The inquiry into the circumstances under which Mrs. Farnaby had died was
held in the forenoon of the next day.
Mr. Melton surprised Amelius by calling for him, and taking him to the
inquest. The carriage stopped on the way, and a gentleman joined them,
who was introduced as Mr. Melton’s legal adviser. He spoke to Amelius
about the inquest; stating, as his excuse for asking certain discreet
questions, that his object was to suppress any painful disclosures. On
reaching the house, Mr. Melton and his lawyer said a few words to the
coroner downstairs, while the jury were assembling on the floor above.
The first witness examined was the landlady.
After deposing to the date at which the late Mrs. Farnaby had hired
her lodgings, and verifying the statements which had appeared in
the newspapers, she was questioned about the life and habits of the
deceased. She described her late lodger as a respectable lady, punctual
in her payments, and quiet and orderly in her way of life: she received
letters, but saw no friends. On several occasions, an old woman was
admitted to speak with her; and these visits seemed to be anything but
agreeable to the deceased. Asked if she knew anything of the old woman,
or of what had passed at the interviews described, the witness answered
both questions in the negative. When the woman called, she always told
the servant to announce her as “the nurse.”
Mr. Melton was next examined, to prove the identity of the deceased.
He declared that he was quite unable to explain why she had left her
husband’s house under an assumed name. Asked if Mr. and Mrs. Farnaby had
lived together on affectionate terms, he acknowledged that he had
heard, at various times, of a want of harmony between them, but was not
acquainted with the cause. Mr. Farnaby’s high character and position in
the commercial world spoke for themselves: the restraints of a gentleman
guided him in his relations with his wife. The medical certificate of
his illness in Paris was then put in; and Mr. Melton’s examination came
to an end.
The chemist who had made up the prescription was the third witness. He
knew the woman who brought it to his shop to be in the service of the
first witness examined; an old customer of his, and a highly respected
resident in the neighbourhood. He made up all prescriptions himself in
which poisons were conspicuous ingredients; and he had affixed to the
bottle a slip of paper, bearing the word “Poison,” printed in large
letters. The bottle was produced and identified; and the directions in
the prescription were shown to have been accurately copied on the label.
A general sensation of interest was excited by the appearance of the
next witness--the woman servant. It was anticipated that her evidence
would explain how the fatal mistake about the medicine had occurred.
After replying to the formal inquiries, she proceeded as follows:
“When I answered the bell, at the time I have mentioned, I found the
deceased standing at the fireplace. There was a bottle of medicine on
the table, by her writing desk. It was a much larger bottle than that
which the last witness identified, and it was more than three parts full
of some colourless medicine. The deceased gave me a prescription to take
to the chemist’s, with instructions to wait, and bring back the physic.
She said, ‘I don’t feel at all well this morning; I thought of trying
some of this medicine,’ pointing to the bottle by her desk; ‘but I
am not sure it is the right thing for me. I think I want a tonic. The
prescription I have given you is a tonic.’ I went out at once to our
chemist and got it. I found her writing a letter when I came back, but
she finished it immediately, and pushed it away from her. When I put the
bottle I had brought from the chemist on the table, she looked at the
other larger bottle which she had by her; and she said, ‘You will
think me very undecided; I have been doubting, since I sent you to the
chemist, whether I had not better begin with this medicine here, before
I try the tonic. It’s a medicine for the stomach; and I fancy it’s only
indigestion that’s the matter with me, after all.’ I said, ‘You eat but
a poor breakfast, ma’am, this morning. It isn’t for me to advise; but,
as you seem to be in doubt about yourself, wouldn’t it be better to send
for a doctor?’ She shook her head, and said she didn’t want to have
a doctor if she could possibly help it. ‘I’ll try the medicine for
indigestion first,’ she says; ‘and if it doesn’t relieve me, we will see
what is to be done, later in the day.’ While we were talking, the tonic
was left in its sealed paper cover, just as I had brought it from the
shop. She took up the bottle containing the stomach medicine, and read
the directions on it: ‘Two tablespoonsful by measure-glass twice a day.’
