XXIX
The mood of the Coroner changed with the afternoon session. He was curter in speech and less patient with the garrulity of his witnesses. Perhaps he dreaded the struggle which he foresaw awaited him.
He plunged at once into the topic he had left unfinished and at the precise point where he had left off. Wealthy had resumed her place on the stand.
“And where did you put this soothing mixture after you had prepared it?”
“Where I always did—on the shelf hanging in the corner on the further side of the bed—the side towards the windows. I did this so that it would not be picked up by mistake for a glass of water left on his stand.”
“Tell that to the jury again, Mrs. Starr. That the soothing medicine of which you speak was in a glass on the shelf we all can see indicated on the chart above your head, and plain water in a glass standing on the table on the near side of the bed.”
“Excuse me, Doctor Jones, I did not mean to say that there was any glass of water on the small stand that night. There was not. He did not seem to want it, so I left the water in a pitcher on the table by the hearth. I only meant that it being my usual custom to have it there I got in the habit of putting anything in the way of medicine as far removed from it as possible.”
“Mrs. Starr, when did you prepare this soothing medicine as you call it?”
“Soon after I entered the room.”
“Before Mr. Bartholomew slept?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Tell how you did it, where you did it and what Mr. Bartholomew said while you were doing it—that is, if he said anything at all.”
“The bottle holding this medicine was kept, as I have already said, with all the other medicines, in the cabinet hanging in the upper passageway.” Every eye rose to the chart. “The water in a pitcher on the large table to the left of the fire-place. Filling a glass with this water which I had drawn myself, I went to the medicine cabinet and got the bottle containing the drops the doctor had ordered for this purpose, and carrying it over to the table, together with the medicine-dropper, added the customary ten drops to the water and put the bottle back in the cabinet and the glass with the medicine in it on the shelf. Mr. Bartholomew’s face was turned my way and he naturally followed my movements as I passed to and fro; but he showed no especial interest in them, nor did he speak.”
“Was this before or after you dropped the curtain on the other side of the bed.”
“After.”
“The bed, I have been given to understand, is surrounded on all sides by heavy curtains which can be pulled to at will. Was the one you speak of the only one to be dropped or pulled at night?”
“Usually. You see Miss Orpha’s picture hangs between the windows and was company for him if he chanced to wake in the night.”
Again that sob, but fainter than before and to me very far off. Or was it that I felt so far removed myself—pushed aside and back from the grief and sufferings of this family?
The heads which turned at this low but pathetic sound were soon turned back again as the steady questioning went on:
“You speak of going to the medicine cabinet. It was your business, no doubt, to go there often.”
“Very often; I was his nurse, you see.”
“There was another bottle of medicine kept there—the one labeled ‘Dangerous’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you see that bottle when you went for the soothing mixture you speak of?”
“No, sir.” This was very firmly said. “I wasn’t thinking of it, and the bottle I wanted being in front I just pulled it out and never looked at any other.”
“This other bottle—the dangerous one—where was that kept?”
“Way back behind several others. I had put it there when the doctor told us that we were not to give him any more of that especial medicine without his orders.”
“If you went to this cabinet so often you must have a very good idea of just how it looked inside.”
“I have, sir,” her voice falling a trifle—at least, I thought I detected a slight change in it as if the emotion she had so bravely kept under up to this moment was beginning to make itself felt.
“Then tell us if everything looked natural to you when you went to it this time; everything in order,—nothing displaced.”
“I did not notice. I was too intent on what I was after. Besides, if I had—”
“Well, go on.”
Her brows puckered in distress; and I thought I saw her hand tremble where it showed amid the folds of her dress. If no other man held his breath at that short interim in which not a sound was heard, I did. Something was about to fall from her lips—
But she was speaking.
“If I had observed any disorder such as you mention I should not have thought it at all strange. I am not the only one who had access to that cabinet. His daughter often went to it, and—and the young gentlemen, too.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What should take them there?”
