by Ellen Wood
“I am sorry for Stephen Grey, though,” observed a gentleman. “If it has been caused by any mistake of his he will feel it all his life. A tender-hearted man is Stephen Grey.”
“It appears to me altogether unaccountable,” remarked the Reverend Mr. Jones, who was the incumbent of St. Mark’s Church, and 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 prussic acid — and they have only that one, it appears, in their surgery — had not been touched.”
“Mr. John Grey told me so 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 named Plumstead spoke next. He was not particularly well-affected towards the Greys, for they dealt at a rival shop; and his voice was sarcastic.
“It had been better, then, to have 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 saving 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 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 burden 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 say,” cried another, dropping his voice, “that Mr. Stephen had his head full of champagne, and couldn’t see one bottle from another. He and Fisher the land-agent had been drinking together.”
“Nonsense!” rebuked the clergyman. “Mr. Stephen Grey is not one to take too much.”
“Why, sir,” cried the coachman, willing to bear 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 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, in search of 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, and 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 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, it was no wonder that he was rapturously received.
“Here’s Fisher! How d’ye you do, Fisher? I say, Fisher, is it true that your champagne was too strong for Stephen Grey last night, and caused 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 champagne that’s too strong 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 about 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 mix up 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 prussic acid alone, I could say nothing 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 them I did not notice, for I was laughing and joking all the time. This morning, when I was in there, Mr. Whittaker showed me the place where the prussic acid jar is kept, and I can be upon my oath that no bottle, so high up as that, was taken down by Mr. Stephen. So much I can say.”
“Well, of all strange events, this seems the strangest. If the draught—”
“Take care! we shall be run over.”
The talkers had to scatter 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 tide set in against him. Not against the man personally, but against any possibilities that the draught could have been fatally touched by other hands 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 m
ight happen to his father? Would he be committed for manslaughter? — tried, convicted, punished?
CHAPTER X.
JUDITH’S PERPLEXITY.
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 the sad news. 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 make 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. Thank you, don’t trouble. I don’t feel as if I could eat now; perhaps I may take something a little later on.”
Margaret prepared the tea in silence. She was wondering how she could best break the news to her sister; she was sure, break it as gently as she could, that it would be a terrible shock to her. As she was pouring out the 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 — I’m afraid she’s not quite well this morning,” replied Margaret. “Do eat something, Judith — you’ll want it by and by.”
“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 tea, rose, and made 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, Margaret. 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 shut the door, and placed her back against it. “Sit down in that chair, Judith, while I tell you something. It is of no use your going 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 understand, and stared 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 realize 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 with it. 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, bewildered look upon it. It suddenly changed; the hard 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 to ask Mr. Stephen whether it was all right, but she had taken it before he could get back again.”
The hard, stony look was reappearing on Judith’s face. She seemed not to understand, and kept her eyes fixed on Margaret.
“If Mr. Carlton smelt 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 heard all this; she came in 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 resolutely, 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 a slight modicum of comfort by way of soothing their shattered nerves. Judith saw them as she came up the yard. She crossed the 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 learned 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 upstairs 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 upon it.
In going down 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 search to discover who the strange lady was, as far as he could do so, and had already written to various friends in London if perchance they might have cognizance of her. He 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,” he said. “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 contrairy. She wanted to take it, poor soul, right upon 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 up 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 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 gave 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, J
udith, in going up the street, encountered Frederick Grey.
“Well, Judith,” began the boy in tones 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 carelessness, into a sleeping draught?” he continued, in excitement.
“Master Frederick, I do not believe that he put the poison into it.”
“But now, look here. I was present when that medicine was made 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 my arms on the counter in a sort of idle way. 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 so! Well, that draught I can declare was properly and safely prepared; and yet, when it reaches 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. That hard look, telling of some strange perplexity, was overshadowing her face again.
“And the town lays the blame upon papa! They say — oh, I won’t 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.