“I have one piece of evidence more to produce, my lord. It is a letter written by Mr. Bartley Bradstone. It is addressed to Mrs. Olivia Bradstone, and is a distinct and clear confession that he was the murderer of Bella Lee.”
“Read it,” said the judge.
Mr. Sewell read it slowly and solemnly, then handed it to the judge, who passed it to the jury.
Mr. Sewell then motioned the policeman to the box.
“How did you obtain this letter?” he said.
“One piece of it from the hand of Mr. Bartley Bradstone,” he replied, evidently with suppressed emotion; “the other was on the table just beside him, sir, and near the burnt-out candle.”
Intense silence.
“Then Mr. Bartley Bradstone—where is he?” asked the judge.
“At his own house, The Maples, sir. When I went with the warrant Mr. McAndrew had brought this morning from London, I met this young woman—Miss Bessie. She’d got a letter from her mistress to give to Mr. Bradstone, or to leave at the house if he was away. And she and me went into the hall together. The servants said Mr. Bradstone was out—had gone to London some days since. Then I told them that I’d information that he’d been back. They all said they hadn’t seen him. But they owned that he might be in the library, which they weren’t allowed to enter lately. I went to the door and found it locked, my lord, and me and the butler forced it. The room was quite dark, with the blinds down; but when we’d pulled ’em up, we found Mr. Bartley Bradstone lying face downward across the table with the half of the letter clutched in his hands. He was quite dead and stiff. There wasn’t no mark nor speck upon him, and the doctor as we fetched says that he died all in a minute of heart disease.”
They let him go on with his tragic story uninterruptedly, and, when he had finished, the judge said, solemnly, amid profound silence: