# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/The Notting Hill mystery - Section VIII

←Section VII
THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY.
(⁂ See remarks prefixed to the first of these papers, Vol. VII., page 617.)
Section VIII. Conclusion.
There now only remains for me, in conclusion, to sum up as briefly and succinctly as possible the evidence contained in the preceding statements. In so doing, it will be necessary to adopt an arrangement somewhat different from that which has been hitherto followed. Each step of the narrative will therefore be accompanied with a marginal reference to the particular deposition from which it may be taken.
First then, for what may be called the preliminary portions of the evidence. With these we I.need here deal but very briefly. They consist almost entirely of letters furnished by the courtesy of a near relation of the late Mrs. Anderton, and read as follows:
​Some six or seven and twenty years ago, the mother of Mrs. Anderton—Lady Boleton—after giving birth to twin daughters, under circumstances of a peculiarly exciting and agitating nature, died in child-bed. Both Sir Edward Boleton and herself appear to have been of a nervous temperament, and the effects of these combined influences is shown in the highly nervous and susceptible organisation of the orphan girls, and in a morbid sympathy of constitution, by which each appeared to suffer from any ailment of the other. This remarkable sympathy is very clearly shown in more than one of the letters I have submitted for your consideration, and I have numerous others in my possession which, should they be considered insufficient, will place the matter, irregular as it certainly is, beyond the reach of doubt. I must request you to bear it particularly and constantly in mind throughout the case.
Almost from the time of the mother’s death, the children were placed in the care of a poor, but respectable woman, at Hastings. Here the younger, whose constitution appears to have been originally much stronger than that of her sister, seems to have improved rapidly in health, and in so doing to have mastered, in some degree, that morbid sympathy of temperament of which I have spoken, and which in the weaker organisation of her elder sister, still maintained its former ascendency. They were about six years old when, whether through the carelessness of the nurse or not, is immaterial to us now, the younger was lost during a pleasure excursion in the neighbourhood. Every inquiry was made, and it appeared pretty clear that she had fallen into the hands of a gang of gipsies, who at that time infested the country round, but no further trace of her was ever after discovered.
The elder sister, now left alone, seems to have been watched with redoubled solicitude. There is nothing, however, in the years immediately following Miss C. Boleton’s disappearance having any direct bearing upon our case, and I have, therefore, confined my extracts from the correspondence entrusted to me, to two or three letters from a lady in whose charge she was placed at Hampstead, and one from an old friend of her mother, from which we gather the fact of her marriage. The latter is chiefly notable as pointing out the nervous and highly sensitive temperament of the young lady’s husband, the late Mr. Anderton, to which I shall have occasion at a later period of the case, more particularly to direct your attention. The former give evidence of a very important fact; namely, that of the liability of Miss Boleton to attacks of illness equally unaccountable and unmanageable, bearing a perfect resemblance to those in which she suffered in her younger days sympathetically with the ailments of her sister; and, therefore, to be not improbably attributed to a similar cause.
Thus far for the preliminary portion of the evidence. II.The second division places before us certain peculiarities in the married life of Mrs. Anderton; its more especial object, however, being to elucidate the connection between the parties whose history we have hitherto been tracing, and the Baron R**, with whose proceedings we are properly concerned.
It appears then, that in all respects but one, the married life of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton was particularly happy. Notwithstanding their retired and often somewhat nomad life, and the limits necessarily imposed thereby to the formation of friendships, the evidence of their devoted attachment to each other is perfectly overwhelming. I have no less than thirty-seven letters from various quarters, all speaking more or less strongly upon this point, but I have thought it better to select from the mass a small but sufficient number, than to overload the case with unnecessary repetition. In one respect alone their happiness was incomplete. It was, as had been justly observed by Mrs. Ward, most unfortunate that the choice of Miss Boleton should have fallen upon a gentleman, who however eligible in every other respect, was, from his extreme constitutional nervousness, so peculiarly ill-adapted for union with a lady of such very similar organisation. The connection seems to have borne its natural fruit in the increased delicacy of both parties, their married life being spent in an almost continual search after health. Among the numerous experiments tried with this object, they at length appear to have had recourse to mesmerism, becoming finally patients of Baron R**, a well known professor of that and other kindred impositions.
