Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 10/Lord Oakburn's daughters - Part 4
LORD OAKBURN’S DAUGHTERS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LYNNE."
CHAPTER VII.THE COBWEBBED JAR.
What was now to be done? How were they to set about fathoming—as Mr. Stephen Grey suggested—this dreadful business? It was so shrouded in mystery! The poor form, calm and still now, lay upon the bed, and the wondering gentlemen stood around it. Medical men come in contact with strange phases of human life, as exhibited in man’s passage from the cradle to the grave, but this little knot of the brethren could only acknowledge to themselves, that of all strange occurrences which had ever passed under their notice, this one appeared to be about the strangest.
Mr. Carlton suddenly left his place from the far side of the bed, held the door open, and motioned the two women from the room. He then in like manner motioned young Frederick Grey. But the boy, who was standing against the wall, close to it, did not stir in answer.
“I’d rather stay in, Mr. Carlton,” he fearlessly said. “Is there any reason why I may not?”
Mr. Carlton hesitated. The words of the boy, spoken out so boldly, had caused the three gentlemen near the bed to look round. Mr. Carlton evidently did wish him to be outside the room, but he as evidently did not see his way quite clear to get him there.
“Is he discreet?” he asked, looking to the two brothers for an answer.
“Perfectly so,” replied Mr. John Grey, who did not himself see any reason why his nephew should be expelled.
Mr. Carlton closed the door and returned to the group. “Mr. Stephen Grey has suggested a doubt of foul play,” he began; “but is it possible that there can be any feasible grounds for it? I ask, gentlemen, because you are all better acquainted with these two women than I am. If either, or both of them———"
“Goodness, man!” interrupted Mr. Stephen Grey, in his impulsive fashion, “you can’t suppose I suspect Mother Pepperfly or the old widow! Pepperfly has her besetting sin, drink; and the widow is a foolish, timorous body; but they’d no more commit murder than you or I would commit it. What could you be thinking of, Mr. Carlton?”
“Pardon me,” rejoined Mr. Carlton; “I merely drew the conclusion from your own remark. I’m sure I have no cause to cast a doubt on them, but there has been no one else about the lady.”
“If I understand Mr. Stephen Grey aright, he did not intend to cast suspicion upon any one,” interposed Mr. Lycett. “His remark arose simply from the want of being able to account for the mystery.”
“Precisely so,” assented Stephen Grey. “If my thoughts had a bent one way more than another, it was whether the medicine could have been exchanged or tampered with between my house and this.”
“It is not likely,” said Mr. Grey. “Dick carries out his medicines in a covered basket. But another idea has suggested itself to me. Stephen, you have seen more of this unfortunate young lady than any one present; I never set eyes on her until now, and I daresay you, Lycett, can say the same. Mr. Carlton here has seen her once only———"
“Twice,” interrupted Mr. Carlton. “Last night and this. I should not have come down to-night had I known the hour fixed for my meeting Mr. Stephen Grey here had so long passed. But I was with patients on the Rise, and the time slipped by unheeded.”
“At any rate you have not seen much of her,” rejoined Mr. John Grey. “My brother Stephen has, comparatively speaking; and what I was about to ask him was this: whether it is at all probable that she herself added the poison to the draught. Was she in low spirits, Stephen?”
“Not in the least,” returned Stephen Grey. “She has been as gay and cheerful as a person can be. Besides, she could not have added anything to the draught without being seen by the nurse; and we have her testimony that it was in her possession in the other room until the moment when she administered it.”
“Another thing,” observed Mr. Carlton; “if the poison was added to the draught after it came here, how could it have smelt of it on its arrival?”
“There lies the greatest enigma of all—why the draught should smell of poison when it got here,” cried Stephen Grey.
“Nay,” dissented his brother; there’s no wonder at its smelling of poison if the poison was in it; the mystery is, how and where it got into it. In my opinion, setting aside her tragical end, there is a great deal of mystery in the affair altogether. Who was she? Where did she come from? Why did she come here, a stranger to the place and to everybody in it? And what a young thing she appears to be!”
She did indeed look young. A fair, pale, sweet face, lying there with its golden-brown hair falling around it. In the alarm of the first moment Mrs. Pepperfly had snatched off the cap, and the hair fell down. Her mouth was upon, and the pretty pearly teeth were visible. They sighed as they looked upon her.
“May her soul have found its rest!” murmured the clergyman, bending over her for a moment ere they took their departure.
Mr. Carlton lingered behind the rest. He visited her box with his own hands, the nurse lighting him, but it contained no clue whatever as to who she was. Nothing but clothes were in it; not a card, not a scrap of paper, not a letter; nothing was there to solve the riddle.
