Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/150

 23, 1864.] seeing nothing in the road, or the fields on either side of it, to attract his admiration, nestled against his mother and was soon asleep. Mrs. Pepperfly had also begun to nod again, when the stranger bent over to her with a question.

“Do you happen to know a lady living about here of the name of Crane?”

Mrs. Pepperfly started and opened her eyes, hardly awake yet.

“Crane?” said she.

“I want to find the address of a lady of that name. Do you know a Mrs. Crane in South Wennock?”

“No, mum,” answered Mrs. Pepperfly, her reminiscences of a certain episode of the past aroused, and not pleasantly, at the question. “I never knowed but one lady o’ that name; and that was but for two or three days, eight year and more ago, for she went out of the world promiscous.”

The widow paused a minute as if she had lost her breath. “How do you mean?” she asked.

“She was ill, mum, and I was the very nurse that was nursing of her, and she was getting on all beautiful when a nasty accident fell in, which haven’t been brought to light yet, and it put her into her grave in St. Mark’s Churchyard.”

“Was she hurt?” exclaimed the widow, hastily.

“No, nothing of that,” answered Mrs. Pepperfly, shaking her head. “The wrong medicine was given to her: it was me myself what poured it out and put it to her dear lips, little thinking I was giving her her death: and I wish my fingers had been bit off first!”

The stranger stared hard at Mrs. Pepperfly, as if she could not understand the words, or as if she doubted the tale. “Where did this happen?” she said at length. “Was she in lodgings in South Wennock?”

“She were in lodgings in Palace Street,” was the reply. “She come all sudden to the place, knowing nobody and nobody knowing her, just as one might suppose a strange bird might drop down from the skies. And she took the widow Gould’s rooms in Palace Street, and that very night her illness come on, and it was me that was called in to nurse her.

“And she is dead?" repeated the stranger, unable apparently to take in the tidings.

“She have been lying ever since in a corner of St. Mark’s Churchyard. She died the following Monday night. Leastways she were killed,” added Mrs. Pepperfly.

The stranger altered the position of the sleeping child, and bent nearer to the nurse. “Tell me about it,” she said.

“It’s soon told,” was the answer. “The doctor had sent in a composing draught. He had sent one in on the Saturday night and on the Sunday night; she were restless, poor thing, though doing as well as it’s possible for a body to do; but she were young, and she would get laughing and talking, and the doctors they don’t like that—and I’ll not say but there’s cases where it’s dangerous. Well, on the Monday night there was sent in another of these sleeping draughts, as the doctor thought, and as us thought, and I gave it to her, and it turned out to be poison, and her poor innocent soul went out after swallowing it; and mine a'most went out too with the fright.”

“Poison!”

“The draught were poisoned, and it killed her.”

“But how came the doctor to send a poisoned draught?” asked the stranger in a passionate tone.

“Ah, there it is,” returned Mrs. Pepperfly. “He says he didn’t send it so—that it went out from him good wholesome physic. But, as me and the widow Gould remarked to each other at the time, If he sent it out pure, what should bring the poison in it afterwards?”

“What was done to the doctor?”

“Nothing. There was a inquest sat upon her body, as I’ve cause to remember, for they had me up at it: but the jury and the crowner thought the doctor had not made the mistake nor put the poison into the draught—which he had stood to it from the first he didn’t.”

“Then who did put it in?”

“It’s more nor I can tell,” replied Mrs. Pepperfly. “I know I didn’t.”

“And was no stir made about it?” continued the stranger, wiping her face, which was growing heated.

“Plenty of stir, for that matter, but nothing come of it. The police couldn’t follow it up proper, for they didn’t know where she came from, or even what her crissen name was: and nobody has never come to inquire after her from that day to this.”

“Who was the doctor that attended her?” was the next question; and it was put abruptly.

“Mr. Stephen Grey. One might say indeed that two was attending of her, him and Mr. Carlton; but Mr. Carlton only saw her once or twice; he was away from the town. She had Mr. Stephen Grey throughout, and it was him that sent the draught.”

“Does he bear a good character?” asked the stranger, harshly.

“Mrs. Pepperfly opened her eyes. “What, Mr. Stephen Grey? Why, mum, nobody never bore a better character in this world, whether as a doctor or a man. Except that