Mrs. Anderton had not been long under his care when the remonstrances of several friends led to the cessation of the Baron’s immediate manipulations, the mesmeric fluid being now conveyed to the patient through the intervention of a third party. Mademoiselle Rosalie, “the medium” thus employed, was a young person regularly retained by Baron R** for that purpose, and of her it is necessary here to say a few words.
She appears to have been about the age of Mrs. Anderton, though looking perhaps a little older than her years; slight in figure, with dark hair and eyes, and in all respects but one answering precisely to the description of that lady’s lost sister. The single difference alluded to, that of wide and clumsy feet, is amply accounted for by the nature of her former avocation. She had been for several years a tight-rope dancer, &c., in the employ of a travelling-circus proprietor; who, by his own account, had purchased her for a trifling sum, of a gang of gipsies at Lewes, just at the very time when the younger Miss Boleton was stolen at Hastings by a gang whose course was tracked through Lewes to the westward. Of him she was again purchased by the Baron, who appears, even at the outset, to have exercised a singular power over her, the fascination of his glance falling on her whilst engaged upon the stage, having compelled her to stop short in the performance of her part. There can, I think, be little doubt that this girl Rosalie was in fact the lost sister of Mrs. Anderton, and of this we shall find that the Baron R** very shortly became cognisant.
It does not appear that on the first meeting of the sisters he had any idea of the relationship between them. He was, indeed, perfectly ignorant of the early history of both. The ​extraordinary sympathy therefore which immediately manifested itself between them was not improbably set down by him as a mere result of the mesmeric rapport, and it was not till he had been for some weeks in attendance on Mrs. Anderton that accident led him to divine its true origin. Nor, on the other hand, does this singular sympathy—a sympathy manifested in a precisely similar manner to that known to have existed years ago between the sisters—appear to have raised any suspicion of the truth in the mind of either Mrs. Anderton or her husband. From the former, indeed, all mention of her early life had been carefully kept till she had probably almost, if not entirely, forgotten the event, while the latter merely remembered it as a tale which had long since ceased to possess any present interest.
The two sisters were thus for several weeks in the closest contact, the effects of which may or may not have been heightened by the so-called mesmeric connection between them, before any suspicion of their relationship crossed the mind of any one. One evening, however,—and from certain peculiar circumstances we are enabled to fix the date precisely to the 13th of October, 1854,—the Baron appears beyond all doubt to have become cognisant of the fact. I must request your particular attention to the circumstances by which his discovery of it was attended.
On that evening the conversation appears to have very naturally turned upon a certain extraordinary case professed to be reported in a number of the “Zoist Mesmeric Magazine,” published a few days before. The pretended case was that of a lady suffering from some internal disorder which forbade her to swallow any food, and receiving sustenance through mesmeric sympathy with the operator, who “ate for her.” From this extraordinary tale the conversation turned naturally to other manifestations of constitutional sympathy, as an instance of which Mr. Anderton related the story of Mrs. Anderton’s lost sister, and the singular bond which had existed between them. II, 2.The conversation appears to have continued for some time, and in the course of it a jesting remark was made by one of the party in allusion to the story of eating by deputy, to which I am inclined to look as the key-note of this horrible affair.
“I said,” deposes Mr. Morton, “I said it was lucky for the young woman that the fellow didn’t eat anything unwholesome.”
From the moment these words were spoken the Baron appears to have dropped out of the conversation altogether. More than this, he was clearly in a condition of great mental pre-occupation and disturbance. Mr. Morton goes on to describe the singularity of his manner, the letting his cigar expire between his teeth, and the tremulousness of his hands, so excessive, that in attempting to re-light it he only succeeded in destroying that of his friend. There can, I think, be no doubt whatever that from that moment he believed thoroughly in the identity of Rosalie with the lost sister of Mrs. Anderton. What other ideas the conversation had suggested to him we must endeavour to ascertain from the evidence that follows.
On the morning of the day succeeding that on the evening of which he had become convinced of Rosalie’s identity, we find Baron R** at Doctors’ Commons inquiring into the particulars of a will by which the sum of 25,000l. had been bequeathed, under certain conditions, to the children of Lady Boleton. Under the provisions of this will, the girl Rosalie was, after her sister and Mr. Anderton, the heir to this legacy. We need, I think, have no difficulty in connecting the acquisition of this intelligence with the steps by which it was immediately followed. Mr. Anderton at once received an intimation of the Baron’s approaching departure for the continent, and at the end of the third week from that time leave was taken, and he apparently started upon his journey. In point of fact, however, his plans were of a very different character. During the three weeks which intervened between his visit to Doctors’ Commons and his farewell to Mr. Anderton, there had been advertised in the parish church of Kensington the banns of marriage between himself and his “medium,” Rosalie,—not, indeed, in the names by which they were ordinarily known, and which would very probably have excited attention, but in the family name—if so it be—of the Baron and in that by which Rosalie was originally known when with the travelling circus. By what means he prevailed upon his victim to consent to such a step is not important to the matter in hand. The general tenour of the subsequent evidence shows clearly that it must have been under some form of compulsion, and, indeed, the unfortunate girl seems to have been made by some means altogether subservient to his will.