“Was this one trunk all she brought?” he asked.
“All, sir,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly. “There’s her work-box a standing on the drawers there, by the bed’s head.”
The surgeon turned to the work-box, and examined it searchingly and thoroughly, as he had the trunk. Its contents consisted of cotton, needles, and such like accessories to work. There was a piece of embroidery in a midway stage; a baby’s little cambric night-cap just begun; and a few paper patterns. Nothing whatever that could throw any light upon herself or her previous history. Her pocket—a loose pocket which Mrs. Pepperfly drew from under the pillow, where the invalid had kept it—contained a purse alone. Nothing else: and in the purse there was not much money. Her keys lay on the drawers.
Mr. Carlton locked both the boxes, and sealed them with his own seal. “I don’t know much about the routine of these affairs,” he observed, “but it is right, I suppose, to make all sale until the police come—they can break my seals if they will.”
Barely had he spoken when a policeman appeared upon the scene. The news had travelled to the station, and the sergeant himself had come down. He was a big man, with round red cheeks, and a small, sharp-pointed nose. He listened in silence to the details which were given him partly by Mr. Carlton, partly by the nurse, and took possession of the basin that had contained the gruel and the bottle.
Next he laid hold of the candle and began to peer about the two rooms, for what purpose, or how it could at all help the inquiry, he alone knew. He carried the candle out in the landing and examined that, gazing up at the walls, raising his face to the window, through which the moonlight shone so brightly in.
“Is that a door?” he suddenly asked.
Without waiting for a reply he strode to the opposite end of the landing to the window, and pulled a door open. The walls had been grained to imitate grey marble, and this door was grained also. It looked like part of the wall, and it opened with a key only. It was that key which had attracted the keen sight of the sergeant.
“It’s only a closet for brooms and the slop-pail, sir,” spoke up Mrs. Gould, who was shivering timidly on the top stairs, holding on by the balustrade.
Even so. It was a very innocent closet, containing only a pail and a couple of brooms. The officer satisfied himself on that point, and closed the door again; but Mr. Carlton, who had not previously known any closet was there, immediately saw that it might have afforded a temporary hiding place for the owner of that face he had seen so close to it earlier in the evening—if indeed that face had not been a myth of his own imagination.
Mr. Carlton could do nothing more, and he took his departure, the face all too present to him as he walked through the moonlit streets. It may be asked why he did not speak of it to the police—why he had not spoken of it to the gentlemen who had been gathered with him round the death-bed. But of what was he to speak? That he thought he saw a strange-looking face, a face half ghostly, half human; a face which had jet black whiskers on its cheeks; that he had thought he saw this on the staircase in the moonbeams, and that when he brought out the candle and threw its rays around nothing was to be seen? It could not, if it belonged to a human, walking being, have had time to get down the stairs unseen; that was impossible; and he had satisfied himself that it had not taken refuge in the bed-room. It is true there was this closet, which he had not known of, but he did not believe it could have gone in there and closed the door again before he was out with the light. Had he spoken of this, nine persons out of ten would have answered him—it was nothing but your own imagination.
And he was not sure that it was not his imagination. When he had descended the stairs after seeing it, he put the question in a careless sort of way to the landlady, as she came from the kitchen and Mrs. Pepperfly’s society to open the door for him—was any strange man on the staircase or in the house?—and Mrs. Gould had answered, with some inward indignation, that there was no man at all in the house, or likely to be in it. Beyond that Mr. Carlton had not spoken of the circumstance.
He went straight on to his home through the moonlit streets, and soon afterwards retired to rest, or rather to bed, for rest he did not get. That shadowy face haunted him in the strangest manner; he could get no sleep for it, but lay tossing and turning until morning light; and then, when he did get to sleep, he saw it in his dreams.
But we must go back to the Messrs. Grey. On leaving Mrs. Gould’s house they parted with Mr. Lycett at the door, for their road lay in the opposite direction to his, and Mr. John Grey passed his arm through his brother’s as they went up the street, young Frederick walking by their side.
“This is a most unfortunate event,” began Mr. John.
“It is to the full as mysterious as it is unfortunate,” was the reply of his brother. “Prussia acid get into my composing draught! The thing is an impossibility.”
“I wonder whether prussic acid had been mixed with the draught, or whether the draught had been poured out and prussic acid substituted?” cried Frederick.
“Don’t talk in that senseless way, Frederick,” rebuked Mr. Stephen. “Who would pour medicine out of a bottle and substitute prussic acid?”
