Armadale (95 page)

‘I don't believe she used it, if it did come to her!' exclaimed Mr Bashwood. ‘I believe it was the captain himself who poisoned her husband!'

Bashwood the younger, without noticing the interruption, folded up the Instructions for the Defence, which had now served their purpose; put them back in his bag; and produced a printed pamphlet in their place.

‘Here is one of the published Reports of the Trial,' he said, ‘which you can read at your leisure, if you like. We needn't waste time now by going into details. I have told you already how cleverly her counsel paved his way for treating the charge of murder, as the crowning calamity of the many that had already fallen on an innocent woman. The two legal points relied on for the defence (after this preliminary flourish) were: First, that there was no evidence to connect her with the possession of poison; and, secondly, that the medical witnesses,
⁷
while positively declaring that her husband had died by poison, differed in their conclusions as to the particular drug that had killed him. Both good points, and both well worked; but the evidence on the other side bore down everything before it. The prisoner was proved to have had no less than three excellent reasons for killing her husband. He had treated her with almost unexampled barbarity; he had left her in a will (unrevoked so far as she knew) mistress of a fortune on his death; and she was by her own confession contemplating an elopement with another man. Having set forth these motives, the prosecution next showed by evidence, which was never once shaken on any single point, that the one person in the house who could by any human possibility have administered the poison, was the prisoner at the bar. What could the judge and jury do, with such evidence before them as this? The verdict was Guilty, as a matter of course; and the judge declared that he agreed with it. The female part of the audience was in hysterics; and the male part was not much better. The judge sobbed, and the Bar shuddered. She was sentenced to death in such a scene as had never been previously witnessed in an English Court of Justice. And she is alive and hearty at
the present moment; free to do any mischief she pleases, and to poison at her own entire convenience, any man, woman, or child that happens to stand in her way. A most interesting woman! Keep on good terms with her, my dear sir, whatever you do – for the Law has said to her in the plainest possible English, “My charming friend, I have no terrors
for you
!”'

‘How was she pardoned?' asked Mr Bashwood breathlessly. ‘They told me at the time – but I have forgotten. Was it the Home-Secretary? If it was, I respect the Home-Secretary! I say the Home-Secretary was deserving of his place.'

‘Quite right, old gentleman!' rejoined Bashwood the younger. ‘The Home-Secretary was the obedient humble servant of an enlightened Free Press – and he
was
deserving of his place. Is it possible you don't know how she cheated the gallows? If you don't I must tell you. On the evening of the Trial, two or three of the young Buccaniers of Literature went down to two or three newspaper offices, and wrote two or three heart-rending leading articles on the subject of the proceedings in court. The next morning the public caught light like tinder; and the prisoner was tried over again, before an amateur court of justice, in the columns of the newspapers. All the people who had no personal experience whatever on the subject, seized their pens, and rushed (by kind permission of the editor) into print. Doctors who had
not
attended the sick man, and who had
not
been present at the examination of the body, declared by dozens that he had died a natural death. Barristers without business, who had
not
heard the evidence, attacked the jury who
had
heard it, and judged the Judge, who had sat on the bench before some of them were born. The general public followed the lead of the barristers and the doctors, and the young Buccaniers who had set the thing going. Here was the Law that they all paid to protect them, actually doing its duty in dreadful earnest! Shocking! shocking! The British Public rose to protest as one man against the working of its own machinery; and the Home-Secretary, in a state of distraction, went to the Judge. The Judge held firm. He had said it was the right verdict at the time, and he said so still. “But suppose,” says the Home-Secretary, “that the prosecution had tried some other way of proving her guilty at the trial than the way they did try – what would you and the jury have done then?” Of course it was quite impossible for the Judge to say. This comforted the Home-Secretary, to begin with. And, when he got the Judge's consent, after that, to having the conflict of medical evidence submitted to one great doctor; and when the one great doctor took the merciful view, after expressly stating, in the first instance, that he knew nothing practically
of the merits of the case, the Home-Secretary was perfectly satisfied. The prisoner's death-warrant went into the waste-paper basket; the verdict of the Law was reversed by general acclamation; and the verdict of the newspapers carried the day. But the best of it is to come. You know what happened when the people found themselves with the pet object of their sympathy suddenly cast loose on their hands? A general impression prevailed directly that she was not quite innocent enough, after all, to be let out of prison then and there! Punish her a little – that was the state of the popular feeling – punish her a little, Mr Home-Secretary, on general moral grounds. A small course of gentle legal medicine, if you love us – and then we shall feel perfectly easy on the subject to the end of our days.'