The marriage thus secretly effected, the Baron and his wife leave town, not for the continent, as stated to Mr. Anderton, but for Bognor, an out-of-the-way little watering-place on the Sussex coast, deserted save for the week of the Goodwood races, where, at that time of the year, he was not likely to meet with any one to whom he was known. Before endeavouring to investigate the motive of all this mystery, it is necessary to bear in mind one important fact:—
Between the wife of Baron R** and Mr. Wilson’s legacy of 25,000l., the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton now alone intervened.
The first few days of the Baron’s stay in Bognor seem to have been devoted to the search for a servant, he having insisted on the unusual arrangement of himself providing one in the house where he lodged. It is worthy of note that the one finally selected was in a position, with respect to character, that placed her entirely in her master’s power. It is unfortunate that this same defect of character necessarily lessens the value of evidence from such a source. We must, however, take it for what it is worth, remembering at the same time, that there is a total absence of any apparent motive, save that of telling the truth, for the statement she has made.
It appears, then, from her account, that after trying by every means to tempt her into some repetition of her former error, the Baron at last seized upon the pretext of her taking from the breakfast table a single taste of jam upon her finger, to threaten her with immediate and utter ​ruin. One only loop-hole was left by which she could escape. The alternative was, indeed, most ingeniously and delicately veiled under the pretext of seeking a plausible reason for her dismissal; but, in point of fact, it amounted to this, that as a condition of her alleged offence not being recorded against her, she would own to the commission of another with which she had nothing whatever to do.
The offence to which she was falsely to plead guilty was this. On the night succeeding the commission of the fault of which, such as it was, she was really guilty, Madame R** was taken suddenly ill. The symptoms were those of antimonial poisoning. The presence of antimony in the stomach was clearly shown. In the presence of the medical man who had been called in, the girl was taxed by the Baron with having administered, by way of a trick, a dose of tartar emetic; and she, in obedience to a strong hint from her master, confessed to the delinquency, and was thereupon dismissed with a good character in other respects. Freed from the dread of exposure, she now flatly denies the whole affair, both of the trick and of the quarrel which was supposed to have led to it, and I am bound to say, that looking both to external and internal evidence, her statement seems worthy of credit.
Nevertheless the poison was unquestionably administered. By whom?
Cui bono? Certainly, it will be said, not for that of the Baron; for until at least the death of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton his interest was clearly in the life of his wife. It is not, therefore, by any means to be supposed that he would before that event attempt to poison her. Of this mystery, then, it appears that we must seek the solution elsewhere.
Returning then for a time to Mr. and Mrs. Anderton, we find that the latter has also suffered from an attack of illness. Comparing her journal and the evidence of her doctor, III. with that given in the case of Madame R**, it appears that the symptoms were identical in every respect, with this single but important exception, that in this case there is no apparent cause for the attack, nor can any trace of poison be found. A little further inquiry, and we arrive at a yet more mysterious coincidence.
It is a matter of universal experience, that almost the most fatal enemy of crime is over-precaution. In this particular case the precautions of the Baron R** appear to have been dictated by a skill and forethought almost super-human, and so admirably have they been taken, that, save in the concealment of the marriage, it is almost impossible to recognise in them any sinister motive whatever. His course with respect to the servant girl, though dictated, as we believe, by the most criminal designs, is perfectly consistent with motives of the very highest philanthropy. Even in the concealment of the marriage, once granting—as I think may very fairly be granted—that such a marriage might be concealed without any necessary imputation of evil, the means adopted were equally simple, effective, and unblameable. They consisted merely in the use of the real, instead of the stage names of the contracting parties, and in the very proper avoidance of all ground for scandal by hiring another lodging, in order that before marriage the address of both parties might not be the same. In the illness of Madame R**, too, at Bognor, nothing can, to all appearance, be more straightforward than the Baron’s conduct. He at once proclaims his suspicion of poison, sends for an eminent physician, verifies his doubts, administers the proper remedies, and dismisses the servant by whose fault the attack has been occasioned. Viewed with an eye of suspicion, there is indeed something questionable in the selection of the medical attendant. Why should the Baron refuse to send for either of the local practitioners, both gentlemen of skill and reputation, and insist on calling in a stranger to the place, who in a very few days would leave it, and very probably return no more? Distrust of country doctors, and decided preference for London skill, furnishes us, as usual, with a prompt and plausible reply. It does not, however, exclude the possibility that the expediency of removing as far as possible all evidence of what had passed may have in some degree affected the choice. Be that as it may, this precaution, whether originally for good or for evil, has enabled us to fix with certainty a very important point.
