“Did Mr. Craighead and Ross Craighead know that your stepfather was in prison?” asked Mr. Bailey.
“When Ross Craighead first asked me to dinner at their home,” answered Tessie, “I knew that he was showing me serious attention. After dinner, I told Mr. Craighead that I had only come so that I could talk to him more freely than was possible in the office; I told him that my stepfather was a drug addict and in prison for having drugs; that he was an educated man, but of no account, and that he always had plenty of money, although we never knew him to work. Still he never was mean to us and I saw little of him after my mother died. Recently I had not seen him. The last time he saw me he told me he was not as ‘flush’ as he had been. All this I told Mr. Craighead, thanking him for his kindness. Then I intended to leave. But he and Ross refused to let me go at all. They said it was bad enough to have the father’s sins visited on the heads of their children, without taking in the stepchildren, too.”
Prompted by the Inspector, Mr. Bailey continued his questions.
“Why,” he asked, “did you go to see Bill Hovey the day before Mr. Craighead died?”
“I should not have gone at all,” replied Tessie, “if Mr. Craighead had not requested it. He sent me out a couple of times to a druggist with an old prescription for narcotics—morphine—and the druggist refused to fill it. He knew Dr. Lawson had forbidden it and was afraid. Then the pain got so bad that Mr. Craighead tossed about moaning all the time. His tossing only made the pain worse, so he called me early in the morning.
“‘Tessie,’ he said, ‘do you mind going to that no account stepfather of yours? Ask him if he can tell you where to get some morphine. Those fellows always know where it is to be had. Just say that you want to do me a good turn—that I am in great pain.’
“I asked Ross what to do. He said, ‘I don’t like it at all, but he never uses it unless he is suffering, so I guess it will be all right to humor him. He is always brooding over the loss of his foot, so a few hours of freedom from pain may do him good. He was like this when he sprained his ankle in a tennis game, two years ago. I thought he would go mad. He just drugged himself all the time to deaden the pain. The doctor said he took enough to kill a horse. I often feared he might get the habit, but he never did.’
“So, I went to see Bill Hovey at the prison. He seemed glad to see me and told me what an injustice had been done him. He said he felt sure he could get out if he had money enough to pay the lawyers. After he got out he intended to go off somewhere and start right again. I told him I was glad to hear it and then he said:
“‘Tessie, I could fix everything up if I had $10,000. You could get it, too, to help your father out of trouble.’