THE MEANS TO DO ILL DEEDS
The pale, weak woman had suddenly been transformed in Tarleton’s eyes
into a heroine. He saw in her someone greater than himself. He was the
official, salaried guardian of society, called upon to run no risks
that a brave man ought to fear. But this forlorn woman, without a
friend in whom she could confide, without support from public opinion
or from the law, had taken into her trembling hands the task of
delivering her sister women from a wretch whom neither opinion nor the
law could reach.
Mrs. Neobard--she had surely earned her right to be called that
now--thanked the doctor for his impulsive action with a look. But it
was not a look of triumph. She proceeded with her story in the tone of
a loser rather than a victor.
“Miss Sebright told me that she had felt a longing to become a mother,
which she had no hope of satisfying because she suffered from a
depravity, a club foot. She had been told as a child that no man would
ever want to marry her, except for her money, and the result had been
to make her distrust every man who came near her. It was a sad story
and I’m afraid it is true of other women. Their self-distrust robs them
of the happiness within their reach, if they only knew it.”
The speaker sighed as though contrasting their fate with her own
opposite mistake.
“She told me she had come to my husband to have the longing driven out
of her mind; instead of which he had persuaded her to become the mother
of an illegitimate child, by a man whose name was not told her. The
child was never born, happily--or unhappily; I daren’t say which. But
she had written letters that disclosed what she had done, and now the
doctor was holding them over her. He hadn’t gone so far as to demand
money, but he was compelling her to come or write to him every week and
charging her high fees. She would rather have paid a lump sum to end
it. The persecution was driving her out of her mind. The poor thing
actually offered me a thousand pounds.”
It was a sickening story. Hardened as he was to the ways of criminals,
Tarleton listened to it with nausea.
“I promised to find the letters and return them to her if I could.
I had to go to work secretly. If I had said anything to my husband
it would have put him on his guard, and he would have placed the
letters somewhere out of my reach. I spied on him till I saw him
one day through the keyhole going to a cupboard in the wall of his
dressing-room,--the one you found.”
The consultant forbore to correct her by saying that the discovery had
been made by Inspector Charles.
“Of course, it was locked and I had no key that would open it. So
I went to an ironmonger’s one day when the doctor was away for the
week-end, and asked him to send a confidential man to open it. I
pretended that my husband had lost the key while he was away on a
holiday, and wanted something in the cupboard to be sent to him. I
don’t know if they believed me, but they said nothing, and they made me
a new key.”
In the same quiet way she went on, seeming to see nothing extraordinary
in the patient contrivance by which she had outwitted the schemer
who most probably looked down upon her as a simple piece of domestic
furniture.
In the cupboard she had found a mass of correspondence, by no means
all of it from women, but in almost every case containing painful and
sometimes hideous revelations of depraved and distorted natures. The
horrified woman had been obliged to leave a good deal unread. The
letters from each correspondent were neatly kept on a separate file,
marked with the number under which he or she wrote. These numbers
puzzled her at first, as they puzzled Tarleton himself, but she had
only to ask Miss Sebright for the explanation. Several numbers were
missing from the series. Either the writers must have redeemed their
rash confessions, or else they had gone abroad or died, and the papers
had become valueless.
The real difficulty before Mrs. Neobard had been to keep her promise
to Miss Sebright without the doctor’s knowing that his cupboard had
been opened. Now she saw her way. If the poor victim defied him and he
went to look for her file and found it gone, he would probably think he
had destroyed it himself by mistake.
“He wasn’t always sober when he came in at night,” the unfortunate wife
said in a tone that breathed of her past sufferings. “I felt sure he
couldn’t suspect me or anyone of taking one set of letters and leaving
all the rest. Anyhow, I decided to risk it. I took Miss Sebright’s
letters and sent them to her by registered post. She wrote thanking me
very gratefully, but telling me that she was dying and asking me to go
and see her. I went more than once. It was the sight of her sinking
into her grave under my husband’s cruelty that nerved me to go on.”
“I should have returned all the other letters now, without caring what
happened, if I had known where to send them. But I had no key to whom
the numbers stood for.”
“You would have found that if you had looked in Dr. Weathered’s
appointment-book,” Sir Frank told her.
The widow opened her eyes.
“I never thought of that! I see you know how to find out everything,
Sir Frank. Stop me if I am telling you anything you know already.”
The consultant waved his hand courteously for her to go on. Her story
had held one surprise for him already, and he foresaw that others were
to come.