Mrs. Anderton was taken ill, not only with the same symptoms, but at the same time, with Madame R**.
Before proceeding to consider the events which followed, there are one or two points in the history of this first illness of the sisters on which it is needful to remark. The action of these metallic poisons, among which we may undoubtedly rank antimony, is as yet but very little understood. We know, however, from the statements of Professor Taylor, certainly by far the first English authority upon the subject, that peculiarities of constitution, or, as they are termed, “idiosyncracies,” frequently assist or impede to a very extraordinary extent the action of such drugs. The constitution of Madame R** appears to have been thus idiosyncratically disposed to favour the action of antimony. There can be no doubt that the action of the poison upon her system was very greatly in excess of that which under ordinary circumstances would have been expected from a similar dose. The poison, therefore, by whomsoever administered, was not intended to prove fatal, though from the peculiar idiosyncracy of Madame R** it was very nearly doing so.
The narrowness of Madame R**’s escape seems to have struck the Baron, and to have exercised a strong influence over his future proceedings. Whether or not he knew or believed her to be exposed to any peculiar influences which might tend to render her life less secure than that of her delicate and invalid sister, it is impossible positively to say. There was no question, however, that her death before that of Mrs. Anderton would destroy all prospect of his succession to the 25,000l., and with this view he proceeded to take as speedily as possible the necessary steps to secure himself against such an event. The obvious ​course, and indeed that suggested at once by Dr. Jones, was that of assurance, and this course he accordingly adopted, after having previously, by a tour of several months, restored his wife to a state of health in which her life would probably be accepted by the offices concerned. The insurances, therefore, with which we are concerned, were effected in consequence of a previous administration of poison to Madame R**, producing an illness far more serious than could have been anticipated, and accompanied by precisely similar symptoms on the part of her delicate sister, Mrs. Anderton, whose death, if preceding that of Madame R**, would more than double the Baron’s prospect of succession.
Between him, therefore, and the sum of either 25,000l. or 50,000l. there now intervened three lives, those of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton, and of his own wife, Madame R**, and on the order in which they fell depended the amount of his gain by their demise. The death of Mr. Anderton before that of Mrs. Anderton, would open the possibility of a second marriage, from which might arise issue, whose claim would precede his; that of his own wife preceding that of either Mr. or Mrs. Anderton, would destroy altogether his own claim to the larger sum. It was only in the event of Mrs. Anderton’s death being followed first by that of her husband, and afterwards by that of her sister, that the Baron’s entire claim would be secured.
Within one year from the time at which matters assumed this position, these three lives fell in, and in precisely the order in which the Baron would most largely and securely profit by their demise.
We now proceed to examine the circumstances under which they fell.
Immediately on his return to England, and before apparently completing his arrangements with respect to the policies of insurance, the Baron, we find, calls upon Mr. Anderton, and by dint of minute inquiries draws from him the entire history of the attack from which Mrs. Anderton had suffered several months before. Supposing, therefore, that the information was of any practical interest, the Baron was now fully aware of the perfect similarity, both of time and symptom, between the cases of his wife and her sister. It is essential that this should be borne in mind.
He now proceeds to establish himself in lodgings in Russell Place, in a house in which, for five days and every night in the week, he is entirely alone. V. The only other tenant is a medical man, whose visits are confined to a few hours on two days in the week, and who lives at too great a distance to be called in on any sudden emergency. Here he establishes himself upon the first and second floors with a laboratory in a small detached room upon the basement floor, where his chemical experiments can be carried on without inconvenience to the rest of the house. It is essential that the position of this laboratory should be very clearly borne in mind, as it plays a most important part in the story which is now to follow.
