Works of Ellen Wood, page 484
“And you mean to tell us that you could go up these stairs and into this closet without Mr. Carlton’s hearing you?”
“Oh yes. I had on my sick-room shoes. They were made of list; soles and all.”
“Did you suspect, witness, that Mr. Carlton was doing anything wrong with the medicine?” asked one of the magistrates.
“No, sir; I never thought of such a thing. It never occurred to me to think anything wrong until the next morning, when I was told Mrs. Crane had died through taking the draught, and that it was found to have been poisoned. I doubted then. I remembered the words of greeting I had heard pass between Mr. Carlton and his patient, proving that they were well acquainted with each other; but still I thought it could not be possible that Mr. Carlton would do anything so wicked. It was only at the inquest when I heard him swear to what I knew was false that I really suspected him.”
“It’s as good as a play,” ironically spoke Lawyer Billiter. “I hope your worships will have the goodness to take notes of the testimony of this witness. What she says is most extraordinary, most incredible,” he continued, looking from one part of the packed audience to the other. “In my opinion it is tainted with the gravest suspicion. First of all she deposes to a cock-and-bull story of hearing terms of endearment pass between Mr. Carlton and his patient, to whom he had only then been called in as a medical attendant; and next she tells this incredible tale of the bottles! Why should she, above all others, have been seated in the dark in Mrs. Crane’s bedroom that first night? — Why should she, above all others, have come stealing up the stairs the second night, still in the dark, just at the particular time that Mr. Carlton was there? This by-play amidst the bottles, that she professes to have witnessed, can only be compared to so many conjuring tricks! How was it, if she did so come up, that the landlady of the house, Mrs. Gould, and the nurse Pepperfly, did not see her? They —— —— — —”
“I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting,” said Judith. “They were, both times, at supper in the kitchen. I saw them as I went by. I have already said so.”
“Allow me to finish, young woman,” reproved Lawyer Billiter.
“I say,” he added, addressing the court collectively: “that this witness’s evidence is incomprehensible; it is fraught with the gravest doubt. To a clear judgment it may appear very like a pure invention, a tale got up to divert suspicion from herself. It remains yet to be seen whether she was not the one who tampered with the draught — if it was tampered with — and now seeks to throw the guilt upon another. Have the goodness to answer this question, witness: if you perceived all this committed by Mr. Carlton, how came it that you did not declare it at the time?”
“I have said,” replied Judith, in some agitation— “because I feared that I should not be believed. I feared it might be met in the manner that you, sir, are now meeting it. I feared the very suspicion might be turned upon me; as you are now trying to turn it.”
“You feared that your unsupported testimony would not weigh against Mr. Carlton?” interposed one of the magistrates.
“Yes, sir,” replied Judith. “I did not really suspect Mr. Carlton until after the inquest, and there was a feeling upon me then of not liking to speak as I had not spoken before. People would have asked me why I kept it in. Besides, I never felt quite sure that Mr. Carlton had done it: it seemed so impossible to believe it.”
“And, confessing this, you now take upon yourself to assert that Mr. Carlton was dropping the prussic acid into the draught while you were looking at him through the door?” sharply asked Lawyer Billiter.
“I don’t assert anything of the kind,” returned Judith. “I have only said what I saw him do with the bottles; I have said nothing more.”
“Oh,” said Lawyer Billiter, “you have said nothing more, haven’t you, young woman! I think it must strike everybody that you have insinuated more, if you have not said it. Your worships,” he added, turning to the bench, “there is not, as it appears to me, a tittle of evidence that ought to weigh against Mr. Carlton. He tells you that the young lady, Mrs. Crane, came here a stranger to him as she did to all others, and there is not a shade of proof that this is untrue; that he ever knew her before. You cannot condemn a man like Mr. Carlton upon the sole testimony of an obscure witness; a servant girl who comes forward with a confession of things that, if true, should have been declared years ago. With the exception of certain words she says she heard pass between Mr. Carlton and the sick lady, there’s no evidence whatever that they were not strangers to each other—”
“You forget the letter written by the lady to Mr. Carlton the night of her arrival,” interrupted one of the magistrates, alluding to the unfortunate letter found by Lady Laura, and which had brought on the trouble.
