The Notting Hill Mystery
TextAnd this was what they saw:
"Madame R** never went into the kitchen at all;" "she went straight into the laboratory," and "the Baron watched her as she came out."
A glance at the place will show the bearing of this evidence and the impossibility of the Baron (who, if he had not been in the kitchen, must at least have thoroughly known the position of his own laboratory) having made any mistake on this point.
What, then, was his motive in thus imposing upon Aldridge, to whose interference he professed himself so much indebted, with this false statement of the place to which Madame R** had been?
There does not seem the slightest reason for discrediting the evidence of these two witnesses. Their story is perfectly simple and coherent. There is neither malice against the Baron nor collusion with Aldridge, in whose case such malice is supposed to exist. The only weak point in their position is the fact, that they were both doing wrong in being in that place at that time; but the admission of this, in truth, rather strengthens than injures the testimony which involves it. We must seek the clue, then, not in their motives, but in those of the Baron. The errand of Madame R**, in her strange expedition, may perhaps afford it. What did she do in the laboratory?
"She drank something from a bottle." "It smelt and tasted like sherry." "It was marked VIN. ANT. POT. TART." That label designates antimonial wine, which is a mixture of sherry and tartar emetic.
Let us see if from this point we can feel our way, as it were, backwards, to the motive for concealment. The life of Madame R** was, as we know, heavily insured. It had already been seriously endangered by the effects of precisely the same drug as that she was now seen to take. If the Baron knew or suspected the motive of her visit, here is at once a motive sufficient, if not perhaps very creditable, for the concealment of a fact, the knowledge of which might very probably lead to difficulty with respect to payment of the policy in case of death.
But here another difficulty meets us. The incident in question occurred at about the middle of the long illness of Madame R**. That illness consisted of a series of attacks, occurring as nearly as possible at intervals of a fortnight, and exhibiting the exact symptoms of the poison here shown to have been taken. One of these attacks followed within a very few hours of the occurrence into which we are examining. Was it the only one of the kind?
The evidence of the night-nurse bears with terrible weight upon this point. Her orders are strict, on no account to close her eyes. Her hours of watch are short, and the repose of the entire day leaves her without the slightest cause for unusual drowsiness. The testimonials of twenty years bear unvarying witness to her care and trustworthiness. Yet every alternate Saturday for eight or ten, or it may even have been nearly twelve weeks, at one regular hour she falls asleep. It is in vain that she watches and fights against it – in vain even that, suspecting "some trick" she on one occasion abstains entirely from food, and drinks nothing but that peculiarly wakeful decoction, strong green tea. On every other night she keeps awake with ease, but surely as the fatal Saturday comes round she again succumbs, and surely as sleep steals over her is it followed by a fresh attack of the symptoms we so plainly recognise. She cannot in any way account for such an extraordinary fatality. She is positive that such a thing never happened to her before. We also are at an equal loss. We can but pause upon the reflection that twice before the periodic drowsiness began, a similarly irresistible sleep had been induced by the so-called mesmeric powers of the Baron himself. And then we pass naturally to her who had been for years habituated to such control, and we cannot but call to mind the statement of Mr. Hands – "I have often willed her (S. Parsons) to go into a dark room and pick up a pin, or some article equally minute."
And then we again remember the watching shadow on the wall.
And yet, after all, at what have we arrived? Grant that the Baron knew the nature of his wife's errand in the laboratory; that the singular power – call it what we will – by which he had before in jest compelled the nurse to sleep, was really employed in enabling the somnambulist to elude her watch. Grant even that the pretensions of the mesmerist are true, and that it was in obedience to his direct will that Madame R** acted as she did, we are no nearer a solution than before.
It was not the Baron's interest that his wife should die.
We must then seek further afield for any explanation of this terrible enigma. Let us see how it fared with Mrs. Anderton while these events were passing at her sister's house.
And here we seem to have another instance of the manner in which the wisest precautions so often turn against those by whom they are taken III. and V.. Admitting that the illness of Madame R** was really caused by criminal means, nothing could be wiser than the precaution which selected for their first essay a night on which they could be tried without fear of observation. Yet this very circumstance enables us to fix a date of the last importance, which without it must have remained uncertain. Madame R**, then, was taken ill on Saturday, the 5th April. On that very night – at, as nearly as can be ascertained, the very same hour, Mrs. Anderton was unaccountably seized with an illness in all respects resembling hers. Like hers, too, the attacks returned at fortnightly intervals: For a few days, on the Baron's advice, a particular medicine is given, and at first with apparently good effect. At the same date the diary of Dr. Marsden shows a similar amelioration of symptoms in the case of Madame R**. In both cases the amendment is but short, and the disease again pursues its course. The result in both is utter exhaustion. In the case of Madame R** reducing the sufferer to death's door; in the weaker constitution of her sister terminating in death. Examination is made. The appearances of the body, no less than the symptoms exhibited in life, are all those of antimonial poisoning. No antimony is, however, found; and from this and other circumstances, results a verdict of "Natural Death." On the 12th October, then, Mrs. Anderton's story ends.
