by Ellen Wood
“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 no one 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 arrive 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 and perplexity.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CORONER’S INQUEST.
THE rain was pouring down in torrents; nevertheless the street of South Wennock was alive with bustle, especially in the vicinity of the Red Lion Inn. It was Thursday, the day appointed for the inquest on the deceased Mrs. Crane.
The county coroner, whose residence was in the county town, was momentarily expected, and presently his gig dashed up, he and his clerk within it. It had been wished to hold the inquest on the Wednesday, but the coroner had put it off to suit his own convenience. He was a lawyer; a short, stout man, with black hair and a jovial-looking face; and as he emerged from under the large gig umbrella, he shook hands with some of the bystanders, his acquaintances. The clerk followed with a blue bag.
The coroner popped into the bar, swallowed a glass of hot brandy and water, and then proceeded to the board-room to swear the jury. It was a long room, the club-room of the inn. A table covered with green baize ran down it, at which they seated themselves, and the coroner opened proceedings. Then they departed to Palace Street to view the body.
They went splashing through the rain and the mud, their umbrellas of little use, for the wind, remarkably high, kept turning them inside out. A genteel attendance escorted them: all the gentleman idlers in the place, all the curious tradespeople, the unwashed mob, and the street urchins. By the pertinacity with which these last dodged the jury’s heels, it might have been thought that they believed the august functionaries to be living curiosities from a travelling wild-beast show.
The necessary inspection over, they splashed back to the Red Lion, and the business began. We may glance at the evidence of two or three of the witnesses, but not at all, for it would only be a repetition of what is already known, and would weary the reader. Difficulty the first was: What was the young lady’s Christian name? No one could answer. Her linen, it was said, was marked with a large C, the initial letter of the word Crane, but with nothing else. Some suggested that this was more probably the initial of her Christian name — Caroline or Charlotte — but it was impossible to say. Her boxes had been officially examined; the large trunk and the workbox; but no clue as to who she was, or what she was, could be found. No scrap of paper indicated her previous abode, or why she came there.
Mrs. Fitch, the landlady of the Red Lion, told what she knew of the stranger’s arrival by the omnibus, the previous Friday, and that she had recommended her to the lodgings in Palace Street. Mr. Stephen Grey testified to his being summoned to her on the same night, to the subsequent birth of the infant, and to her safe and healthy condition afterwards, up to seven o’clock on the Monday evening, at which hour he last saw her alive. Mr. John Grey and Mr. Brooklyn from Great Wennock, who had conjointly made the post-mortem examination, gave evidence as to the cause of her death — poison, by prussic acid; and there were other points of evidence, technical or otherwise, not necessary to go into in detail.
There had been a question raised by the coroner as to whether Mr. Stephen Grey should give his evidence. That gentleman expressed himself anxious and willing to tender it; and at length the coroner decided to admit it, warning Mr. Stephen that he need not say anything to criminate himself, and that what he did say might possibly be used as evidence against him. Mr. Stephen smiled, and replied that all he had it in his power to say might be used against him if it could be. He spoke to the making up of the sleeping draught, to the ingredients of which it was composed. Frederick Grey, his son, testified that he had seen it made up, minutely describing what had been put into it, as his father had done, and to sending the draught by Dick, the boy. Dick, who was the next witness, protested, with a very red and startled face, caused by finding himself before a coroner’s court, that he had taken it safely and given it into the hands of Nurse Pepperfly.
“Call Nurse Pepperfly,” said the coroner.
Nurse Pepperfly was called for in the adjoining room and escorted in, in rather a shaky state, not induced by the imbibing of strong waters — from such she had that morning abstained — but from the general agitation caused by the anticipated proceedings. She had attired herself in her best, of course. A short black stuff gown, the worse for stains and dust, a scarlet woollen shawl, and a rusty black bonnet surmounted by a bow. The wind, as she came along the street, had taken the shawl, the bonnet, and the grey hairs underneath, and played with them after its own boisterous fashion; so that altogether Nurse Pepperfly presented a somewhat bewildered and untidy appearance. She wore pattens and white stockings, the latter a mass of splashes, and very distinctly visible from the shortness of the gown; but the extraordinary rotundity of Mrs. Pepperfly’s person seemed almost to preclude the possibility of any gown being made long enough to conceal her legs. She took off her pattens when close to the coroner, and held them in one hand: her umbrella, dripping with rain, being in the other. A remarkable umbrella, apparently more for show than use, since its stick and wires projected a full foot at the bottom through the gingham, and there was no handle visible at the top. There was a smothered smile at her appearance when she came in, and her evidence caused some diversion, not only in itself, but from the various honorary titles she persisted in according to the coroner and jury.
“Your name’s Pepperfly?” began the coroner.
“Which it is, my lord, with Betsy added to it,” was the response, given with as deep a curtsey as the witness’s personal incumbrances would permit.
“You mean Elizabeth?” said the coroner, raising his pen from his note-book, and waiting.
