by Grant Allen
‘Well, he crawled over to the cabinet — the inlaid cabinet by the fireplace: your grace must remember it — I beg your lordship’s pardon — and opened a drawer. The Duchess’s jewel-case was there, as I knew, unlocked. It was the great Amberley jewel-case — not the one where she kept her every-day things — and I’d put it there myself just before I was taken ill, to have it handy in an easy place for Arthur Roper. Lifting the lid, the Duke took out a bottle with a glass stopper that I’d laid in there on purpose among the jewellery: it was a bottle marked “Best French Violet Powder;” but it had a lot of loose little things stuck in among the chalk — earrings with single diamonds in them and such-like small valuables — that I’d put there beforehand so that Arthur might carry them off without much difficulty. The Duke emptied out the violet-powder into the blue paper, diamonds and all, and emptied the stuff in the blue paper into the bottle of violet-powder. He saw the diamonds as he did it, and laughed low again. That made me feel sure he was really mad, and I was alarmed for the Duchess; but I held my peace still, for I knew the two nurses wouldn’t be away from him very much longer.
‘The next thing the Duke did was to shut the drawer firm, and crawl back furtively to the corner where the loose square was up. He’d left it lifted out: now he put back the blue paper, with the diamonds and things inside, and jammed down the square with all his might and main on top of them. As he did so, I think he heard a noise outside. He started, stared around, clapped his hands to his ears, pulled back the corner of the carpet in a very great hurry, and ran for the bed almost as if nothing at all was the matter with him. But he was shivering all over, I could see, and frightfully exhausted. The exertion had killed him. He jumped into bed like mad, pulled the clothes all up over him, lay stiff and stark, and let his head fall back upon the pillow with his eyes shut so that I thought he was dying. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I jumped away from the window and crawled back all on the shudder, meaning to go to the boudoir next door and call the Duchess.
‘When I got to the boudoir, the Duchess was walking up and down, listening, and wringing her hands; and my heart failed me: I was afraid to call to her. She turned, and for a moment I thought she saw me. But she didn’t, I believe; for she started and looked away. I crouched back towards the Duke’s window, and was going to peep in to see more, when suddenly I heard Arthur Roper below whistle twice to me. That meant danger. I was frightened at the whistling, and looked round at once. He was beckoning me to come down. I crawled back to my own house — the Mortimers’, I mean — ran downstairs quickly, and met him at the door, not knowing what was the matter. He had a hansom there waiting. “Jump in, Bess!” he said. “Jump in, right away. If you don’t, we’re lagged! There’s detectives in the Gardens.” I jumped in at once, feeling very ill and weak with exposure to the cold, being convalescent still, and drove off with him at once without any more questions. He took me home where we usually stay; and I found I had a relapse. The fever was upon me in full force again, and I went to bed that minute, wandering in my mind, and pulled down with the typhoid. I was too ill for a week to do anything but lie still and forget myself and everybody else. It wasn’t till the end of a week I could sit up in my bed and read a paper; and then I found out what had been happening meanwhile to the poor dear Duchess.
‘The moment I read what the papers had to say, I saw it all at once: that the powder in the blue paper was morphia; and that the Duke had poisoned himself, and out of mad spite wanted to put it all off upon the innocent Duchess.
‘“Arthur,” I said, “I must get up this minute and go into court, and tell the whole truth of what I’ve seen to the jury.”
‘“Are you mad, Bess,” says he, “that you want to expose us and get us both into prison? Leave it alone, I say, and it’ll all come straight. They’re sure to discover it.”’
And then the poor woman went on to describe in vivid terms her fierce long struggle to get free, and the close watch kept upon her; she told how at last, in despair, she had feigned to be far more ill than she really was, and so had got the watch upon her relaxed a little; how, in an unguarded moment, she had seized the opportunity, slipped on a few clothes, rushed out into the street, and run towards the court, not knowing whether the Duchess had been tried yet or not; how the man Roper, returning, had missed her from her bed, and pursued her almost to the very doors of the court; and how she had arrived there, at last, breathless, ill, and feeble, but resolved to tell the whole truth, as far as in her lay, and save the life of an innocent woman who had helped and friended her.