Her head lifted, her voice steadied, she looked the capable, kindly person of a few moments ago. That thrill of emotion was gone; perhaps I have overemphasized it.
“We all worked together, sir. The young gentlemen, that is one or the other of them, often took my place in the room, especially at night, and Mr. Bartholomew, used to being waited on and having many wants, they had learned how to take care of him and give him what he called for.”
“And this took them to the cabinet?”
“Undoubtedly; it held a great variety of things besides his medicines.”
The Coroner paused. During the most trying moment of my life every eye in the room turned on me, not one on Edgar.
I bore it stoically; a feeling I endeavored to crush making havoc in my heart.
Then the command came:
“Continue with your story. You have given us the incidents of the night such as you observed them before Mr. Bartholomew slept; you will now relate what happened after.”
Again I watched her hand. It had clenched itself tightly and then loosened as these words rang out from the seat of authority. The preparation for what she had to tell had been made; the time had now come for its relation. She began quietly, but who could tell how she would end.
“For an hour I kept my watch on the curtained side of the bed. It was very still in the room, so deathly still that after awhile I fell asleep in my chair. When I woke it was suddenly and with a start of fear. I was too confused at first to move and as I sat listening, I heard a slight sound on the other side of the bed, followed by the unmistakable one of a softly closing door. My first thought, of course, was for my patient and throwing the curtains aside, I looked through. The room was light enough, for one of the logs on the hearth had just broken apart, and the glow it made lit up Mr. Bartholomew’s face and showed me that he was sleeping. Relieved at the sight, I next asked myself who could have been in the room at an hour so late, and what this person wanted. I was not frightened, now that I was fully awake, and being curious, nothing more, I drew the portière from before the passage-way at my back and, stepping to the door beyond, opened it and looked out.”
Here she became suddenly silent, and so intent were we all in anticipation of what her next words would reveal, that the shock caused by this unexpected break in her story, vented itself in a sort of gasp from the parched lips and throats of the more excitable persons present. It was a sound not often heard save on the theatrical stage at a moment of great suspense, and the effect upon the witness was so strange that I forgot my own emotion in watching her as she opened her lips to continue and then closed them again, with a pitiful glance at the Coroner.
He seemed to understand her and made a kindly effort to help her in this sudden crisis of feeling.
“Take your time, Mrs. Starr,” he said. “We are well aware that testimony of this nature must be painful to you, but it is necessary and must be given. You opened the door and looked out. What did you see?”
“A man—or, rather, the shadow of a man outlined very dimly on the further wall of the hall.”
“What man?”
“I do not know, sir.”
She did; the woman was lying. No one ever looked as she did who was in doubt as to what she saw. But the Coroner intentionally or unintentionally blind to this very decided betrayal of her secret, still showed a disposition to help her.
“Was it so dark?”
“Yes, sir. The electrolier at the stair-head had been put out probably by him as he passed, for—”
It was a slip. I saw it in the way her face changed and her voice faltered as with one accord every eye in the assemblage before her turned quickly towards the chart.
I did not need to look. I know that hall by heart. The electrolier she spoke of was nearer the back than the front; to put it out in passing, meant that the person stopping to extinguish it was heading towards the rear end of the hall. In other words, Clarke or myself. As it was not myself—
But she must have thought it was, for when the Coroner, drawing the same conclusion, pressed her to describe the shadow and, annoyed at her vague replies, asked her point blank if it could be that of Clarke, she shook her head and finally acknowledged that it was much too slim.
“A man’s, though?”
“Certainly, a man’s.”
“And what became of this shadow?”
“It was gone in a minute; disappeared at the turn of the wall.”
She had the grace to droop her head, as if she realized what she was doing and took but little pleasure in it. My estimation of her rose on the instant; for she did not like me, was jealous of every kindness my uncle had shown me, and yet felt compunction over what she was thus forced into saying.
