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B00_200 | Oh, my poor darling! my innocent martyr! I understood it at last. The false name in which he had married me; the terrible words he had spoken when he had warned me to respect his secret; the still more terrible doubt that he felt of me at that moment--it was all intelligible to my sympathies, it was all clear to my und... | |
B00_201 | My husband was alone in the room, seated at the further end of it, near the fire-place. He started to his feet and faced me in silence as I entered. The Major softly closed the door on us and retired. Eustace never stirred a step to meet me. I ran to him, and threw my arms round his neck and kissed him. The embrace was... | |
B00_202 | “Why do you leave me?” I said. “Why do you speak to me in this cruel way? Are you angry, Eustace? My darling, if you _are_ angry, I ask you to forgive me.”
“It is I who ought to ask _your_ pardon,” he replied. “I beg you to forgive me, Valeria, for having made you my wife.”
He pronounced those words with a hopeless, he... | |
B00_203 | My heart swelled in me as if it would burst. I lifted my hand from his bosom, and laid it on his shoulder to support myself.
“I don’t ask you to pity me, Eustace; I ask you to do me justice. You are not doing me justice. If you had trusted me with the truth in the days when we first knew that we loved each other--if yo... | |
B00_204 | “I want no reason! I believe in spite of the jury--in spite of the Verdict.”
“Will your friends agree with you? When your uncle and aunt know what has happened--and sooner or later they must know it--what will they say? They will say, ‘He began badly; he concealed from our niece that he had been wedded to a first wife;... | |
B00_205 | “We have only been married a few days, Valeria. Your love for me is new and young. Time, which wears away all things, will wear away the first fervor of that love.”
“Never! never!”
He drew back from me a little further still. | |
B00_206 | “Look at the world around you,” he said. “The happiest husbands and wives have their occasional misunderstandings and disagreements; the brightest married life has its passing clouds. When those days come for _us,_ the doubts and fears that you don’t feel now will find their way to you then. When the clouds rise in _ou... | |
B00_207 | Imbittered by that knowledge, my next harsh word may be harsher still. Your next thoughts of me may remind you more vividly and more boldly that your husband was once tried as a poisoner, and that the question of his first wife’s death was never properly cleared up. Do you see what materials for a domestic hell are min... | |
B00_208 | Can we live together on such terms as these? No mortal creatures could support the misery of it. This very day I said to you, ‘If you stir a step further in this matter, there is an end of your happiness for the rest of your life.’ You have taken that step and the end has come to your happiness and to mine. The blight ... | |
B00_209 | So far I had forced myself to listen to him. At those last words the picture of the future that he was placing before me became too hideous to be endured. I refused to hear more.
“You are talking horribly,” I said. “At your age and at mine, have we done with love and done with hope? It is blasphemy to Love and Hope to ... | |
B00_210 | I went near to him again, and took his hand.
“What did you tell me the world has said of you?” I asked. “What did you tell me my friends would say of you? ‘Not Proven won’t do for us. If the jury have done him an injustice--if he _is_ innocent--let him prove it.’ Those were the words you put into the mouths of my frien... | |
B00_211 | I seized him by the arm. In my indignation and my despair I shook him with all my strength. God forgive me, I could almost have struck him for the tone in which he had spoken and the look that he had cast on me! | |
B00_212 | “I have told you that I mean to read the Trial,” I said. “I mean to read it, line by line, with you. Some inexcusable mistake has been made. Evidence in your favor that might have been found has not been found. Suspicious circumstances have not been investigated. Crafty people have not been watched. Eustace! the convic... | |
B00_213 | “My defense was undertaken by the greatest lawyers in the land,” he said. “After such men have done their utmost, and have failed--my poor Valeria, what can you, what can I, do? We can only submit.”
“Never!” I cried. “The greatest lawyers are mortal men; the greatest lawyers have made mistakes before now. You can’t den... | |
B00_214 | I left him, and returned to the study. Major Fitz-David was not there. I knocked at the door of communication with the front room. It was opened instantly by the Major himself. The doctor had gone away. Benjamin still remained in the room.