‘So here I am,’ she cried, ‘and I’ve saved her! I’ve saved her!’
At the close of her strange story, all told with that simple earnestness and directness of wording which is the best guarantee of good faith, not a soul in the court doubted for one moment her startling evidence. Even the blind old judge himself gazed at her somewhat compassionately, as the counsel for the Crown remarked with slow precision, ‘There is one obvious means of testing the truth of this witness’s story, my lord. She says the Duke replaced the blue paper under the loose square of the floor, from which he took the supposed morphia-powder.’
‘He did, my lord!’ the girl cried, turning full upon him from counsel. ‘If your lordship likes, I can go with a policeman and point out the very place on the floor, where it is, to him.’
‘Has a watch been kept upon the room?’ the judge asked, somewhat coldly, turning to the inspector in charge of the case.
‘Yes, my lord, day and night ever since the moment of his grace’s death. Nothing could have been secreted or altered there without our knowledge.’
The judge looked at his watch, and conferred with counsel for the Crown.
‘It’s rather late,’ he mumbled testily; ‘but I suppose all parties concerned would prefer that this case should be completed to-night, without further adjournment. Are you willing, Mr. Harrison, I should send round two policemen by cab, at once, to search the spot indicated?’
‘By all means, if your lordship thinks fit,’ Douglas answered with pleasure.
‘Shall I go with them, my lord?’ Miss Pomeroy asked in an eager tone.
‘Certainly not,’ the judge responded dryly. ‘We will detain you here, witness, for the present, till we’ve ascertained the truth of your story.’
There was a bustle once more. The Crown would defer Elizabeth Pomeroy’s cross-examination till the police reported on the state of the room.
Linda leaned back in her chair wearily. The suspense of the trial was almost over now, and already she felt her character vindicated. But Bertie — the Bertie she knew and almost loved — was gone for ever. In his place, an unspeakable something had burst in upon her life. An awful presence haunted her. She understood at last why that smile of recognition with which he greeted her, as she entered the room after his final dose of morphia, had inexpressibly chilled and frozen the very marrow in her bones. He had smiled to think he was successful in his devilish plot to murder her!
But as the policemen left the court, on their errand of search, Mr. Mitchell Hanbury leaned across from his seat, and whispered once more in Douglas’s ear, ‘Very well planned — very well planned indeed! You couldn’t have brought in your best witness for the defence more effectively or with more dramatic surroundings!’
CHAPTER L.
GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?
As the court waited, somewhat listlessly, for the policemen’s return, one of the nurses came up and spoke a few words under her breath to Douglas, who presently turned to the judge, and asked in a respectful tone, ‘May I put a few more questions to this witness, my lord, bearing upon the facts just detailed to us by Elizabeth Pomeroy?’
‘You may,’ the judge answered grumpily. ‘She’s been sworn already, so no need to re-swear her. Get into the box, witness.’
The nurse stood up in the box once more, and Douglas proceeded to question her on the communication she had just made to him. The woman had three things to say: first, that the window g
iving on the terrace was fastened from inside, both before and after her short absence from the room, so that Elizabeth Pomeroy could not then have got in from outside to secrete the paper; second, that a man was on guard on the landing, so that she could not have come in by the street-door; and third, that the police took possession of the room before she and her companion left it that evening. So that if anything of importance should be found in the Duke’s room, it must certainly have been placed there at or before the time suggested by Elizabeth Pomeroy’s story.
The Crown having refused to cross-examine Miss Pomeroy till the police returned, the court waited on, after this, in rather subdued silence. In an incredibly short time, however, the two men came back, bringing with them into court, amid profound sensation — a concealed something. The senior policeman, with practised familiarity, went into the box at once and was soon sworn. He exhibited the object he had found to the court. The judge examined it curiously, and then passed it on without one word to the attentive jury. It was a large piece of coarse blue paper, doubly and trebly folded, and with a label outside. Within was a quantity of fine white powder, and a number of small objects in pearls and diamonds.
‘What is written on the packet, my lord?’ Douglas inquired anxiously.