“Well, papa, it is pretty sure that she took prussic acid; so it must have been given to her in some way.”
“From the drain left in the phial, it is apparent that some drops were mixed with the draught, just sufficient to destroy life, and no more,” observed Mr. John. “Stephen,” he added, lowering his voice, and speaking with hesitation, “are you sure-pardon the question, but are you sure you did not, in some unaccountable fit of absence, mix it with it yourself?”
In good truth the affair to Mr. John Grey, a man of sound practical sense, did appear most unaccountable. He had turned it over in his mind in all its bearings as he stood by the bed at Mrs. Gould’s, and the only possible solution he could come to was, that the poison must have been inadvertently mixed with the draught when it was made up. And yet this appeared most unlikely, for he knew how correct his brother was.
“I have not mixed medicines for twenty years, John, to make a fatal mistake at last,” was the reply of Stephen Grey. “No; the draught was carefully and properly mixed.”
“I stood by and watched papa do it, Uncle John, and I am sure it was carefully mixed,” said Frederick, rather resenting his uncle’s doubt. “Do you think he could have taken down the jar of prussic acid from its corner in a fit of absence?—why, he couldn’t reach it, you know, without the steps; and they have not been brought into the surgery today. Mr. Fisher saw him mix it, too.”
“Mr. Fisher did?”
“Fisher’s seeing me happened in this way,” interposed Mr. Stephen, “In leaving Mrs. Crane, soon after seven this evening, I saw Fisher at his door, and he made me go in. It was Mrs. Fisher’s birthday, and he had a bottle of champagne on the table, about to tap it. I helped them drink it, and then Fisher came out with me for a stroll, first of all turning into the surgery with me, and waiting while I mixed the draught for Mrs. Crane.”
“And was the bottle given immediately to Dick?”
“Not immediately,” spoke Frederick; “it waited a short while on the counter while Dick finished his supper. But it never was lost sight of for one moment while it was there, as Mr. Whittaker can testify,” he added, as if in anticipation of what might be his uncle’s next question. “Whittaker came in before papa had quite finished the mixture—that is, he was putting the paper round the bottle—and we neither of us, I or Whittaker, quitted the room until Dick had gone out with it.”
“Well, it appears most incomprehensible,” exclaimed Mr. John Grey.
The first thing they did on entering was to question Dick. He slept at the top of Mr. John’s house, and they proceeded to his room, rousing Mr. Dick from his slumbers: a shock-headed gentleman of fourteen, who struggled up in bed, his eyes wild with surprise.
“Wake up, Dick,” said his master.
“I am awake, sir,” responded Dick. “Be I wanted? is there any physic to take out?”
“No, nothing of that,” continued Mr. John. “I only want to ask you a question. Did you carry any medicine to Mrs. Gould’s tonight?”
“I took some there, sir. A small bottle.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“It were Master Frederick as give it to me, sir. I took it down and give it to that there fat Pepperfly, for it were she that come to the door.”
“Did you go straight there? or did you loiter on your way and put your basket down?”
“I went straight there,” replied the boy, earnestly. “I never loitered once not let go of the basket. Do that Pepperfly say as I didn’t take it, sir?—or that I took it broke?” he added, believing this unusual cross-questioning must bode some accusation against himself. “She’s a big story-teller if she do.”
“She has not said anything about you,” returned his master; “I only want to know whether that little bottle of medicine was delivered at Mrs. Gould’s untouched, in the same state that it was given to you.”
“Yes, that it was, sir,” was the boy’s ready answer, and they could tell by his manner that he was speaking the truth.
Telling him ho might go to sleep again, they went down to the surgery. No one was in it then, and the gas was turned very low. Mr. Stephen turned it on, and brought in the steps from the recess outside, where they were kept. In a remote corner of the highest shelf was a glass jar, labelled “Hydrocyanic Acid;” he mounted the steps and reached it down.
“See!” he exclaimed, “actually cobwebs upon it, woven from the stopper to the jar, and the dust on it an inch thick! that proves it has not been touched for some time. Why, it must be six weeks at least since we had occasion to use it.”
It was the only preparation of prussic acid in their possession of any sort, whether diluted or otherwise, and the seeing the jar in this state completely did away with the half doubt on John Grey’s mind touching his brother—he saw that he could not have used it. They leaned their elbows on the counter where the medicines were usually compounded, and talked together over the affair, unable to offer any conjecture or surmise which might tend to solve it.