In these lodgings, then, Madame R** is again taken ill with a return, though in a greatly mitigated form, of the same symptoms from which she had previously suffered at Bognor. The attack, however, though less violent in its immediate effects, was succeeded at regular intervals of about a fortnight by others of a precisely similar character. And here we arrive at what is at once the most significant, the most extraordinary, and the most questionable of the evidence we have been able to collect.
It appears, then, that upon a night in August, a young man of the name of Aldridge, who, as a matter of special favour, had been taken into the house since the arrival of the Baron, saw Madame R** leave her bed-room, and, apparently in her sleep, walk down the stairs in the dark to the lower part of the house. The room in which the Baron slept was next to hers, and on the wall of that room, projected by the night-lamp burning on the table, the young man saw what seemed to be the shadow of a man watching Madame R** as she went by. He looked again and the shadow was gone—so rapidly that at first he could scarcely believe his eyes, and was only, after consideration, satisfied that it really had been there. He went down to the room, but the Baron was asleep. He told him what had happened to Madame R**, and he at once followed her. Young Aldridge watched him until he had descended the kitchen-stairs and returned, followed closely by the sleep-walker. He then went back to his room, to which the Baron shortly afterwards came to thank him for his warning, and to tell him that, in some freak of slumber, Madame R** had visited the kitchen.
So far the story is simple enough. There is nothing extraordinary in a sick woman of exciteable nerves taking a sudden fit of somnambulism, and walking down even into the kitchen of a house that was not her own. The Baron’s conduct—in all respects but that of the watching shadow—was precisely that which, from a sensible and affectionate husband, might most naturally have been expected. Nor is it very difficult, even setting aside all idea of malice, to set down the shadow portion of the story to a mere freak of imagination on the part of the young man who, though “not drunk,” was nevertheless on his own admission, “perhaps a little excited,” and who had been “drinking a good deal of beer and shandy-gaff.” But the evidence does not end here.
By one of those extraordinary coincidences by which the simple course of ordinary events so often baffles the best laid schemes of crime, there were others in the house, besides the young man Aldridge, who witnessed the movements of the Baron and Madame R**. It so happened that, on the afternoon of that particular day, the woman of the house had hampered the little latch-lock by which young Aldridge usually admitted himself, and, as this occurred late in the day, it is more than probable that the Baron was unaware of it, as also of the fact that in consequence the servant-girl Susan Turner, sat up beyond the usual hour of going to bed for the purpose of letting the young man in. This girl, it seems, had a lover—a stoker on one of the northern lines—and him she appears to have invited to keep her company on her watch. Aldridge returned and went up to bed, but the ​lover—who was to be on duty with his engine at two o’clock, and who was doubtlessly interrupted in a most interesting conversation by the arrival of the lodger—still remained in the kitchen, and was only just leaving it when Madame R** came down stairs. Taking her at first to be the mistress of, the house, and fearful lest the street-lamp gleaming through the glass partition should betray her “young man’s” presence, Susan Turner draws him to the lumber-room, the window of which, it appears, looks into a sort of well between the house and the two rooms built out at the back, after a fashion not unusual in London houses. Into this well, also, immediately opposite to the window of the lumber-room, looks that of the backroom or laboratory, furnished with what the witness describes as a “tin looking-glass,” but which is really one of those metal reflectors, in common use, for increasing the light of rooms in such a position. The distance between the two windows is little more than eight feet. The night was clear, with a bright, full harvest moon, and its rays, thrown by the reflector into the laboratory, made every part of its interior distinctly visible from the lumber-room. The door of the latter room was open, and the staircase illuminated by the Baron’s approaching light. The hiders in the lumber-room could see distinctly the whole proceedings of both Baron and Madame R**, from the time Aldridge lost sight of them to the moment they again emerged into his view.
And this was what they saw:
“Madame R** never went into the kitchen at all;” “she went straight into the laboratory,” and “the Baron watched her as she came out.”
A glance at the place will show the bearing of this evidence and the impossibility of the Baron (who, if he had not been in the kitchen, must at least have thoroughly known the position of his own laboratory) having made any mistake on this point.
What, then, was his motive in thus imposing upon Aldridge, to whose interference he professed himself so much indebted, with this false statement of the place to which Madame R** had been?
