Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Did you feel any inconvenience from them? Any pain?”

  “Not a bit, sir. As I said to Ann Dovey that night, when she asked whether they was fit pills to give the children, they seemed as mild as milk.”

  “Should you know the box again, witness?”

  “Law yes, sir, what should hinder me?” returned Hester Reed, inwardly marvelling at what seemed so superfluous a question.

  The coroner undid the paper, and handed the box to her. She was standing close to him, on the other side his clerk — who sat writing down the evidence. “Is this the box?” he asked. “Look at it well.”

  Mrs. Reed did as she was bid: turned it about and looked “well.” “Yes, sir, it is the same box,” said she. “That is, I am nearly sure of it.”

  “What do you mean by nearly sure?” quickly asked the coroner, catching at the word. “Have you any doubt?”

  “Not no moral doubt at all, sir. Only them pill-boxes is all so like one another. Yes, sir, I’m sure it is the same box.”

  “Open it, and look at the pills. Are they, in your judgment, the same?”

  “Just the same, sir,” she answered, after taking off the lid. “One might a’most know’em anywhere. Only — —”

  “Only what?” demanded the coroner, as she paused.

  “Well, sir, I fancied I had rather more left — six or seven say. There’s only five here.”

  The coroner made no answer to that. He took the box from her and put on the lid. We soon learnt that two had been taken out for the purpose of being analyzed.

  For who should loom into the room at that juncture but Pettipher, the druggist from Piefinch Cut. He had been analyzing the pills in a hasty way in obedience to orders received half-an-hour ago, and came to give the result. The pills contained arsenic, he said; not enough to kill a grown person, he thought, but enough to kill a child. As Pettipher was only a small man (in a business point of view) and sold groceries as well as drugs, and spectacles and ear-trumpets, some of us did not think much of his opinion, and fancied the pills should have been analyzed by Duffham. That was just like old Jones: giving work to the wrong man.

  George Reed was questioned, but could tell nothing, except that he had never touched either box or pills. While Ann Dovey was being called, and the coroner had his head bent over his clerk’s notes, speaking to him in an undertone, Abel Crew suddenly asked to be allowed to look at the pills. The coroner, without lifting his head, just pushed the box down on the green cloth; and one of the jury handed it over his shoulder to Abel Crew.

  “This is not the box I gave Mrs. Reed,” said Abel, in a clear, firm tone, after diving into it with his eyes and nose. “Nor are these the pills.”

  Up went the coroner’s head with a start. He had supposed the request to see the box came from a juryman. It might have been irregular for Abel Crew to be allowed so much; but as it arose partly through the coroner’s own fault, he was too wise to make a commotion over it.

  “What is that you say?” he asked, stretching out his hand for the box as eagerly as though it had contained gold.

  “That this box and these pills are not the same that I furnished to Mrs. Reed, sir,” replied Abel, advancing and placing the box in the coroner’s hand. “They are not indeed.”

  “Not the same pills and box!” exclaimed the coroner. “Why, man, you have heard the evidence of the witness, Hester Reed; you may see for yourself that she spoke nothing but truth. Don’t talk nonsense here.”

  “But they are not the same, sir,” respectfully persisted Abel. “I know my own pills, and I know my own boxes: these are neither the one nor the other.”

  “Now that won’t do; you must take us all for fools!” exploded the coroner, who was a man of quick temper. “Just you stand back and be quiet.”

  “Never a pill-box went out from my hands, sir, but it had my little private mark upon it,” urged Abel. “That box does not bear the mark.”

  “What is the mark, pray?” asked the coroner.

  “Four little dots of ink inside the rim of the lid, sir; and four similar dots inside the box near the edge. They are so faint that a casual observer might not notice them; but they are always there. Of all the pill-boxes now in my house, sir — and I suppose there may be two or three dozen of them — you will not find one but has the mark.”

  Some whispering had been going on in different parts of the room; but this silenced it. You might have heard a pin drop. The words seemed to make an impression on the coroner: they and Abel Crew were both so earnest.

