terrible pain they had died in. Duffham and a medical man, who was a
stranger and had helped at the post-mortem, testified to arsenic being
the cause of death. The next question was, how had it been administered?
A rumour arose in the room that the pills had been analyzed; but the
result had not transpired. Every one could see a small paper parcel
standing on the table before the coroner, and knew by its shape that it
must contain the pill-box.
Hester Reed was called. She said (giving her evidence very quietly, just
a sob and a sigh every now and then alone betraying what she felt) that
she was the wife of George Reed. Her two little ones--twins, aged eleven
months and a half--had been ailing for a day or two, seemed feverish,
would not eat their food, were very cross at times and unnaturally still
at others, and she came to the conclusion that their teeth must be
plaguing them, and thought she would give them some mild physic. Mrs.
Todhetley, the Squire's lady at Dyke Manor, had called in on the Tuesday
afternoon, and agreed with her that some mild physic----
"Confine your statement to what is evidence," interrupted the coroner,
sternly.
Hester Reed, looking scared at the check, and perhaps not knowing what
was evidence and what not, went on the best way she could. She and Ann
Dovey--who had been neighbourly enough to look in and help her--had
given the children a pill apiece in the evening after they were
undressed, mashing the pill up in a little sugar and warm water. She
then put them to bed upstairs and went to bed herself not long after. In
the night she and her husband were awoke by the babies' screams, and
they thought it must be convulsions. Her husband lighted the fire and
ran for Dr. Duffham; but one had died before the doctor could get there,
and the other died close upon it.
"What food had you given them during the day?" asked the coroner.
"Very little indeed, sir. They wouldn't take it."
"What did the little that they did take consist of?"
"It were soaked bread, sir, with milk and some sprinkled sugar. I tried
them with some potato mashed up in a spoonful o' broth at midday--we'd
had a bit o' biled neck o' mutton for dinner--but they both turned from
it."
"Then all they took that day was bread soaked in milk and sweetened with
sugar?"
"Yes, it were, sir. But the bread was soaked in warm water and the milk
and sugar was put in afterwards. 'Twas but the veriest morsel they'd
take, poor little dears!"
"Was the bread--and the milk--and the sugar, the same that the rest of
your household used?"
"In course it were, sir. My other children ate plenty of it. _Their_
appetites didn't fail 'em."
"Where did you get the warm water from that you say you soaked the bread
in?"
"Out o' the tea-kettle, sir. The water was the same that I biled for our
tea morning and night."
"The deceased children, then, had absolutely no food given to them apart
from what you had yourselves?"
"Not a scrap, sir. Not a drop."
"Except the pills."
"Excepting them, in course, sir. None o' the rest of us wanted physic."
"Where did you procure these pills?"
She went into the history of the pills. Giving the full account of them,
as already related.
"By your own showing, witness, it must be three months, or thereabouts,
since you had that box from Abel Crew," spoke the coroner. "How do you
know that the two pills you administered to the deceased children came
from the same box?"
Hester Reed's eyes opened wide. She looked as surprised as though she
had been asked whether she had procured the two pills from the moon.
"Yes, yes," interposed one of the jury, "how do you know it was the same
box?"
"Why, gentlemen, I had no other box of pills at all, save that," she
said, when her speech came to her. "We've had no physic but that in the
cottage since winter, nor for ever so long afore. I'll swear it was the
same box, sirs; there can't be no mistake about it."
"Did you leave it about in the way of people?" resumed the coroner. "So
that it might be handled by anybody who might come into your cottage?"
"No, sir," she answered, earnestly. "I never kept the pill-box but in
one place, and that was on the top of the high press upstairs out of
harm's way. I put it there the first night Abel Crew gave it me, and
when I wanted to get a pill or two out for my own taking, I used to step
on a chair--for it's too high for me to reach without--and help myself.
The box have never been took from the place at all, sir, till Tuesday
night, when I brought it downstairs with me. When I've wanted to dust
the press-top, I've just lifted the pill-box with one hand and passed
the duster along under it with the other, as I stood on the chair. It's
the same box, sir; I'll swear to that much; and it's the same pills."
Strong testimony. The coroner paused a moment. "You swear that, you say?
You are quite sure?"
"Sir, I am sure and positive. The box was never took from its place
since Abel Crew gave it me, till I reached up for it on Tuesday evening
and carried it downstairs."