“Not at all, your worship,” undauntedly returned the lawyer. “There’s no proof that that letter was addressed to Mr. Carlton — was ever in his possession. The woman Smith’s story of its having been handed to her by the Lady Jane Chesney, and that Lady Jane received it from Mr. Carlton’s wife, goes for nothing. I might take a letter from my pocket, hand it to your worship, and say that the party from whom I received it told me he had had it from the Khan of Tartary; but it mightn’t be any nearer the truth for his saying it.”
There was a smile in the hall. Mr. Carlton touched his lawyer on the sleeve, and the latter bent to him.
“What letter is it that is in question?”
For it was a positive fact that Mr. Carlton, up to this moment, had heard nothing of the letter. The policeman who arrested him had not mentioned it: and, on his arrival at the town-hall, the proceedings were commenced in so much haste and confusion that he had only a vague idea of the details of the charge. Lawyer Billiter was sent for afterwards; and he gathered his necessary information from others, more than from the prisoner.
“Don’t you know about it?” returned the lawyer, in a whisper. “Haven’t you seen the letter? Why, it’s that letter that has done three parts of the mischief?”
“I have not seen or heard of any letter. Where did it come from?”
“Out of some safe in your cellar, — as I am given to understand. It’s an awkward letter, mind you, Carlton,” added the lawyer, confidentially, “unless you can explain it away.”
“Have they been searching my house?” asked Mr. Carlton, haughtily, answering the only portion of the explanation which had struck him.
“Not at all. I’m not sure that the bench know how it was obtained yet, except that Lady Jane Chesney lent it to that Mrs. Smith for an hour or two; and her ladyship said she had it from Lady Laura. I met Pepperfly—”
“But there was no letter in the safe,” interrupted Mr. Carlton, puzzled by the words. “I don’t know what you mean. Can I see the letter?”
Lawyer Billiter asked permission of the bench, and the letter was handed to Mr. Carlton. To describe his mental astonishment when he saw the letter that he thought he had burnt years and years before, would be impossible. He turned it about in his hands, just as he had once turned about the torn portion of its copy before the coroner; he read it word by word; he gazed at its faded characters, faded by the hand of Time; and he could not make it out at all. The court gathered nothing from his aspect, save surprise — surprise that looked genuine.
“I protest — I know nothing of this letter!” he exclaimed. “It is none of mine.”
“It was found in your possession, in a safe that you keep locked in your cellar,” said the bench, who were wiser than Mr. Billiter thought.
“It never was found there,” returned Mr. Carlton impressively. “I deny it entirely. I declare that I never had such a letter there as this. I knew some vile conspiracy must be at work!”
“Don’t you recognize the letter, Mr. Carlton?” inquired the bench, who were still deferent to Mr. Carlton, and could not address him or treat him as they did prisoners in ordinary.
“How can I recognize a letter that I never saw before?”
“You have seen part of it before, at any rate. You must remember the portion of a letter produced at the inquest on Mrs. Crane. The inference to be drawn now is, that she abandoned that letter in writing it on account of the blot she made, and began this fresh one. The words in both are the same.”
“Are they the same?” rejoined Mr. Carlton. “I had forgotten; it is a long while ago. But to whom was this letter written?”
“You perceive that it is addressed to you?”
“I perceive that my name is on the cover, the envelope. How it got there, or what it all means, I am at a loss to imagine. This letter appears to be written to the lady’s husband, not to me, her medical attendant.”
“The deduction sought to be drawn from the letter is, that it was written to you as her husband. Of course, that is not yet proved.”