  “You assert also that the pills are not yours,” spoke the coroner, who was known to be fond of desultory conversations while holding his inquests. “What proof have you of that?”

  “No proof; that is, no proof that I can advance, that would satisfy the eye or ear. But I am certain, by the look of them, that those were never my pills.”

  All this took the jury aback; the coroner also. It had seemed to some of them an odd thing that Hester Reed should have swallowed two or three of the pills at once without their entailing an ache or a pain, and that one each had poisoned the babies. Perkins the butcher observed to the coroner that the box must have been changed since Mrs. Reed helped herself from it. Upon which the coroner, after pulling at his whiskers for a moment as if in thought, called out for Mrs. Reed to return.

  But when she did so, and was further questioned, she only kept to what she had said before, strenuously denying that the box could have been changed. It had never been touched by any hands but her own while it stood in its place on the press, and had never been removed from it at all until she took it downstairs on the past Tuesday night.

  “Is the room where this press stands your own sleeping-room?” asked the coroner.

  “No, sir. It’s the other room, where my three children sleep.”

  “Could these children get to the box?”

  “Dear no, sir! ’Twould be quite impossible.”

  “Had any one an opportunity of handling the box when you took it down on Tuesday night?” went on the coroner after a pause.

  “Only Mrs. Dovey, sir. Nobody else was there.”

  “Did she touch it?”

  “She laid hold of it to look at the pills.”

  “Did you leave her alone with it?”

  “No, sir. Leastways — yes, I did for a minute or so, while I went into the back’us to get the sugar and a saucer and spoon.”

  “Had she the box in her hands when you returned?”

  “Yes, sir, I think she had. I think she was still smelling at the pills. I know the poor little innocents was lying one on one knee, and one on t’other, all flat, and her two hands was lifted with the box in ‘em.”

  “It was after that that you took the pills out of it to give the children?”

  “Yes, sir; directly after. But Ann Dovey wouldn’t do nothing wrong to the pills, sir.”

  “That will do,” said the coroner in his curt way. “Call Ann Dovey.”

  Ann Dovey walked forward with a face as red as her new bonnet-strings. She had heard the whole colloquy: something seemed, too, to have put her out. Possessing scant veneration for coroners at the best of times, and none for the jury at present assembled, she did not feel disposed to keep down her temper.

  The few first questions asked her, however, afforded no opportunity for resentment, for they were put quietly, and tended only to extract confirmation of Mrs. Reed’s evidence, as to fetching the pill-box from upstairs and administering the pills. Then the coroner cleared his throat.

  “Did you see the last witness, Hester Reed, go into the back kitchen for a spoon and saucer?”

  “I saw her go and fetch ’em from somewhere,” replied Ann Dovey, who felt instinctively the ball was beginning, and gave the reins to her temper accordingly.

  “Did you take charge of the pill-box while she was gone?”

  “I had it in my hand, if you mean that.”

  “Did anybody come into the kitchen during that interval?”

&nb
sp; “No they didn’t,” was the tart response.

  “You were alone, except for the two infants?”

  “I were. What of it?”

  “Now, witness, did you do anything with that box? Did you, for instance, exchange it for another?”

  “I think you ought to be ashamed o’ yourselves, all on you, to sit and ask a body such a thing!” exploded Mrs. Dovey, growing every moment more resentful, at being questioned. “If I had knowed the bother that was to spring up, I’d have chucked the box, pills and all, into the fire first. I wish I had!”

  “Was the box, that you handed to Hester Reed on her return, the same box she left with you? Were the pills the same pills?”

  “Why, where d’ye think I could have got another box from?” shrieked Ann Dovey. “D’you suppose, sir, I carry boxes and pills about with me? I bain’t so fond o’ physic as all that comes to.”

  “Dovey takes pills on occasion for that giddiness of his; I’ve seen him take ‘em; mayhap you’d picked up a box of his,” spoke Dobbs the blacksmith, mildly.

