The Notting Hill Mystery

by Charles Felix

  "I. 'But you could not _get nourishment_ so?' "A. 'Yes: _I could getall my system wants._'

  * * * * *

  "_April_ 26_th._--In the evening I kept her asleep one hour, _and tooktea for her._

  "_April_ 27_th._--... I ate dinner and she felt much stronger.

  * * * * *

  "I kept her asleep two hours and a quarter in the morning and one hourin the evening, _eating for her as usual._"

  [Footnote 1: Section II. 2.]

  [Footnote 2: This I find to be the case.--R. H.]

  [Footnote 3: The chemists from whom the Baron obtained his medicines.]

  [Footnote 4: The arrangement alluded to will be seen from theaccompanying plan. The inner partition is entirely of glass, while theouter has a row of large panes along the top.]

  [Footnote 5: In a former portion of the case we are told that thispatient was _clairvoyant_ and could see her own internal condition.--R.H. pard.]

  Section VIII. Conclusion.

  There now only remains for me, in conclusion, to sum up as brieflyand succinctly as possible the evidence contained in the precedingstatements. In so doing, it will be necessary to adopt an arrangementsomewhat different from that which has been hitherto followed. Eachstep of the narrative will therefore be accompanied with a marginalreference to the particular deposition from which it may be taken.

  First then, for what may be called the preliminary portions of theevidence. With these we need here deal but very briefly. They consistalmost entirely of letters furnished by the courtesy of a near relationof the late Mrs. Anderton (I.), 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, undercircumstances of a peculiarly exciting and agitating nature, died inchild-bed. Both Sir Edward Boleton and herself appear to have been ofa nervous temperament, and the effects of these combined influences isshown in the highly nervous and susceptible organisation of the orphangirls, and in a morbid sympathy of constitution, by which each appearedto suffer from any ailment of the other. This remarkable sympathy isvery clearly shown in more than one of the letters I have submittedfor your consideration, and I have numerous others in my possessionwhich, should they be considered insufficient, will place the matter,irregular as it certainly is, beyond the reach of doubt. I must requestyou to bear it particularly and constantly in mind throughout the case.

  Almost from the time of the mother's death, the children were placedin the care of a poor, but respectable woman, at Hastings. Here theyounger, whose constitution appears to have been originally muchstronger than that of her sister, seems to have improved rapidly inhealth, and in so doing to have mastered, in some degree, that morbidsympathy of temperament of which I have spoken, and which in theweaker organisation of her elder sister, still maintained its formerascendency. They were about six years old when, whether through thecarelessness of the nurse or not, is immaterial to us now, the youngerwas lost during a pleasure excursion in the neighbourhood. Everyinquiry was made, and it appeared pretty clear that she had fallen intothe hands of a gang of gipsies, who at that time infested the countryround, but no further trace of her was ever after discovered.

  The elder sister, now left alone, seems to have been watched withredoubled solicitude. There is nothing, however, in the yearsimmediately following Miss C. Boleton's disappearance having any directbearing upon our case, and I have, therefore, confined my extracts fromthe correspondence entrusted to me, to two or three letters from alady in whose charge she was placed at Hampstead, and one from an oldfriend of her mother, from which we gather the fact of her marriage.The latter is chiefly notable as pointing out the nervous and highlysensitive 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 ofa very important fact; namely, that of the liability of Miss Boleton toattacks of illness equally unaccountable and unmanageable, bearing aperfect resemblance to those in which she suffered in her younger dayssympathetically with the ailments of her sister; and, therefore, to benot improbably attributed to a similar cause.

  Thus far for the preliminary portion of the evidence. The seconddivision places before us (II.) certain peculiarities in the marriedlife of Mrs. Anderton; its more especial object, however, being toelucidate the connection between the parties whose history we havehitherto been tracing, and the Baron R**, with whose proceedings we areproperly concerned.

  It appears then, that in all respects but one, the married life of Mr.and Mrs. Anderton was particularly happy. Notwithstanding their retiredand often somewhat nomad life, and the limits necessarily imposedthereby to the formation of friendships, the evidence of their devotedattachment to each other is perfectly overwhelming. I have no lessthan thirty-seven letters from various quarters, all speaking more orless strongly upon this point, but I have thought it better to selectfrom the mass a small but sufficient number, than to overload the casewith unnecessary repetition. In one respect alone their happiness wasincomplete. It was, as had been justly observed by Mrs. Ward, mostunfortunate that the choice of Miss Boleton should have fallen upon agentleman, who however eligible in every other respect, was, from hisextreme constitutional nervousness, so peculiarly ill-adapted for unionwith a lady of such very similar organisation. The connection seems tohave borne its natural fruit in the increased delicacy of both parties,their married life being spent in an almost continual search afterhealth. Among the numerous experiments tried with this object, theyat length appear to have had recourse to mesmerism, becoming finallypatients of Baron R**, a well known professor of that and other kindredimpositions.

