Works of Ellen Wood, page 428
“Another thing,” observed Mr. Carlton: “if the poison was added to the draught after it came here, how could the smell have been there 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 every one 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 removed the cap, and the hair had fallen about the face. Her mouth was a little open, 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 others. He searched her box with his own hands, the nurse lighting him, but it contained no clue whatever as to whom she might be. Nothing but wearing-apparel was 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 with her?” he asked.
“All, sir,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly. “There’s her workbox standing on the drawers there, by the bed-head.”
The surgeon turned to the workbox, and examined it searchingly and thoroughly, as he had examined the trunk. Its contents consisted of cotton, needles, and all accessories necessary to work. There was a piece of embroidery finished; a baby’s little cambric night-cap just begun; and there were 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 were on the drawers.
Mr. Carlton locked both the workbox and the trunk, 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 safe until the police come — they can break my seals if they wish to do so.”
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: a big man, with round red cheeks. 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 took 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 on to the landing and examined that, gazing up at the walls, raising his face to the window, through which the moonlight shone so brightly.
“Is that a door?” he suddenly asked.
Without waiting for a reply, he strode to the opposite end of the landing, and pulled open a door. The walls had been grained to imitate grey marble, and the door was grained also. It looked like part of the wall, and opened with a key only. It was the key which had attracted the keen sight of the sergeant.
“It’s only a closet for brooms and dustpans, sir,” spoke up Mrs. Gould, who was shivering timidly at the top of the stairs, holding on by the balustrade.
Even so. It was a very innocent closet, containing only a couple of brooms. The officer satisfied himself on that point, and closed the door again; but Mr. Carlton, who had not previously known that 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 freak of his own imagination.
Mr. Carlton could do nothing more, and he took his departure, the face all too present with 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 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 with jet black whiskers; 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 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 bedroom. 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 before he was out again 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 indignation, that there was no man at all in the house, or likely to be. Beyond that, Mr. Carlton had not mentioned 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 not fall asleep for it, but lay tossing and turning until the morning. Then, when he did fall asleep, it haunted his dreams.
But we must return to an earlier hour of the evening, and to the Messrs. Grey. On leaving Mrs. Gould’s house they parted with Mr. Lycett at the door, for their road lay in an opposite direction to his, and Mr. John Grey passed his arm through his brother’s as they went up the street, young Frederick walking with them.
“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. “Prussic 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 drop left in the phial, it is clear that sufficient poison was mixed with the draught, 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, make the mistake 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 near 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 so fatal a mistake at last,” was the reply of Stephen Grey. “No; the draught was carefully and properly made up.”
“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 prussic acid jar from its corner in a fit of absence of mind? — why, he couldn’t reach it, you know, without the steps; and they have not been brought into the surgery to-day. Mr. Fisher saw him mix it too.”
“Mr. Fisher did?”
“Fisher’s seeing me happened in this way,” interposed Mr. Stephen. “Upon 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 was about to tap a bottle of champagne. I helped them out with it, and then Fisher came out with me for a stroll, first of all turning into the surgery 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 time on the counter while Dick finished his supper. But it was never lost sight of for one moment while it was there, as Mr. Whittaker can testify,” he added, as if anticipating 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, left 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. “Am I wanted? Is there any physic to take out?”
“No, nothing of that sort,” returned Mr. John. “I only want to ask you a question. Did you carry any medicine to Mrs. Gould’s to-night?”
“I took some there, sir. A small bottle.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“It was Master Frederick gave it to me, sir. I took it down and gave it to that there fat Pepper fly, for it was 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 nor let go the basket. Do that Pepper fly say I didn’t take it, sir? — or that I took it broke?” he added, believing this unusual cross-questioning must mean 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 he might go to sleep again, they went down to the surgery. No one was in it then, and the gas was very low. Mr. Stephen turned it up, and brought in the steps from an outside recess, 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 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 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, took the white linen duster kept in the surgery, and dusted the glass-jar containing the poison. John Grey noticed this just as the act was accomplished.
“Oh, Frederick! what have you done?”
“Only taken off the dust and the 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 Frederick’s face. 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? Those friendly cobwebs might have saved your father.”
Frederick Grey felt as if a lump 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 that they will 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 so administered to the patient, as 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 placed it in his hand; he spoke of it at once, as the nurse proves. 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 error of mixing poison with the sleeping draught; but that cobwebbed, dusty jar would have been proof that he had not done so, 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, with all their 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 wished his uncle good night in humble tones, 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 clear to the world.”
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 no one 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, 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 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 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. Carlton had brought the draught back with him when he called here.”
“Did you see him, Whittaker?” asked Stephen Grey.
“I saw him. I was here alone. 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 throw light upon it. As it does upon most things.”
CHAPTER IX.
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. Every one was out of doors discussing the fatal event. Groups gathered everywhere; on the pavement, in the high-road, in the shops, at private doors, they congregated; one only theme in their minds. The previous day, Monday, had been pretty fruitful for the gossip-mongers, inasmuch as that they had food for gossip from the accident to Mr. Carlton and his groom; but that paltry news was as nothing compared with this. You are aware how prone we are to pick up any slight 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, as it was, with mystery on all sides.
Mr. John Grey was right when he assumed that it was on his brother the onus of the affair would fall. The opinion almost universally taken up was, that Mr. Stephen Grey had carelessly committed the error when making up the sleeping draught. The fact that he had correctly made up medicines all his life went for nothing now.
“I’ve driven my horses for fifteen year and never thro wed ’em down to injure 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’s been accurate 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 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 given to conversing familiarly together 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 of honour such an 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 edge 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 safely till last Friday was a fortnight, and then he got drowned at last!”