“If she knew! Ah, if she knew!” passed in tumult through my brain; and I bore the stare of an hundred eyes as I could not have borne the stare of one if that one had been Orpha’s. Thank God, her veil was so thick.
Further questions brought out little more concerning this incident. She had not followed the shadow, she had not looked at the clock, she had not even gone around the bed to see what had occasioned the peculiar noise she had heard. She had not thought it of sufficient importance. Indeed, she had not attached any importance to the incident at the time, since her patient had not been wakened and late visits were not uncommon in that sick-room where the interest of everybody in the house centered, night as well as day.
But, when Mr. Bartholomew at last grew restless and she went for the medicine she had prepared, she saw with some astonishment that it was not in the exact place on the shelf where she had placed it,—or, at least, in the exact place where she felt sure that she had placed it. But even this did not alarm her or arouse her suspicion. How could it when everybody in the house was devoted to its master—or at all events gave every evidence of being so. Besides, she might have been mistaken as to where she had set down the glass. Her memory was not what it was,—and so on and so on till the Coroner stopped her with the query:
“And what did you do? Did you give him the dose his condition seemed to call for?”
“I did; and my heart is broken at the thought.” She showed it. Tears were welling from her eyes and her whole body shook with the sob she strove to suppress. “I can never forgive myself that I did not suspect—mix a fresh draught—do anything but put that spoon filled with doubtful liquor between his lips. But how could I imagine that any one would tamper with the medicines in that cabinet. That any one would—”
Here she was stopped again, peremptorily this time, and her testimony switched to the moment when she saw the first signs of anything in Mr. Bartholomew’s condition approaching collapse and how long it was after she gave him the medicine.
“Some little time. I was not watching the clock. Perhaps I slept again—I shall never know, but if I did, it was the sound of a sudden gasp from behind the curtains which started me to my feet. It was like a knife going through me, for I had a long experience with the sick before I came to C—— and knew that it foretold the end.
“I was still surer of this when I bent over to look at him. He was awake, but I shall never forgot his eye. ‘Wealthy,’ he whispered, exerting himself to speak plainly, ‘call the children—call all of them—bid them come without delay—all is over with me—I shall not live out the coming day. But first, the bowl—the one in the bathroom—bring it here—put it on the stand—and two candles—lighted—don’t look; act!’ It was the master ordering a slave. There was nothing to do but to obey. I went to the bathroom, found the bowl he wanted, brought it, brought the candles, lighted them, turned on the electricity, for the candles were mere specks in that great room and then started for the door. But he called me back. ‘I want the two envelopes,’ he cried. ‘Open the drawer and get them. Now put them in my hands, one in my right, the other in my left, and hasten, for I fear to—to lose my speech.’
“I rushed—I was terrified to leave him alone even for an instant but to cross him in his least wish might mean his death, so I fled like a wild woman through the halls, first to Mr. Edgar’s room, then downstairs to Miss Orpha and later—not till after I had seen these two on their way to Mr. Bartholomew’s room, to the rear hall and Mr. Quenton’s door.”
“What did you do there?”
“I both knocked and called.”
“What did you say?”
“That his uncle was worse, and for him to come immediately. That Mr. Bartholomew found difficulty in speaking and wanted to see them all before his power to do so failed.”
“Did he answer?”
“Instantly; opening the door and coming out. He was in Mr. Bartholomew’s room almost as soon as the others.”
“How could that be? Did he not stop to dress?”
“He was already dressed, just as he rose from dinner.”
What followed has already been told; I will not enlarge upon it. The burning of the one will in the presence of Orpha, Edgar and myself, with Wealthy Starr standing in the background. Uncle’s sudden death before he could tell us where the will containing his last wishes could be found, and the shock we had all received at the astonishment shown by the doctor at his patient having succumbed so suddenly when he had fully expected him to live another fortnight.
The excitement which had been worked up to fever-point gradually subsided after this and, the hour being late, the inquiry was adjourned, to be continued the next day.