The judge examined the words closely. ‘They’re in some foreign language,’ he answered, with judicial vagueness— ‘possibly Norse; but I’m no Scandinavian scholar. The lower words are presumably a proper name, followed by a legend, which may mean “Chemist, Christiania.” However, the interpreter’s in court; he will examine the paper, after the jury have seen it, and translate the words for us.’
The interpreter stepped up, with brisk readiness, and looked at the paper curiously.
‘The words mean,’ he said, ‘“The Powder as before. Poison. Ole Svendssen, Chemist and Druggist to the King, Upper Palace Street, Christiania.”’
‘Will my learned brother cross-examine the witness Elizabeth Pomeroy now?’ the judge said, turning serenely to the senior counsel for the Crown.
Senior counsel for the Crown smiled a smile of conscious self-denial. ‘No, thank you, my lord,’ he said. ‘We will leave the case as it stands, to the jury. Elizabeth Pomeroy’s statement may be taken for what it is worth — backed by this confirmation, such as it is. We don’t desire to comment upon it further than to point out the very singular nature of the witness’s pursuits, and the consequent improbability that her testimony can possess any great or really conclusive value.’
‘You don’t wish to address the jury again, Mr. ... ah ... Harrison?’ the little judge said, more cordially.
‘No, thank you, my lord,’ Douglas answered with a confident smile; ‘like the learned Attorney-General, I hope to leave myself in the hands of the jury.’
The little judge leaned forward, and looked very wise. ‘The evidence just tendered in so irregular a way,’ he observed oracularly, ‘has left me little or nothing to add to the summing-up I have already addressed to you, gentlemen. If you now believe the witness Elizabeth Pomeroy, whose story has certainly been confirmed in one remarkable particular by the police, you will add the weight of her evidence, be it more or less, to the general weight of that which I have previously detailed to you. If, on the contrary, you think, with the learned Attorney-General, her testimony is tainted by her own frank admission of a life of deceit and hardened vice, then you will weigh it well, and allow it such importance as in your opinion may properly attach to it. But I may tell you, gentlemen’ — and the blind old judge braced himself up for a singularly free expression of judicial opinion— ‘I may tell you that the peculiar circumstances under which this woman’s evidence has been given, and her apparently straightforward desire to save what she seems to regard as an innocent life, entitle her testimony in this case, in my judgment, to far more consideration than might under other conditions be reasonably claimed for it. In short, I venture to direct you that the woman’s evidence may fairly be accepted as, in a certain degree, not wholly unworthy of some little credence.’
The jury looked wise, in their turn, and conferred together, in an undertone, for half a second.
‘Perhaps you wish to retire again?’ the little judge asked, peering at them ferret-like.
‘No, no, my lord,’ the foreman answered, with some decision. ‘We are agreed upon our verdict. The evidence just brought forward has contained nothing of any sort that could induce us to alter our opinion.’
‘Very well,’ the little judge responded, leaning back on the bench with a self-satisfied air. ‘We will resume at the point where this very irregularly-tendered evidence for a time interrupted us.’
There was dead silence, as before. Once more the clerk of arraigns spoke out the solemn words: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, do you find the prisoner at the bar, Linda, Duchess of Powysland, guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?’
The foreman of the jury, clearing his throat a second time, read out again from the scrap of paper he held in his hands: ‘We find her not guilty; and we desire, further, to express our unanimous belief that Adalbert Owen Trefaldwyn, Duke of Powysland, contrary to the opinion of the coroner’s jury, died by his own hand, having wilfully and deliberately administered to himself an over-dose of morphia.’
The foreman paused for a second. Then he added, somewhat less formally: ‘That, my lord, was the verdict we had agreed upon, without one dissentient voice, before we heard Elizabeth Pomeroy’s evidence; and Elizabeth Pomeroy’s evidence, I need hardly say, has only confirmed us in it.’
‘This is very irregular,’ the little judge mumbled, half to himself; ‘very irregular indeed — extremely irregular. The jury impanelled to try the accused on the capital charge is taking upon itself the functions of a coroner’s inquest. But under the circumstances I suppose it can’t be helped. And all I have to say myself on the matter is — that I entirely coincide in all your findings.’