‘Don't joke about it!' cried his father. ‘Don't, don't, don't, Jemmy! Did they try her again? They couldn't! they durs'n't! Nobody can be tried twice over for the same offence.'

‘Pooh! pooh! she could be tried a second time for a second offence,' retorted Bashwood the younger – ‘and tried she was. Luckily for the pacification of the public mind, she had rushed headlong into redressing her own grievances (as women will), when she discovered that her husband had cut her down from a legacy of fifty thousand pounds to a legacy of five thousand, by a stroke of his pen. The day before the Inquest a locked drawer in Mr Waldron's dressing-room table, which contained some valuable jewellery, was discovered to have been opened and emptied – and when the prisoner was committed by the magistrates, the precious stones were found torn out of their settings, and sewn up in her stays. The lady considered it a case of justifiable self-compensation. The Law declared it to be a robbery committed on the executors of the dead man. The lighter offence – which had been passed over, when such a charge as murder was brought against her – was just the thing to revive, to save appearances in the eyes of the public. They had stopped the course of justice, in the case of the prisoner, at one trial; and now all they wanted was to set the course of justice going again, in the case of the prisoner, at another! She was arraigned for the robbery, after having been pardoned for the murder. And, what is more, if her beauty and her misfortunes hadn't made a strong impression on her lawyer, she would not only have had to stand another trial, but would have had even the five thousand pounds, to which she was entitled by the second will, taken away from her, as a felon, by the Crown.'

‘I respect her lawyer! I admire her lawyer!' exclaimed Mr Bashwood. ‘I should like to take his hand, and tell him so.'

‘He wouldn't thank you, if you did,' remarked Bashwood the younger.

‘He is under a comfortable impression that nobody knows how he saved Mrs Waldron's legacy for her but himself.'

‘I beg your pardon, Jemmy,' interposed his father. ‘But don't call her Mrs Waldron. Speak of her, please, by her name when she was innocent and young, and a girl at school. Would you mind, for my sake, calling her Miss Gwilt?'

‘Not I! It makes no difference to me what name I give her. Bother your sentiment! let's get on with the facts. This is what the lawyer did before the second trial came off. He told her she would be found guilty
again
, to a dead certainty. “And this time,” he said, “the public will let the law take its course. Have you got an old friend whom you can trust?” She hadn't such a thing as an old friend in the world. “Very well, then,” says the lawyer, “you must trust me. Sign this paper; and you will have executed a fictitious sale of all your property to myself. When the right time comes, I shall first carefully settle with your husband's executors; and I shall then re-convey the money to you, securing it properly (in case you ever marry again) in your own possession. The Crown, in other transactions of this kind, frequently waives its right of disputing the validity of the sale – and if the Crown is no harder on you than on other people, when you come out of prison you will have your five thousand pounds to begin the world with again.” – Neat of the lawyer, when she was going to be tried for robbing the executors, to put her up to a way of robbing the Crown, wasn't it? Ha! ha! what a world it is!'

The last effort of the son's sarcasm passed unheeded by the father. ‘In prison!' he said to himself. ‘Oh me, after all that misery, in prison again!'