"You had been in the habit of taking these pills yourself, you say?"
"I took two three or four times when I first had 'em, sir; once I took
three; but since then I've felt better and not wanted any."
"Did you feel any inconvenience from them? Any pain?"
"Not a bit, sir. As I said to Ann Dovey that night, when she asked
whether they was fit pills to give the children, they seemed as mild as
milk."
"Should you know the box again, witness?"
"Law yes, sir, what should hinder me?" returned Hester Reed, inwardly
marvelling at what seemed so superfluous a question.
The coroner undid the paper, and handed the box to her. She was standing
close to him, on the other side his clerk--who sat writing down the
evidence. "Is this the box?" he asked. "Look at it well."
Mrs. Reed did as she was bid: turned it about and looked "well." "Yes,
sir, it is the same box," said she. "That is, I am nearly sure of it."
"What do you mean by _nearly_ sure?" quickly asked the coroner, catching
at the word. "Have you any doubt?"
"Not no moral doubt at all, sir. Only them pill-boxes is all so like one
another. Yes, sir, I'm sure it is the same box."
"Open it, and look at the pills. Are they, in your judgment, the same?"
"Just the same, sir," she answered, after taking off the lid. "One might
a'most know'em anywhere. Only----"
"Only what?" demanded the coroner, as she paused.
"Well, sir, I fancied I had rather more left--six or seven say. There's
only five here."
The coroner made no answer to that. He took the box from her and put on
the lid. We soon learnt that two had been taken out for the purpose of
being analyzed.
For who should loom into the room at that juncture but Pettipher, the
druggist from Piefinch Cut. He had been analyzing the pills in a hasty
way in obedience to orders received half-an-hour ago, and came to give
the result. The pills contained arsenic, he said; not enough to kill a
grown person, he thought, but enough to kill a child. As Pettipher was
only a small man (in a business point of view) and sold groceries as
well as drugs, and spectacles and ear-trumpets, some of us did not think
much of his opinion, and fancied the pills should have been analyzed by
Duffham. That was just like old Jones: giving work to the wrong man.
George Reed was questioned, but could tell nothing, except that he had
never touched either box or pills. While Ann Dovey was being called, and
the coroner had his head bent over his clerk's notes, speaking to him in
an undertone, Abel Crew suddenly asked to be allowed to look at the
pills. The coroner, without lifting his head, just pushed the box down
on the green cloth; and one of the jury handed it over his shoulder to
Abel Crew.
"This is not the box I gave Mrs. Reed," said Abel, in a clear, firm
tone, after diving into it with his eyes and nose. "Nor are these the
pills."
Up went the coroner's head with a start. He had supposed the request to
see the box came from a juryman. It might have been irregular for Abel
Crew to be allowed so much; but as it arose partly through the coroner's
own fault, he was too wise to make a commotion over it.
"What is that you say?" he asked, stretching out his hand for the box as
eagerly as though it had contained gold.
"That this box and these pills are not the same that I furnished to Mrs.
Reed, sir," replied Abel, advancing and placing the box in the coroner's
hand. "They are not indeed."
"Not the same pills and box!" exclaimed the coroner. "Why, man, you have
heard the evidence of the witness, Hester Reed; you may see for yourself
that she spoke nothing but truth. Don't talk nonsense here."
"But they are _not_ the same, sir," respectfully persisted Abel. "I know
my own pills, and I know my own boxes: these are neither the one nor the
other."
"Now that won't do; you must take us all for fools!" exploded the
coroner, who was a man of quick temper. "Just you stand back and be
quiet."
"Never a pill-box went out from my hands, sir, but it had my little
private mark upon it," urged Abel. "That box does not bear the mark."
"What is the mark, pray?" asked the coroner.
"Four little dots of ink inside the rim of the lid, sir; and four
similar dots inside the box near the edge. They are so faint that a
casual observer might not notice them; but they are always there. Of all
the pill-boxes now in my house, sir--and I suppose there may be two or
three dozen of them--you will not find one but has the mark."
Some whispering had been going on in different parts of the room; but
this silenced it. You might have heard a pin drop. The words seemed to
make an impression on the coroner: they and Abel Crew were both so
earnest.
"You assert also that the pills are not yours," spoke the coroner,
who was known to be fond of desultory conversations while holding his
inquests. "What proof have you of that?"