“Will you come and speak to Eustace?” I began. “If you will only say what I want... | |
B00_215 | The Major and Benjamin both opposed this hasty resolution on my part. They appealed to my own sense of self-respect, without (so far as I remember it) producing the slightest effect on my mind. They were more successful when they entreated me next to be patient for my husband’s sake. In mercy to Eustace, they begged me... | |
B00_216 | Hearing this, I told them both unreservedly what I had said to Eustace, and how he had received it. To my unspeakable disappointment, they both sided with my husband, treating my view of his position as a mere dream. They said it, as he had said it, “You have not read the Trial.”
I was really enraged with them. “The fa... | |
B00_217 | “If you refuse my request,” I said, “you will oblige me, Major, to go to the nearest bookseller and tell him to buy the Trial for me. I am determined to read it.”
This time Benjamin sided with me.
“Nothing can make matters worse than they are, sir,” he said. “If I may be permitted to advise, let her have her own way.”
... | |
B00_218 | “My young friend tells me that she informed you of her regrettable outbreak of temper a few days since,” he said as he handed me the volume. “I was not aware at the time what book she had in her hand when she so far forgot herself as to destroy the vase. When I left you in the study, I supposed the Report of the Trial ... | |
B00_219 | Slowly and more slowly the heavy minutes followed each other, and still there were no signs of my husband’s return. We tried to continue our conversation, and failed. Nothing was audible; no sounds but the ordinary sounds of the street disturbed the dreadful silence. Try as I might to repel it, there was one foreboding... | |
B00_220 | The landlady met us in the hall. Nothing had been seen or heard of Eustace. There was a letter waiting for me upstairs on the table in our sitting-room. It had been left at the hotel by a messenger only a few minutes since.
Trembling and breathless, I ran up the stairs, the two gentlemen following me. The address of th... | |
B00_221 | Major Fitz-David opened the letter and read it through to himself. When he had done he threw it on the table with a gesture which was almost a gesture of contempt.
“There is but one excuse for him,” he said. “The man is mad.”
Those words told me all. I knew the worst; and, knowing it, I could read the letter. It ran th... | |
B00_222 | “No! the one atonement I can make is--to leave you. Your one chance of future happiness is to be disassociated, at once and forever, from my dishonored life. I love you, Valeria--truly, devotedly, passionately. But the specter of the poisoned woman rises between us. It makes no difference that I am innocent even of the... | |
B00_223 | “Yes, Valeria, I fully, freely release you. If it be possible to annul our marriage, let it be done. Recover your liberty by any means that you may be advised to employ; and be assured beforehand of my entire and implicit submission. My lawyers have the necessary instructions on this subject. Your uncle has only to com... | |
B00_224 | In those words he took his leave of me. We had then been married--six days.
CHAPTER XIV. THE WOMAN’S ANSWER.
THUS far I have written of myself with perfect frankness, and, I think I may fairly add, with some courage as well. My frankness fails me and my courage fails me when I look back to my husband’s farewell letter,... | |
B00_225 | I was removed from the hotel in the care of my fatherly old friend, Benjamin. A bedroom was prepared for me in his little villa. There I passed the first night of my separation from my husband. Toward the morning my weary brain got some rest--I slept.
