Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/400

 24, 1864.] out before I could well get away from the door.”

“And why did you not avow who you were when he asked, instead of getting away?”

“Again I must say that I had no ill motive in doing it,” replied the witness. “I felt like an eaves-dropper, like a peeper into what did not concern me, and I did not like to let Mr. Carlton know I had been there. I declare that I had no other motive. I have wished many a time since, when people have been talking and suspecting the ‘man on the stairs,’ that I had let myself be seen.”

“And you mean to tell us that you could go up these stairs and into this closet without Mr. Carlton’s hearing you?”

“Oh yes, I had on my sick-room shoes. They were of list; soles and all.”

“Did you suspect, witness, that Mr. Carlton was doing anything wrong with the medicine?” asked one of the magistrates.

“No, sir, I never thought of such a thing. It never occurred to me to think anything wrong at all until the next morning, when I was told Mrs. Crane had died through taking the draught, and that it was found to have been poisoned. I doubted then; I remembered the words of greeting I had heard pass between Mr. Carlton and his patient the former night, proving that they were well acquainted with each other; but still I thought it could not be possible that Mr. Carlton would do anything so wicked. It was only at the inquest when I heard him swear to what I knew was false that I really suspected him.”

“It’s as good as a play!” ironically spoke Lawyer Billiter. “I hope your worships will have the goodness to take notes of the testimony of this witness. What she says is most extraordinary, most incredible,” he continued, looking from one part of the packed audience to another; “in my opinion it is tainted with the gravest suspicion. First of all she deposes to a cock-and-bull story of hearing terms of endearment pass between Mr. Carlton and his patient, to whom he had only then been called in as a medical attendant; and next she tells this equally incredible tale of the bottles! Why should she, above all others, have been seated in the dark in Mrs. Crane’s bedroom that ﬁrst night?—why should she, above all others, have come stealing up the stairs the second night, still in the dark, just at the particular time, the few minutes that Mr. Carlton was there? This by-play amidst the bottles, that she professes to have witnessed, can only be compared to so many conjuring tricks! How was it, if she did so come up, that the landlady of the house, Mrs. Gould, and the nurse, Pepperfly, did not see her? They"

“I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting,” said Judith. “They were, both times, at their supper in the kitchen; I saw them as I went by. I have already said so.”

“Give me leave to finish, young woman,” reproved Lawyer Billiter. “I say,” he added, addressing the court collectively, “that this witness’s evidence is incomprehensible, it is fraught with the gravest doubt; to a clear judgment it may appear very like pure invention, a tale got up to divert suspicion from herself. It remains yet to be seen whether she was not the tamperer of the draught—if it was tampered with—and now seeks to throw the guilt upon another. Have the goodness to answer a question, witness: if you perceived all this committed by Mr. Carlton, how came it that you did not declare it at the time?”

“I have said,” replied Judith, in some agitation—“because I feared that I should not be believed. I feared it might be met in the manner that you, sir, are now meeting it. I feared the very suspicion might be turned upon me; as you are now trying to turn it.”

“You feared that your unsupported testimony would not weigh against Mr. Carlton?” interposed one of the magistrates.

“Yes, sir,” replied Judith. “I did not really suspect Mr. Carlton until after the inquest, and there was a feeling upon me then of not liking to speak as I had not spoken before: people would have asked me why I kept it in. Besides, I never felt quite sure that Mr. Carlton had done it: it seemed so impossible to believe it.”

“And, confessing this, you now take upon yourself to assert that Mr. Carlton was dropping the prussic acid into the draught while you were squinting at him through the door?” sharply asked Lawyer Billiter.

“I don’t assert anything of the kind,” returned Judith, “I have only said what I saw him do with the bottles; I have said nothing more.”

“Oh,” said Lawyer Billiter, “you have said nothing more, haven’t you, young woman! I think it must strike everybody that you have insinuated more, if you have not said it. Your worships,” he added, turning to the bench, “there is not, as it appears to me, a tittle of evidence that ought to weigh against Mr. Carlton. He tells you that the young lady, Mrs. Crane, came here a stranger to him as she did to all others, and there’s not a shade of proof that this is untrue; that he ever knew her before. You cannot condemn a man like Mr. Carlton upon the sole testimony of an obscure witness; a servant girl who comes forward with a confession of things that, if true, should have been declared years ago. With the exception