"No proof; that is, no proof that I can advance, that would satisfy the
eye or ear. But I am certain, by the look of them, that those were never
my pills."
All this took the jury aback; the coroner also. It had seemed to some of
them an odd thing that Hester Reed should have swallowed two or three of
the pills at once without their entailing an ache or a pain, and that
one each had poisoned the babies. Perkins the butcher observed to the
coroner that the box must have been changed since Mrs. Reed helped
herself from it. Upon which the coroner, after pulling at his whiskers
for a moment as if in thought, called out for Mrs. Reed to return.
But when she did so, and was further questioned, she only kept to what
she had said before, strenuously denying that the box _could_ have been
changed. It had never been touched by any hands but her own while it
stood in its place on the press, and had never been removed from it at
all until she took it downstairs on the past Tuesday night.
"Is the room where this press stands your own sleeping-room?" asked the
coroner.
"No, sir. It's the other room, where my three children sleep."
"Could these children get to the box?"
"Dear no, sir! 'Twould be quite impossible."
"Had any one an opportunity of handling the box when you took it down
on Tuesday night?" went on the coroner after a pause.
"Only Mrs. Dovey, sir. Nobody else was there."
"Did she touch it?"
"She laid hold of it to look at the pills."
"Did you leave her _alone_ with it?"
"No, sir. Leastways--yes, I did for a minute or so, while I went into
the back'us to get the sugar and a saucer and spoon."
"Had she the box in her hands when you returned?"
"Yes, sir, I think she had. I think she was still smelling at the pills.
I know the poor little innocents was lying one on one knee, and one on
t'other, all flat, and her two hands was lifted with the box in 'em."
"It was after that that you took the pills out of it to give the
children?"
"Yes, sir; directly after. But Ann Dovey wouldn't do nothing wrong to
the pills, sir."
"That will do," said the coroner in his curt way. "Call Ann Dovey."
Ann Dovey walked forward with a face as red as her new bonnet-strings.
She had heard the whole colloquy: something seemed, too, to have put her
out. Possessing scant veneration for coroners at the best of times, and
none for the jury at present assembled, she did not feel disposed to
keep down her temper.
The few first questions asked her, however, afforded no opportunity
for resentment, for they were put quietly, and tended only to extract
confirmation of Mrs. Reed's evidence, as to fetching the pill-box from
upstairs and administering the pills. Then the coroner cleared his
throat.
"Did you see the last witness, Hester Reed, go into the back kitchen for
a spoon and saucer?"
"I saw her go and fetch 'em from somewhere," replied Ann Dovey, who felt
instinctively the ball was beginning, and gave the reins to her temper
accordingly.
"Did you take charge of the pill-box while she was gone?"
"I had it in my hand, if you mean that."
"Did anybody come into the kitchen during that interval?"
"No they didn't," was the tart response.
"You were alone, except for the two infants?"
"I were. What of it?"
"Now, witness, did you do anything with that box? Did you, for instance,
exchange it for another?"
"I think you ought to be ashamed o' yourselves, all on you, to sit and
ask a body such a thing!" exploded Mrs. Dovey, growing every moment more
resentful, at being questioned. "If I had knowed the bother that was to
spring up, I'd have chucked the box, pills and all, into the fire first.
I wish I had!"
"Was the box, that you handed to Hester Reed on her return, the same box
she left with you? Were the pills the same pills?"
"Why, where d'ye think I could have got another box from?" shrieked Ann
Dovey. "D'you suppose, sir, I carry boxes and pills about with me? I
bain't so fond o' physic as all that comes to."
"Dovey takes pills on occasion for that giddiness of his; I've seen
him take 'em; mayhap you'd picked up a box of his," spoke Dobbs the
blacksmith, mildly.
That was adding fuel to fire. Two of a trade don't agree. Dovey and
Dobbs were both blacksmiths: the one in Church Dykely; the other in
Piefinch Cut, not much more, so to say, than a stone's-throw from each
other. The men were good friends enough; but their respective ladies
were apt to regard jealously all work taken to the rival establishment.
Any other of the jurymen might have made the remark with comparative
impunity; not so Dobbs. And, besides the turn the inquiry seemed to be
taking, Mrs. Dovey had not been easy about it in her mind from the
first; proof of which was furnished by the call, already mentioned,
made by her husband on Abel Crew.