At breakfast-time Major Fitz-David called to inquire about me. He ha... | |
B00_226 | I retired to my room and wrote to my uncle Starkweather, telling him exactly what had happened, and inclosing him a copy of my husband’s letter. This done, I went out for a little while to breathe the fresh air and to think. I was soon weary, and went back again to my room to rest. My kind old Benjamin left me at perfe... | |
B00_227 | “I am still too weak and weary, Eustace, to write to you at any length. But my mind is clear. I have formed my own opinion of you and your letter; and I know what I mean to do now you have left me. Some women, in my situation, might think that you had forfeited all right to their confidence. I don’t think that. So I wr... | |
B00_228 | “Does this surprise you? It surprises _me._ If another woman wrote in this manner to a man who had behaved to her as you have behaved, I should be quite at a loss to account for her conduct. I am quite at a loss to account for my own conduct. I ought to hate you, and yet I can’t help loving you. I am ashamed of myself;... | |
B00_229 | “That question is easily answered. What the Law has failed to do for you, your Wife must do for you. Do you remember what I said when we were together in the back room at Major Fitz-David’s house? I told you that the first thought that came to me, when I heard what the Scotch jury had done, was the thought of setting t... | |
B00_230 | “Are you surprised at the knowledge of the law which this way of writing betrays in an ignorant woman? I have been learning, my dear: the Law and the Lady have begun by understanding one another. In plain English, I have looked into Ogilvie’s ‘Imperial Dictionary,’ and Ogilvie tells me, ‘A verdict of Not Proven only in... | |
B00_231 | “Who will help me, when I need help, is more than I yet know. There was a time when I had hoped that we should go hand in hand together in doing this good work. That hope is at an end. I no longer expect you, or ask you, to help me. A man who thinks as you think can give no help to anybody--it is his miserable conditio... | |
B00_232 | “You may laugh over this blind confidence on my part, or you may cry over it. I don’t pretend to know whether I am an object for ridicule or an object for pity. Of one thing only I am certain: I mean to win you back, a man vindicated before the world, without a stain on his character or his name--thanks to his wife.
“W... | |
B00_233 | I read it to Benjamin. He held up his hands with his customary gesture when he was thoroughly bewildered and dismayed. “It seems the rashest letter that ever was written,” said the dear old man. “I never heard, Valeria, of a woman doing what you propose to do. Lord help us! the new generation is beyond my fathoming. I ... | |
B00_234 | The firm consisted of two partners. They both received me together. One was a soft, lean man, with a sour smile. The other was a hard, fat man, with ill-tempered eyebrows. I took a great dislike to both of them. On their side, they appeared to feel a strong distrust of me. We began by disagreeing. They showed me my hus... | |
B00_235 | I have no wish to claim any credit to myself in these pages which I do not honestly deserve. The truth is that my pride forbade me to accept help from Eustace, now that he had left me. My own little fortune (eight hundred a year) had been settled on myself when I married. It had been more than I wanted as a single woma... | |
B00_236 | Pardoning other things, I could not quite pardon his concealing from me that he had been married to a first wife. Why I should have felt this so bitterly as I did, at certain times and seasons, I am not able to explain. Jealousy was at the bottom of it, I suppose. And yet I was not conscious of being jealous--especiall... | |
B00_237 | In another minute my uncle’s strong arms were round me. In my forlorn position, I felt the good vicar’s kindness, in traveling all the way to London to see me, very gratefully. It brought the tears into my eyes--tears, without bitterness, that did me good. | |
B00_238 | “I have come, my dear child, to take you back to your old home,” he said. “No words can tell how fervently I wish you had never left your aunt and me. Well! well! we won’t talk about it. The mischief is done, and the next thing is to mend it as well as we can. If I could only get within arm’s-length of that husband of ... | |
B00_239 | I said, ‘No; you stop at home, and look after the house and the parish, and I’ll bring the child back.’ You shall have your old bedroom, Valeria, with the white curtains, you know, looped up with blue! We will return to the Vicarage (if you can get up in time) by the nine-forty train to-morrow morning.” | |
B00_240 | Return to the Vicarage! How could I do that? How could I hope to gain what was now the one object of my existence if I buried myself in a remote north-country village? It was simply impossible for me to accompany Doctor Starkweather on his return to his own house.
“I thank you, uncle, with all my heart,” I said. “But I... | |
B00_241 | It was only due to my good guardian and friend that I should take him into my confidence sooner or later. There was no help for it but to rouse my courage, and tell him frankly what I had it in my mind to do. The vicar listened in breathless dismay. He turned to Benjamin, with distress as well as surprise in his face, ... | |
B00_242 | “In plain English,” retorted the vicar, “you are conceited enough to think that you can succeed where the greatest lawyers in Scotland have failed. _They_ couldn’t prove this man’s innocence, all working together. And _you_ are going to prove it single-handed? Upon my word, you are a wonderful woman,” cried my uncle, s... | |
B00_243 | “Yes, uncle; I have thought of that. I shall first try to form some conclusion (after reading the Trial) as to the guilty person who really committed the crime. Then I shall make out a list of the witnesses who spoke in my husband’s defense. I shall go to those witnesses, and tell them who I am and what I want. I shall... | |
B00_244 | “Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you are going roaming about the country to throw yourself on the mercy of strangers, and to risk whatever rough reception you may get in the course of your travels? You! A young woman! Deserted by your husband! With nobody to protect you! Mr. Benjamin, do you hear her? And can y... | |
B00_245 | “Many another woman before me,” I went on, “has faced serious difficulties, and has conquered them--for the sake of the man she loved.”