There does not seem the slightest reason for discrediting the evidence of these two witnesses. Their story is perfectly simple and coherent. There is neither malice against the Baron nor collusion with Aldridge, in whose case such malice is supposed to exist. The only weak point in their position is the fact, that they were both doing wrong in being in that place at that time; but the admission of this, in truth, rather strengthens than injures the testimony which involves it. We must seek the clue, then, not in their motives, but in those of the Baron. The errand of Madame R**, in her strange expedition, may perhaps afford it. What did she do in the laboratory?
“She drank something from a bottle.” “It smelt and tasted like sherry.” “It was marked VIN. ANT. POT. TART.” That label designates antimonial wine, which is a mixture of sherry and tartar emetic.
Let us see if from this point we can feel our way, as it were, backwards, to the motive for concealment. The life of Madame R** was, as we know, heavily insured. It had already been seriously endangered by the effects of precisely the same drug as that she was now seen to take. If the Baron knew or suspected the motive of her visit, here is at once a motive sufficient, if not perhaps very creditable, for the concealment of a fact, the knowledge of which might very probably lead to difficulty with respect to payment of the policy in case of death.
But here another difficulty meets us. The incident in question occurred at about the middle of the long illness of Madame R**. That illness consisted of a series of attacks, occurring as nearly as possible at intervals of a fortnight, and exhibiting the exact symptoms of the poison here shown to have been taken. One of these attacks followed within a very few hours of the occurrence into which we are examining. Was it the only one of the kind?
The evidence of the night-nurse bears with terrible weight upon this point. Her orders are strict, on no account to close her eyes. Her hours of watch are short, and the repose of the entire day leaves her without the slightest cause for unusual drowsiness. The testimonials of twenty years bear unvarying witness to her care and trustworthiness. Yet every alternate Saturday for eight or ten, or it may even have been nearly twelve weeks, at one regular hour she falls asleep. It is in vain that she watches and fights against it—in vain even that, suspecting “some trick” she on one occasion abstains entirely from food, and drinks nothing but that peculiarly wakeful decoction, strong green tea. On every other night she keeps awake with ease, but surely as the fatal Saturday comes round she again succumbs, and surely as sleep steals over her is it followed by a fresh attack of the symptoms we so plainly recognise. She cannot in any way account for such an extraordinary fatality. She is positive that such a thing never happened to her before. We also are at an equal loss. We can but pause upon the reflection that twice before the periodic drowsiness began, a similarly irresistible sleep had been induced by the so-called mesmeric powers of the Baron himself. And then we pass naturally to her who had been for years habituated to such control, and we cannot but call to mind the statement of Mr. Hands—“I have often willed her (S. Parsons) to go into a dark room and pick up a pin, or some article equally minute.”
And then we again remember the watching shadow on the wall.
And yet, after all, at what have we arrived? Grant that the Baron knew the nature of his wife’s errand in the laboratory; that the singular power—call it what we will—by which he had before in jest compelled the nurse to sleep, was really employed in enabling the somnambulist to elude her watch. Grant even that the pretensions of the mesmerist are true, and that it was in obedience to his direct will that Madame R** acted as she did, we are no nearer a solution than before.
It was not the Baron’s interest that his wife should die.
We must then seek further afield for any explanation of this terrible enigma. Let us see how it ​fared with Mrs. Anderton while these events were passing at her sister’s house.
And here we seem to have another instance of the manner in which the wisest precautions so often turn against those by whom they are taken. III. and V. Admitting that the illness of Madame R** was really caused by criminal means, nothing could be wiser than the precaution which selected for their first essay a night on which they could be tried without fear of observation. Yet this very circumstance enables us to fix a date of the last importance, which without it must have remained uncertain. Madame R**, then, was taken ill on Saturday, the 5th April. On that very night—at, as nearly as can be ascertained, the very same hour, Mrs. Anderton was unaccountably seized with an illness in all respects resembling hers. Like hers, too, the attacks returned at fortnightly intervals: For a few days, on the Baron’s advice, a particular medicine is given, and at first with apparently good effect. At the same date the diary of Dr. Marsden shows a similar amelioration of symptoms in the case of Madame R**. In both cases the amendment is but short, and the disease again pursues its course. The result in both is utter exhaustion. In the case of Madame R** reducing the sufferer to death’s door; in the weaker constitution of her sister terminating in death. Examination is made. The appearances of the body, no less than the symptoms exhibited in life, are all those of antimonial poisoning. No antimony is, however, found; and from this and other circumstances, results a verdict of “Natural Death.” On the 12th October, then, Mrs. Anderton’s story ends.
