by Ellen Wood
“Well, go on.”
“I left them, and went indoors to bed, and the next morning Margaret told me that Mrs. Crane had died: died the previous night before ten o’clock, through taking the sleeping draught sent her by Mr. Stephen Grey. I don’t know how I felt. I could not tell you if I tried, or the dreadful doubt that came over me, whether or not Mr. Carlton had touched it. I heard of his having smelt poison in the draught when it first came, and I thought then of course the poison must have been in it; that when I saw him alone with the bottle open, he might only be smelling it again. Of one thing I felt certain — that Mr. Stephen Grey had not committed the error — and the state of mind, the uncertainty I was in until the inquest, no tongue could tell. I went to the inquest; I wanted to be at rest one way or the other, to gain some relief from my perplexity. Young Frederick Grey — I beg your pardon, Mr. Frederick; I had my thoughts cast back in the past — had whispered to me, that if any one mixed poison with the draught it was Mr. Carlton, not his father; and though I would not listen to him, his words made a deep impression on me. At the inquest I heard Mr. Carlton give his evidence, and from that moment I believed him to have been guilty. He swore before the coroner that he neither touched nor saw the draught after he gave it back to Mrs. Pepperfly; that he did not observe or know where she placed it. That I knew to be a falsehood. He did see it and touch it, and took care to replace it in the position that the old woman had done. He testified that he had told Mrs. Crane not to take the draught, but I felt sure he had told her nothing of the sort. He swore also that he knew nothing of Mrs. Crane, who she was, or where she came from, and that I knew was false. An impulse came over me to step out before the coroner and declare all I had seen and heard, but somehow I did not dare do so. I feared he might turn round and set me at defiance by denying it, or even accuse me in his stead — and which of us would have been listened to? — an established medical man, such as he; or an obscure servant, such as myself? Part of a letter was found before the inquest was over — and, my lady, it was a faithful copy, for I remember every word, of the first part of that letter found last night by Lady Laura. The coroner showed it to Mr. Carlton, and he fenced in his answers. He took the letter to the window, and stood there with his back to the room; the jury thought nothing, but I was sure it was only to collect himself, and gain time to cover his agitation. That letter, which Lady Laura found, was the one written by Mrs. Crane the night of her arrival, for I recognized the envelope again last night: the very letter which Mrs. Gould got me to carry to Mr. Carlton’s. As I came out of the inquest-room, I felt quite sure that he had murdered the lady.”
“You ought to have declared all this, Judith.”
“My lady, I say that people would not have believed me. There was not a jot of evidence to corroborate my tale, there was no proof at all that he knew her. If declared to them now, they will not, perhaps, believe it.”
“It might have saved my sister Laura,” murmured Lady Jane.
“I did what little I could to keep her from Mr. Carlton. After I went to live with you, my lady, Pompey let slip a word that Miss Laura — as she was then — used to go into the garden in secret, at the dusk hour, to meet Mr. Carlton. I could not say anything to Mr. Carlton openly: but I thought I might frighten him, and warn Miss Laura. One night when they were there (it was the very night before they went away) I took off my white cap and put on a black one, tied on those plush whiskers, which I have kept by me to this day, put a cap of Pompey’s on my head, and threw on my master’s old cloak. When I got to their meeting-place in the garden Miss Laura was alone; he had gone. It was nearly dark amidst the trees, where I stood. She could get but an imperfect view of me, and I disguised my voice, and warned her, in the best way I knew how, against Mr. Carlton. Mr. Carlton saw me as I was stealing back again, and I raised the cap and he saw my face in the moonlight. He looked frightened to death. I suppose he recognized it again for the same face he had seen on the landing that night, and I glided amidst the trees until he had gone. I have appeared to him in the same way once or twice since then. You may remember, my lady, the night we returned home after my lord’s death. When we had left Lady Laura and gone on, you discovered that her dressing-case had been forgotten in the fly. I got out to take it to her, saying I would walk home afterwards. I left it at the servants’ entrance, and in passing the dining-room window, coming away, I saw Mr. Carlton by the light of the fire. I pushed back my bonnet, snatched my black scarf off my neck, tied it down the sides of my face under the chin, and pressed my face flat against the panes, which naturally made it look wide. He saw it was the same figure which had so terrified him before, and I heard his cry of amazement, as I rushed away, putting my bonnet on as I went.”