Doctor Starkweather rose slowly to his feet, with the air of a person whose capacity of toleration had reached its last limits.
“Am I to understand that you are still in love with Mr. ... | |
B00_246 | “Oh yes, I’ll give you a kiss. Anything you like, Valeria. I shall be sixty-five next birthday; and I thought I knew something of women, at my time of life. It seems I know nothing. Loxley’s Hotel is the address, Mr. Benjamin. Good-night.”
Benjamin looked very grave when he returned to me after accompanying Doctor Star... | |
B00_247 | As I stood by the window, looking out, the memory came to me of another moonlight night, when Eustace and I were walking together in the Vicarage garden before our marriage. It was the night of which I have written, many pages back, when there were obstacles to our union, and when Eustace had offered to release me from... | |
B00_248 | I looked at the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. “No!” I said to myself. “Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband’s cause. The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will begin it to-night.”
I drew down t... | |
B00_249 | Turning to the second page of the Trial, I found a Note, assuring the reader of the absolute correctness of the Report of the Proceedings. The compiler described himself as having enjoyed certain special privileges. Thus, the presiding Judge had himself revised his charge to the jury. And, again, the chief lawyers for ... | |
B00_250 | MR. JAMES ARLISS, W. S., Agent for the Crown.
THE DEAN OF FACULTY (Farmichael), } Counsel for the Panel ALEXANDER CROCKET, Esquire (Advocate),} (otherwise the Prisoner)
MR. THORNIEBANK, W. S.,} MR. PLAYMORE, W. S., } Agents for the Panel.
The Indictment against the prisoner then followed. I shall not copy the uncouth l... | |
B00_251 | To be brief, then, Eustace Macallan was “indicted and accused, at the instance of David Mintlaw, Esquire, Her Majesty’s Advocate, for Her Majesty’s interest,” of the Murder of his Wife by poison, at his residence called Gleninch, in the county of Mid-Lothian. The poison was alleged to have been wickedly and feloniously... | |
B00_252 | The next paragraph asserted that the said Eustace Macallan, taken before John Daviot, Esquire, advocate, Sheriff-Substitute of Mid-Lothian, did in his presence at Edinburgh (on a given date, viz., the 29th of October), subscribe a Declaration stating his innocence of the alleged crime: this Declaration being reserved i... | |
B00_253 | So much for the Indictment! I have done with it--and I am rejoiced to be done with it.
An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great length on the next three pages. This, in its turn, was succeeded by the list of the witnesses, and by the names of the jurors (fifteen in number) balloted for to try t... | |
B00_254 | It was observed by every one present that the prisoner’s face betrayed traces of acute mental suffering. He was deadly pale. His eyes never once wandered to the crowd in the Court. When certain witnesses appeared against him, he looked at them with a momentary attention. At other times he kept his eyes on the ground. W... | |
B00_255 | “The prisoner was brought before me on the present charge. He made and subscribed a Declaration on the 29th of October. It was freely and voluntarily made, the prisoner having been first duly warned and admonished.”
Having identified the Declaration, the Sheriff-Substitute--being cross-examined by the Dean of Faculty (... | |
B00_256 | “I was first sent for to attend the deceased lady on the 7th of October. She was then suffering from a severe cold, accompanied by a rheumatic affection of the left knee-joint. Previous to this I understood that her health had been fairly good. She was not a very difficult person to nurse when you got used to her, and ... | |
B00_257 | One night, when she was wakeful and restless, she said to me--” | |
B00_258 | The Dean of Faculty here interposed, speaking on the prisoner’s behalf. He appealed to the Judges to say whether such loose and unreliable evidence as this was evidence which could be received by the Court.
