Chapter XV: Mr. Levison Cross-Examines

The inquest is resumed on the following day at eleven, in a room closely packed with eager spectators, among whom the _élite_ of Redcastle are to be distinguished. The _élite_ are deeply interested in the issue of this inquiry. Have they not taken Sibyl, as it were, to their bosoms, admitted her to those sacred hearths where never lowered the shadow of evil, and is it not incumbent upon her, for their sakes, for their untainted reputes, to clear herself of this hideous charge? Her own shame, her own guilt, her own undeserved agony, if innocent, are of secondary consideration. ‘She has visited _us_!’ cry the _élite_. ‘How dreadful it will be for us if it turns out that she has poisoned her uncle! People will say they met her in _our_ houses. Quite a disgrace to happen to one, dear Mrs. Stormont,’ says Mrs. Groshen. ‘Actually humiliating, my dear,’ replies Mrs. Stormont.

The prevailing opinion in Redcastle is that Sibyl has done the deed. Perhaps had Stephen Trenchard endowed her with a million of money popular feeling might have leaned the other way. It is difficult to suppose that the possessor of a million can err. The property qualification, once necessary to members of Parliament--so many hundred per annum as a pledge of respectability--runs through life. Qualified with a million, no one could have imagined Sibyl a poisoner. But disappointed, deluded, penniless, an abject failure--as much a disappointment to her friends as to herself--Sibyl now appears in the light of a base and insidious schemer, who has well merited the disappointment of her schemes.

And what is this last revelation? asks Redcastle indignantly, when the story of Mr. Secretan’s arrival at the jail with his wife gets, no one knows how, into active circulation,--what is this about a husband? What! She has been deceiving us all this time. She has been parading herself in fine dresses, which may never be paid for, she has been spreading her silken train like a peacock’s tail, and showing herself off in her false colours as an unmarried woman to the detriment of _our_ daughters. She has been exercising her wicked fascinations upon _our_ sons. She has flirted with our husbands even, and has taken us all in with her pretended innocence and affected girlishness.

‘The husband must be as bad as the wife,’ says Redcastle, and various are the speculations and statements as to Mr. Secretan’s character.

The inquest begins, and here he is, standing behind his wife’s chair as she sits in the place of the accused, the focus of every pitiless eye, eyes that have once looked kindly at her, eyes that have admired. There is Fred Stormont, with his mouth open, standing on tiptoe to look over his father’s shoulder, as if he were at a play. Stay, there is one face not quite unpitying. Dr. Mitsand sits yonder near the coroner, grave, watchful, and with a look which Sibyl takes for sympathy.

‘Really, a handsome young man,’ whispers Mrs. Stormont through that thick veil of hers to Mrs. Groshen. ‘He looks like a gentleman, too.’

‘Rather the air of an adventurer, I fancy,’ replies Mrs. Groshen.

The witnesses are examined, and there is much repetition of evidence given on the previous examination. Joel Pilgrim, calm, precise, and faultless of intonation, relates the discovery of Mr. Trenchard’s death.

‘At what hour had you last seen him alive?’ inquires the coroner.

‘At ten o’clock on the previous evening, when I bade him good night.’

‘You had access to him at any hour of the night, I believe?’ interposes Mr. Levison.

Joel looks at the questioner somewhat insolently.

‘Am I to answer this person’s questions?’ he inquires of the coroner.

‘Yes, so long as they are relevant to the case.’

‘I don’t know what you mean by having access,’ answers Joel. ‘Mr. Trenchard’s bedroom door was locked. There was a second door, but that opened on a back landing, and was only used by the butler.’

‘But it was equally convenient for you, had you wanted to see Mr. Trenchard in the night, I think,’ says Mr. Levison.

‘I don’t see that,’ answers Joel, curtly.

‘Don’t you? Allow me to make the fact clearer to you. Here is a little plan of the landing on the back staircase.’ He exhibits a sheet of cartridge paper, with a ground plan in pen and ink. ‘Here are doors numbered 1, 2, 3. No. 1, Mr. Trenchard’s bedroom; No. 2, his dressing-room; No. 3, your bedroom. You perceive that from the secondary door of your bedroom to the secondary door of Mr. Trenchard’s bedroom is but a step.’

‘That is right enough, but I never entered Mr. Trenchard’s room by that secondary door.’

‘What, not upon the night but one before the murder, when you had an important conversation with Mr. Trenchard upon financial matters,--a conversation which was overheard by a witness I shall produce by-and-bye--overheard in consequence of your having left that secondary door ajar?’