From that time dates the recovery of Madame R**.
The first life is now removed from between Baron R** and the full sum of 50,000l. Let us examine briefly the circumstances attending the lapse of the second. VI. Here again events each in itself quite simple and natural, combine to form a story fraught with terrible suspicion. I have alluded to the inquest which followed on the death of Mrs. Anderton. That inquiry originated in circumstances which cast upon her husband the entire suspicion of her murder. To whose agency, whether direct or indirect, voluntary or involuntary, is an after question, may every one of these circumstances be traced? Mr. Anderton insists on being the only one from whom the patient shall receive either medicine or food. It is the Baron who applauds and encourages a line of conduct diametrically opposed to his own, and tending more than any other circumstance to fix suspicion on his friend. A remedy is suggested, the recommending of which points strongly to the idea of poison, and it is from the Baron that the suggestion comes. Two papers are found, the one bearing in part the other in full, the name of the poison suspected to have been used. The first of these is brought to light by the Baron himself,—the second is found in a place where he has just been, and by a person whom he has himself despatched to search there for something else. He draws continual attention to that point of exclusive attendance from which suspicion chiefly springs. His replies to Dr. Dodsworth respecting the recommendation of the antimonial antidote are so given as to confirm the worst interpretation to which it had given rise, and even when, on the discovery of the second paper, he advises the nurse that it should be destroyed, he does so in a manner that ensures not only its preservation but its immediate employment in the manner most dangerous to his friend.
The evidence fails. What is the Baron’s connection with the catastrophe that follows? He knows well the accused man’s nervous anxiety for his own good name. He procures, on the ground of his friendly anxiety, the earliest intelligence of his friend’s probable acquittal. He enters that friend’s room to acquaint him with the good news. Returning he takes measures to secure the prisoner thoroughout the night from interruption or interference. In the morning Mr. Anderton is a corpse, and on his pillow is found the phial in which the poison had been contained, and a written statement that the desperate step had been taken in despair of an acquittal. By what marvellous accident was the hopeful news of the chemical investigation thus misinterpreted? By what negligence or connivance was the fatal drug placed within his reach? One thing only we know—
It was the Baron who conveyed the news. It was from his pocket medicine case, left by him within the sick man’s reach, that the poison came.
Thus fell the second of the two lives which stood between the Baron and the full sum of 50,000l. Of this sum the 25,000l. which accrues from the relationship between Mrs. Anderton and Madame R** is already his as soon as claimed, but there is no immediate necessity for the claim to be preferred. He may perhaps have thought it better to wait before making such a claim until the first sensation occasioned by the double deaths through which he inherited had passed away. He may have been merely putting in train some plausible story to account for his only now proclaiming a fact of which he had certainly been aware for at least a year. Whatever his reason, however, he certainly for some weeks after Mr. Anderton’s death made no movement to establish his claim upon the property, and during this time Madame R** was slowly but surely recovering her strength.
But while wisdom thus dictated a policy of delay, the irresistible course of events hurried on the crisis. A letter comes filled with threats of the vengeance of jealous love if its cause be not that night removed. It is but a fragment of that letter that is preserved, but its meaning is clear enough, and it is that under threat of revelation of some capital crime, the connection between himself and Madame R** should be finally brought to an end.
“N’en sais-tu bien le moyen?”
That night the condition is fulfilled. Once more the sleeping lady takes her midnight journey to her husband’s laboratory. Once more her unconscious hand pours out the deadly draught. But this time it is no slow poison that she takes. It is a powerful and burning acid that even as it awakes her from her trance, shrivels her with a horrible and instant death. One shrill and quickly stifled shriek alarms the inmates of the house, ​and when they hurry to the spot they find only a disfigured corpse, lying with bare feet and disordered night dress in the darkness of the stormy November night, and with the fatal glass still clasped in its hand.
My task is done. In possession of the evidence thus placed before you, your judgment of its result will be as good as mine. Link by link you have now been put in possession of the entire chain. Is that chain one of purely accidental coincidences, or does it point with terrible certainty to a series of crimes, in their nature and execution almost too horrible to contemplate? That is the first question to be asked, and it is one to which I confess myself unable to reply. The second is more strange, and perhaps even more difficult still. Supposing the latter to be the case, are crimes thus committed susceptible of proof, or even if proved, are they of a kind for which the criminal can be brought to punishment?