The Lord Advocate (speaking on behalf of the Crown) claimed it as his right to produce the evidence. It was of th... | |
B00_259 | “For instance, I had more than one opportunity of personally observing that Mr. and Mrs. Macallan did not live together very happily. I can give you an example of this, not drawn from what others told me, but from what I noticed for myself. | |
B00_260 | “Toward the latter part of my attendance on Mrs. Macallan, a young widow lady named Mrs. Beauly--a cousin of Mr. Macallan’s--came to stay at Gleninch. Mrs. Macallan was jealous of this lady; and she showed it in my presence only the day before her death, when Mr. Macallan came into her room to inquire how she had passe... | |
B00_261 | Macallan insisted on my staying in language so insolent to her husband that he said, ‘If you cannot control yourself, either the nurse leaves the room or I do.’ She refused to yield even then. ‘A good excuse,’ she said, ‘for getting back to Mrs. Beauly. Go!’ He took her at her word, and walked out of the room. He had b... | |
B00_262 | “It may not be amiss to add a word which may help to explain Mrs. Macallan’s jealousy of her husband’s cousin. Mrs. Macallan was a very plain woman. She had a cast in one of her eyes, and (if I may use the expression) one of the most muddy, blotchy complexions it was ever my misfortune to see in a person’s face. Mrs. B... | |
B00_263 | “Her illness, if I am asked to describe it, I should say was troublesome--nothing more. Until the last day there were no symptoms in the least degree serious about the malady that had taken her. Her rheumatic knee was painful, of course--acutely painful, if you like--when she moved it; and the confinement to bed was ir... | |
B00_264 | “Her writing, so far as I knew, was almost entirely of the poetical sort. She was a great hand at composing poetry. On one occasion only she showed me some of her poems. I am no judge of such things. Her poetry was of the dismal kind, despairing about herself, and wondering why she had ever been born, and nonsense like... | |
B00_265 | “Yes: the plan of the room now shown to me is quite accurately taken, according to my remembrance of it. One door led into the great passage, or corridor, on which all the doors opened. A second door, at one side (marked B on the plan), led to Mr. Macallan’s sleeping-room. A third door, on the opposite side (marked C o... | |
B00_266 | “I beg to say that I can speak from my own knowledge positively about Mrs. Macallan’s illness, and about the sudden change which ended in her death. By the doctor’s advice I made notes at the time of dates and hours, and such like. I looked at my notes before coming here.
“From the 7th of October, when I was first call... | |
B00_267 | “I was awoke at the time I have mentioned by the ringing of the hand-bell which she kept on her bed-table. Let me say for myself that I had only fallen asleep on the sofa in the bedroom at past two in the morning from sheer fatigue. Mrs. Macallan was then awake. She was in one of her bad humors with me. I had tried to ... | |
B00_268 | “The moment her bell rang I was up and at the bedside, ready to make myself useful.
“I asked what was the matter with her. She complained of faintness and depression, and said she felt sick. I inquired if she had taken anything in the way of physic or food while I had been asleep. She answered that her husband had come... | |
B00_269 | “The doctor seemed no better able to account for the change for the worse in his patient than we were. Hearing her complain of thirst, he gave her some milk. Not long after taking it she was sick. The sickness appeared to relieve her. She soon grew drowsy and slumbered. Mr. Gale left us, with strict injunctions to send... | |
B00_270 | “Coming upstairs again, I met the under-housemaid sweeping on one of the landings.
“The girl informed me that Mrs. Macallan had taken a cup of tea during my absence in the housekeeper’s room. Mr. Macallan’s valet had ordered the tea for his mistress by his master’s directions. The under-housemaid made it, and took it u... | |
B00_271 | “After a little talk with the under-housemaid, I returned to the bedroom. No one was there. Mrs. Macallan was lying perfectly quiet, with her face turned away from me on the pillow. Approaching the bedside, I kicked against something on the floor. It was a broken tea-cup. I said to Mrs. Macallan, ‘How comes the tea-cup... | |
B00_272 | Stooping over her to arrange the bedclothes, I looked toward her table. The writing materials which were always kept on it were disturbed, and there was wet ink on one of the pens. I said, ‘Surely you haven’t been writing, ma’am?’ ‘Why not?’ she said; ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ ‘Another poem?’ I asked. She laughed to herself-... | |
B00_273 | “I had no choice but to do as I was told. To the best of my observation, there was nothing the matter with her, and nothing for the nurse to do. I put the bell-rope within reach of her hand, and I went downstairs again.