“How do you account for it, Judith — that your appearance should inspire him with this terror?” interrupted Frederick Grey.
“Sir, in this way. I think that when he first saw me, that night on the staircase, he must have feared it was somebody who had watched him insert the poison, but when no one could be traced ‘ or heard of, as having been in the house, then he doubted whether the appearance might not have been supernatural. I fancy there has been a conflict in his mind all along, sometimes giving way to the fancy that the figure was real, sometimes that it was not; and equally fearing both.”
Frederick Grey nodded, and Judith continued.
“The years wore on, but somehow I always felt a fear of Mr. Carlton. The feeling that was upon me was — that no one was safe with him. I dare say it was a foolish feeling, but I could not help it. When Lady Lucy was taken ill with the fever, and Mr. Carlton kept her at his house in what might be called an underhanded manner, I grew quite alarmed, wondering whether he intended any ill to her, and the night the lamp went out in the hall I whispered words to him that he did not like. I did it in my fear. And only a night or two ago I put on those plush whiskers again — for I determined to do it, and fetched them from Cedar Lodge — and made myself look altogether as much what I looked like that first night as I could, and stood in the dusk at the surgery window.”
“But it is strange that he never recognized you!” interrupted Frederick Grey.
“Not strange, sir, You cannot think how those plush sides and the black border disguise my face. It looks exactly like a man’s. Besides, Mr. Carlton has never seen it except in the most imperfect and uncertain light. I think he must have been struck with some faint resemblance, for Lady Laura told me laughingly the other day that there was a look in my face Mr. Carlton could not bear. And all this time, my ladies, I never had the remotest suspicion that the lady who died in Palace Street was connected with the family I serve.”
Judith ceased. The tale was told. And she stood motionless within the shadow of the crimson curtain in the silence that fell upon the room.
CHAPTER XX.
THE LAWYER’S TELEGRAM.
COULD there be any doubt of the guilt of Mr. Carlton? It was scarcely to be hoped for. Jane Chesney and Frederick Grey remained alone after Judith’s revelation, pondering the question in their own minds, scarcely liking to look in each other’s faces. Judith had left the room; Lucy was upstairs, going to rest — if rest she might hope for. Poor Lucy thought she should never leave off shivering. She was younger than they were, more inexperienced in the ways of the world, and utterly unprepared for the disclosure. Never a doubt had crossed her of Mr. Carlton; she could scarcely believe that she must doubt him now; but she felt sick and faint.
Frederick Grey was the first to break the silence. “Do you remember, Lady Jane, a meeting between me and Mr. Carlton on the Rise, to which you were an accidental listener?” he inquired in low tones. “Do you remember the purport of the words I said to him?”
She made an affirmative gesture. “I have often recalled it, and the accusation you made against him.”
“It agrees with this.”
There was another long pause.
“He must have been her husband,” resumed Jane, scarcely above a whisper.
The words were spoken hesitatingly in his delicacy of feeling, remembering who that other wife was. Jane moaned aloud; she could not help herself.
“How can Judith have kept that dreadful secret within her all these years?” was her next exclamation.
He took his elbow from the mantelpiece where he bad been standing so long, came forward, and sat down opposite to Jane. “I have been thinking it over, Lady Jane, and I really do not see — looking back — that Judith could have done otherwise. I confess that my first impression was a selfish one; a certain resentful feeling that she should not have declared what she knew, and so have cleared my father. Now that I reflect upon it dispassionately, I do not think she could have done it. As she observes, none might have believed her. Think what a strange charge it would have been to bring against a medical man!”
“But if she had disclosed the few words of conversation she heard pass between Mr. Carlton and Clarice at their first greeting? That surely would have established previous relations between them, and have been a clue to the rest.”