"Dovey takes pills on occasion, do he!" she shrilly retorted. "And what
do you take, Bill Dobbs? Pints o' beer when you can get 'em. Who lamed
Poole's white horse the t'other day a-shoeing him?"
"Silence!" sternly interrupted the coroner. While Dobbs, conscious of
the self-importance imparted to him by the post he was now filling, and
of the necessity of maintaining the dignity of demeanour which he was
apt to put on with his best clothes, bore the aspersion with equanimity
and a stolid face.
"Attend to me, witness, and confine yourself to replying to the
questions I put to you," continued the coroner. "Did you take with you
any pills or pill-box of your own when you went to Mrs. Reed's that
evening?"
"No, I _didn't_," returned Ann Dovey, the emphasis culminating in a sob:
and why she should have set on to shiver and shake was more than the
jury could understand.
"Do you wear pockets?"
"What if I do?" she said, after a momentary pause. But her lips grew
white, and I thought she was trying to brave it out.
"Had you a pocket on that evening?"
"Heaven be good to me!" I heard her mutter under her breath. And if ever
I saw a woman look frightened nearly to death, Ann Dovey looked it then.
"Had you a pocket on that evening, witness?" repeated the coroner,
sharply.
"Y--es."
"What articles were in it? Do you recollect?"
"It were a key or two," came the answer at length, her very teeth
chattering and all the impudence suddenly gone out of her. "And my
thimble, sir;--and some coppers; and a part of a nutmeg;--and--and I
don't remember nothing else, sir."
"No box of pills? You are sure you had not that?"
"Haven't I said so, sir?" she rejoined, bursting into a flood of tears.
For which, and for the sudden agitation, nobody could see any reason:
and perhaps it was only that which made the coroner harp upon the same
string. Her demeanour had become suspicious.
"You had no poison of any kind in your pocket, then?"
But he asked the question in jest more than earnest. For when she went
into hysterics instead of replying, he let her go. He was used to seeing
witnesses scared when brought before him.
The verdict was not arrived at that day. When other witnesses had
been examined, the coroner addressed the jury. Ten of them listened
deferentially, and were quite prepared to return a verdict of
Manslaughter against Abel Crew; seemed red-hot to do it, in fact. But
two of them dissented. They were not satisfied, they said; and they held
out for adjourning the inquest to see if any more light could be thrown
upon the affair. As they evidently had the room with them, the coroner
yielded, and adjourned the inquest in a temper.
And then it was discovered that the name was not Crew but Carew. Abel
himself corrected the coroner. Upon that, the coroner sharply demanded
why he had lived under a false name.
"Nay, sir," replied Abel, as dignified as you please, "I have had no
intention of doing so. When I first came to this neighbourhood I gave my
name correctly--Carew: but the people at once converted it into Crew by
their mode of pronunciation."
"At any rate, you must have sanctioned it."
"Tacitly I have done so. What did it signify? When I have had occasion
to write my name--but that has been very rare--I have written it Carew.
Old Sir Peter Chavasse knew it was Carew, and used to call me so; as did
Sir Geoffry. Indeed, sir, I have had no reason to conceal my name."
"That's enough," said the coroner, cutting him short. "Stand back, Abel
Carew. The proceedings are adjourned to this day week."
IV.
ABEL CREW.
Things are done in remote country places that would not be done in
towns. Whether the law is understood by us, or whether it is not, it
often happens that it is very much exceeded, or otherwise not acted
upon. Those who have to exercise it sometimes show themselves as
ignorant of it as if they had lived all their lives in the wilds of
America.
Old Jones the constable was one of these. When not checked by his
masters, the magistrates, he would do most outrageous things--speaking
of the law and of common sense. And he did one in reference to Abel
Crew. I still say Crew. Though it had come out that his name was Carew,
we should be sure to call him Crew to the end.
The inquest might have been concluded at its first sitting, but
for the two who stood out against the rest of the jury. Perkins the
butcher and Dobbs the blacksmith. Truth to say, these two had plenty
of intelligence; which could not be said of all the rest. Ten of the
jury pronounced the case to be as clear as daylight: the infants had
been poisoned by Abel Crew's pills: and the coroner seemed to agree
with them--he hated trouble. But Dobbs and Perkins held out. They were
not satisfied, they said; the pills furnished by Abel Crew might not
have been the pills that were taken by the children; moreover, they
considered that the pills should be "more officially" analyzed.