“Half an hour more, as well as I can guess it, passed. I kept within hearing of the bell; but it nev... | |
B00_274 | “At the same moment I heard the master’s voice on the terrace outside. I went out, and found him speaking to one Mr. Dexter, an old friend of his, and (like Mrs. Beauly) a guest staying in the house. Mr. Dexter was sitting at the window of his room upstairs (he was a cripple, and could only move himself about in a chai... | |
B00_275 | “It was then close on eleven o’clock. As fast as I could mount the stairs I hastened back to the bedroom.
“Before I opened the door I heard Mrs. Macallan groaning. She was in dreadful pain; feeling a burning heat in the stomach and in the throat, together with the same sickness which had troubled her in the early morni... | |
B00_276 | “I had not been long back at the bedside when Mr. Macallan and Mrs. Beauly both came in together. Mrs. Macallan cast a strange look on them (a look I cannot at all describe), and bade them leave her. Mrs. Beauly, looking very much frightened, withdrew immediately. Mr. Macallan advanced a step or two nearer to the bed. ... | |
B00_277 | “Before Mr. Gale arrived Mrs. Macallan was violently sick. What came from her was muddy and frothy, and faintly streaked with blood. When Mr. Gale saw it he looked very serious. I heard him say to himself, ‘What does this mean?’ He did his best to relieve Mrs. Macallan, but with no good result that I could see. After a... | |
B00_278 | “While we were waiting for the physician, Mr. Macallan came into his wife’s room with Mr. Gale. Exhausted as she was, she instantly lifted her hand and signed to him to leave her. He tried by soothing words to persuade her to let him stay. No! She still insisted on sending him out of her room. He seemed to feel it--at ... | |
B00_279 | “It was a long time before they rang for me. The coachman was sent for before I was summoned back to the bedroom. He was dispatched to Edinburgh for the second time, with a written message from Dr. Jerome to his head servant, saying that there was no chance of his returning to the city and to his patients for some hour... | |
B00_280 | “At last I was sent for. On my presenting myself in the bedroom, Doctor Jerome went out to speak to Mr. Macallan, leaving Mr. Gale along with me. From that time as long as the poor lady lived I was never left alone with her. One of the two doctors was always in her room. Refreshments were prepared for them; but still t... | |
B00_281 | “By the time that the lamp was lighted in the sick-room I could see that the end was near. Excepting an occasional feeling of cramp in her legs, she seemed to suffer less. But her eyes looked sunk in her head; her skin was cold and clammy; her lips had turned to a bluish paleness. Nothing roused her now--excepting the ... | |
B00_282 | “Toward eight o’clock she seemed to have lost the use of her hands and arms: they lay helpless outside the bed-clothes. A little later she sank into a sort of dull sleep. Little by little the sound of her heavy breathing grew fainter. At twenty minutes past nine Doctor Jerome told me to bring the lamp to the bedside. H... | |
B00_283 | “A little later the two doctors left the house. Mr. Macallan had been quite incapable of receiving them and hearing what they had to say. In this difficulty they had spoken privately with Mr. Dexter, as Mr. Macallan’s old friend, and the only gentleman then staying at Gleninch.
“Before bed-time I went upstairs to prepa... | |
B00_284 | Ignorant as I was of the law, I could see what impression the evidence (so far) was intended to produce on the minds of the jury. After first showing that my husband had had two opportunities of administering the poison--once in the medicine and once in the tea--the counsel for the Crown led the jury to infer that the ... | |
B00_285 | “I persist in declaring that Mrs. Macallan had a most violent temper. But she was certainly in the habit of making amends for the offense that she gave by her violence. When she was quiet again she always made her excuses to me, and she made them with a good grace. Her manners were engaging at such times as these. She ... | |
B00_286 | Macallan herself--not her husband--who decided that Mrs. Beauly should not be disappointed, and should pay her visit to Gleninch then and there. Further, Mrs. Macallan (in spite of her temper) was popular with her friends and popular with her servants. There was hardly a dry eye in the house when it was known she was d... | |
B00_287 | Having produced this salutary counter-impression, the Dean of Faculty sat down; and the medical witnesses were called next.
