“I did,” said the woman, “if you’re the coroner. Joe File—he’s my husband—he’s gone out to see about the funeral. I wish it was his, I do.”
“What do you suspect?” said I.
“I’ll tell you,” she returned in a whisper. “I think he was made away with. I think there was foul play. I think he was poisoned. That’s what I think.”
“I hope you may be mistaken,” said I. “Suppose you let me see the body.”
“You shall see it,” she replied; and following her, I went up-stairs to a front chamber, where I found the corpse.
“Get it over soon,” said the woman, with strange firmness. “If there ain’t no murder been done I shall have to run for it; if there was”—and her face set hard—“I guess I’ll stay.” With this she closed the door and left me with the dead.
If I had known what was before me I never could have gone into the thing at all. It looked a little better when I had opened a window and let in plenty of light; for although I was, on the whole, far less afraid of dead than living men, I had an absurd feeling that I was doing this dead man a distinct wrong—as if it mattered to the dead, after all! When the affair was over, I thought more of the possible consequences than of its relation to the dead man himself; but do as I would at the time, I was in a ridiculous funk, and especially when going through the forms of a post-mortem examination.
I am free to confess now that I was careful not to uncover the man’s face, and that when it was over I backed to the door and hastily escaped from the room. On the stairs opposite to me Mrs. File was seated, with her bonnet on and a bundle in her hand.
“Well,” said she, rising as she spoke, and with a certain eagerness in her tone, “what killed him? Was it poison?”
“Poison, my good woman!” said I. “When a man has typhoid fever he don’t need poison to kill him. He had a relapse, that’s all.”