Thus absorbed, they did not notice the movements of Frederick. He, ever restless, ever seeking to be in action, as boys of that age are sure to be, laid hold of the white linen duster kept in the surgery, and dusted well the gloss containing the poison. John Grey caught sight of the feat just as it was accomplished.
“O, Frederick! what have you done?”
“Only taken off the dust and cobwebs, uncle,” answered the lad, wondering at the tone of alarm.
“Do you know,” cried John Grey, speaking sharply in his excitement, “that that meddling action of yours may cost your father his life? Or, at least, his reputation.”
The crimson of emotion rushed violently into the face of Frederick. He made no answer.
“So long as that dust was on the jar, it was a sure proof that it had not been opened. Did you see the cobwebs spun from the stopper to the jar? What could have afforded more certain evidence that the stopper had not been taken out? These friendly cobwebs might have saved your father.”
Frederick Grey felt as if a ball had come into his throat and was choking him: as if it would take his whole life to atone for the imprudence of which he had been guilty.
“It is not likely they suspect my father,” he exclaimed; “and as to accusing him—no, uncle, they will not do that.”
“Whom will they accuse, think you? you or me? The medicine went out of this house, and was delivered untampered with to Nurse Pepperfly, was administered untampered with also to the patient, so far as we can learn or suspect. Mr. Carlton, a man in honourable practice, as we are, testifies that the draught did smell of prussic acid when the nurse put it into his hand; he spoke of it at once, as the nurse testifies. To whom, then, will people’s suspicions be directed but to him who made up the medicine? You have faith in your father and I have faith in my brother that he could not be, and was not, guilty of the careless error of putting poison in the sleeping draught; but that cobwebbed, dusty jar would have been proof that he had not, for those who have not faith in him. And now you have destroyed it! Go home to bed, boy! you have done enough mischief for one night.”
The words, in all their full sting, told on Frederick Grey. A remorse, amounting to positive agony, was taking possession of him for the imprudence he had committed. He did not reply; he was too completely subdued; he only longed to be away from all eyes, where he might indulge his sorrow and his repentance—where he might consider the means, if there were any, of repairing his fault, and pray to God to turn away the evil. He fished his uncle good night in a humble voice, and turned to his father.
“Good night, and God bless you, my darling boy!” said Mr. Stephen, warmly. “You did not do wrong intentionally. Be at ease; I am conscious of my own innocence, and I can put my hearty faith in God to make it plain.”
Frederick Grey went home and threw himself on his bed, sobbing as if his heart would break, in spite of his sixteen years. There was nobody to whom he could turn for comfort. He was an only child, and his mother, whom he loved better than anything on earth, was away in a foreign land, gone to it in search of health.
Mr. John Grey and his brother remained in the surgery, and were joined by their assistant, Mr. Whittaker, who was a qualified surgeon. They talked the matter over with him, but no solution of it whatever could be arrived at.
“That the draught was given to the boy as Mr. Stephen left it, I and Frederick can both testify,” said the assistant. “Dick, it appears, delivered it intact to Mrs. Pepperfly, who took it straight to Mr. Carlton, and he at once smelt the prussic acid. I can’t make it out at all. I have heard of magic, but this beats it hollow. What a pity but Mr. Carton had brought the draught back here when he called.”
“Did you see him, Whittaker?” asked Stephen Grey.
“I saw him. There was only myself here. He came in and asked if he could speak a word to Mr. Stephen Grey. Mr. Stephen, I told him, was out, and he went away.”
“Well,” said Mr. Grey, “it does appear to be utterly incomprehensible; time, I suppose, will bring an elucidation upon it. As it does upon most things.”
CHAPTER VIII.POPULAR OPINION IN SOUTH WENNOCK.
Tuesday morning arose, the morning subsequent to Mrs. Crane’s death, and South Wennock was in excitement from one end of it to the other. Everybody was out of doors discussing the fatal event. Groups gathered everywhere; on the pavement, in the high road, on the sills of shops, at private doors, they congregated; one only theme in their minds and on their tongues. The previous day, Monday, had been pretty fruitful for the gossip-mongers, inasmuch as they had found nuts from the accident to Mr. Carlton and his groom; but that paltry news was as nothing compared to this. You are aware how prone we are to pick up any little bit of mystery, how we dive into it and strive to make it ours, never resting until it is fathomed; you may then judge what a dish this must have been for South Wennock’s inhabitants, enshrouded on all sides, as it was, with mystery.
Mr. John Grey was right when he assumed that it was on his brother the onus of the affair would fall. Almost the universal opinion taken up was, that Mr. Stephen Grey had committed the error in carelessness, when making up the sleeping draught. The fact that he had been a correct mixer of medicines all his life, went for nothing now.