“I beg to thank your worship for that admission,” volubly spoke Lawyer Billiter. “It is not proved. On the contrary, it will not be my client’s fault, or mine either, if we do not prove that the whole charge is false, arising, it may be, out of some strange mistake. A more improbable charge was certainly never brought against a medical man. Why should Mr. Carlton deliberately kill a patient — a young lady whom he was called in to attend, a perfect stranger to him? He—”
“If the greeting, testified to by the witness, Judith Ford, may be believed, she was not a stranger to him, Mr. Billiter.”
“True, your worship; but you will scarcely feel inclined, I fancy, to accept that young woman’s word before Mr. Carlton’s. I repeat, there’s not a shadow of proof, if you put that witness’s word aside, that Mr. Carlton had any previous acquaintance with Mrs. Crane. All the probabilities tend the other way; and, without that proof, it is impossible to pursue this charge against him. Mrs. Crane herself spoke of Mr. Carlton as a stranger to her, as she did of the Messrs. Grey. The Widow Gould — —”
It seemed that Lawyer Billiter’s eloquence was fated to be continually interrupted. A noise at the back of the hall caused him to turn angrily. “What was the cause of the noise?” the magistrates as angrily demanded, and they were answered by their clerk, Mr. Drone.
“Some important evidence has arrived from town, your worships.”
Important evidence from town! Their worships gazed in the direction of the commotion; everybody else gazed; the prisoner gazed. But all that could be seen was the blooming person of Mrs. Pepperfly, who was late in making her appearance, and was not altogether steady on the legs. Some policemen were endeavouring to force a way for her through the dense crowd, for they supposed her testimony would be wanted; but their efforts were useless. A slender figure might have been passed through, but Mrs. Pepperfly, never. Groaning, exhausted, a martyr to heat, and dreadfully cross, she commenced a fight with those around her as effectually as her crushed state permitted.
But the stir, while it baffled Mrs. Pepperfly, enabled another to get through the mass: a tall, slim young man, who twisted in and out like an eel, and got to the front at last.
He was the important evidence from town; that is, he had brought it with him. After conferring a few moments with Mr. Drone, he took from his pocket-book a folded paper. Mr. Drone inspected it with curious eyes, and then handed it to the waiting magistrates.
It was a copy of the certificate of a marriage solemnized in London, at St. Pancras Old Church, early in the month of July, 1847, between Lewis Carlton and Clarice Beauchamp.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE REMAND.
THE copy of the certificate of a marriage solemnized at St. Pancras Old Church early in the month of July, 1847, between Lewis Carlton and Clarice Beauchamp.
The magistrates gazed at the document as they sat on the bench, and handed it about from one to another, and glanced at Mr. Carlton. Even so. It was that gentleman’s marriage certificate with the unhappy lady of whom he had denied all knowledge, whom — there could be no doubt now — he had destroyed.
The magistrates glanced at Mr. Carlton. A change had come over his face; as much change as could come over one so impassive; and a fanciful observer might have said that he cowered. He knew that all was over; that any attempt to struggle against his fate and the condemning facts heaping themselves one after another upon his head, would be utterly futile. Nevertheless, he rallied after the first moment’s shock, and raised himself to his full height — cold, uncompromising, ready to hold out to the last. Of the sea of eyes bent upon him from every part of the crowded hall, he disliked most to meet those of Frederick Grey; he remembered the boy’s open, honest accusation of him in the years gone by.
The gentleman who had brought the paper into the hall was called forward and sworn. His name was James Chesterton, he said. He had been articled clerk to Mr. Friar, the solicitor, of Bedford Row, and was with him still, though the term of his articles had expired. In consequence of a telegram received the previous night from Mr. Drone, he had gone the first thing that morning to search the register of St. Pancras Old Church, and found in it the record of the marriage of which that certificate was a copy.
“You certify that this is a true copy?” asked the chief magistrate.
“A true copy,” replied the witness, “exact in every particular. The clerk who was with me when I copied it said he was present when the marriage took place, and remembered the parties quite well. He had a suspicion that it was a secret marriage, and that caused him to observe them particularly. The lady—”
“And pray what cause had he to suspect that it was a secret marriage?” sharply interrupted Lawyer Billiter.
