by Ellen Wood
“Not unless you goes under my own eyes,” retorted old Jones. “You might be for destroying your stock o’ pills for fear they should bear evidence again’ you, Abel Crew.”
“My pills are, of all things, what I would not destroy,” said Abel. “They would bear testimony for me, instead of against me, for they are harmless.”
So Abel Crew hobbled to his cottage on the common, attended by old Jones and a tail of followers. Arrived there, he attended the first thing to his scalded foot, dressing it with some of his own ointment. Then he secured some bread and butter, not knowing what the accommodation at the lock-up might be in the shape of eatables, and changed his handsome quaint suit of clothes for those he wore every day. After that, he was escorted back to the lock-up.
Now, the lock-up was in Piefinch Cut, nearly opposite to Dovey the blacksmith’s. The Squire remembered the time when the lock-up stood alone; when Piefinch Cut had no more houses in it than Piefinch Lane now has; but since then Piefinch Cut had been built upon and inhabited; houses touching even the sacred walls of the lock-up. A tape-and-cotton and sweetstuff shop supported it on one side, and a small pork-butcher’s on the other. Pettipher’s drug shop, should anybody be curious on the point, was next to the tape-and-cotton mart.
To see Abel Crew arriving in the custody of old Jones the constable, the excited stragglers after them, astonished Piefinch Cut not a little. Figg the pawnbroker — who was originally from Alcester — considered himself learned in the law. Anyway, he was a great talker, and liked to give his opinion upon every topic that might turn up. His shop joined Dovey’s forge: and when we arrived there, Figg was outside, holding forth to Dovey, who had his shirt-sleeves rolled up above his elbows as usual, his leather apron on. Mrs. Dovey stood listening behind, in the smart gown and red-ribboned bonnet she had worn at the inquest.
“Why — what on earth! — have they been and gone and took up Crew?” cried Figg in surprise.
“It is an awful shame of old Jones,” I broke in; speaking more to Dovey than Figg, for Figg was no favourite of mine. “A whole week of the lock-up! Only think of it, Dovey!”
“But have they brought it in again’ him, Master Johnny?” cried Dovey, unfolding his grimy arms to touch his paper cap to me as he spoke.
“No; that’s what they have not done. The inquest is adjourned for a week; and I don’t believe old Jones has a right to take him at all. Not legally, you know.”
“That’s just what her brought word,” said Dovey, with a nod in the direction of his wife. “‘Well, how be it turned, Ann?’ says I to her when her come back — for I’d a sight o’ work in to-day and couldn’t go myself. ‘Oh, it haven’t turned no ways yet, Jack,’ says her; ‘it be put off to next week.’ There he goes! right in.”
This last remark applied to Abel Crew. After fumbling in his pocket for the two big keys, tied together with string, and then fumbling at the latch, old Jones succeeded in opening the door. Not being much used, the lock was apt to grow rusty. Then he stood back, and with a flourish of hands motioned Abel in. He made no resistance.
“They must know for certain as ‘twere his pills what done it,” struck in Mrs. Dovey.
“No, they don’t,” said I. “What’s more, I do not think it was his pills. Abel Crew says he never put poison in his pills yet, and I believe him.”
“Well, and no more it don’t stand to reason as he would, Mr. Ludlow,” said Figg, a man whose self-complaisance was not to be put down by any amount of discouragement. “I were just a-saying so to Dovey —— Why have old Jones took him up?” went on Figg to Gibbon the gamekeeper, who came striding by.
“Jones says he has the coroner’s orders for it,” answered Gibbon.
“Look here, I know a bit about law, and I know a man oughtn’t to be shut up till some charge is brought again’ him,” contended Figg. “Crew’s pills is suspected, but he have not been charged yet.”
“Anyway, it’s what Jones has gone and done,” said Gibbon. “Perhaps he is right. And a week’s not much; it’ll soon pass. But as to any pills of Abel Crew’s having killed them children, it’s just preposterous to think of it.”
“What d’ye suppose did kill ‘em, then, Richard Gibbon?” demanded Ann Dovey, a hot flush on her face, her tone full of resentment.