  That was adding fuel to fire. Two of a trade don’t agree. Dovey and Dobbs were both blacksmiths: the one in Church Dykely; the other in Piefinch Cut, not much more, so to say, than a stone’s-throw from each other. The men were good friends enough; but their respective ladies were apt to regard jealously all work taken to the rival establishment. Any other of the jurymen might have made the remark with comparative impunity; not so Dobbs. And, besides the turn the inquiry seemed to be taking, Mrs. Dovey had not been easy about it in her mind from the first; proof of which was furnished by the call, already mentioned, made by her husband on Abel Crew.

  “Dovey takes pills on occasion, do he!” she shrilly retorted. “And what do you take, Bill Dobbs? Pints o’ beer when you can get ‘em. Who lamed Poole’s white horse the t’other day a-shoeing him?”

  “Silence!” sternly interrupted the coroner. While Dobbs, conscious of the self-importance imparted to him by the post he was now filling, and of the necessity of maintaining the dignity of demeanour which he was apt to put on with his best clothes, bore the aspersion with equanimity and a stolid face.

  “Attend to me, witness, and confine yourself to replying to the questions I put to you,” continued the coroner. “Did you take with you any pills or pill-box of your own when you went to Mrs. Reed’s that evening?”

  “No, I didn’t,” returned Ann Dovey, the emphasis culminating in a sob: and why she should have set on to shiver and shake was more than the jury could understand.

  “Do you wear pockets?”

  “What if I do?” she said, after a momentary pause. But her lips grew white, and I thought she was trying to brave it out.

  “Had you a pocket on that evening?”

  “Heaven be good to me!” I heard her mutter under her breath. And if ever I saw a woman look frightened nearly to death, Ann Dovey looked it then.

  “Had you a pocket on that evening, witness?” repeated the coroner, sharply.

  “Y — es.”

  “What articles were in it? Do you recollect?”

  “It were a key or two,” came the answer at length, her very teeth chattering and all the impudence suddenly gone out of her. “And my thimble, sir; — and some coppers; and a part of a nutmeg; — and — and I don’t remember nothing else, sir.”

  “No box of pills? You are sure you had not that?”

  “Haven’t I said so, sir?” she rejoined, bursting into a flood of tears. For which, and for the sudden agitation, nobody could see any reason: and perhaps it was only that which made the coroner harp upon the same string. Her demeanour had become suspicious.

  “You had no poison of any kind in your pocket, then?”

  But he asked the question in jest more than earnest. For when she went into hysterics instead of replying, he let her go. He was used to seeing witnesses scared when brought before him.

  The verdict was not arrived at that day. When other witnesses had been examined, the coroner addressed the jury. Ten of them listened deferentially, and were quite prepared to return a verdict of Manslaughter against Abel Crew; seemed red-hot to do it, in fact. But two of them dissented. They were not satisfied, they said; and they held out for adjourning the inquest to see if any more light could be thrown upon the affair. As they evidently had the room with them, the coroner yielded, and adjourned the inquest in a temper.

  And then it was discovered that the name was not Crew but Carew. Abel himself corrected the coroner. Upon that, the coroner sharply demanded why he had lived under a false name.

  “Nay, sir,” replied Abel, as dignified as you please, “I have had no intention of doing so. When I first came to this neighbourhood I gave my name correctly — Carew: but the people at once converted it into Crew by their mode of pronunciation.”

  “At any rate, you must have sanctioned it.”

  “Tacitly I have done so. What did it signify? When I have had occasion to write my name — but that has been very rare — I have written it Carew. Old Sir Peter Chavasse knew it was Carew, and used to call me so; as did Sir Geoffry. Indeed, sir, I have had no reason to conceal my name.”

  “That’s enough,” said the coroner, cutting him short. “Stand back, Abel Carew. The proceedings are adjourned to this day week.”

  IV.

  ABEL CREW.

  Things are done in remote country places that would not be done in towns. Whether the law is understood by us, or whether it is not, it often happens that it is very much exceeded, or otherwise not acted upon. Those who have to exercise it sometimes show themselves as ignorant of it as if they had lived all their lives in the wilds of America.