From that time dates the recovery of Madame R**.
The first life is now removed from between Baron R** and the full sum of 50,000l VI.. Let us examine briefly the circumstances attending the lapse of the second. Here again events each in itself quite simple and natural, combine to form a story fraught with terrible suspicion. I have alluded to the inquest which followed on the death of Mrs. Anderton. That inquiry originated in circumstances which cast upon her husband the entire suspicion of her murder. To whose agency, whether direct or indirect, voluntary or involuntary, is an after question, may every one of these circumstances be traced? Mr. Anderton insists on being the only one from whom the patient shall receive either medicine or food. It is the Baron who applauds and encourages a line of conduct diametrically opposed to his own, and tending more than any other circumstance to fix suspicion on his friend. A remedy is suggested, the recommending of which points strongly to the idea of poison, and it is from the Baron that the suggestion comes. Two papers are found, the one bearing in part the other in full, the name of the poison suspected to have been used. The first of these is brought to light by the Baron himself, – the second is found in a place where he has just been, and by a person whom he has himself despatched to search there for something else. He draws continual attention to that point of exclusive attendance from which suspicion chiefly springs. His replies to Dr. Dodsworth respecting the recommendation of the antimonial antidote are so given as to confirm the worst interpretation to which it had given rise, and even when, on the discovery of the second paper, he advises the nurse that it should be destroyed, he does so in a manner that ensures not only its preservation but its immediate employment in the manner most dangerous to his friend.
The evidence fails. What is the Baron's connection with the catastrophe that follows? He knows well the accused man's nervous anxiety for his own good name. He procures, on the ground of his friendly anxiety, the earliest intelligence of his friend's probable acquittal. He enters that friend's room to acquaint him with the good news. Returning he takes measures to secure the prisoner throughout the night from interruption or interference. In the morning Mr. Anderton is a corpse, and on his pillow is found the phial in which the poison had been contained, and a written statement that the desperate step had been taken in despair of an acquittal. By what marvellous accident was the hopeful news of the chemical investigation thus misinterpreted? By what negligence or connivance was the fatal drug placed within his reach? One thing only we know —
It was the Baron who conveyed the news. It was from his pocket medicine case, left by him within the sick man's reach, that the poison came.
Thus fell the second of the two lives which stood between the Baron and the full sum of 50,000l. Of this sum the 25,000l. which accrues from the relationship between Mrs. Anderton and Madame R** is already his as soon as claimed, but there is no immediate necessity for the claim to be preferred. He may perhaps have thought it better to wait before making such a claim until the first sensation occasioned by the double deaths through which he inherited had passed away. He may have been merely putting in train some plausible story to account for his only now proclaiming a fact of which he had certainly been aware for at least a year. Whatever his reason, however, he certainly for some weeks after Mr. Anderton's death made no movement to establish his claim upon the property, and during this time Madame R** was slowly but surely recovering her strength.
But while wisdom thus dictated a policy of delay, the irresistible course of events hurried on the crisis. A letter comes VII. filled with threats of the vengeance of jealous love if its cause be not that night removed. It is but a fragment of that letter that is preserved, but its meaning is clear enough, and it is that under threat of revelation of some capital crime, the connection between himself and Madame R** should be finally brought to an end.
"N'en sais-tu bien le moyen?"
That night the condition is fulfilled. Once more the sleeping lady takes her midnight journey to her husband's laboratory. Once more her unconscious hand pours out the deadly draught. But this time it is no slow poison that she takes. It is a powerful and burning acid that even as it awakes her from her trance, shrivels her with a horrible and instant death. One shrill and quickly stifled shriek alarms the inmates of the house, and when they hurry to the spot they find only a disfigured corpse, lying with bare feet and disordered night dress in the darkness of the stormy November night, and with the fatal glass still clasped in its hand.
My task is done. In possession of the evidence thus placed before you, your judgment of its result will be as good as mine. Link by link you have now been put in possession of the entire chain. Is that chain one of purely accidental coincidences, or does it point with terrible certainty to a series of crimes, in their nature and execution almost too horrible to contemplate? That is the first question to be asked, and it is one to which I confess myself unable to reply. The second is more strange, and perhaps even more difficult still. Supposing the latter to be the case, are crimes thus committed susceptible of proof, or even if proved, are they of a kind for which the criminal can be brought to punishment?