He shook his head. “Yes, had Judith been believed. It would all have lain in that. I think the chances are she would not have been; and Mr. Carlton would have crushed her and triumphed.”
“What is to be done now?” wailed Jane.
“Nothing. You would not like to proceed against Mr. Carlton, or bring any public accusation against him. Circumstances forbid it.”
“Bring a public accusation against Mr. Carlton!” repeated Jane, recoiling in horror from the thought. “And Laura his wife! No, no; I did not allude to that, I did not think of it. Clarice and Laura were both alike my sisters; and the one, dead, must remain unavenged for the sake of the one, living. I spoke of Laura herself. What is to be done about her? She cannot be suffered to remain with Mr. Carlton.”
Frederick Grey drew in his lips. It was too delicate a point for him, and he preferred not to discuss it. “I cannot meddle with that, Lady Jane. She has been with him ever since, all these years.” True. Jane saw not her way clearly. “How could Mr. Carlton be so bold and imprudent as to keep that letter?” she said aloud, alluding to the letter found by her sister, and which she had been describing to Frederick Grey.
“Ah, that’s inexplicable,” was his quick reply. “At least it would be, but that we every day see guilty men commit the most unaccountable mistakes: mistakes that the world can only marvel at. It may be, that some fatal blindness overtakes their minds and judgments, causing them to bring upon themselves their own doom. There is a Latin proverb, Lady Jane: ‘Quod Deus vult fierdere, priiis dement at?”
But the reader — if he possesses any memory — can explain the fact, in this instance, better than Frederick Grey. Whatever mistakes Mr. Carlton committed in that unhappy business as against his own safety, this was not one of them, for the retention of the letter was an accident. Do you remember that he searched for the letter and could not find it, and came to the conclusion that he had burnt it with some others, notes and trifles that were of no consequence? He put one letter away in his iron safe, supposing it to be a note from his father that he wished to preserve; the real fact being that this was the letter he put up, the one from his father he burnt. All in mistake. A chance error, people might have said; but how many of these trifling “chances” may be traced in the chain, leading to the discovery of some great crime. It happened that Mr. Carlton never had occasion to look at his father’s (supposed) letter again, and there it lay forgotten, waiting to fulfil its mission, until it was at length unearthed by the jealous hands of Mr. Carlton’s wife. Had he not tried that wife, had he been always loyal to her, the past crime might never have been brought home to him during life.
For it was that letter that finally led to the discovery. It was the turning-point that drove home the guilt where it was due. And yet it may be said that the chain leading to it was linked by accident, more than by design.
Lady Jane, painfully perplexed, had brought away the letter when she quitted Mr. Carlton’s house that morning. She had it in her pocket at Mrs. Smith’s, and after the explanation had taken place, Jane showed her the letter, in the hope that it might in some way help to identify the husband, to whom it was evidently written. Even then Jane had no suspicion of Mr. Carlton, or if she had, it was only in a very vague degree. She believed that Clarice had married Mr. Crane, and that however Mr. Carlton might have been mixed up in the affair, it had been only as Mr. Crane’s friend and associate. Jane would have shown the letter to Frederick Grey, but it was not just now in her possession. She described it, and he took up the clue at once.
“Ah, yes, it was to her husband she wrote it; Mr. Carlton. But the playful style in which, as you describe, it is written, would mislead any one who has not the key. They would never suppose that the husband spoken of, and the medical man she says she must ask to come to her, were one and the same. I should like my father to see that letter, Lady Jane.”
“Oh yes, he shall see it. You — you are sure Sir Stephen would not use it against him?” she added quickly.
“Against Mr. Carlton? Oh no. I don’t think he would do it in any case, certainly not in this. My father is the kindest man breathing. Lucy will be his daughter-in-law; and Mr. Carlton is her sister’s husband. Sir Stephen must lie under suspicion still, for Lucy’s sake — perhaps I ought rather to say for Lady Laura’s sake. It has not injured him, Lady Jane; he lived down the odium long ago: witness how he was received the other day at South Wennock.”