  Old Jones the constable was one of these. When not checked by his masters, the magistrates, he would do most outrageous things — speaking of the law and of common sense. And he did one in reference to Abel Crew. I still say Crew. Though it had come out that his name was Carew, we should be sure to call him Crew to the end.

  The inquest might have been concluded at its first sitting, but for the two who stood out against the rest of the jury. Perkins the butcher and Dobbs the blacksmith. Truth to say, these two had plenty of intelligence; which could not be said of all the rest. Ten of the jury pronounced the case to be as clear as daylight: the infants had been poisoned by Abel Crew’s pills: and the coroner seemed to agree with them — he hated trouble. But Dobbs and Perkins held out. They were not satisfied, they said; the pills furnished by Abel Crew might not have been the pills that were taken by the children; moreover, they considered that the pills should be “more officially” analyzed. Pettipher the druggist was all very well in his small way, but hardly up, in their opinion, to pronouncing upon pills when a man’s life or liberty was at stake. They pressed for an adjournment, that the pills might be examined by some competent authority. The coroner, as good as telling them they were fools to their faces, had adjourned the inquest in suppressed passion to that day week.

  “And I’ve got to take care of you, Abel Crew,” said old Jones, floundering up on his gouty legs to Abel as the jury and crowd dispersed. “You’ve got to come along o’ me.”

  “To come where?” asked Abel, who was hobbling towards home on his scalded foot, by the help of his stick and the arm of Gibbon the gamekeeper.

  “To the lock-up,” said old Jones.

  “To the lock-up!” echoed Abel Crew.

  “In course,” returned old Jones. “Where else but the lock-up? Did you think it was to the pound?”

  Abel Crew, lifting the hand that held his stick to brush a speck of dirt off his handsome velvet coat, turned to the constable; his refined face, a little paler than usual, gazing inquiringly at old Jones’s, his silver hair glistening in the setting sun.

  “I don’t understand you, Mr. Jones,” he said calmly. “You cannot mean to lock me up?”

  “Well, I never!” cried old Jones, who had a knack of considering every suspected person guilty, and treating them accordingly. “You have a cheek, you have, Abel Crew! ‘Not
going to take me to the lock-up, Mr. Jones,’ says you! Where would you be took to?”

  “But there’s no necessity for it,” said Abel. “I shall not run away. I shall be in my house if I’m wanted again.”

  “I dare say you would!” said old Jones, ironically. “You might or you mightn’t, you know. You be as good as committed for the killing and slaying o’ them there two twins, and it’s my business to see as you don’t make your escape aforehand, Abel Crew.”

  Quite a company of us, sauntering out of the inquest-room, were listening by this time. I gave old Jones a bit of my mind.

  “He is not yet committed, Jones, therefore you have no right to take him or to lock him up.”

  “You don’t know nothing about it, Mr. Ludlow. I do. The crowner gave me a hint, and I’m acting on it. ‘Don’t you go and let that man escape,’ says his worship to me: ‘it’ll be at your peril if you do.’ ‘I’ll see to him, your worship,’ says I. And I be a-doing of it.”

  But it was hardly likely that the coroner meant Abel Crew to be confined in that precious lock-up for a whole week. One night there was bad enough. At least, I did not think he meant it; but the crowd, to judge by their comments, seemed divided on the point.

  “The shortest way to settle the question will be to ask the coroner, old Jones,” said I, turning back to the Silver Bear. “Come along.”

  “You’d be clever to catch him, Master Johnny,” roared out old Jones after me. “His worship jumped into his gig; it was a-waiting for him when he come out; and his clerk druv him off at a slapping pace.”

  It was true. The coroner was gone; and old Jones had it all his own way; for, you see, none of us liked to interfere with the edict of an official gentleman who held sway in the county and sat on dead people. Abel Crew accepted the alternative meekly.

  “Any way, you must allow me to go home first to lock my house up, and to see to one or two other little matters,” said he.