“I asked him the same question,” quietly answered the witness. “He said that the parties came to the church quite alone, and the young lady was dressed in every-day clothes. He could not help looking at her, he said, she was so beautiful,”
“And that was the clerk, you say?”
“I supposed him to be the clerk; if not the actual clerk, some deputy acting for him.”
Lawyer Billiter fired up. He was about to deny that the Lewis Carlton then present was obliged to have been that bridegroom, when he was silenced by the bench. The chief magistrate read the certificate aloud for Mr. Carlton’s benefit, and then turned to him.
“Prisoner,” said he, — and it was the first time they had called him prisoner—” what have you to say to this?”
“I shall not say anything,” returned the prisoner. “If evidence is to be brought against me about which I know nothing, how can I be prepared to refute it?”
“You cannot say that you know nothing of the marriage of which this certificate is a copy of the record. Can you still deny that the unfortunate young lady was your wife?”
There was a pause. It is possible that a doubt was passing through Mr. Carlton’s mind as to whether he could still deny that fact. If so, it might be abandoned as useless. There were certain officials connected with St. Pancras Church still — and he knew it — who could swear to his person.
“If she was my wife, that does not prove that I — poisoned her,” he returned.
“It goes some way towards it, though,” said the magistrate, forgetting official reticence in the moment’s excitement.
The words were drowned by a loud murmur that burst simultaneously from many parts of the hall, and bore an unpleasant sound. It was not unlike an expression of popular opinion, boding no good feeling to the prisoner. John Bull is apt to be on occasion inconveniently impulsive, and Mr. Carlton was losing ground.
“Silence!” shouted the chairman, in anger. “Prisoner,” he added, turning to Mr. Carlton as the sounds died away, “if my memory serves me right, you swore before the coroner at the inquest that you knew nothing of this letter or of its handwriting. What do you say now?”
What could he say, with that certificate lying there? In spite of the high tone he assumed, he stood there a sorry picture of convicted guilt Just at that moment, however, the fact of the production of the letter was occupying his mind more than anything else, for he believed its resuscitation to be nothing short of a miracle.
“I do know nothing of the letter,” replied the prisoner, in answer to the chairman’s question. “Some conspiracy must have been got up against me, and I am its victim. It may yet be cleared up.”
That was the utmost acknowledgment they could get from him. But, of course, plain as the proofs were, he was not bound to incriminate himself. Lawyer Billiter, whose zeal rose with the danger and the necessity for exertion in his client’s cause, talked himself hoarse, and twisted the evidence of the witnesses into various plausible contortions. All in vain. The case, with the production of that marriage certificate, had assumed altogether a different complexion, and the deference with which the justices of South Wennock had been at first inclined to treat Mr. Carlton, was exchanged for uncompromising official firmness.
The examination lasted until dark, when candles were brought in: the twilight of a winter’s evening steals upon us all too quickly. The town-hall had not yet been improved by gas or lamps — South Wennock was only a slow country place — and there were no means of lighting it, if lights were required, except by candles. Four were brought, to be placed in any convenient spot. Mr. Drone’s clerk got one on his desk, the acting beadle held another in his hand, and the other two were disposed of where they could be. The hall — or court, as South Wennock was wont to call it — presented a strange view in that glimmering and uncertain light: the dense crowd and their lifted faces, the excited aspect of those taking part in the proceedings, the hot defiance of Lawyer Billiter’s countenance, and the calmly impassive one of the prisoner.
But it was shortly found not practicable to conclude the examination that day, and the magistrates remanded it until the morrow, That would close it, and there was not a shadow of doubt on any mind present, including the zealous one of Lawyer Billiter, that Lewis Carlton would then be committed to the county jail to take his trial for the wilful murder of Clarice Beauchamp, otherwise Clarice Beauchamp Chesney, otherwise Clarice Beauchamp Carlton. The various names were being bandied about the court in an undertone; carping spirits had already mooted the question — could the young lady have been his real wife in point of law, as she had not been married in the name of Chesney?
