Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852

by Various

One only possible expedient remained—that of once more endeavoring to soften the obduracy of Mr. Bradshaw. This it was finally determined to attempt, and Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale set off by a London morning coach upon the well-nigh hopeless speculation. They alighted at the "Hunter's Inn," where Drysdale remained, while his wife proceeded alone to Rodney Place. Thomas Burnham was friendly and good-natured as ever. The old mariner, he told Drysdale, was visibly failing, and his chief amusement seemed to be scraping together and hoarding up money. James Berry, a broken-down tailor, and a chap, according to Burnham, who knew how many beans made five as well as any man in Devonshire, had been for some time valet, gardener, and general factotum at Rodney Place, and appeared to exercise great influence over Mr. Bradshaw. The only other person in the establishment was the old cook, Margery Deans, who, never otherwise, since he had known her, than desperately hard of hearing, was now become deaf as a stone. Drysdale, it was afterward remembered, listened to all this with eager attention, and was especially inquisitive and talkative respecting Mr. Bradshaw's hoarding propensities, and the solitary, unprotected state in which he lived.

Mrs. Drysdale was long gone; but the tremulous hopes which her protracted stay called feebly forth, vanished at the sight of her pale, tearful, yet resolved aspect. "It is useless, Edward," she murmured, with her arms cast lovingly about her husband's neck, and looking in his face with far more lavish expression of affection than when, with orange blossoms in her hair, she stood a newly-consecrated wife beside him. "It is useless to expect relief from my uncle, save upon the heartless, impossible condition you know of. But let us home. God's heaven is still above our heads, though clouds and darkness rest between. We will trust in Him, Edward, and fear not!"

So brave a woman should have been matched with a stout-hearted man; but this, unhappily, was not the case. Edward Drysdale was utterly despondent, and he listened, as his wife was afterward fain to admit to myself and others, with impatient reluctance to all she said as they journeyed homeward, save when the condition of help spoken of, namely, that she should abandon her husband, and take up her abode with her children at Rodney Place, was discussed—by her indignantly. Once also, when she mentioned that the old will in her favor was not yet destroyed, but would be, her uncle threatened, if she did not soon return, a bright, almost fiery expression seemed to leap from his usually mild, reflective eyes, and partially dissipate the thick gloom which mantled his features.

This occurred on a winter's day in early March, and the evening up to seven o'clock had passed gloomily away with the Drysdales, when all at once the husband, starting from a profound reverie, said he would take a walk as far as Exeter, see the attorney in the suit against him, and, if possible, gain a little time for the arrangement of the debt. His wife acquiesced, though with small hope of any favorable result, and the strangely-abstracted man left the house.

Ten o'clock, the hour by which Edward Drysdale had promised to return, chimed from a dial on the mantle-piece. Mrs. Drysdale trimmed the fire, lit the candles, which, for economy's sake, she had extinguished, and had their frugal supper laid. He came not. Eleven o'clock! What could be detaining him so late? Twelve!—half-past twelve! Rachel Drysdale was just about to bid the servant-maid, who was sitting up in the kitchen, go to bed, when the sound of carriage-wheels going toward Exeter stopped at the door. It was a return post-chaise, and brought Edward Drysdale. He staggered, as if intoxicated, into the kitchen, reached down a half-bottle of brandy from a cupboard, and took it to the post-boy, who immediately drove off. Anne Moody, the servant-girl, was greatly startled by her master's appearance: he looked, she afterward stated, more the color of a whited wall, than of flesh and blood, and shook and "cowered," as if he had the ague. Mrs. Drysdale came into the kitchen, and stood gazing at her husband in a white, dumb kind of way (I am transcribing literally from the girl's statement), till the outer door was fastened, when they both went up-stairs into a front sitting-room. Curiosity induced Anne Moody to follow, and she heard, just as the door closed upon them, Mrs. Moody say, "You have not been to Exeter, I am sure?" This was said in a nervous, shaking, voice, and her master replied in the same tone, "No; I changed my mind," or words to that effect. Then there was a quick whispering for a minute or two, interrupted by a half-stifled cry or scream from Mrs. Drysdale. A sort of hubbub of words followed, which the girl—a very intelligent person of her class, by-the-by—could not hear, or at least not make out, till Mr. Drysdale said in a louder, slower way, "You, Rachel—the children are provided for; but, O God! at what a dreadful price!" Anne Moody, fearful of detection, did not wait to hear more, but crept stealthily up-stairs to bed, as her mistress had ordered her to do when she left the kitchen. On the following morning the girl found her master and mistress both up, the kitchen and parlor fires lit, and breakfast nearly over. Mr. Drysdale said he was in a hurry to get to Exeter, and they had not thought it worth while to call her at unseasonable hours. Both husband and wife looked wild and haggard, and this, Moody, when she looked into their bed-chamber, was not at all surprised at, as it was clear that neither of them had retired to rest. One thing and the other, especially kissing and fondling the children over and over again, detained Mr. Drysdale till half-past eight o'clock, and then, just as he was leaving the house, three men confronted him! A constable of the name of Parsons, James Berry, Mr. Bradshaw's servant, and Burnham, the landlord of the Hunter's Inn. They came to arrest him on a charge of burglary and murder! Mr. Bradshaw had been found early in the morning cruelly stabbed to death beside his plundered strong-box!