“That’s just what has to be found out,” returned Gibbon, passing on his way.
“If it hadn’t been for Dobbs and Butcher Perkins holding out again’ it, Crew ‘ud ha’ been brought in guilty safe enough,” said Ann Dovey. And the tone was again so excited, so bitterly resentful against Dobbs and Perkins, that I could not help looking at her in wonder. It sounded just as though the non-committal of Abel were a wrong inflicted upon herself.
“No, he would not have been brought in guilty,” I answered her; “he would have been committed for trial; but that’s a different thing. If the matter could be sifted to the bottom, I know it would be found that the mischief did not lie with Abel Crew’s pills. There, Mrs. Dovey!”
She was looking at me out of the corners of her eyes — for all the world as if she were afraid of me, or of what I said. I could not make her out.
“Why should you wish so particularly to bring it home to Crew?” I pointedly asked her; and Figg turned round to look at her, as if seconding the question.
“Me want particular to bring it home to Crew!” she retorted, her voice rising with temper; or perhaps with fear, for she trembled like an aspen leaf. “I don’t want to bring it home particular to him, Mr. Ludlow. It were his pills, though, all the same, that did it.”
And with that she whisked through the forge to her kitchen.
On the morning following I got old Jones to let me into the lock-up. The place consisted of two rooms opening into one another, and a small square space, no bigger than a closet, at the end of the passage, where they kept the pen and ink. For that small space had a window in it, looking on to the fields at the back; the two rooms had only skylights in the roof. In the inner room a narrow iron bedstead stood against the wall, a mattress and blanket on it. Abel was sitting on that when we went in.
“You must have been lively here last night, Abel!”
“Yes, very, sir,” answered he, with a half-smile. “I did not really mind it; I am used to be alone. I could have done with fewer rats, though.”
“Oh, are there rats here?”
“Lots of them, Master Johnny. I don’t like rats. They came upon my face, and all about me.”
“Why does old Jones not set traps for them? He considers this place to be under his special protection.”
“There are too many for any trap to catch,” answered Abel.
Old Jones had gone off to the desk in the closet, having placed some bread and butter and milk on the shelf for Abel. His errand there was to enter the cost of the bread in the account-book, to be settled for later. A prisoner in the lock-up was commonly treated to bread and water: old Jones had graciously allowed this one to pay for some butter and milk out of his own pocket.
“I don’t want to treat ’em harsher nor I be obliged, Master Ludlow,” he said to me, when coming in, in reference to the butter and the milk he was carrying. “Abel Crew have been known as a decent man ever since he come among us: and if he chooses to pay for the butter and the milk, there ain’t no law against his having ‘em. ‘Tain’t as if he was a burglar.”
“No, he is not a burglar,” I answered. “And you must mind that you do not get into the wrong box about him. There’s neither law nor justice in locking him up, Jones, before he is charged.”
“If I had never locked up nobody till they was charged, I should ha’ been in the wrong box many a time afore now,” said old Jones, doggedly. “Look at that there man last Christmas; what I caught prowling in the grounds at Parrifer Hall, with a whole set of house-breaking things concealed in his pockets! After I’d took him, and lodged him in here safe, it was found that he was one o’ the worst characters in the county, only let out o’ Worcester goal two days before. S
uppose I’d not took him, Master Johnny? where ‘ud the spoons at Parrifer Hall ha’ been?”
“That was a different case altogether.”
“I know what I’m about,” returned Jones. “The coroner, he just give me a nod or two, looking at Crew as he give it. I knew what it meant, sir: a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.”
Anyway, Jones had him, here in the lock-up: and had gone off to enter the loaf in the account-book; and I was sitting on the bench opposite Abel.
“It is a wicked shame of them to have put you here, Abel.”
“It is not legal — as I believe,” he answered. “And I am sure it is not just, sir. I swear those pills and that box produced at the inquest were none of mine. They never went out of my hands. Old Jones thinks he is doing right to secure me, I suppose, and he is civil over it; so I must not grumble. He brought me some water to wash in this morning, and a comb.”
“But there’s no sense in it. You would not attempt to escape; you would wait for the reassembling of the inquest.”