Mr. Levison looks fixedly at the witness as he asks this question; Mr. Secretan’s eyes are also turned upon that tawny countenance, and every eye in the court follows those other eyes. A curious change comes over that dusky complexion of Mr. Pilgrim’s. It is not pallor, but rather a deeper tint of olive, which makes him look like a sufferer in an advanced stage of yellow jaundice.

‘Did you make use of that secondary door?’ asks Levison.

‘Never!’ replies the witness, resolutely.

‘And you have no recollection of that particular conversation?’

‘I can recall no particular conversation of the kind. Mr. Trenchard and I had been in business together, and had many conversations upon financial matters.’

‘Was not some of Mr. Trenchard’s capital engaged in your business at the time of his death?’

‘Mr. Trenchard took all he could take out of the business when he left Calcutta.’

‘But he still retained a share in the business, and had a claim to his share of profits arising therefrom?’

‘What can my business relations have to do with this inquiry?’ exclaims Joel, angrily. ‘These questions are simply impertinent. We are here to ascertain the cause of Mr. Trenchard’s death.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ replies Levison, sharply. ‘Medical evidence has established the cause of death. We are here to find out who killed him,--and to get at the murderer we have to discover the motive. I venture to affirm that no motive can be ascribed to the lady now under arrest.’

The name of Levison is such a power in the criminal court that the Redcastle coroner, who might have restricted the inquiries of a lesser man, allows Mr. Levison full licence. The coroner, being a medical man, has not that affection for legal formulas which distinguishes some of his brother officials, and is content to let another man have his share in the development of the case.

Podmore is the next witness examined. He has not forgotten the coroner’s reproof, and has brought his mind to as near an approach to sobriety as it is possible for a brain so steeped in alcohol to arrive at on short notice. He gives pretty much the same evidence as he gave on the previous occasion; and of him Mr. Levison asks no questions.

Next comes a witness whose appearance causes a feeling of compunction even in those minds most set against the accused. This is Jane Faunthorpe, who stands before the assembly in her black frock and black straw hat--cheap mourning provided by the parish doctor’s scanty purse--with her face paler than it has ever been seen before, and her eyelids swollen with weeping.

She has but one feeling, and that is the conviction that Sibyl is to be hung, and that the hanging will be in some measure her own work. She has not forgotten that speech of her uncle’s about her having put a rope round her sister’s neck.

She looks at Sibyl piteously, her eyes brimming with tears, and the corners of her mouth remorsefully depressed.

‘I can’t help it, Sibyl,’ she whispers. ‘It isn’t my fault.’

‘Do you know the nature of an oath, my dear?’ asks the coroner.

‘I know that it is very dreadful, and one mustn’t do it,’ replies the tearful child.

The question is explained to her, and the oath administered, and then comes the ordeal. She is made to tell everything, reluctantly and with many tears. She gives a detailed account of Sibyl’s visit to the surgery, and her own remarks about the odour of bitter almonds.

‘But I know why she took that horrid stuff,’ adds Jane. ‘It wasn’t to poison uncle Trenchard, but to poison herself, poor dear thing, and I know why she wanted to poison herself.’

‘Really, Mr. Coroner,’ interposes Joel, ‘if these childish speculations are to be admitted as evidence----’

‘“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,”’ says the coroner, gravely. ‘Let the little girl tell us her opinion. It can do no harm.’

‘I know that Sibyl was very unhappy,’ pursues Jane, eagerly. ‘Uncle Trenchard wanted her to marry him,’ pointing to Joel.

‘You must not point at people,’ says the coroner. ‘You must tell us whom you mean.’

‘Well, then, Mr. Pilgrim. Uncle Trenchard wanted her to marry Mr. Pilgrim, and she didn’t like him, and couldn’t have married him if she had liked him, because she had a husband already, and there he is,’ pointing to Alexis, ‘and how he can let his wife be taken up for murder is more than I can understand,’ concludes Jane, indignantly.

‘And you think your sister may have taken that poison with an idea of destroying herself?’ inquires the coroner.

‘I’m almost sure she did.’

‘When we have done with these expressions of juvenile opinion I suppose we shall pass on to actual evidence?’ says Joel, with a sneer.

‘You and I are at one as to the object of this inquiry, I hope, Mr. Pilgrim,’ replies the coroner, gravely.

Mr. Levison asks more questions of Jenny, all tending to show Sibyl’s distress of mind at the time of her abstracting the poison, and that this distress was occasioned by her uncle’s endeavour to force her into a marriage with his friend.

‘It was quite dreadful at the last,’ says Jane. ‘Things were to be huddled up anyhow. She was to be married after a few days’ notice, without a single bridesmaid, or a wedding dress, or anything, and then to go out to India. And she had a husband already, and so what could she do but poison herself or run away?’