“I’ve druv my horses for fifteen year and never throwed ’em down to kill my passengers yet; but that’s no reason why I mayn’t have the ill-luck some day,” spoke the coachman of a four-horse stage, plying daily between two certain towns, and halting at South Wennock for breakfast, at the Red Lion inn. “And that’s just it, as I reckon, with Mr. Stephen Grey. He have been a accurate mixer of physic, up to now; but he may have made the mistake at last. The best of us is liable to ’em; as I’m sure the gentlemen standing round knows.”
The gentlemen standing round nodded. They formed part of a large group collected at the coach entrance of the Red Lion. The group comprised people of various degrees and grades—gentlemen, tradesmen, and labourers. In a small country place where the inhabitants are all known to each other, they are apt to converse together familiarly on local topics, Without reference to social standing.
“Like me,” struck in the blacksmith. “I druv a nail right into a horse’s foot last week, and lamed him; and I’ll be upon my word such a awk’ard accident hasn’t happened to me —no, not for years.”
“Look at poor Toker, too!” said a little man, hovering respectfully on the outside of the crowd,—Wilkes the barber. “How many a hundred times had he gone up the river in that punt of his, and always came home safe till last Friday was a fortnight, and then he got drownded at last!”
“I am sorry for Stephen Grey, though,” observed a gentleman. " If it has been caused by his mistake he will feel it all his life. A tender-hearted man is Stephen Grey.”
“It appears to me altogether most unaccountable,” remarked the Reverend Mr. Jones, who was the incumbent of St. Mark’s Church, and who had come out to join in the popular gossip and excitement. Perhaps because he was a connection of the Greys, his wife and Mrs. John Grey being sisters. “I hear that there was every proof that the jar containing the prussic acid—and they have but that one, it appears, in their surgery—had not been touched.”
“Mr. John Grey told me that himself, this morning,” interrupted another eager voice. “As a proof that their jar had not been touched, it was covered in cobwebs, he said, and remained so covered after the lady was dead; only young master Fred officiously wiped them off.”
There ensued a silence. The crowd generally were deliberating upon this last item of news. It was the first time it had reached them. A substantial grocer of the name of Plumstead spoke. He was not particularly affected towards the Greys, for they dealt at a rival shop; and his voice had a sarcastic tone.
“It had been better then that they had let the cobwebs remain, so that the coroner and jury might have seen them.”
“John Grey is a man of honour. He would not tell a lie.”
One or two shook their heads dubiously. “We don’t know what we might do, any of us, toward the saving of a brother.”
“Look here!” broke out a fresh voice. “How could the poison have got into the draught, except when it was being made up? And how could Mr. Carlton have smelt it, if it had not been in it?”
“Of course it was in it. She would not have died if it hadn’t been in it.”
“There’s the argument. The draught was sent direct from the Greys’ surgery to Palace Street, and there’s Mr. Carlton and Nurse Pepperfly to testify that it smelt as strong as it could of prussic acid. Why, Mr. Carlton, it turns out, had a sort of suspicion that it might do some harm, and called in at the Greys’ to ask about it, only Mr. Stephen was out and he couldn’t see him. I heard say that he blames himself now for not having brought the draught away with him.”
“Then why didn’t he bring it away?”
“Well, of course he never thought that it was as bad as it turned out to be. And there’s a report going about that he desired the sick lady not to take the draught.”
“Who says that?”
“I heard it.”
“At any rate it seems to come to this,” observed a gentleman who had not yet spoken. “That when the draught went out of the Messrs. Greys’ surgery it went out with the poison in it. And as Mr. Stephen Grey himself mixed that draught, I don’t see how he can shift the dilemma from his own shoulders.”
“He can’t shift it, sir,” said a malcontent. “It’s all very well to say young master Fred wiped the cobwebs off the jar. Perhaps he did; but not, I’ll lay, before they had been previously disturbed.”
“Talking about young Fred,” interposed the grocer; “he was going by my shop just now, and I asked him about it. ‘My father mixed the draught correctly,’ he said; ‘I can be upon my word that he did, for I saw him do it.’ ‘Can you be upon your oath, Master Frederick?’ returned I, just by way of catching the young gentleman. ‘Yes, I can, if necessary,’ said he, throwing his head back in his haughty, fearless way, and looking me full in the face; ‘but my word is the same as my oath, Mr. Plumstead.’ And he went off as corked as could be.”
“Young Fred is a chip of the old Grey block, open and honourable,” cried the little barber. “He may have noticed nothing wrong, and if the boy says he didn’t, why I don’t believe he did.”
