‘Really dead, sir! Why, I closed her eyes, and put her in the coffin with my own hands! If she ain’t dead, I don’t know who is! But if you doubt my word, you’d better ask the doctor that gave the certificate for her.’
‘What is the doctor’s name?’
‘Dodson; he lives opposite.’
‘You must forgive my strange questions, Mrs Thompson, but I have had a terrible dream about my poor friend, and I think I should like to talk to the doctor about her.’
‘Oh, very good, sir,’ cried the landlady, much offended. ‘I’m not afraid of what the doctor will tell you. She had excellent nursing and everything as she could desire, and there’s nothing on my conscience on that score, so I’ll wish you good morning.’ And with that Mrs Thompson slammed the door in Mr Braggett’s face.
He found Dr Dodson at home.
‘If I understand you rightly,’ said the practitioner, looking rather steadfastly in the scared face of his visitor, ‘you wish, as a friend of the late Miss Cray’s, to see a copy of the certificate of her death? Very good, sir; here it is. She died, as you will perceive, on the twenty-fifth of November, of peritonitis. She had, I can assure you, every attention and care, but nothing could have saved her.’
‘You are quite sure, then, she is dead?’ demanded Mr Braggett, in a vague manner.
The doctor looked at him as if he were not quite sure if he were sane.
‘If seeing a patient die, and her corpse coffined and buried, is being sure she is dead, I am in no doubt whatever about Miss Cray.’