“Mad, undeniably mad. She took me for a policeman, and raved about a murder for which she wanted to give herself up to justice.”
“A fixed delusion, you see,” said Mainwaring, with a gentle sigh. “Do you know how long she has had this idea, Cheriton?”
“Indeed, I do not. Her position on my estate was a peculiar one. She lived at one of the lodges, but her status was not that of an ordinary dependent. She was her own mistress, and lived a very solitary life—after her daughter left her. I have sent for the daughter, who will be here presently, I hope. My first notice of anything amiss was a hint dropped by a young medical man who was visiting at Cheriton. He saw Mrs. Porter, and formed the opinion that she either had been off her head in the past, or was likely to go off her head in the future. That startled me, and I had it in my mind to ask you to come down to see her, Mainwaring, when there came the sudden departure of this morning—a departure which was so at variance with her former habits that it made me anxious for her safety. I followed her to London—first to her daughter’s lodging—and then here—where by mere guesswork, I found her.”
“Do you think that it may be the sad event of last year—the murder of your son-in-law—which has put this notion into her head?”
“It is not unlikely. That dreadful event made a profound impression upon everybody at Cheriton. She, being a reserved and thoughtful woman, may have brooded over it.”
“Until she grew to associate herself with the crime,” said Wilmot. “Nothing more likely. Was the murderer never found, by the way?”
“Never.”
“But there can be no suspicion against this lady, I conclude. She can have been in no way concerned in the crime?”
“I think you have only to look at her in order to be satisfied upon that point,” said Lord Cheriton; and the two physicians agreed that the poor lady in question was not of the criminal type, and that nothing was more common in the history of mental aberration than the hallucination to which she was a victim.
“Those monotonous lives of annuitants and genteel dependents—exempt from labour, and to the outward eye full of placid contentment, do not infrequently tend towards madness,” said Dr. Wilmot. “I have seen more than one such case as this. There are some minds that have no need of action or variety, some natures which can vegetate in a harmless nullity. There are other tempers which prey upon themselves in solitude, and brood upon fancies till they lose touch of realities. This lady is of the latter type, highly organized, sensitive to a marked degree, of the genus-irritabile.”