"I did," said the woman, "if you 're the coroner. Joe, 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 a strange firmness. "If there ain't no murder been done, I shall have to run for it. If there is," 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 should 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 tremor, and especially when, in going through the forms of a post-mortem dissection, I had to make the first cut through the skin. Of course, I made no examination of the internal organs. I wanted to know as little as possible about them, and to get done as soon as I could. Unluckily, however, the walls of the stomach had softened and given way, so that I could not help seeing, among the escaped contents of the stomach, numerous grains of a white powder, which I hastened to conceal from my sight by rapidly sewing up the incisions which I had made.
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 small bundle in her hand.
"Well," said she, rising as she spoke, and with a certain eagerness in her tones, "what killed him? Was it arsenic?"
"Arsenic, my good woman!" said I; "when a man has typhoid fever, he don't need poison to kill him."