But if Frederick Grey and Lady Jane agreed that the affair altogether, including the letter, must be suppressed, there was another individual who, unfortunately, took just the opposite view of it. This was Mrs. Smith. And at this very moment, while they were so speaking, she was making the first move to publish it abroad.
Chance links, fitting one into the other! chance events, words, trifles in the chain of discovery! From the hour in which Mrs. Smith had found Mr. Carlton searching her drawers, she had had a suspicion of him; not that he was the husband of Mrs. Crane, but that he held some secret connected with that past time. The little boy, Lewis, had told her he heard Mr. Carlton looking into drawers upstairs as well as down, and the woman wondered excessively. Like most secretive persons, she dwelt much upon it in her own mind; and when the time came — as it did come — that a little fresh evidence bearing on the past met her ears, a half-doubt crept into her mind of the worst, as connected with Mr. Carlton.
You may remember Mrs. Smith’s afternoon levee. You may remember that Judith as she left the cottage met Mr. Carlton driving up to it; and you may also remember a casual remark to the effect that Mr. Carlton returned home from that visit a little put out with some trifle that had occurred there. Very greatly to his annoyance, the Widow Gould — whom he had not the honour of meeting frequently in private society — brought up the subject of Mrs. Crane. Her tongue was never at rest, and she had not the least tact. She alluded openly to the fact of Mrs. Smith being the person who took away the child, and persisted in speaking of the past in a manner not at all agreeable to the surgeon. Mrs. Pepperfly (also a visitor) thought there was no harm in chiming in, now that it was openly commented upon, and the two kept up a duet as long as they had the chance, which was as long as Mr. Carlton was attending to the child, then on Mrs. Smith’s lap in the kitchen. Mrs. Gould’s concluding remark put the finishing touch to the gossip.
“I could have declared that you was known to her, Mr. Carlton, sir, the very day she first come to South Wennock. It was in this way: Mrs. Crane — —”
The surgeon turned round, a sort of glare in his eyes. If looks could enforce silence, the Widow Gould had been silenced then. But in her want of tact she did not understand.
“Mrs. Crane asks who were the doctors here, and I told her the Mr. Greys and Mr. Carlton. Then
she writes a note to Mr. Carlton, telling me to send it — as have been known to South Wennock many a day, for I told it out at the inquest. But when I had took the note downstairs, I saw it had your Chrissen name outside it, sir, Lewis. Many a time have I wondered how she got at the name.
Judy said Mrs. Fitch might have told it, but Mrs. Fitch said she didn’t, and —— —”
“Is it well to have this gossip in the room when your child’s so ill?” sternly asked the surgeon of Mrs. Smith. “It is bad for him; and it must not be allowed. You might choose a better time, I think, for receiving visitors.”
The words, the tone, took Mrs. Gould by surprise. She sat a moment with her mouth open, and then seemed to shrink into nothing, too completely checked to offer even a whisper of apology. Mr. Carlton gave a short direction in regard to the child, strode out to his carriage, and was driven away.
“How did I offend him?” breathed the Widow Gould then, questioning the other two with her eyes.
“I wish you’d go on with what you were saying about the Christian name,” returned Mrs. Smith. “I never heard this before.”
“It’s not much to go on with. When I saw the name, Lewis Carlton, Esq., on the letter, I wondered how she knew it was Lewis, and I’ve wondered since. Judy said his name must have been in the newspaper I had took up to her to read while she had her tea, but I looked in it after she was dead, and I couldn’t see it. I saw his name, I Mr. Carlton,’ but I couldn’t see ‘Lewis.’”
“Is Mr. Carlton’s name Lewis?” asked Mrs. Smith.
The Widow Gould opened her eyes at the question. “I thought all South Wennock knew that.”
Perhaps all South Wennock did know it; nevertheless Mrs. Smith did not. It was a singular fact that Mrs. Smith until that hour had remained ignorant of Mr. Carlton’s Christian name. She might possibly have heard it before, but if so it had escaped her notice. The plate on his door was no longer “Mr. Lewis Carlton it had been changed to “Mr Carlton” upon his father’s death.