I asked if she had a measure-glass; and she said, Yes, and sent me to
her bedroom to look for it. I couldn’t find it. While I was looking, I
heard her cry out, and ran back to the drawing-room to see what was the
matter. ‘Oh!’ she says, ‘how clumsy I am! I’ve broken the bottle.’ She
held up the bottle of the stomach medicine and showed it to me, broken
just below the neck. ‘Go back to the bedroom,’ she says, ‘and see if you
can find an empty bottle; I don’t want to waste the medicine if I can
help it.’ There was only one empty bottle in the bedroom, a bottle on
the chimney-piece. I took it to her immediately. She gave me the broken
bottle; and while I poured the medicine into the bottle which I had
found in the bedroom, she opened the paper which covered the tonic I
had brought from the chemist. When I had done, and the two bottles were
together on the table--the bottle that I had filled, and the bottle that
I had brought front the chemist--I noticed that they were both of the
same size, and that both had a label pasted on them, marked ‘Poison.’ I
said to her, ‘You must take care, ma’am, you don’t make any mistake,
the two bottles are so exactly alike.’ ‘I can easily prevent that,’ she
says, and dipped her pen in the ink, and copied the directions on the
broken bottle, on to the label of the bottle that I had just filled.
‘There!’ she said. ‘Now I hope your mind’s at ease?’ She spoke
cheerfully, as if she was joking with me. And then she said, ‘But
where’s the measure-glass?’ I went back to the bedroom to look for it,
and couldn’t find it again. She changed all at once, upon that--she
became quite angry; and walked up and down in a fume, abusing me for my
stupidity. It was very unlike her. On all other occasions she was a
most considerate lady. I made allowances for her. She had been very much
upset earlier in the morning, when she had received a letter, which she
told me herself contained bad news. Yes; another person was present at
the time--the same woman that my mistress told you of. The woman looked
at the address on the letter, and seemed to know who it was from. I told
her a squint-eyed man had brought it to the house--and then she left
directly. I don’t know where she went, or the address at which she
lives, or who the messenger was who brought the letter. As I have said,
I made allowances for the deceased lady. I went downstairs, without
answering, and got a tumbler and a tablespoon to serve instead of the
measure-glass. When I came back with the things, she was still walking
about in a temper. She took no notice of me. I left the room again
quietly, seeing she was not in a state to be spoken to. I saw nothing
more of her, until we were alarmed by hearing her scream. We found
the poor lady on the floor in a kind of fit. I ran out and fetched the
nearest doctor. This is the whole truth, on my oath; and this is all I
know about it.”
The landlady was recalled at the request of the jury, and questioned
again about the old woman. She could give no information. Being asked
next if any letters or papers belonging to, or written by, the deceased
lady had been found, she declared that, after the strictest search,
nothing had been discovered but two medical prescriptions. The writing
desk was empty.
The doctor was the next witness.
He described the state in which he found the patient, on being called
to the house. The symptoms were those of poisoning by strychnine.
Examination of the prescriptions and the bottles, aided by the servant’s
information, convinced him that a fatal mistake had been made by the
deceased; the nature of which he explained to the jury as he had already
explained it to Amelius. Having mentioned the meeting with Amelius
at the house-door, and the events which had followed, he closed his
evidence by stating the result of the postmortem examination, proving
that the death was caused by the poison called strychnine.
The landlady and the servant were examined again. They were instructed
to inform the jury exactly of the time that had elapsed, from the moment
when the servant had left the deceased alone in the drawing-room, to
the time when the screams were first heard. Having both given the
same evidence, on this point, they were next asked whether any person,
besides the old woman, had visited the deceased lady--or had on any
pretence obtained access to her in the interval. Both swore positively
that there had not even been a knock at the house-door in the interval,
and that the area-gate was locked, and the key in the possession of the
landlady. This evidence placed it beyond the possibility of doubt that
the deceased had herself taken the poison. The question whether she had
taken it by accident was the only question left to decide, when Amelius
was called as the next witness.
The lawyer retained by Mr. Melton, to watch the case on behalf of Mr.
Farnaby, had hitherto not interfered. It was observed that he paid the
closest attention to the inquiry, at the stage which it had now reached.
Amelius was nervous at the outset. The early training in America, which
had hardened him to face an audience and speak with self-possession
on social and political subjects had not prepared him for the very
difficult ordeal of a first appearance as a witness. Having answered
the customary inquiries, he was so painfully agitated in describing Mrs.
Farnaby’s sufferings, that the coroner suspended the examination for a
few minutes, to give him time to control himself. He failed, however, to
recover his composure, until the narrative part of his evidence had come
to an end. When the critical questions, bearing on his relations with
Mrs. Farnaby, began, the audience noticed that he lifted his head,
and looked and spoke, for the first time, like a man with a settled
resolution in him, sure of himself.
