The Notting Hill Mystery

by Charles Warren ADAMS

  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 enquiries 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.

  V.

  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. 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, is 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.

  VI.

  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 bedroom, 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 her’s, and on the wall of that room, projected by the nightlamp 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—or pretended to be—asleep. He told him what had happened to Madame R**, and he at once followed her. 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 excitable 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 put 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 back room 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,’—‘the Baron watched her as she came out.’

  A glance at the place will show the beari
ng 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 the attacks followed within a very few hours of the occurrence into which we are examining. Was it the only occurrence 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 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 it is 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.

  III.

  and

  V.

  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. 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 of 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 her’s. Like her’s, 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 of October, then, Mrs. Anderton’s story ends.

  From that time dates the recovery of Madame R**.

  VI.

  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. 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 enquiry 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 be 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 throughout 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.

  VII.

  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.