Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/97

 . 17, 1863.] course, and indeed that suggested at once by Dr. Jones, was that of assurance, and this course he accordingly adopted, after having previously, by a tour of several months, restored his wife to a state of health in which her life would probably be accepted by the offices concerned. The insurances, therefore, with which we are concerned, were effected in consequence of a previous administration of poison to Madame R**, producing an illness far more serious than could have been anticipated, and accompanied by precisely similar symptoms on the part of her delicate sister, Mrs. Anderton, whose death, if preceding that of Madame R**, would more than double the Baron’s prospect of succession.

Between him, therefore, and the sum of either 25,000l. or 50,000l. there now intervened three lives, those of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton, and of his own wife, Madame R**, and on the order in which they fell depended the amount of his gain by their demise. The death of Mr. Anderton before that of Mrs. Anderton, would open the possibility of a second marriage, from which might arise issue, whose claim would precede his; that of his own wife preceding that of either Mr. or Mrs. Anderton, would destroy altogether his own claim to the larger sum. It was only in the event of Mrs. Anderton’s death being followed first by that of her husband, and afterwards by that of her sister, that the Baron’s entire claim would be secured.

Within one year from the time at which matters assumed this position, these three lives fell in, and in precisely the order in which the Baron would most largely and securely profit by their demise.

We now proceed to examine the circumstances under which they fell.

Immediately on his return to England, and before apparently completing his arrangements with respect to the policies of insurance, the Baron, we find, calls upon Mr. Anderton, and by dint of minute inquiries draws from him the entire history of the attack from which Mrs. Anderton had suffered several months before. Supposing, therefore, that the information was of any practical interest, the Baron was now fully aware of the perfect similarity, both of time and symptom, between the cases of his wife and her sister. It is essential that this should be borne in mind.

He now proceeds to establish himself in lodgings in Russell Place, in a house in which, for five days and every night in the week, he is entirely alone. The only other tenant is a medical man, whose visits are confined to a few hours on two days in the week, and who lives at too great a distance to be called in on any sudden emergency. Here he establishes himself upon the first and second floors with a laboratory in a small detached room upon the basement floor, where his chemical experiments can be carried on without inconvenience to the rest of the house. It is essential that the position of this laboratory should be very clearly borne in mind, as it plays a most important part in the story which is now to follow.

In these lodgings, then, Madame R** is again taken ill with a return, though in a greatly mitigated form, of the same symptoms from which she had previously suffered at Bognor. The attack, however, though less violent in its immediate effects, was succeeded at regular intervals of about a fortnight by others of a precisely similar character. And here we arrive at what is at once the most significant, the most extraordinary, and the most questionable of the evidence we have been able to collect.

It appears, then, that upon a night in August, a young man of the name of Aldridge, who, as a matter of special favour, had been taken into the house since the arrival of the Baron, saw Madame R** leave her bed-room, and, apparently in her sleep, walk down the stairs in the dark to the lower part of the house. The room in which the Baron slept was next to hers, and on the wall of that room, projected by the night-lamp burning on the table, the young man saw what seemed to be the shadow of a man watching Madame R** as she went by. He looked again and the shadow was gone—so rapidly that at first he could scarcely believe his eyes, and was only, after consideration, satisfied that it really had been there. He went down to the room, but the Baron was asleep. He told him what had happened to Madame R**, and he at once followed her. Young Aldridge watched him until he had descended the kitchen-stairs and returned, followed closely by the sleep-walker. He then went back to his room, to which the Baron shortly afterwards came to thank him for his warning, and to tell him that, in some freak of slumber, Madame R** had visited the kitchen.

So far the story is simple enough. There is nothing extraordinary in a sick woman of exciteable nerves taking a sudden fit of somnambulism, and walking down even into the kitchen of a house that was not her own. The Baron’s conduct—in all respects but that of the watching shadow—was precisely that which, from a sensible and affectionate husband, might most naturally have been expected. Nor is it very difficult, even setting aside all idea of malice, to set down the shadow portion of the story to a mere freak of imagination on the part of the young man who, though “not drunk,” was nevertheless on his own admission, “perhaps a little excited,” and who had been “drinking a good deal of beer and shandy-gaff.” But the evidence does not end here.

By one of those extraordinary coincidences by which the simple course of ordinary events so often baffles the best laid schemes of crime, there were others in the house, besides the young man Aldridge, who witnessed the movements of the Baron and Madame R**. It so happened that, on the afternoon of that particular day, the woman of the house had hampered the little latch-lock by which young Aldridge usually admitted himself, and, as this occurred late in the day, it is more than probable that the Baron was unaware of it, as also of the fact that in consequence the servant-girl Susan Turner, sat up beyond the usual hour of going to bed for the purpose of letting the young man in. This girl, it seems, had a lover—a stoker on one of the northern lines—and him she appears to have invited to keep her company on her watch. Aldridge returned and went up to bed, but the