“Why, yes, it was; I believe Monsieur Dupuis did think so—I am sure Monsieur Podevin did. But it was impossible it could have been the case, you see, because Lavinia touched nothing either of the days that we did not also partake of.”
“There ought to have been an examination after death. You objected to that, I fancy,” continued Featherston, who had talked a little with Madame Carimon.
“True—I did; and I have been sorry for it since,” sighed Ann Fennel. “It was through what my husband said to me that I objected. Edwin thought it would be distasteful to me. He did not like the idea of it either. Being dead, he held that she should be left in reverence.”
Featherston coughed. She was evidently innocent as any lamb of suspicion against him.
“And now,” went on Mr. Featherston, “just tell me what you mean by saying you see your sister about the house.”
“We do see her,” said Nancy.
“Nonsense! You don’t. It is all fancy. When the nerves are unstrung, as yours are, they play us all sorts of tricks. Why, I knew a man once who took up a notion that he walked upon his head, and he came to me to be cured!”
“But it is seeing Lavinia’s apparition, and the constant fear of seeing it which lies upon me, that has brought on this nervousness,” pleaded Nancy. “It is to my husband, when he is here, that she chiefly appears; nothing but that is keeping him away. I have seen her only three or four times.”
She spoke quietly and simply, evidently grounded in the belief. Mr. Featherston wondered how he was to deal with this: and perhaps he was not himself so much of a sceptic in the supernatural as he thought fit to pretend. Nancy continued:
“It was to my husband she appeared first. Exactly a week after her death. No; a week after the evening she was first taken ill. He was coming upstairs to bed—I had gone on—when he suddenly fancied that some one was following him, though only he and I were in the house. Turning quickly round, he saw Lavinia. That was the first time; and I assure you I thought he would have died of it. Never before had I witnessed such mortal terror in man.”