“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