“I waited. I now went to the cupboard every day when I knew I was
safe from interruption, to read any fresh letters that had arrived,
in the hope of finding something in them that would give me a clue to
the writer’s identity. At last I found one in which the writer had
put her address at the head in the usual way. I suppose she did it in
forgetfulness.”
Tarleton breathed softly while he waited for the name he was pretty
certain of hearing.
“The address was Carlyle Square, Chelsea. I looked it up in the
Directory and found she was a Mrs. Baker. Have you heard of her
before?” Mrs. Neobard gave him an imploring look.
“I knew her brother, the late Captain Armstrong,” the specialist said,
without answering the question directly. “Please tell me everything.”
Mrs. Neobard made an effort and went on.
“I was disappointed, in a sense, to find that her letters weren’t worth
returning to her. There was nothing in them that anyone could make use
of to harm her, as far as I could see. She was simply a very foolish
woman with fads. She had come to my husband out of mere curiosity,
I should think, and he had played on her weakness. He had pretended
that she was secretly longing to commit a murder; and the silly woman
believed him. She seemed rather proud of it than otherwise. I suppose
it gave her a feeling of self-importance to think of herself as a
possible Mrs. Maybrick. In one of her letters she compared herself with
Miladi in the ‘Three Musketeers.’”
It was so exactly in keeping with his own impression of the queer
little woman in Carlyle Square that Tarleton gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Ah! I see you do know her. But I suppose you won’t tell me how much
you know?”
The physician was obliged to shake his head. “You could not trust me
yourself, ma’am, if I did.”
“I suppose you are right,” she admitted regretfully. “Well, I went on
reading this Mrs. Baker’s letters on the chance of finding something
serious in them; and at last there was. He had prompted her to think
out plans for committing a murder, and she was actually sending them to
him.”
A gasp drew Tarleton’s attention to Sarah Neobard, who had sat hitherto
listening in silence. Now she seemed roused to a sense of impending
tragedy, and gazed at her mother with dilated eyes.
The widow directed a swift glance at her, and withdrew it instantly.
“You can understand my terrible position, Sir Frank. My eyes had been
opened to my husband’s character. I don’t say that he had always been
a bad man, but he had become one by now. I had the proof under my
eyes that he was a criminal, and a danger to society. And here he was
discussing plots of murder with a weak, silly woman who seemed to be
under his thumb. Judging from her letters she was quite capable of
committing a murder out of vanity, just to give herself the feeling
that she was an extraordinary person.”
The consultant did not credit this. But he was not there to defend Mrs.
Baker, and he did not want to interrupt.
“I felt that if she did commit a crime she would be doing it as my
husband’s instrument, as much as if he had hypnotized her, and that I
must find some way to prevent it. Then, while I was wondering how to
interfere, a letter came in which she said she had a bottle of poison
in her possession, a poison unknown to the medical profession, that her
brother had brought with him from Sumatra. But I expect you know about
that?”
“I know the poison you speak of, certainly. The brother sold me a
quantity of it. He professed it was all he had brought to England.”
“He deceived you, then. In the next letter she described exactly where
she kept the poison, in a chiffonier in her drawing-room within reach
of the first caller. She boasted that she kept it under lock and key,
but almost anyone could pick a lock like that, as even I could see. Of
course, I knew from that moment that the poison was within my husband’s
reach, and I felt sure he meant to take it. Why else should he have
asked about it so particularly? What did it matter to him where it was
kept, unless he wanted it himself?”
“I quite agree with you,” said the specialist, seeing that he was
expected to reply.
“Now you see where I stood. I knew that my husband was capable of
committing a murder, if he had anything to gain by it, and now I knew
that he was actually scheming to obtain a poison that couldn’t be
detected. I don’t think Mrs. Baker had an idea that her brother had
parted with some to you. She wrote as though her bottle held all there
was. And who was it that he was thinking of murdering? I couldn’t see
anyone but myself.”
“Mother!” The word burst from Sarah’s agonized lips. If she had
retained any lingering softness for the dead man it must have expired
in that cry. Her mother did not turn her head.
“I had to defend myself. I couldn’t prevent him from taking the poison
in any other way that I could think of. I went to Mrs. Baker’s house
and stole the bottle.”
“You were quite right,” the physician agreed again.