“Escape!” he exclaimed. “I should be the first to remain for it. I am more anxious than any one to have the matter investigated. Truth to say, Master Johnny, my curiosity is excited. Hester Reed is so persistent in regard to their being the pills and box that I gave her; and as she is a truthful honest woman, one can’t see where the mistake lies. There must be a mystery in it somewhere.”
“Suppose you are committed to take your trial? And found guilty?”
“That I shall be committed, I look upon as certain,” he answered. “As to being found guilty — if I am, I must bear it. God knows my innocence, and I shall hope that in time He will bring it to light.”
“All the same, Abel, they ought not to put you in here.”
“That’s true, sir.”
“And then there will be the lying in prison until the assizes — two or three good months to come! Don’t go and die of it, Abel.”
“No, I shall not do that,” he answered, smiling a little. “The consciousness of innocence will keep me up.”
I sat looking at him. What light could get in through the dusty skylight fell on his silver hair, which fell back from his pale face. He held his head down in thought, only raising it to answer me. Some movement in the closet betokened old Jones’s speedy approach, and I hastened to assure Abel that all sensible people would not doubt his innocence.
“No one need doubt it, Master Johnny,” he answered firmly, his eye kindling. “I never had a grain of arsenic in my house; I have never had any other poison. There are herbs from which poison may be distilled, but I have never gathered them. When it comes to people needing poison — and there are some diseases of the human frame that it may be good for — they should go to a qualified medical man, not to a herbalist. No. I have never, never had poison or poisonous herbs withing my dwelling; therefore (putting other reasons aside) it is impossible that those pills can have been my pills. God hears me say it, and knows that it is true.”
Old Jones, balancing the keys in his hand, was standing within the room, listening. Abel Crew was so respectable and courteous a prisoner, compared with those he generally had in the lock-up, burglars, tipsy men, and the like, returning him a “thank you” instead of an oath, that he had already begun to regard him with some favour, and the assertion seemed to make an impression on him.
“Look here,” said he. “Whose pills could they have been, if they warn’t yours?”
“I cannot imagine,” returned Abel Crew. “I am as curious about it as any one else — Master Ludlow here knows I am. I dare say it will come out sometime. They could not have been made up by me.”
“What was that you told the coroner about your pill-boxes being marked?” asked old Jones.
“And so they are marked; all of them. The pill-box I saw there — —”
“I mean the stock o’ boxes you’ve got at home. Be they all marked?”
“Every one of them. When I have in a fresh lot of pill-boxes the first thing I do, on bringing them home, is to mark them.”
“Then look here. You just trust me with the key of your place, and tell me where the boxes are to be found, and I’ll go and secure ‘em, and lay ’em afore the coroner. If they be all found marked, it’ll tell in your favour.”
The advice sounded good, and Abel Crew handed over his key. Jones looked solemn as he and I went away together.
“It’s an odd thing, though, Master Johnny, ain’t it, how the pison could ha’ got into them there pills,” said he slowly, as he put the big key into the lock of the outer door.
And we had an audience round us before the words were well spoken. To see the lock-up made fast when there was a prisoner within it, was always a coveted recreation in Piefinch Cut. Several individuals had come running up; not to speak of children from the gutters. Dovey stood gazing in front of his forge; Figg, who liked to be lounging about outside when he had no customers transacting delicate negotiations within, backed against his shop-window, and stared in concert with Dovey. Jones flourishing the formidable keys, crossed over to them.
“How do he feel to-day?” asked Figg, nodding towards the lock-up.
“He don’t feel no worse appariently than he do other days,” replied old Jones. “It be a regular odd thing, it be.”
“What be odd?” asked Dovey.
“How the pison could ha’ got into them there pills. Crew says he has never had no pison in his place o’ no kind, herbs nor else.”
“And I would pledge my word that it is the truth,” I put in.