‘Yes,' said Bashwood the younger, rising and stretching himself, ‘that's how it ended. The verdict was Guilty; and the sentence was imprisonment for two years. She served her time; and came out, as well as I can reckon it, about three years since. If you want to know what she did when she recovered her liberty, and how she went on afterwards, I may be able to tell you something about it – say, on another occasion, when you have got an extra note or two in your pocket-book. For the present, all you need know, you do know. There isn't the shadow of a doubt that this fascinating lady has the double slur on her, of having been found guilty of murder, and of having served her term of imprisonment for theft. There's your moneysworth for your money – with the whole of my wonderful knack at stating a case clearly, thrown in for nothing. If you have any gratitude in you, you ought to do something handsome, one of these days, for your son. But for me, I'll tell you what
you would have done, old gentleman. If you could have had your own way, you would have married Miss Gwilt.'

Mr Bashwood rose to his feet; and looked his son steadily in the face.

‘If I could have my own way,' he said, ‘I would marry her now.'

Bashwood the younger started back a step. ‘After all I have told you?' he asked, in the blankest astonishment.

‘After all you have told me.'

‘With the chance of being poisoned, the first time you happened to offend her?'

‘With the chance of being poisoned,' answered Mr Bashwood, ‘in four-and-twenty hours.'

The Spy of the Private Inquiry Office dropped back into his chair, cowed by his father's words and his father's looks.

‘Mad!' he said to himself. ‘Stark mad, by jingo!'

Mr Bashwood looked at his watch, and hurriedly took his hat from a side-table.

‘I should like to hear the rest of it,' he said. ‘I should like to hear every word you have to tell me about her, to the very last. But the time, the dreadful, galloping time, is getting on. For all I know, they may be on their way to be married at this very moment.'

‘What are you going to do?' asked Bashwood the younger, getting between his father and the door.

‘I am going to the hotel,' said the old man, trying to pass him. ‘I am going to see Mr Armadale.'

‘What for?'

‘To tell him everything you have told me.' He paused after making that reply. The terrible smile of triumph which had once already appeared on his face, overspread it again. ‘Mr Armadale is young; Mr Armadale has all his life before him,' he whispered cunningly, with his trembling fingers clutching his son's arm. ‘What doesn't frighten
me
will frighten
him
!'

‘Wait a minute,' said Bashwood the younger. ‘Are you as certain as ever that Mr Armadale is the man?'

‘What man?'

‘The man who is going to marry her.'

‘Yes! yes! yes! Let me go, Jemmy – let me go.'

The Spy set his back against the door, and considered for a moment. Mr Armadale was rich. Mr Armadale (if
he
was not stark mad, too) might be made to put the right money-value on information that saved him from the disgrace of marrying Miss Gwilt. ‘It may be a hundred pounds in my pocket, if I work it myself,' thought Bashwood the
younger. ‘And it won't be a halfpenny if I leave it to my father.' He took up his hat, and his leather bag. ‘Can you carry it all in your own addled old head, daddy?' he asked, with his easiest impudence of manner. ‘Not you! I'll go with you, and help you. What do you think of that?'

The father threw his arms in an ecstasy round the son's neck. ‘I can't help it, Jemmy,' he said, in broken tones. ‘You are so good to me. Take the other note, my dear – I'll manage without it – take the other note.'

The son threw open the door with a flourish; and magnanimously turned his back on the father's offered pocket-book. ‘Hang it, old gentleman, I'm not quite so mercenary as
that
!' he said, with an appearance of the deepest feeling. ‘Put up your pocket-book, and let's be off. – If I took my respected parent's last five-pound note,' he thought to himself, as he led the way downstairs, ‘how do I know he mightn't cry halves when he sees the colour of Mr Armadale's money? – Come along, dad!' he resumed. ‘We'll take a cab and catch the happy bridegroom before he starts for the church!'

They hailed a cab in the street, and started for the hotel which had been the residence of Midwinter and Allan during their stay in London. The instant the door of the vehicle had closed, Mr Bashwood returned to the subject of Miss Gwilt.

‘Tell me the rest,' he said, taking his son's hand, and patting it tenderly. ‘Let's go on talking about her all the way to the hotel. Help me through the time, Jemmy – help me through the time.'