  Mrs. Anderton had not been long under his care when the remonstrancesof several friends led to the cessation of the Baron's immediatemanipulations, the mesmeric fluid being now conveyed to the patientthrough the intervention of a third party. Mademoiselle Rosalie, "themedium" thus employed, was a young person regularly retained by BaronR** for that purpose, and of her it is necessary here to say a fewwords.

  She appears to have been about the age of Mrs. Anderton, though lookingperhaps a little older than her years; slight in figure, with darkhair and eyes, and in all respects but one answering precisely to thedescription of that lady's lost sister. The single difference alludedto, that of wide and clumsy feet, is amply accounted for by the natureof her former avocation. She had been for several years a tight-ropedancer, &c., in the employ of a travelling-circus proprietor; who, byhis own account, had purchased her for a trifling sum, of a gang ofgipsies at Lewes, just at the very time when the younger Miss Boletonwas stolen at Hastings by a gang whose course was tracked through Lewesto the westward. Of him she was again purchased by the Baron, whoappears, even at the outset, to have exercised a singular power overher, the fascination of his glance falling on her whilst engaged uponthe stage, having compelled her to stop short in the performance of herpart. There can, I think, be little doubt that this girl Rosalie was infact the lost sister of Mrs. Anderton, and of this we shall find thatthe Baron R** very shortly became cognisant.

  It does not appear that on the first meeting of the sisters he hadany idea of the relationship between them. He was, indeed, perfectlyignorant of the early history of both. The extraordinary sympathytherefore which immediately manifested itself between them was notimprobably 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 theother hand, does this singular sympathy--a sympathy manifested ina precisely similar manner to that known to have existed years agobetween the sisters--appear to have raised any suspicion of the truthin the mind of either Mrs. Anderton or her husband. From the former,indeed, all mention of her early life had been carefully kept till shehad probably almost, if not entirely, forgotten the event, while thelatter merely remembered it as a tale which had l
ong since ceased topossess any present interest.

  The two sisters were thus for several weeks in the closest contact, theeffects of which may or may not have been heightened by the so-calledmesmeric connection between them, before any suspicion of theirrelationship crossed the mind of any one. One evening, however,--andfrom certain peculiar circumstances we are enabled to fix the dateprecisely to the 13th of October, 1854,--the Baron appears beyondall doubt to have become cognisant of the fact. I must request yourparticular attention to the circumstances by which his discovery of itwas attended.

  On that evening the conversation appears to have very naturally turnedupon a certain extraordinary case professed to be reported in a numberof the "Zoist Mesmeric Magazine," published a few days before. Thepretended case was that of a lady suffering from some internal disorderwhich forbade her to swallow any food, and receiving sustenancethrough mesmeric sympathy with the operator, who "_ate for her._" Fromthis extraordinary tale the conversation turned naturally to othermanifestations of constitutional sympathy, as an instance of which Mr.Anderton related the story of Mrs. Anderton's lost sister, and thesingular bond which had existed between them. The conversation appearsto have continued for some time (II., 2.), and in the course of it ajesting remark was made by one of the party in allusion to the storyof eating by deputy, to which I am inclined to look as the key-note ofthis horrible affair.

  "I said," deposes Mr. Morton, "I said _it was lucky for the young womanthat the fellow didn't eat anything unwholesome._"

  From the moment these words were spoken the Baron appears to havedropped out of the conversation altogether. More than this, he wasclearly in a condition of great mental pre-occupation and disturbance.Mr. Morton goes on to describe the singularity of his manner, theletting his cigar expire between his teeth, and the tremulousness ofhis hands, so excessive, that in attempting to re-light it he onlysucceeded in destroying that of his friend. There can, I think, beno doubt whatever that from that moment he believed thoroughly inthe identity of Rosalie with the lost sister of Mrs. Anderton. Whatother ideas the conversation had suggested to him we must endeavour toascertain from the evidence that follows.

  On the morning of the day succeeding that on the evening of whichhe had become convinced of Rosalie's identity, we find Baron R** atDoctors' Commons inquiring into the particulars (II., 5.) of a willby which the sum of 25,000_l_. had been bequeathed, under certainconditions, to the children of Lady Boleton. Under the provisions ofthis will, the girl Rosalie was, after her sister and Mr. Anderton, theheir to this legacy. We need, I think, have no difficulty in connectingthe acquisition of this intelligence with the steps by which it wasimmediately followed. Mr. Anderton at once received an intimation ofthe Baron's approaching departure for the continent, and at the endof the third week from that time leave was taken, and he apparentlystarted upon his journey. In point of fact, however, his plans were ofa very different character. During the three weeks which intervenedbetween his visit to Doctors' Commons and his farewell to Mr. Anderton,there had been advertised in the parish church of Kensington the bannsof marriage between himself and his "medium," Rosalie,--not, indeed,in the names by which they were ordinarily known, and which would veryprobably have excited attention, but in the family name--if so itbe--of the Baron and in that by which Rosalie was originally known whenwith the travelling circus. By what means he prevailed upon his victimto consent to such a step is not important to the matter in hand. Thegeneral tenour of the subsequent evidence shows clearly that it musthave been under some form of compulsion, and, indeed, the unfortunategirl seems to have been made by some means altogether subservient tohis 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, anout-of-the-way little watering-place on the Sussex coast, deserted savefor 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. Beforeendeavouring to investigate the motive of all this mystery, it isnecessary to bear in mind one important fact:--