I must pass lightly over the harrowing scenes which followed—the tumultuous agony of the wife, and the despairing asseverations of the husband, impossible to be implicitly believed in even by that wife, for the criminating evidence was overwhelming. Drysdale had been seen skulking about Rodney Place till very late by both Burnham and Berry. In the room through which he must have passed in going and returning from the scene of his frightful crime, his hat had been found, and it was now discovered that he, Drysdale, had taken away and worn home one of Berry's—no doubt from hurry and inadvertence. In addition to all this, a considerable sum of money in gold and silver, inclosed in a canvas-bag, well known to have belonged to the deceased, was found upon his person! It appeared probable that the aim of the assassin had been only robbery in the first instance, for the corpse of the unfortunate victim was found clothed only in a night-dress. The fair inference, therefore, seemed to be that the robber, disturbed at his plunder by the wakeful old seaman, had been compelled, perhaps reluctantly, to add the dreadful crime of murder to that which he had originally contemplated. The outcry through the county was terrific, and as Edward Drysdale, by the advice of Mr. Sims, the attorney, who subsequently instructed Mr. Prince, reserved his defense, there appeared to be nothing of a feather's weight to oppose against the tremendous mass of circumstance arrayed against the prisoner.

And when, upon the arrival of the King's Commission at Exeter, Mr. Prince received a very full and carefully-drawn brief in defense—a specious, but almost wholly unsupported story of the prisoner's appeared all that could be relied upon in rebuttal of the evidence for the crown. According to Edward Drysdale, he merely sought Mr. Bradshaw upon the evening in question for the purpose of concluding with that gentleman an arrangement for the separation of himself from his wife and children, and their domiciliation at Rodney Place. It was further averred that he was received with greater civility than he expected; that the interview was a long one, during which he, Drysdale, had seen nobody but Mr. Bradshaw, although he believed the aged and deaf cook was in the kitchen. That he had arranged that Mrs. Drysdale and his children should be early on the morrow with her uncle, and that he had received the money found on his person and at his house from the deceased's own hands, in order to pay the debt and costs in the suit wherein execution was about to be levied on his furniture, and that the residue was to be applied to his, the prisoner's, own use. That the expressions deposed to by Anne Moody, and his own and Mrs. Drysdale's emotion after his return home, which had told so heavily against him in the examinations before the magistrates, were perfectly reconcilable with this statement—as, indeed, they were—and did not, therefore, bear the frightful meaning that had been attached to them. With respect to the change of hats, that might easily have happened, because his hat had been left on entering in the hall-passage, and in his hurry, in coming out by the same way, he had no doubt mistaken Berry's for his own; but he solemnly denied having been in the room, or near the part of the house where his hat was alleged to have been found. This was the gist of the explanation; but, unfortunately, it was not sustained by any receivable testimony in any material particular. True, Mrs. Drysdale, whom every body fully believed, declared that this account exactly coincided with what her husband told her immediately on arriving home in the post-chaise—but what of that? It was not what story the prisoner had told, nor how many times he had told it, that could avail, especially against the heavy improbabilities that weighed upon his, at first view, plausible statement. How was it that, knowing Mr. Bradshaw's almost insane dislike of himself, he did not counsel his wife to make terms with her uncle, preparatory to her returning to Rodney Place? And was it at all likely that Mr. Bradshaw, whose implacable humor Mrs. Drysdale had experienced on the very day previous to the murder, should have so suddenly softened toward the man he so thoroughly hated and despised? I trow not; and the first consultation on the case wore a wretchedly-dismal aspect, till the hawk-eye of Mr. Prince lit upon an assertion of Thomas Burnham's, that he had gone to Mr. Bradshaw's house upon some particular business at a quarter past twelve on the night of the murder, and had seen the deceased alive at that time, who had answered him, as he frequently did, from his bedroom window. "Rodney Place," said Mr. Prince, "is nine miles from Drysdale's residence. I understood you to say, Mr. Sims, that Mrs. Drysdale declares her husband was at home at twenty minutes to one?"

"Certainly she does; but the wife's evidence, you are aware, can not avail her husband."

"True; but the servant girl! The driver of the post-chaise! This is a vital point, and must be cleared up without delay."

I and Williams, Sims' clerk, set off instantly to see Mrs. Drysdale, who had not left her room since her husband's apprehension. She was confident it was barely so late as twenty minutes to one when the post-chaise drove up to the door. Her evidence was, however, legally inadmissible, and our hopes rested on Anne Moody, who was immediately called in. Her answer was exasperating. She had been asleep in the kitchen, and could not positively say whether it was twelve, one, or two o'clock when her master reached home. There was still a chance left—that of the post-chaise driver. He did not, we found, reach Exeter, a distance of three miles only from Mr. Drysdale's, till a quarter to three o'clock, and was then much the worse of liquor. So much for our chance of proving an alibi!