“I had no difficulty. I took a bunch of all the keys I could find in
the house, keys of wardrobes and drawers and boxes of different sizes,
and went round to the Square. I walked up and down till I had seen a
woman who looked like the mistress of the house come out, and then I
knocked, and asked to be allowed to wait upstairs. I gave some common
name.” She put her hand to her forehead. “That’s strange! I can’t
remember the name. Well, almost the first key I tried opened the
chiffonier and there stood the bottle just as she had described it I
put it into my pocket and came away.”
Whatever theory Sir Frank had formed as to the case, it had certainly
not included this incident. He had thought it possible that after
Weathered had carried off the bottle his wife had found it and taken
it in turn from him. He had never conjectured that the feeble-looking
woman had been brave and cool enough to checkmate her husband in
advance like this.
“For the moment I felt safe,” Mrs. Neobard went on steadily. “But how
long could I expect to be from such a husband as mine? He was a doctor,
and it was easy for him to obtain other poisons. He would have had to
do that in any case, I think, as it turned out. Mrs. Baker quarrelled
with him soon after, because he had advised her to kill a favourite
cat. She refused to have anything more to do with him, and as her
letters were more damaging to him than to her he had no hold on her. I
soon found that he had destroyed them.”
This was another new light for the consultant. And it prepared him for
what was to come next.
“It seemed to me that my only chance of escape was to leave him. But
what reason could I give to the world for doing so? I had nothing to
complain of as far as his treatment of me was concerned. He was always
perfectly courteous. We were on friendly terms outwardly. I couldn’t
prove that he had been unfaithful to me; I wasn’t even sure in my own
mind that he had been, yet, although the letters showed me that he was
pursuing one of his victims. What could I say? Was I to denounce him
publicly as a scoundrel, and produce the letters? I might have ruined
dozens of innocent men and women. And I might fail. I might find that
the world sided with him instead of me. I knew him well enough to
know exactly what he would do. He would say that I had spied on his
professional work, that I had pried into the secrets of his patients
and that jealousy had made me insane. And he would have found plenty of
people to believe him. A wife who betrays her husband is not likely to
be forgiven.
“If I left him I doubted if my own daughter would have come with me.”
This was the first allusion the mother had made to her daughter’s
unhappy infatuation. And it was the last one. Sarah had begun to cry
quietly. Now Mrs. Neobard put out her hand again and took her child’s.
“You won’t expect me to give you _all_ my reasons for deciding that
I must act as I did, Sir Frank. Perhaps you will think I really was
insane. I don’t know--after reading some of those letters that I found
I sometimes feel it difficult to say who is sane and who isn’t. I can
only say I thought over everything time after time, as quietly as I
could, and I always came to the same conclusion. I think what stuck
in my mind most of all was the death of poor Miss Sebright. There was
no doubt that he had murdered her, as surely as if he had given her
arsenic. I thought he ought to die.”
She said it without an effort, as though it were the most natural
conclusion in the world.
“It looked like a providence to me that I had the poison ready. It
was his own doing, you see. He had helped me to it through wanting it
himself for his own wicked ends. I had taken it in self-defence, and
there it was, ready to be used.”
The listener remembered Shakespeare’s lines, though he refrained from
quoting them:
“How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done.”
The master of human nature had anticipated the excuse of many King
Johns. And in this case the excuse seemed genuine. In fact, the widow
did not speak as though she meant to excuse herself; she seemed to be
simply explaining the sequence of her thoughts.
“Then I came to a new difficulty, that I had never expected. I found I
couldn’t do it.”
It sounded like confession. There was far more of apology in the tone
with which she said this than there had been in her whole previous
statement. For the first time there was moisture in her eyes.
“I had believed in him once.... I had loved him.”
She broke down and ceased for a few moments. Tarleton watched her with
real pity.
“I dare say you will find it difficult to understand me, Sir Frank, but
I think most wives would. I hadn’t changed my mind. I was still quite
firm in believing that it was right to put an end to my husband, but I
had to find someone else to do it.”
The consultant nodded. It was all plain to him now. His theory had not
been very far wrong, after all.
“I decided that I must try to discover one of his victims, one of
the men who had confessed their secrets to him and were suffering
in consequence, and give the poison to him. I didn’t think of the
appointment-book, unfortunately. The only way that occurred to me of
getting in touch with the writers of the letters was to go to the
Domino Club.”
Tarleton felt astray again for the moment. There were more
complications in the case than he had even yet grasped.