  _Between the wife of Baron R** and Mr. Wilson's legacy of_ 25,000_l_.,_the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton now alone intervened._

  The first few days of the Baron's stay in Bognor seem to have beendevoted to the search for a servant, he having insisted on the unusualarrangement of himself providing one in the house where he lodged. Itis worthy of note that the one finally selected was in a position,with respect to character, that placed her entirely in her master'spower. It is unfortunate that this same defect of character necessarilylessens the value of evidence from such a source. We must, however,take it for what it is worth, remembering at the same time, that thereis a total absence of any apparent motive, save that of telling thetruth, for the statement she has made.

  It appears, then, from her account, that after trying by every meansto tempt her into some repetition of her former error, the Baron atlast seized upon the pretext of her taking from the breakfast table asingle taste of jam upon her finger, to threaten her with immediate andutter ruin. One only loop-hole was left by which she could escape. Thealternative was, indeed, most ingeniously and delicately veiled underthe pretext of seeking a plausible reason for her dismissal; but, inpoint of fact, it amounted to this, that as a condition of her allegedoffence not being recorded against her, she would own to the commissionof another with which she had nothing whatever to do.

  The offence to which she was falsely to plead guilty was this. On thenight succeeding the commission of the fault of which, such as itwas, she was really guilty, Madame R** was taken suddenly ill. Thesymptoms were those of antimonial poisoning. The presence of antimonyin the stomach was clearly shown. In the presence of the medical manwho had been called in, the girl was taxed by the Baron with havingadministered, by way of a trick, a dose of tartar emetic; and she,in obedience to a strong hint from her master, confessed to thedelinquency, and was thereupon dismissed with a good character in otherrespects. Freed from the dread of exposure, she now flatly denies thewhole affair, both of the trick and of the quarrel which was supposedto have led to it, and I am bound to say, that looking both to externaland 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; foruntil at least the death of Mr. and Mrs. Anderton his interest wasclearly in the life of his wife. It is not, therefore, by any means tobe supposed that he would before that event attempt to poison her. Ofthis mystery, then, it appears that we must seek the solution elsewhere.

  Returning then for a time to Mr. and Mrs. Anderton, we find that thelatter has also suffered from an attack of illness. Comparing herjournal (III.) and the evidence of her doctor, with that given in thecase of Madame R**, it appears that the symptoms were identical inevery respect, with this single but important exception, that in thiscase there is no apparent cause for the attack, nor can any trace ofpoison be found. A little further inquiry, and we arrive at a yet moremysterious coincidence.

  It is a matter of universal experience, that almost the most fatalenemy of crime is over-precaution. In this particular case theprecautions of the Baron R** appear to have been dictated by a skilland forethought almost superhuman, and so admirably have they beentaken, that, save in the concealment of the marriage, it is almostimpossible to recognise in them any sinister motive whatever. Hiscourse with respect to the servant girl, though dictated, as webelieve, by the most criminal designs, is perfectly consistent withmotives of the very highest philanthropy. Even in the concealmentof the marriage, once granting--as I think may very fairly begranted--that such a marriage might be concealed without any necessaryimputation of evil, the means adopted were equally simple, effective,and unblameable. They consisted merely in the use of the real, insteadof the stage names of the contracting parties, and in the very properavoidance of all ground for scandal by hiring another lodging, inorder that before marriage the address of both
parties might not bethe 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 eminentphysician, verifies his doubts, administers the proper remedies, anddismisses the servant by whose fault the attack has been occasioned.Viewed with an eye of suspicion, there is indeed something questionablein the selection of the medical attendant. Why should the Baron refuseto send for either of the local practitioners, both gentlemen of skilland reputation, and insist on calling in a stranger to the place, whoin 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 doesnot, however, exclude the possibility that the expediency of removingas far as possible all evidence of what had passed may have in somedegree affected the choice. Be that as it may, this precaution, whetheroriginally for good or for evil, has enabled us to fix with certainty avery important point.

  _Mrs. Anderton was taken ill, not only with the same symptoms, but atthe same time, with Madame R**._

  Before proceeding to consider the events which followed, there are oneor two points in the history of this first illness of the sisters onwhich it is needful to remark. The action of these metallic poisons,among which we may undoubtedly rank antimony, is as yet but verylittle understood. We know, however, from the statements of ProfessorTaylor,[1] certainly by far the first English authority upon thesubject, that peculiarities of constitution, or, as they are termed,"idiosyncracies," frequently assist or impede to a very extraordinaryextent the action of such drugs. The constitution of Madame R** appearsto have been thus idiosyncratically disposed to favour the action ofantimony. There can be no doubt that the action of the poison uponher system was very greatly in excess of that which under ordinarycircumstances 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 nearlydoing so.