After this, Jenny is dismissed, and retires weeping. On the whole she has made an impression in Sibyl’s favour, except upon some of the feminine members of the audience, Mrs. Stormont in particular, who whispers to Mrs. Groshen,--

‘That girl is a mass of deception;’ to which the banker’s wife nods acquiescence, though not very clear as to whether ‘that girl’ means Sibyl or Jenny.

Sibyl keeps her seat meanwhile, pale but very calm. She gives an upward look at her husband now and then in the course of the proceedings, a look that is full of trustful affection, and which goes straight to the heart of Sir Wilford Cardonnel, who surveys the scene from the back of the crowd at the other side of the room. Sir Wilford would give much to be in Mr. Secretan’s place, ay, although that awful suspicion hung over his wife. The possibility of Sibyl’s guilt has never entered his mind, although Phœbe and Lavinia have been loud in their denunciations, and have gone so far as to say that they saw ‘secret poisoner’ written upon Miss Faunthorpe’s countenance while she was staying at the How. Loud will be their self-congratulations and crowings by-and-bye when they hear that this chosen of their brother’s was a married woman all the while, and that poor Wilford has been deluded by a designing adventuress. They are not present at this examination. They would not degrade themselves by being interested in this business. It is all very well for the town to be in a fever of curiosity. The county sits aloof amidst its gardens and stables, and poor schools, and vested interests, and can afford to let the topic of the day go by.

After Jenny’s examination the coroner adjourns the inquiry, with a view to obtaining additional evidence. But before this adjournment the coroner and Mr. Levison talk confidentially together for some minutes, and it is clear to every one present that the additional evidence will be given by witnesses suggested by Mr. Levison,--witnesses for the defence.

The suspended inquiry closes somewhat abruptly as it seems to the audience, and there is a sense of disappointment at this unfinished condition of things.

Alexis leaves the court full of anxiety, yet more hopeful than he had been before the inquest. He has seen that curious change in Joel Pilgrim’s countenance when pressed by Mr. Levison’s questions, and he is convinced that Joel Pilgrim is in some manner concerned in the murder.

He accompanies Sibyl back to the jail, and then returns to the hotel to meet his legal adviser, eager to know what Mr. Levison has to say of the day’s work.

‘Well,’ he asks as soon as they are closeted together, ‘what do you think of Joel Pilgrim?’

‘I think he did the trick,’ replies Mr. Levison after one of his long pauses, which are aggravating to a man as anxious as Alexis, ‘and I think he’ll bolt.’

‘Bolt?’

‘Yes. Try to get out of the country. My questions hit him hard. He sees the game is up. The case is simple enough. The old man wanted to wring money out of him, a lump of money, and he was under the old man’s thumb in some way. The old man could wind up his business--had a bill of sale or partnership deed that gave him unlimited power, and threatened to crush Pilgrim unless the money was forthcoming. And not being able to get the money, Mr. Pilgrim took the easiest way out of the difficulty by giving his partner a dose of prussic acid.’

‘He must have known that detection was inevitable.’

‘I’m not so sure of that. There’s a great deal of ignorance in this enlightened age of ours. This man has been brought up in the East, where crime of this kind is commoner and easier than it is here. He may not be very well posted in English law or English customs. He may have thought that in a sleepy little town like this Redcastle no inquiry would have been made as to the cause of an old man’s death. He was ailing and he died, and there an end; or he may have thought that the death would have been put down to suicide; or, supposing him to be a very bad lot, he may have intended from the outset to lay the crime at your wife’s door. He knew of her possession of that prussic acid.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘From her own lips, when I talked this matter over with her half an hour before the inquest. She had shown him the bottle of poison, and threatened to kill herself if he molested her with such attentions as he might have thought he had a right to pay to his affianced wife. She let him know that she had the poison in her possession, and then in the hurry of her flight she forgot the existence of the bottle, and left it, she does not remember where. It was found in her work-basket, where no doubt he put it when he had used its contents.’

‘Might not just the same thing have been done by Podmore?’

‘How was Podmore to know that your wife had that bottle in her possession? or granted that he did know it, I don’t see his motive.’

‘Servants have murdered their masters for the sake of plunder, or to come into the possession of a legacy.’

‘True, but I don’t think Podmore is the man. I have had the two men under my eye, and have taken my measure of both.’

‘What are we to do if Pilgrim makes a bolt?’