“They says,” cried another, dropping his voice, “that Mr. Stephen had got his head full of champagne, and couldn’t see one bottle from another. That he and Fisher the land agent had been drinking it together.”
“Nonsense!” rebuked the clergyman. “Mr. Stephen Grey is not one to drink too much.”
“Why, sir,” cried the coachman, Willing to hear his testimony-for the aspersion just mentioned had not found favour with him, or with many of those around him—“I heard that Mr. Fisher could be a witness in Mr. Stephen’s favour, for he stood by and saw him make up the physic.”
At this juncture Mrs. Fitch’s head appeared at the side door. She was looking for the coachman.
“Now, Sam Heath! Do you know that your half hour has been up this five minutes?”
Sam Heath, the coachman, hastened up the yard, as fast as his size would permit him. The fresh horses were already attached to the coach, the passengers were waiting to mount.
Sam Heath had been gathering in the news of the great event that morning instead of attending to his breakfast, and had become absorbed in it.
Before the little diversion caused by this interference of Mrs. Fitch was over, another comer had been added to the collected knot of gossipers. It was the gentleman just spoken of, Mr. Fisher, the land surveyor and agent, a pleasant-looking man of thirty, careless in manner as in countenance. Considering what had just been avowed, as to his knowledge of the affair, there was no wonder that he was rapturously received.
“Here’s Fisher!, How d’ye do, Fisher? I say, Fisher, is it true that your champagne was too potent for Stephen Grey last night, causing him to mistake prussic acid for wholesome syrup of squills?”
“That’s right! Go on, all of you!” returned Fisher, satirically. “Stephen Grey knows better than to drink champayne that’s too potent for him, whether mine or anybody else’s. I’ll just tell you the rights of the case. It was my wife’s birthday, and———"
“We heard wedding day,” interrupted a voice.
“Did you? then you heard wrong. It was her birthday, and I was just going to open a bottle of champagne, when Stephen Grey went by, and I got him in to drink her health. My wife had two glasses out of it, and I think he had two, and I had the rest. Stephen Grey was as sober, to all intents and purposes, when he went out of my house as he was when he came into it. I went with him and saw him compound this identical, fatal medicine.”
“You can bear witness that he put no prussic acid into it, then?”
“Not I,” returned Mr. Fisher. “If it was said to be composed of prosaic acid pure, I could not tell to the contrary. I saw him pour two or three liquids together, but whether they were poison, or whether they were not, I could not tell. How should I know his bottles apart? And if I had known I took no notice, for I was laughing and joking all the time. This morning, when, I was in there, Mr. Whittaker showed me the place of the prussic acid, and I can be upon my oath that no bottle, so high as that, was taken down by Mr. Stephen. So far I can say.”
“Well, of all strange, incomprehensible events, this seems the strangest. If the draught———”
“Take care! we shall be run over.”
The talkers had to scutter right and left. Sam Heath, in all the pride and glory of his box seat, was driving quickly out of the yard to make up for time wasted, his four handsome horses before him, his coach, filled with passengers inside and out, behind him. It was the break up of the assemblage, and they dispersed to fall into smaller knots, or to join other groups.
The probabilities appeared too overwhelming against Stephen Grey. A sort of tide set in against him. Not against the man personally, but against any possibilities that the draught could have been fatally impregnated by other bands than his. In vain a very few attempted to take his part; to express their belief that, however the poison might have got into the draught it was not put there by Stephen Grey; in vain his son Frederick reiterated his declaration, that he had watched the draught mixed, and that it was mixed carefully and correctly; their speaking was as a hopeless task, for the public mind was made up.
“Let it rest, Frederick,” said Mr. Stephen to his son. “The facts will come to light sometime, I know, and then they’ll be convinced.”
“Yes—but meanwhile?” thought Frederick, with a swelling heart. Ay! what in the meanwhile might happen to his father? Would he be committed for manslaughter?—tried, convicted, punished?
Upon none did Mrs. Crane’s death produce a more startling shock than upon Judith Ford. The hours kept at old Mrs. Jenkinson’s were early, and the house had gone to rest when it happened, so that even the servant Margaret did not know of it until the following morning. She did not disturb Judith to tell her. Mrs. Jenkinson the previous night had kindly told Judith to lie in bed as long as she liked in the morning, and try to get her face-ache well. Judith, who had really need of rest, slept long, and it was past nine o’clock when she came down to the kitchen. Margaret was just finishing her own breakfast.
“How’s your face, Judith?” she asked, busying herself to get some fresh tea for her sister. “It looks better. The swelling has gone down.”