“Your worship, I never knowed myself called anything but Betsy. It may be that ‘Lizabeth was written in the register at my baptism, but I can’t speak to it. Mother—”
“That will do,” said the coroner, and after a few more questions he came to the chief point. “Did you take in some medicine last Monday evening for the lady you were nursing — Mrs. Crane?” —
“Yes, my lord, I did. It were a composing draught; leastways, that’s what it ought to have been.”
“What time was that?”
“It were after dark, sir, and I was at my supper,”
“Can’t you tell the time?”
“It must have struck eight, I think, your worship, for I had begun to feel dreadful peckish before I went down, and eight o’clock’s my supper hour. I had just finished it, sir, when the ring came. It were pickled herrings that we had—”
“The jury do not want to know what you had for supper; confine yourself to necessary points. Who brought the medicine?” —
“That boy of the Mr. Greys: Dick. An insolent young rascal, Mr. Mayor, as you ever set eyes on. He whips up the cover of his basket, and out he takes a small bottle wrapped in white paper and gives it me. I should like to tell you, my lord, what he said to me.”
“If it bears upon the case, you can do so,” replied the coroner. “‘Now, Mother Pepperfly,�
�� said he, ‘how are you off for Old Tom to-night?’ My fingers tingled to get at his ears, my lord mayor and corporation, but he backed out of my reach.”
Mrs. Pepperfly in her indignation had turned round to the jury, expecting their sympathy, and the room burst into a laugh.
“He backed away out of my reach, gentlemen, afeared of getting his deserts, and he stopped in the middle of the road and made a face at me, knowing I’d no chance of getting at him. They are as lissome as cats, them boys, and I’m rather stout to set up a run.”
“I told you to confine yourself to evidence,” said the coroner in reproving tones. “What did you do with the medicine?”
“I took it upstairs, gentlefolks, and Mr. Carlton came out of the lady’s room, for he had just called in, and asked what it was I had got. I said it was the sleeping draught from Mr. Grey’s, and he took it out of my hand, and said it smelt of oil of almonds.”
“Oil of almonds? Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“Of course I am sure,” retorted Mrs. Pepperfly. “I didn’t dream it. He took out the cork and he smelt the stuff, and then he said it. ‘What could Mr. Stephen Grey be giving her oil of almonds for?’ he said.”
“Did you smell it?”
“I can’t say I did, your lordship, much; though Mr. Carlton was surprised I couldn’t, and put it towards me; but my nose hadn’t no smell in it just at that particular moment, and so I told him.”
“Why had it not?” inquired the coroner.
Mrs. Pepperfly would have liked to evade the question. She fidgeted, first on one leg, then on the other, put down her pattens and took them up again, and gave her umbrella a shake, the effect of which was to administer a shower of raindrops to all the faces in her vicinity.
“Come,” said the coroner sharply, “you stand there to tell the truth. If the stuff emitted so strong a smell, how was it you could not smell it?”
“I had just swallowed a wee drop of gin, sir,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly in a subdued tone. “When my supper were over, Mrs. Gould says to me, ‘Just a drain, mum, to keep the herrings down, it’s obligatory to your health!’ and knowing I’m weak in the stomach, gentlefolks, which gets upset at nothing, I let myself be over-persuaded, and took a drain; but you couldn’t have put it into a thimble.”
“I dare say you couldn’t,” said the coroner, while the room tittered.
Mrs. Pepperfly’s slip of the tongue took her aback.
“I meant to say as ’twouldn’t have filled a thimble, gentry; I did indeed, for that was the fact; but no wonder my wits is scared out of me, a-standing up here afore you all. Just as I was a swallowing of the wee drain, the ring came to the door, so that I had, as you may say, the gin actually in my mouth, when I took the medicine upstairs; and that’s the reason I hadn’t no smell for anything else.”
“Who took possession of the draught? You, or Mr. Carlton, or the sick lady?”
“I did, your honours. I put it by the side of the rest of the bottles on the cheffonier in the sitting-room, and —— —— — —”
“Was there any other bottle there that could have been mistaken for this?” interrupted the coroner.
“Not one in all the lot,” responded the witness. “They were most of them empty bottles, and bigger than the one the draught was in; and they are there still.”
“Had any person an opportunity of touching that bottle in the time between your placing it there, and your administering it to the patient?”
“There wasn’t nobody in the house to touch it,” returned the witness. “I was nearly all the time afterwards in the room, and there was nobody else. When I went to get it to give it to the lady, Mrs. Gould lighted me, and I’m sure it hadn’t been touched, for the shelf of that cheffonier’s a tilting, narrow sort of place, and I had put the draught right in the corner, and there I found it.”
“Mr. Carlton was gone then?”
“Mr. Carlton? Oh, he went directly almost after the draught came. He didn’t stay long, your reverences.”
“Witness, I am going to ask you a question; be particular in answering it. There has been a rumour gaining credit, that Mr. Carlton warned you not to administer that draught; is it correct?”
