It was his other medical friend, Dr. Wilmot, stout and jovial, more adapted to assist at a wedding than a funeral, more fitted to prescribe for wine-bibbing aldermen or dowagers who needed to be “kept up” on Rœderer or Mumm, than to stand beside the bed of agony, or listening to the ravings of a mind distraught. Mainwaring came out of the dining-room at the sound of voices in the hall.
“Ah, how do you do, Wilmot? You will have very little trouble in making up your mind about this poor soul. Go in and talk to her while I take a turn in the garden with his Lordship.”
He opened the dining-room door, and Dr. Wilmot passed in, smiling, agreeable, and beginning at once in an oily voice, “My dear lady, my friend Mainwaring suggests that I should have a little chat with you while—while Lord Cheriton and he are admiring the garden. A very nice garden, upon my word, for the immediate vicinity of London. One hardly expects such a nice bit of ground nowadays. May I feel your pulse? Thanks, a little too rapid for perfect health.”
“What do you and that other man mean by all this pretence?” she exclaimed, indignantly. “I am not ill. Are you a doctor, or a policeman in disguise? If you want to take me to prison I am ready to go with you. I came to London on purpose to give myself up. You need not beat about the bush. I am ready.”
“Mad, very mad,” thought Dr. Wilmot, detaining the unwilling wrist, and noting its tumultuous pulsations by the second hand of his professional watch.
Lord Cheriton and Dr. Mainwaring were pacing slowly up and down the moss-grown gravel while this was happening.
“How did you find her?”
“Curiously calm and collected for the first part of the interview. Had it not been for her troubled eye, and the nervous movements of her hands, I should have supposed her as sane as you or I. I talked to her of indifferent subjects, and her answers were consecutive and reasonable, although it was evident she resented my presence. It was only when I asked her why she had come to London that she became agitated and incoherent, and began to talk about having committed a murder, and wishing to give herself up and make a full confession of her guilt. Instead of waiting for the law to find her out she was going to find the law. She had no fear of the result. She had long been tired of her life, and she was not afraid of the disgrace of a felon’s death. Her whole manner, as she said this, showed a deep-rooted delusion, and I am of opinion that her mind has been unhinged for a long time. That notion of an imaginary crime is often a fixed idea in lunacy. A madman will conceive a murder that never took place, or he will connect himself with some actual murder, and insist upon his guilt, often with an extraordinary appearance of truth and reality, until he is shaken by severe cross-examination.”
“You will receive her in your house at once?”
“I have no objection, if Wilmot’s opinion coincides with mine; but another medical man must sign the certificate if she is to enter my house. I have no doubt as to her being in a condition to require restraint. She is not violent at present, but if she is not taken care of she will go wandering about in search of a police-magistrate, and with increasing excitement there will be every likelihood of acute mania. Ah, here comes Wilmot. Well, what do you think of the case, Wilmot?”