“It is a great deal better,” replied Judith.
“Margaret, I did not think to lie so late as this; you should have called me. Thunk you, don’t trouble. I don’t feel as if I could eat now; perhaps I’ll take a bit of bread-and-butter later. "
Margaret got the tea ready in silence. She was wondering how she could best break the news to her sister; she was sure, break it as gently as she would, that it would be a terrible shock. As she was pouring out the cup of tea her mistress’s bell rang, and she had to answer it; and felt almost glad of the respite.
“I wonder how Mrs. Crane is this morning?” Judith said when she returned. “Have you heard?”
“I—l’m afraid she’s not quite well this morning,” replied Margaret. “Do eat something, Judith—you’ll want it.”
“Not well,” returned Judith, unmindful of the exhortation to eat. “Has fever come on?”
“No, it’s not fever. They say—they say—that the wrong medicine has been given to her,” brought out Margaret, thinking she was accomplishing her task cleverly.
“Wrong medicine!” repeated Judith, looking bewildered.
“It’s more than I can understand. But it—they say that the effects will kill her.”
Judith gulped down her hot tea, rose, and mode for the door. Margaret caught her as she was escaping through it.
“Don’t go, Judith. You can’t do any good. Stop where you are.”
“I must go, Msrgaret. Those two women in there are not worth a rush, both put together; at least, the widow’s not worth it, and the other can’t always be trusted. If she is in danger, poor young lady, you will not see me again until she’s out of it. Margaret, then! you have no right to detain me.”
Margaret contrived to get the door shut, and placed her back against it. “Sit down in that chair, Judith, while I tell you something. It is of no use for you to go in. Do you understand?—or must I speak plainer?”
Judith, overpowered by the strong will so painfully and evidently in earnest, sat down in the chair indicated, and waited for an explanation. She could not in the least understood, and stared hard at her sister.
“It is all over, Judith; it was over at ten o’clock last night. She is dead.”
The same hard stare on Judith’s countenance. She did not speak. Perhaps she could not yet realise the sense of the words.
“Mr. Stephen Grey sent in a sleeping draught, to be given her the last thing,” continued Margaret. “He made some extraordinary mistake in it, and sent poison. As soon as she drank it, she died.”
Judith’s face had been growing of a livid, death-like whiteness, but there was the same hard, uncomprehending look upon it. It suddenly changed; the haul look, for intelligence, the uncertainty, for horror. She uttered a low shriek and hid her eyes with her hands.
“Now this is just what I thought it would be—you do take on so,” rebuked Margaret. “It is a shocking thing; it’s dreadful for the poor young lady; but still she was a stranger to us.”
Judith had begun to shiver. Presently she took her hands from her eyes and looked at her sister.
“Mr. Stephen sent the poison, do you say!”
"They say it. It’s odd to me if he did. But her death, poor thing, seems proof positive.”
“Then he never did send it!” emphatically cried Judith. “Oh, Margaret, this is awful! When did she die?”
“Well I believe it was about a quarter or ten minutes before ten last night. Mr. Carlton it appears called there sometime in the evening, and was there when the draught was brought in, and he smelt the poison in the bottle. He went off to the Greys in ask Mr. Stephen whether it was all right, but she had taken it before he could get back again.”
The hard, stony look was re-appearing on Judith’s face. She seemed not to understand, and kept her eyes fixed on Margaret.
“If Mr. Carlton smelt the poison, why did he not forbid it to be given to her?” she said after a while.
“Well—upon my word I forget. I think, though, Mrs. Gould said he did forbid it. It was from her I got all this; she came in here as soon as I was down this morning. She is in a fine way, she and old Pepperfly too; but, as I tell her, there’s no need for them to fear. It doesn’t seem to have been any fault of theirs.”
Judith rose from her chair where she had quietly sat during the recital. “I must go in and learn more, Margaret,” she said in a resolute tone, as if she feared being stopped a second time.
“Ay, you may go now,” was Margaret’s answer. “I only wanted to break the news to you first.”
Mrs. Gould and nurse Pepperfly were doing duty over the kitchen fire, talking themselves red in the face, and imbibing is slight modicum of comfort by way of soothing their shattered nerves. Judith saw them as she came up the yard. She crossed the house passage and pushed open the kitchen door.
Both screamed. Too busy to see or hear her, sitting as they were with their backs to the window, her entrance startled them. That overcome, they became voluble on the subject of the past night; and Judith, leaning against the ironing-board underneath the window, listened attentively, and garnered up the particulars in silence.