‘Stop him. I’ve taken measures for that already. I telegraphed to Scotland Yard for a man I can depend upon. He came down by the first train this morning, and Mr. Pilgrim is under that man’s surveillance. He’ll play with him as a clever angler plays with his fish, and if it’s to be done, he’ll land him. But we want the bolt to be decided, we want Pilgrim to throw up the sponge. An attempt to get away may help us to fix him with the fact, for you see the case is a very difficult one. We have to get that prussic acid bottle, known to be in your wife’s possession, transferred to the hands of Pilgrim. It’s not enough for us to show that there was sufficient motive for his putting the old man out of the way, we must show that he actually did the deed.’

‘I don’t see how it is to be done,’ says Alexis despondingly.

‘No more do I, just at present.’

‘Do you think the jury were favourably impressed as regards my wife by to-day’s examination?’

‘Well, yes; I should say rather favourably than otherwise. Your wife is very handsome, you see, and beauty has a great influence upon juries. Then that little girl’s evidence, though it was awkward as to the possession of the poison, was good in some points. Children are capital witnesses if you work them carefully. They always excite sympathy. The little girl suggested a motive for Mrs. Secretan’s securing the poison--suicide--persecuted, unprotected, and so on. That idea fits in with her flight from Redcastle. Yes, I think on the whole the little girl’s evidence was good.’

It is seven o’clock by this time, and Mr. Levison is ready for his dinner, a substantial fact in the day which he is not inclined to ignore, even though a client’s life and fair name tremble in the balance. The two gentlemen dine together, Alexis too anxious to eat, a condition of things which Mr. Levison severely reproves.

‘If you want to see your wife safely through this business you must begin by taking care of yourself, Mr. Secretan,’ says the lawyer, helping himself to a second supply of fish. ‘This salmon is the finest I have ever eaten in this part of England. Try a little bit of the back.’

But salmon cannot tempt Alexis, who is full of anxieties this evening.

The post has just brought a letter from Dick, enclosing another from Linda Challice, and telling him that the little boy has arrived at the Grange.

‘He’s a dear little fellow,’ writes Dick, ‘but he frets a good deal about Miss Challice, and it’s as much as the maid-servant and I can do to comfort him. We’ve found a pony for him, and we are teaching him to ride up and down the meadow, which we find very consoling. He laughs and enjoys himself very much during the ride, but when it is all over he still cries for mammie. I am afraid that in the process of consolation we have given him rather more strawberries and other fruit than may be quite advisable. I dare say when you come back he will speedily reconcile himself to his new home. He is to go and see grandpapa Benfield on Sunday afternoon. Miss Challice has gone to the south of France on a sketching tour. I dare say she has told you all about it in her letter.’

This is rather startling news to receive at such a time. His boy at home, Linda gone. He hastens to read her letter.

‘DEAR MR. SECRETAN,

‘A little quiet reflection has convinced me that you, and you
alone, have a right to the custody of my darling Trot. Providence
brought him to our home. Providence brought you there to claim
your own. What can I wish for him better than a happy home and
his father’s love? Parting with him is a wrench that must almost
break my heart, but the pain would be just the same let the
parting come when it might. Knowing this, I have made up my mind
to give him up at once, and send him to you this day.

‘In order that I may not feel the loss of my darling quite so
keenly as I must feel it if I stayed in the home that he has
brightened, I have determined to go abroad for a short time. I
am going to Cannes, to an old lady, an aunt of my father’s, who
keeps a boarding-house there. I shall be enabled to practise my
favourite art of landscape painting among strange scenes, and the
change will be altogether an advantage to me. Of course you will
understand that I shall not stay too long away from my dear old
grandfather.

‘Good-bye, dear Mr. Secretan; may my darling Trot be as happy as
I wish him, and a source of unfailing happiness to you. I shall
expect to see him grown quite a big boy when I come back to
Dorley.

‘Very sincerely yours,
‘LINDA CHALLICE.’

Alexis folds up the letter with a sigh. So ends his brief romance of Dorley Mill. That Linda has been dearer to him than she should have been he knows but too well. That her heart has been touched by some feeling warmer than pity for a helpless invalid he more than half suspects; but he has never harboured one dishonourable feeling, he has never cherished one guilty wish, and he feels that in thus leaving Dorley for a little while Linda has shown herself as wise as she is good. Pity for his wife’s most pitiable condition has strangled that unpermitted love in its birth. He can think of Linda now with a pathetic tenderness hardly akin to pain, as of one he has loved and lost long ago.

He answers Dick’s letter before he leaves the hotel, and gives him a string of directions about Trot. The things that are to be done, and the things that are to be left undone. No mother writing about her firstborn could be more careful. He posts this letter himself on his way to the jail.

He spends a quiet hour with Sibyl, but says not a word about his boy. He cannot bring himself to talk of Trot within those walls. It will be time enough when Sibyl is free from this horrible suspicion, and he can take her to Cheswold Grange.