The Peixada murder had been a sensational and peculiarly revolting affair. One July night, 1879, Mr. Bernard Peixada, “a retired Jewish merchant,” had died at the hands of his wife. Edward Bolen, coachman, in the attempt to protect his employer, had sustained a death-wound for himself. Mrs. Peixada, “the perpetrator of these atrocities,” as Arthur gathered from the records now beneath his eye, “was a young and handsome woman, of a respectable Hebrew family, who must have been actuated by a depraved desire to possess herself of her husband’s wealth.” They had “surprised her all but red-handed in the commission of the crime,” though “too late to avert its dire results.” Eventually she was tried in the Court of General Sessions, and acquitted on the plea of insanity. Arthur remembered—as, perhaps, the reader does—that her acquittal had been the subject of much popular indignation. “She is no more insane than you or I,” every body had said; “she is simply lacking in the moral sense. Another evidence that you can’t get a jury to be impartial when a pretty woman is concerned.”
“She was bad,” continued Peixada, as Arthur returned the papers, “bad through and through. I warned my brother against her before his marriage.
“‘What,’ said I, ’what do you suppose she would marry an old man like you for, except your money?’ He said, ’Never mind.’ She was young and showy, and Bernard lost his head.”
“She was doocedly handsome, a sooperb creature to look at, you know,” cried Mr. Rimo, with the accent of a connoisseur.
“Hainsome is as hainsome does,” quoth Mr. Mendel, sententiously.
“She was as cold as ice, as hard as alabaster,” said Peixada, perhaps meaning adamant. “The point is that after her release from prison she took out letters of administration upon my brother’s estate.”
“Why, I thought she was insane,” said Arthur. “A mad woman would not be a competent administratrix.”
“Exactly. I interposed objections on that ground. But she answered that she had recovered; that although insane a few months before—at the time of the murder—she was all right again now. The surrogate decided in her favor. A convenient form of insanity, eh?”
“Were there children?” Arthur inquired.
“No—none. My nephew, Mr. Rimo, son of my sister who is dead, and I myself, were the only next of kin. She paid us our shares right away.” Then what could he be driving at now? Arthur waited for enlightenment.