In the dock Linda still stood half fainting, and worn out with fatigue. The little judge looked at her hard through those inscrutable spectacles. Then he woke up suddenly to an almost human mood. ‘Your grace is discharged,’ he said, beaming upon her with his small ferret-eyes, ‘and all that now remains for me, madam, is to congratulate you most heartily upon the complete vindication of your character from every charge, direct or indirect, brought against you by the Crown in this unhappy matter. I thoroughly concur in the finding of the jury.’ He paused for a second, and looked hard at her again. ‘Linda, Duchess of Powysland,’ he said once more, ‘you leave this court, as you entered it, a stainless lady. Your counsel and his witnesses have made it abundantly clear to every thinking mind that every count in the indictment preferred against you is utterly unfounded.’
Linda had just strength enough to say, ‘Thank you, my lord, thank you!’ and then she fell back upon a chair half senseless. She was dimly aware of a great crowd of friends pressing anxiously round her, and grasping her hand, and of Cecil’s strong arm supporting her from behind with brotherly affection. Then her eyes closed for a minute or two, and she knew no more. When they opened again, there were two people alone she looked for eagerly in that stilled but attentive crowd. The first was Douglas Harrison; the second was Elizabeth Pomeroy.
Douglas came forward with modest pride, and grasped her hand frankly. She took both his in hers, and held them there long with friendly warmth. ‘I owe you more than my life,’ she said, with tears in her eyes. ‘How can I ever thank you?’
Then she looked round, not less eagerly, for Elizabeth Pomeroy. The poor girl was seated hard by, broken down with shame, now the excitement and interest of the trial were over, with a policeman by her side, who was obviously guarding her.
‘You — you’re not going to use her admissions of guilt against herself, surely!’ Linda cried out, horrified; for, in spite of all, she still liked and befriended the maid who had so silently sympathized with her in her great trouble.
‘Oh, don’t you fear, your grace,’ the man answered respectfully, saluting
as he spoke; ‘she’ll come to no harm. We’ll take care of that. We won’t waste her in prison. She’ll be much too useful to us.’
And so, in a dim, vague way, hardly knowing what took place, Linda felt herself hurried by Cecil to the door, and almost carried to a landau that was in waiting outside; while the crowd in the street, surging violently forward, set up a great cry of ‘Hooray! hooray!’ that was echoed far and near, in a deafening roar; and then Linda knew the mob was cheering her.
CHAPTER LI.
LINDA IN EXILE.
On the rare occasions when the English people change their minds, and make stepping-stones of their own dead selves, they do certainly dance upon them to some tune. So Linda found, to her vast satisfaction, as soon as the great trial was fairly over. The revulsion of public feeling was intense, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, perhaps just a trifle irrational as well. No sooner was it found out that the Duchess hadn’t murdered her husband after all, than she was elevated forthwith into a popular heroine of the first order. Nobody would hear a word of any sort against her character generally. Not only were people convinced that she hadn’t given the Duke morphia, but they were also convinced that her relations with Basil Maclaine were, and must always have been, perfectly innocent. In this, of course, they happened to be right; but the proof they had of it was perhaps a trifle insufficient for the purpose. To believe in a woman’s spotless integrity merely because she hasn’t murdered her husband may be regarded by a severely logical critic as not quite reasonable.
However, the British public, when it leaves one extreme, usually rushes headlong down a steep place into another. The clubs, which three weeks before had so freely indulged in covert sneers at Linda’s expense, now veered round entirely, and were convinced ‘down to the ground’ that that fellow Powysland was ‘a very bad egg,’ and that his conduct to that poor girl he married for her money was ‘simply and solely nothing short of abominable.’ Everybody now accepted Douglas Harrison’s view, that the Duke, driven to desperation by his gambling losses, had deliberately poisoned himself; and that, having once made up his mind so to conduct his exit from life in the fine old ancestral Montgomery fashion, he had further been impelled by a mad impulse of jealousy to throw suspicion on his wife as a means of revenge for her supposed relations with Basil Maclaine. So, an hour after the trial was over, the news-boys in the Strand were shouting merrily, ‘Speshul edishun! The Duchess acquitted! ’Ere y’are! Evenin’ Standard! The defence of the Duchess!’ And the public, which a week before had been all the other way, stood in the streets, with tears of joy running down its collective cheeks, as it read the news of the lady’s safety.
