Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/450

 442 nary mistake in it, and sent poison. As soon as she drank it, she died.”

Judith’s face had been growing of a livid, death-like whiteness, but there was the same hard, uncomprehending look upon it. It suddenly changed; the haul look, for intelligence, the uncertainty, for horror. She uttered a low shriek and hid her eyes with her hands.

“Now this is just what I thought it would be—you do take on so,” rebuked Margaret. “It is a shocking thing; it’s dreadful for the poor young lady; but still she was a stranger to us.”

Judith had begun to shiver. Presently she took her hands from her eyes and looked at her sister.

“Mr. Stephen sent the poison, do you say!”

"They say it. It’s odd to me if he did. But her death, poor thing, seems proof positive.”

“Then he never did send it!” emphatically cried Judith. “Oh, Margaret, this is awful! When did she die?”

“Well I believe it was about a quarter or ten minutes before ten last night. Mr. Carlton it appears called there sometime in the evening, and was there when the draught was brought in, and he smelt the poison in the bottle. He went off to the Greys in ask Mr. Stephen whether it was all right, but she had taken it before he could get back again.”

The hard, stony look was re-appearing on Judith’s face. She seemed not to understand, and kept her eyes fixed on Margaret.

“If Mr. Carlton smelt the poison, why did he not forbid it to be given to her?” she said after a while.

“Well—upon my word I forget. I think, though, Mrs. Gould said he did forbid it. It was from her I got all this; she came in here as soon as I was down this morning. She is in a fine way, she and old Pepperfly too; but, as I tell her, there’s no need for them to fear. It doesn’t seem to have been any fault of theirs.”

Judith rose from her chair where she had quietly sat during the recital. “I must go in and learn more, Margaret,” she said in a resolute tone, as if she feared being stopped a second time.

“Ay, you may go now,” was Margaret’s answer. “I only wanted to break the news to you first.”

Mrs. Gould and nurse Pepperfly were doing duty over the kitchen fire, talking themselves red in the face, and imbibing is slight modicum of comfort by way of soothing their shattered nerves. Judith saw them as she came up the yard. She crossed the house passage and pushed open the kitchen door.

Both screamed. Too busy to see or hear her, sitting as they were with their backs to the window, her entrance startled them. That overcome, they became voluble on the subject of the past night; and Judith, leaning against the ironing-board underneath the window, listened attentively, and garnered up the particulars in silence.

“It is next door to an impossibility that Mr. Stephen could have mixed poison with the draught,” was her first rejoinder. “I, for one, will never believe it.”

The room up-stairs was in possession of the police, but Judith was allowed to see it. The poor young face lay white and still, and Judith burst into tears as she gazed at it.

In going down stairs again she just missed meeting Mr. Carlton. He called at the house, and spoke to the policeman. He, the surgeon, had undertaken to assist the police in their researches to discover who the strange lady was, so far as he could, and had already written to various friends in London if perchance they might have cognisance of her. Ho appeared inclined to be sharp with Mrs. Pepperfly, almost seeming to entertain some doubt of the woman’s state of sobriety at the time of the occurrence.

“It is a most extraordinary thing to me, Mrs. Pepperfly, that the lady did not tell you I had forbidden her to take the draught. I can scarcely think but that she did tell you. And yet you went and gave it to her.”

“I can be upon my Bible oath that she never said nothing to me against taking the draught,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly, scarcely knowing whether to be indignant or to shed tears at the reproach. “Quite the conterairy. She wanted to take it, poor soul, right atop of her gruel; and would have took it so, if I had let her.”

Mr. Carlton threw his light grey eyes straight into the woman’s face.

“Are you sure you remember all the occurrences quite clearly, Mrs. Pepperfly?”

Mrs. Pepperfly understood the insinuation and fired at it. “I remember ’em just as clear as you do, sir. And I’m thankful to goodness that as fur as that night goes I’ve not got nothing on my conscience. If it was to come over again to-night, me being still in ignorance of what was to turn out, I should just give her the draught, supposing it my duty, as I give it her then.”

“Well, it appears to me very strange that she should have taken it,” concluded Mr. Carlton.

In the course of the morning, Judith, in going up the street, encountered Frederick Grey.