“I expect you know all about the Club. My husband had started it as
a means of getting money out of his patients, but it caught on, and
became quite a fashionable resort. It brought him something like £1,000
a year. Of course, his name didn’t appear, but everyone knew he was to
be met there regularly. He never missed a dance. The nominal proprietor
of the Club was the woman who managed it for him, Madame Bonnell.”
“Yes. I knew all that. And I know Madame Bonnell.”
Mrs. Neobard’s face betrayed some apprehension.
“Know her as a friend, do you mean?” she ventured.
“I know her well enough to think she could be a very dangerous one.”
“Ah, then you _do_ know her. I wish I had!... I went to her to buy a
ticket of admission to the Club, as I wasn’t a member. I didn’t mean to
tell her who I was, but she knew somehow.”
“Madame Bonnell knew a good deal.”
“Yes, I found that out, too, before I had done with her. She was all
politeness; she pretended to think I was coming out of curiosity and
treated it as a sort of joke. She promised of her own accord not to let
Dr. Weathered know. Promised it playfully, you understand, as if it
were of no consequence whether he did or not. What she really thought I
can’t tell, but she must have suspected something and meant to get me
in her power.
“She deceived me completely. I asked her some questions about the
people who came, especially the patients. I wanted to find out which of
them came against their will, but I hoped she wouldn’t see what I was
driving at.”
A sheep might as well have tried to hoodwink a wolf, was Tarleton’s
inward comment, but he thought he had interrupted enough.
“She answered all my questions so glibly and seemed so anxious to
oblige that I was led on further and further. At last she said, ‘You
can see I am a friend, madam; why not trust me? I see you want to know
your husband’s enemies and I am willing to help you. This Club is full
of them. Every time the doctor comes here I consider he takes his life
in his hands.’
“I tried to draw back, but it was too late. She refused to let me go.
She said, ‘I must choose between you and your husband, madam. He is
my employer, he pays me well, and if anything happens to him you may
engage another manageress, and I shall lose my daily bread. If it is
your object to preserve him from danger we can work together.’
“She must have guessed pretty well by this time that I had a different
object, because she hardly waited for me to answer. Before I could
make up my mind what to say, she went on: ‘On the other hand, I have
no friendship for Dr. Weathered. Of late I have sometimes wished that
he were out of the way. The Club would do better without him in my
opinion. He is unpopular. And always I am afraid of some terrible
_esclandre_--some frightful scene or some exposure that would ruin the
Club and perhaps injure my character.’”
In spite of the gravity of the situation Sir Frank Tarleton relished
Madame’s regard for her character, though he kept his enjoyment to
himself.
“She meant me to feel that she was on my side, I could see. It seemed
to be a pure matter of business with her. She was ready to help me to
save my husband or to kill him--it didn’t matter which, provided it was
made worth her while. At the same time she let me see that I was in
her power. ‘It comes to this,’ she said at last, ‘that if you are not
going to trust me I can’t afford to trust you. You may have come here
to pump me, to find out if I deserve your husband’s confidence. In that
case I must report this conversation to him for my own protection; I
expect you to see that, madam.’”
It was all so clever, as clever as the advertisement about the letters,
Tarleton reflected. He did not wonder that Mrs. Neobard had been
overmatched.
“In the end I had to give in to her. I saw no way out, and it looked
as if she would be perfectly willing to help me on her own terms. I
undertook to transfer the whole property in the Domino Club to her on
my husband’s death, and she undertook to find one of his victims who
hated him enough to kill him, if he could do it safely, and give him
the secret poison. No one was to know where she had obtained it.
“I took the bottle to her the next day. The moment it was in her hands
she said to me, ‘I must have more than this, madam. I must have the
letters you have found. They are your justification for planning your
husband’s death, and I must have them to show in my defence if I get
into trouble for assisting you.’
“I had been weak enough to tell her nearly everything I have told
you, because I couldn’t bear to let her think that I was a bad woman
acting from evil motives. Now I repented too late. As usual, she had
a perfect answer to everything I could say. ‘It comes to this, madam,
that you have given me the means to commit a murder, and you have made
these letters your excuse. If you decline to produce them I must doubt
if they exist, and as an honest woman I shall hand this bottle over to
the police.’”
Tarleton got out of his chair. If he did not yet know all he wanted to
know, he knew all that this poor woman could tell him.
“Thank you. If I have your permission to use this information in my own
way neither you nor your daughter need fear anything more.”
The astonished woman stopped him on the way to the door.
“But after Madame Bonnell had got the letters she turned round and
refused to go on with the plot. How did my husband die?”
“I am going to ask her that.”