The questions proceeded:
Was he in Mrs. Farnaby’s confidence, on the subject of her domestic
differences with her husband? Did those differences lead to her
withdrawing herself from her husband’s roof? Did Mrs. Farnaby inform
him of the place of her retreat? To these three questions the witness,
speaking quite readily in each case, answered Yes. Asked next, what the
nature of the ‘domestic differences’ had been; whether they were likely
to affect Mrs. Farnaby’s mind seriously; why she had passed under an
assumed name, and why she had confided the troubles of her married life
to a young man like himself, only introduced to her a few months since,
the witness simply declined to reply to the inquiries addressed to him.
“The confidence Mrs. Farnaby placed in me,” he said to the coroner, “was
a confidence which I gave her my word of honour to respect. When I have
said that, I hope the jury will understand that I owe it to the memory
of the dead to say no more.”
There was a murmur of approval among the audience, instantly checked by
the coroner. The foreman of the jury rose, and remarked that scruples
of honour were out of place at a serious inquiry of that sort. Hearing
this, the lawyer saw his opportunity, and got on his legs. “I represent
the husband of the deceased lady,” he said. “Mr. Goldenheart has
appealed to the law of honour to justify him in keeping silence. I am
astonished that there is a man to be found in this assembly who fails to
sympathize with him. But as there appears to be such a person present,
I ask permission, sir, to put a question to the witness. It may, or may
not, satisfy the foreman of the jury; but it will certainly assist the
object of the present inquiry.”
The coroner, after a glance at Mr. Melton, permitted the lawyer to put
his question in these terms:--
“Did your knowledge of Mrs. Farnaby’s domestic troubles give you any
reason to apprehend that they might urge her to commit suicide?
“Certainly not,” Amelius answered. “When I called on her, on the morning
of her death, I had no apprehension whatever of her committing suicide.
I went to the house as the bearer of good news; and I said so to the
doctor, when he first spoke to me.”
The doctor confirmed this. The foreman was silenced, if not convinced.
One of his brother-jurymen, however, feeling the force of example,
interrupted the proceedings, by assailing Amelius with another
question:--“We have heard that you were accompanied by a young lady at
the time you have mentioned, and that you took her upstairs with you. We
want to know what business the young lady had in the house?”
The lawyer interfered again. “I object to that question,” he said. “The
purpose of the inquest is to ascertain how Mrs. Farnaby met with her
death. What has the young lady to do with it? The doctor’s evidence has
already told us that she was not at the house, until after he had been
called in, and the deadly action of the poison had begun. I appeal,
sir, to the law of evidence, and to you, as the presiding authority, to
enforce it. Mr. Goldenheart, who is acquainted with the circumstances
of the deceased lady’s life, has declared on his oath that there was
nothing in those circumstances to inspire him with any apprehension
of her committing suicide. The evidence of the servant at the lodgings
points plainly to the conclusion already arrived at by the medical
witness, that the death was the result of a lamentable mistake, and of
that alone. Is our time to be wasted in irrelevant questions, and are
the feelings of the surviving relatives to be cruelly lacerated to no
purpose, to satisfy the curiosity of strangers?”
A strong expression of approval from the audience followed this. The
lawyer whispered to Mr. Melton, “It’s all right!”
Order being restored, the coroner ruled that the juryman’s question
was not admissible, and that the servant’s evidence, taken with the
statements of the doctor and the chemist, was the only evidence for
the consideration of the jury. Summing up to this effect, he recalled
Amelius, at the request of the foreman, to inquire if the witness knew
anything of the old woman who had been frequently alluded to in the
course of the proceedings. Amelius could answer this question as
honestly as he had answered the questions preceding it. He neither knew
the woman’s name, nor where she was to be found. The coroner inquired,
with a touch of irony, if the jury wished the inquest to be adjourned,
under existing circumstances.
For the sake of appearances, the jury consulted together. But the
luncheon-hour was approaching; the servant’s evidence was undeniably
clear and conclusive; the coroner, in summing up, had requested them not
to forget that the deceased had lost her temper with the servant, and
that an angry woman might well make a mistake which would be unlikely
in her cooler moments. All these influences led the jury irrepressibly,
over the obstacles of obstinacy, on the way to submission. After a
needless delay, they returned a verdict of “death by misadventure.” The
secret of Mrs. Farnaby’s suicide remained inviolate; the reputation of
her vile husband stood as high as ever; and the future life of Amelius
was, from that fatal moment, turned irrevocably into a new course.