“I declare, to the goodness gracious, that Mr. Carlton never said nothing of the sort,” returned the witness, putting herself into a flurry. “My lord — your worship — gentlemen of the honourable corporation all round” (turning herself about between the coroner and the jury), “if it was the last blessed word I had to speak, I’d stand to it that Mr. Carlton never said a word to me about not giving the draught. He snifted at it, as if he’d like to snift out what it was made of, and he put a drop on his finger and tasted it, and he said it smelt of oil of almonds; but, as to saying he told me not to give it, it’s a barefaced falsehood, my lord judge. He says he ordered Mrs. Crane not to take it, but I declare on my oath that he never said anything about it to me. And she didn’t, neither.” The coroner had allowed her to exhaust her wrath. “You administered the draught yourself to Mrs. Crane?”
“Yes, I did, as it was my place to do, and Mrs. Gould stood by, a-lighting me. I put it out into a wine-glass, sir, and then, my mouth being all right again, I smelt it strong enough, and so did Mrs. Gould.”
“The lady did not object to it?”
“No, poor thing, she never objected to nothing as we gave her, and she was quite gay over it. As I held it to her, she gave a snift, as Mr. Carlton had done, and she smiled. ‘It smells like cherry pie, nurse,’ said she, and swallowed it down; and a’most before we could look round, she was gone. Ah, poor young lady! I should like to have the handling of them that put it in.”
Mrs. Pepperfly, in her sympathy with the dead, or rage against the destroyer, raised her hands before her and shook them. The pattens clanked together, and the umbrella was ejecting its refreshing drops, when an officer of the court seized her arms from behind, and poured an anathema into her ear.
“A coroner’s court was not a place to wring wet umbrellas in, and if she didn’t mind, she’d get committed.”
“Were you conscious that she was dead?” inquired the coroner. “Not at first, my lord judge, not right off at the moment. I thought she was fainting, or took ill in some way. ‘What have upset her now?’ I says to Mrs. Gould, and, with that, I took off her night-cap, and lifted her head up. Not for long, though,” concluded the witness, shaking her head. “I soon see she was gone.”
“You know nothing whatever, then, nor have you any suspicion, how the poison could have got into the draught?”
The coroner put this question at the request of one of the jury.
“I!” returned Mrs. Pepperfly, amazed at its being asked her. “No; I wish I did. I wish I could trace it home to some such a young villain as that Dick who brought the bottle down. I’d secure a good place to go and see him hung, if I had to stand on my legs twelve hours for it — and they swell frightful in standing, do my legs, my lord.”
“The boy had not meddled with the medicine in bringing it?” cried the coroner, waving his hand to pass over the introduced irreverence, “Not he, my lord-mayor,” was the reply of the witness. “I wish he had, that I might have been down upon him, the monkey! But I am upon my oath, and must speak the truth, which is that the bottle came neat and untouched, the white paper round it, just as the Greys send out their physics.”
They had done with Mrs. Pepperfly for the present, and she made a curtsey to the four sides of the room, and sailed out of it.
The next witness called was Lewis Carlton. His gentlemanly appearance, good looks, and the ready manner in which he gave his evidence, presented a contrast to the lady just retired.
“Upon returning home from a journey last Sunday night,” he began, when the coroner desired him to state what he knew, “one of my servants handed me a note, which had been left for me, he said, on the previous Friday. It proved to be from a Mrs. Crane, requesting to see me professionally, and was dated from the house in Palace Street, where she
now lies dead. I went there at once, found that she had been confined, and was being attended by Mr. Stephen Grey, who had been called to her in consequence of my absence—”
The coroner interposed with a question:
“Have you that note to produce?”
Now the witness had not that note to produce, and, what was somewhat singular, he did not know for certain what had become of the note. When he was going to visit Mrs. Crane on the Sunday night, he looked for the note, as may be remembered, and could not see it; therefore he came to the conclusion that he had thrown it into the fire with the other letters. —
“I really do not think I saved it,” he answered. “It is not my custom to keep notes of that sort, and, though I do not positively recollect doing so, I have no doubt I put it in the fire as soon as read. I have looked for it since, but cannot find it. There was nothing in the note that could have thrown light upon the case; half a dozen formal lines, chiefly requesting me to call and see her, comprised it.”
“Was it signed with her full name?”
“Her full name?” repeated Mr. Carlton, as if he scarcely understood the question.
“We have no clue to her Christian name. This note may have supplied it. Or perhaps it was written in the third person.”
“Oh, of course; I scarcely comprehended you,” answered Mr. Carlton. “It was written in the third person. ‘Mrs. Crane presents her compliments to Mr. Carlton,’ etc. That’s how it was worded. I gathered from it that she did not expect to be ill before May.”
“In your interview with her that evening did you obtain any information as to who she was?”
“Not the slightest. It was late, and I thought it unwise to disturb her. What little passed between us related chiefly to her state of health. I regretted my absence, and said I was glad to find she was doing well, under Mr. Stephen Grey. She wished me to attend her, now I had returned, and I understood her to say she had been recommended to me by friends, before coming to South Wennock.”