Interrogated as to her relations with the prisoner, Mrs. Beauly indignantly denied that she or Mr. Macallan had ever given the deceased lady the slightest cause for jealousy. It was impossible for Mrs. Beauly to leave Scotland, after visiting at the houses of her cousin's neighbors, without also visiting at her cousin's house. To take any other course would have been an act of downright rudeness, and would have excited remark. She did not deny that Mr. Macallan had admired her in the days when they were both single people. But there was no further expression of that feeling when she had married another man, and when he had married another woman. From that time their intercourse was the innocent intercourse of a brother and sister. Mr. Macallan was a gentleman: he knew what was due to his wife and to Mrs.
Beauly--she would not have entered the house if experience had not satisfied her of that. As for the evidence of the under-gardener, it was little better than pure invention. The greater part of the conversation which he had described himself as overhearing had never taken place. The little that was really said (as the man reported it) was said jestingly; and she had checked it immediately--as the witness had himself confessed. For the rest, Mr. Macallan's behavior toward his wife was invariably kind and considerate. He was constantly devising means to alleviate her sufferings from the rheumatic affection which confined her to her bed; he had spoken of her, not once but many times, in terms of the sincerest sympathy. When she ordered her husband and witness to leave the room, on the day of her death, Mr. Macallan said to witness afterward, "We must bear with her jealousy, poor soul: we know that we don't deserve it." In that patient manner he submitted to her infirmities of temper from first to last.
The main interest in the cross-examination of Mrs. Beauly centered in a question which was put at the end. After reminding her that she had given her name, on being sworn, as "Helena Beauly," the Lord Advocate said:
"A letter addressed to the prisoner, and signed 'Helena,' has been read in Court. Look at it, if you please. Are you the writer of that letter?"Before the witness could reply the Dean of Faculty protested against the question. The Judges allowed the protest, and refused to permit the question to be put. Mrs. Beauly thereupon withdrew.
She had betrayed a very perceptible agitation on hearing the letter referred to, and on having it placed in her hands. This exhibition of feeling was variously interpreted among the audience. Upon the whole, however, Mrs. Beauly's evidence was considered to have aided the impression which the mother's evidence had produced in the prisoner's favor.
The next witnesses--both ladies, and both school friends of Mrs.
Eustace Macallan--created a new feeling of interest in Court.
They supplied the missing link in the evidence for the defense.
The first of the ladies declared that she had mentioned arsenic as a means of improving the complexion in conversation with Mrs.
Eustace Macallan. She had never used it herself, but she had read of the practice of eating arsenic among the Styrian peasantry for the purpose of clearing the color, and of producing a general appearance of plumpness and good health. She positively swore that she had related this result of her reading to the deceased lady exactly as she now related it in Court.
The second witness, present at the conversation already mentioned, corroborated the first witness in every particular;and added that she had procured the book relating to the arsenic-eating practices of the Styrian peasantry, and their results, at Mrs. Eustace Macallan's own request. This book she had herself dispatched by post to Mrs. Eustace Macallan at Gleninch.
There was but one assailable p oint in this otherwise conclusive evidence. The cross-examination discovered it.
Both the ladies were asked, in turn, if Mrs. Eustace Macallan had expressed to them, directly or indirectly, any intention of obtaining arsenic, with a view to the improvement of her complexion. In each case the answer to that all-important question was, No. Mrs. Eustace Macallan had heard of the remedy, and had received the book. But of her own intentions in the future she had not said one word. She had begged both the ladies to consider the conversation as strictly private--and there it had ended.
It required no lawyer's eye to discern the fatal defect which was now revealed in the evidence for the defense. Every intelligent person present could see that the prisoner's chance of an honorable acquittal depended on tracing the poison to the possession of his wife--or at least on proving her expressed intention to obtain it. In either of these cases the prisoner's Declaration of his innocence would claim the support of testimony, which, however indirect it might be, no honest and intelligent men would be likely to resist. Was that testimony forthcoming? Was the counsel for the defense not at the end of his resources yet?
The crowded audience waited in breathless expectation for the appearance of the next witness. A whisper went round among certain well-instructed persons that the Court was now to see and hear the prisoner's old friend--already often referred to in the course of the Trial as "Mr. Dexter."After a brief interval of delay there was a sudden commotion among the audience, accompanied by suppressed exclamations of curiosity and surprise. At the same moment the crier summoned the new witness by the extraordinary name of "MISERRIMUS DEXTER"