“It is next door to an impossibility that Mr. Stephen could have mixed poison with the draught,” was her first rejoinder. “I, for one, will never believe it.”
The room up-stairs was in possession of the police, but Judith was allowed to see it. The poor young face lay white and still, and Judith burst into tears as she gazed at it.
In going down stairs again she just missed meeting Mr. Carlton. He called at the house, and spoke to the policeman. He, the surgeon, had undertaken to assist the police in their researches to discover who the strange lady was, so far as he could, and had already written to various friends in London if perchance they might have cognisance of her. Ho appeared inclined to be sharp with Mrs. Pepperfly, almost seeming to entertain some doubt of the woman’s state of sobriety at the time of the occurrence.
“It is a most extraordinary thing to me, Mrs. Pepperfly, that the lady did not tell you I had forbidden her to take the draught. I can scarcely think but that she did tell you. And yet you went and gave it to her.”
“I can be upon my Bible oath that she never said nothing to me against taking the draught,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly, scarcely knowing whether to be indignant or to shed tears at the reproach. “Quite the conterairy. She wanted to take it, poor soul, right atop of her gruel; and would have took it so, if I had let her.”
Mr. Carlton threw his light grey eyes straight into the woman’s face.
“Are you sure you remember all the occurrences quite clearly, Mrs. Pepperfly?”
Mrs. Pepperfly understood the insinuation and fired at it. “I remember ’em just as clear as you do, sir. And I’m thankful to goodness that as fur as that night goes I’ve not got nothing on my conscience. If it was to come over again to-night, me being still in ignorance of what was to turn out, I should just give her the draught, supposing it my duty, as I give it her then.”
“Well, it appears to me very strange that she should have taken it,” concluded Mr. Carlton.
In the course of the morning, Judith, in going up the street, encountered Frederick Grey.
“Well, Judith,” began the boy in a tone of resentment, “what do you think of this?”
“I don’t know what to dare to think of it, sir,” was Judith’s answer, “Nothing in all my life has ever come over me like it.”
“Judith, you know papa. Now, do you believe it within the range of possibility—possibility, mind you—that he should put prussic acid, through a careless mistake, into a sleeping draught?” he continued, in excitement.
“Master Frederick, I do not believe that he put it in.”
“But now, look here. I was present when that medicine was mixed up. I saw everything my father put into it, watched every motion, and I declare that it was mixed correctly. I happened to be there, leaning with my arms on the counter in a sort of idle fit. When papa came in with Mr. Fisher, he told me to go home to my Latin, but I was in no hurry to obey, and lingered on. I am glad now I did! Well, that draught, I can declare, was properly and safely compounded; and yet, when it gets to Mrs. Crane’s, there’s said to be poison in it, and she drinks it and dies! Who is to explain it or account for it?”
Judith did not reply. The hard look, telling of some strange perplexity, was overshadowing her face again.
“And the town lays the blame upon papa! They say—oh, I wont' repeat to you all they say. But, Judith, there are a few yet who don’t believe him guilty.”
“I, for one,” she answered.
“Ay, Judith, I———”
The lad paused. Then he suddenly bent forward and whispered something in her ear. Her pale face turned crimson as she listened, and she put up her hands deprecatingly, essaying to stop him.
“Hush, hush, Master Grey! Be silent, sir.”
“Judith, for two pins I’d say it aloud.”
“I’d rather you said it aloud than said it to me, sir.”
There was a pause. Frederick Grey threw back his head in the manner he was rather given to, when anything annoyed him, and there was a fearless, resolute expression on his face which caused Judith to fear he was going to speak aloud. She hastened to change the subject.
“I suppose there will be an inquest, sir?”
“An inquest! I should just think so. If ever there was a case demanding an inquest, it’s this one. If the verdict goes against my father, it will be my fault.” And he forthwith described to her how he had wiped the cobwebs from the jar. “The worst of it is, speaking of minor considerations,” he went on, “that nobody knows where to write to her friends, or whether she has any. My father says you took a letter to the post for her.”
“So I did, and the police have just asked me about it,” replied Judith; “but I did not notice the address, except that it was London. It was to that Mrs. Smith who came down and took away the baby.”
They are going to try and find that woman. Carlton says she ought to be found if possible, because, through her, we may come at some knowledge of who Mrs. Crane was, and he has given a description of her to the police; he saw her on Sunday night at Great Wennock Station. And now I must make a run for it, Judith, or I shall catch it for loitering.”
The boy ran off. Judith gazed after him as one lost in thought, her countenance resuming its look of hardness, its mazed perplexity.