“Well, and so I think it is,” said Dovey. “Last night George Reed was in here a-talking. He says he one day come across Abel Crew looking for herbs in the copse behind the Grange. Crew was picking and choosing: some herbs he’d leave alone, and some he dug up. Reed spied out a fine-looking plant, and called to him. Up comes Crew, trowel in hand, bends down to take a look, and then gives his head a shake. ‘That won’t do for me,’ says he, ‘that plant has poisonous properties,’ says he; ‘and I never meddles with them that has,’ says he. George Reed told us that much in this here forge last night. Him and his wife have a’most had words about it.”
“Had words about what?” asked old Jones.
“Why, about them pills. Reed tells her that if it is the pills what poisoned the young ones, she have made some mull o’ the box Abel give her and got it changed. But he don’t believe as ‘twere the pills at all. And Hester Reed, she sticks to it that she never made no mull o’ the box, and that the pills is the same.”
At this juncture, happening to turn my head, I saw Mrs. Dovey at the door at the back of the forge, her face screwed round the doorpost, listening: and there was a great fear on it. Seeing me looking at her, she disappeared like a shot, and quietly closed the door. A thought flashed across me.
“That woman knows more about it than she will say! And it is frightening her. What can the mystery be?”
The children were buried on the Sunday afternoon, all the parish flocking to the funeral; and the next morning Abel Crew was released. Whether old Jones had become doubtful as to the legality of what he had done, or whether he received a mandate from the coroner by the early post, no one knew. Certain it was, that before nine o’clock old Jones held the lock-up doors open, and Abel Crew walked out. It was thought that some one must have written privately to the coroner — which was more than likely. Old Jones was down in the mouth all day, as if he had had an official blowing-up.
Abel and his stick went home. The rest and his own doctoring had very nearly cured the instep. On the Saturday old Jones had made a descent upon the cottage and cleared it of the pill-boxes. Jones found that every box had Abel’s private mark upon it.
“Well, this is a curious start, Crew!” exclaimed Mr. Duffham, meeting him as he was turning in at his gate. “Now in the lock-up, and now out of it! It may be old Jones’s notion of law, but it is not mine. How have you enjoyed it?”
“It would not have been so bad but for the rats, sir,” re
plied Abel. “I could see a few stars shining through the skylight.”
The days went on to the Thursday, and it was now the evening before the adjourned inquest. Tod and I, in consideration of the popular ferment, had taken the Squire at a favourable moment, and extracted from him another week’s holiday. Opinions were divided: some believed in Crew, others in the poisoned pills. As to Crew himself, he was out in his garden as usual, attending to his bees, and his herbs and flowers, and quietly awaiting the good or the ill luck that Fate might have in store for him.
It was Thursday evening, I say; and I was taking tea with Duffham. Having looked in upon him, when rushing about the place, he asked me to stay. The conversation turned upon the all-engrossing topic; and I chanced to mention that the behaviour of Ann Dovey puzzled me. Upon that, Duffham said that it was puzzling him. He had been called in to her the previous day, and found her in a regular fever, eyes anxious, breath hysterical, face hectic. Since the day of the inquest she had been more or less in this state, and the blacksmith told Duffham he could not make out what had come to her. “Them pills have drove her mad, sir,” were Dovey’s words; “she can’t get ’em off her mind.”
The last cup of tea was poured out, and Duffham was shaking round the old black pot to see if he could squeeze out any more, when we received an interruption. Dovey came bursting in upon us straight from his forge; his black hair ruffled, his small dark face hot with flurry. It was a singular tale he had come to tell. His wife had been making a confession to him. Driven pretty nearly out of her mind by the weight of a secret, she could hold it no longer.
To begin at the beginning. Dovey’s house swarmed with black-beetles. Dovey himself did not mind the animals, but Mrs. Dovey did; and no wonder, when she could not step out of bed in the night without putting her foot on one. But, if Dovey did not dislike black-beetles, there was another thing he did dislike — hated in fact; and that was the stuff called beetle-powder: which professed to kill them. Mrs. Dovey would have scattered some on the floor every night; but Dovey would not allow it. He forbid her to bring a grain of it into the house: it was nothing but poison, he said, and might chance to kill themselves as well as the beetles. Ann Dovey had her way in most matters, for Dovey was easy, as men and husbands go; but when once he put his veto on a thing, she knew she might as well try to turn the house round as turn him.