Pettipher the druggist was all very well in his small way, but hardly
up, in their opinion, to pronouncing upon pills when a man's life or
liberty was at stake. They pressed for an adjournment, that the pills
might be examined by some competent authority. The coroner, as good as
telling them they were fools to their faces, had adjourned the inquest
in suppressed passion to that day week.
"And I've got to take care of you, Abel Crew," said old Jones,
floundering up on his gouty legs to Abel as the jury and crowd
dispersed. "You've got to come along o' me."
"To come where?" asked Abel, who was hobbling towards home on his
scalded foot, by the help of his stick and the arm of Gibbon the
gamekeeper.
"To the lock-up," said old Jones.
"To the lock-up!" echoed Abel Crew.
"In course," returned old Jones. "Where else but the lock-up? Did you
think it was to the pound?"
Abel Crew, lifting the hand that held his stick to brush a speck of dirt
off his handsome velvet coat, turned to the constable; his refined face,
a little paler than usual, gazing inquiringly at old Jones's, his silver
hair glistening in the setting sun.
"I don't understand you, Mr. Jones," he said calmly. "You cannot mean to
lock me up?"
"Well, I never!" cried old Jones, who had a knack of considering every
suspected person guilty, and treating them accordingly. "You have a
cheek, you have, Abel Crew! 'Not going to take me to the lock-up, Mr.
Jones,' says you! Where would you be took to?"
"But there's no necessity for it," said Abel. "I shall not run away. I
shall be in my house if I'm wanted again."
"I dare say you would!" said old Jones, ironically. "You might or you
mightn't, you know. You be as good as committed for the killing and
slaying o' them there two twins, and it's my business to see as you
_don't_ make your escape aforehand, Abel Crew."
Quite a company of us, sauntering out of the inquest-room, were
listening by this time. I gave old Jones a bit of my mind.
"He is not yet committed, Jones, therefore you have no right to take him
or to lock him up."
"You don't know nothing about it, Mr. Ludlow. I do. The crowner gave me
a hint, and I'm acting on it. 'Don't you go and let that man escape,'
says his worship to me: 'it'll be at your peril if you do.' '_I'll_ see
to him, your worship,' says I. And I be a-doing of it."
But it was hardly likely that the coroner meant Abel Crew to be confined
in that precious lock-up for a whole week. One night there was bad
enough. At least, I did not think he meant it; but the crowd, to judge
by their comments, seemed divided on the point.
"The shortest way to settle the question will be to ask the coroner,
old Jones," said I, turning back to the Silver Bear. "Come along."
"You'd be clever to catch him, Master Johnny," roared out old Jones
after me. "His worship jumped into his gig; it was a-waiting for him
when he come out; and his clerk druv him off at a slapping pace."
It was true. The coroner was gone; and old Jones had it all his own
way; for, you see, none of us liked to interfere with the edict of an
official gentleman who held sway in the county and sat on dead people.
Abel Crew accepted the alternative meekly.
"Any way, you must allow me to go home first to lock my house up, and to
see to one or two other little matters," said he.
"Not unless you goes under my own eyes," retorted old Jones. "You might
be for destroying your stock o' pills for fear they should bear evidence
again' you, Abel Crew."
"My pills are, of all things, what I would not destroy," said Abel.
"They would bear testimony for me, instead of against me, for they are
harmless."
So Abel Crew hobbled to his cottage on the common, attended by old Jones
and a tail of followers. Arrived there, he attended the first thing to
his scalded foot, dressing it with some of his own ointment. Then he
secured some bread and butter, not knowing what the accommodation at the
lock-up might be in the shape of eatables, and changed his handsome
quaint suit of clothes for those he wore every day. After that, he was
escorted back to the lock-up.
Now, the lock-up was in Piefinch Cut, nearly opposite to Dovey the
blacksmith's. The Squire remembered the time when the lock-up stood
alone; when Piefinch Cut had no more houses in it than Piefinch Lane now
has; but since then Piefinch Cut had been built upon and inhabited;
houses touching even the sacred walls of the lock-up. A tape-and-cotton
and sweetstuff shop supported it on one side, and a small pork-butcher's
on the other. Pettipher's drug shop, should anybody be curious on the
point, was next to the tape-and-cotton mart.