Here the evidence was simply irresistible.
Dr. Jerome and Mr. Gale positively swore that the symptoms of the illness were the symptoms of poisoning by arsenic. The surgeon who had performed the po... | |
B00_288 | On the second day the evidence to be produced by the prosecution was anticipated with a general feeling of curiosity and interest. The Court was now to hear what had been seen and done by the persons officially appointed to verify such cases of suspected crime as the case which had occurred at Gleninch. The Procurator-... | |
B00_289 | “On the twenty-sixth of October I received a communication from Doctor Jerome, of Edinburgh, and from Mr. Alexander Gale, medical practitioner, residing in the village or hamlet of Dingdovie, near Edinburgh. The communication related to the death, under circumstances of suspicion, of Mrs. Eustace Macallan, at her husba... | |
B00_290 | “No criminal charge in connection with the death was made at my office against any person, either in the communication which I received from the medical men or in any other form. The investigations at Gleninch and elsewhere, beginning on the twenty-sixth of October, were not completed until the twenty-eighth. Upon this... | |
B00_291 | “I got a warrant on the twenty-sixth of October to go to the country-house near Edinburgh called Gleninch. I took with me Robert Lorrie, assistant to the Fiscal. We first examined the room in which Mrs. Eustace Macallan had died. On the bed, and on a movable table which was attached to it, we found books and writing ma... | |
B00_292 | “Further investigation of the room revealed nothing which could throw any light on the purpose of our inquiry. We examined the clothes, jewelry, and books of the deceased. These we left under lock and key. We also found her dressing-case, which we protected by seals, and took away with us to the Fiscal’s office, along ... | |
B00_293 | “His illness was described to us as a nervous complaint, caused by the death of his wife, and by the proceedings which had followed it. He was reported to be quite incapable of exerting himself, and quite unfit to see strangers. We insisted nevertheless (in deference to our instructions) on obtaining admission to his r... | |
B00_294 | “The door opened, and there came swiftly in a gentleman--a cripple--wheeling himself along in a chair. He wheeled his chair straight up to a little table which stood by the prisoner’s bedside, and said something to him in a whisper too low to be overheard. The prisoner opened his eyes, and quickly answered by a sign. W... | |
B00_295 | Finding there was no moving him by fair means, I took his chair and pulled it away, while Robert Lorrie laid hold of the table and carried it to the other end of the room. The crippled gentleman flew into a furious rage with me for presuming to touch his chair. ‘My chair is Me,’ he said: ‘how dare you lay hands on Me?’... | |
B00_296 | “Having locked the door, so as to prevent any further intrusion, I joined Robert Lorrie in examining the bedside table. It had one drawer in it, and that drawer we found secured.
“We asked the prisoner for the key.
“He flatly refused to give it to us, and said we had no right to unlock his drawers. He was so angry that... | |
B00_297 | “I opened the door cautiously. Instead of the crippled gentleman, whom I had expected to see again, there was another stranger standing outside. The prisoner hailed him as a friend and neighbor, and eagerly called upon him for protection from us. We found this second gentleman pleasant enough to deal with. He informed ... | |
B00_298 | “We found inside several letters, and a large book with a lock to it, having the words ‘My Diary’ inscribed on it in gilt letters. As a matter of course, we took possession of the letters and the Diary, and sealed them up, to be given to the Fiscal. At the same time the gentleman wrote out a protest on the prisoner’s b... | |
B00_299 | Matters grew worse still when the next witnesses were called. The druggist whose label had been found on the crumpled bit of paper now appeared on the stand, to make the position of my unhappy husband more critical than ever.
Andrew Kinlay, druggist, of Edinburgh, deposed as follows: |
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