Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/98

90 lover—who was to be on duty with his engine at two o’clock, and who was doubtlessly interrupted in a most interesting conversation by the arrival of the lodger—still remained in the kitchen, and was only just leaving it when Madame R** came down stairs. Taking her at first to be the mistress of, the house, and fearful lest the street-lamp gleaming through the glass partition should betray her “young man’s” presence, Susan Turner draws him to the lumber-room, the window of which, it appears, looks into a sort of well between the house and the two rooms built out at the back, after a fashion not unusual in London houses. Into this well, also, immediately opposite to the window of the lumber-room, looks that of the backroom or laboratory, furnished with what the witness describes as a “tin looking-glass,” but which is really one of those metal reflectors, in common use, for increasing the light of rooms in such a position. The distance between the two windows is little more than eight feet. The night was clear, with a bright, full harvest moon, and its rays, thrown by the reflector into the laboratory, made every part of its interior distinctly visible from the lumber-room. The door of the latter room was open, and the staircase illuminated by the Baron’s approaching light. The hiders in the lumber-room could see distinctly the whole proceedings of both Baron and Madame R**, from the time Aldridge lost sight of them to the moment they again emerged into his view.

And 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