“ ‘It certainly did seem to me at times,’ he at last reluctantly admitted, ‘that my wife did not seem quite herself. She used to be very gay and bright, and lately I often saw her in the evening sitting, as if brooding over some matters, which evidently she did not care to communicate to me.’
“Still the coroner insisted, and suggested the small bottle.
“ ‘I know, I know,’ replied the young man, with a short, heavy sigh. ‘You mean—the question of suicide—I cannot understand it at all—it seems so sudden and so terrible—she certainly had seemed listless and troubled lately—but only at times—and yesterday morning, when I went to business, she appeared quite herself again, and I suggested that we should go to the opera in the evening. She was delighted, I know, and told me she would do some shopping, and pay a few calls in the afternoon.’
“ ‘Do you know at all where she intended to go when she got into the Underground Railway?’
“ ‘Well, not with certainty. You see, she may have meant to get out at Baker Street, and go down to Bond Street to do her shopping. Then, again, she sometimes goes to a shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in which case she would take a ticket to Aldersgate Street; but I cannot say.’
“ ‘Now, Mr. Hazeldene,’ said the coroner at last very kindly, ‘will you try to tell me if there was anything in Mrs. Hazeldene’s life which you know of, and which might in some measure explain the cause of the distressed state of mind, which you yourself had noticed? Did there exist any financial difficulty which might have preyed upon Mrs. Hazeldene’s mind; was there any friend—to whose intercourse with Mrs. Hazeldene—you—er—at any time took exception? In fact,’ added the coroner, as if thankful that he had got over an unpleasant moment, ‘can you give me the slightest indication which would tend to confirm the suspicion that the unfortunate lady, in a moment of mental anxiety or derangement, may have wished to take her own life?’
“There was silence in the court for a few moments. Mr. Hazeldene seemed to everyone there present to be labouring under some terrible moral doubt. He looked very pale and wretched, and twice attempted to speak before he at last said in scarcely audible tones:
“ ‘No; there were no financial difficulties of any sort. My wife had an independent fortune of her own—she had no extravagant tastes—’
“ ‘Nor any friend you at any time objected to?’ insisted the coroner.
“ ‘Nor any friend, I—at any time objected to,’ stammered the unfortunate young man, evidently speaking with an effort.
“I was present at the inquest,” resumed the man in the corner, after he had drunk a glass of milk and ordered another, “and I can assure you that the most obtuse person there plainly realized that Mr. Hazeldene was telling a lie. It was pretty plain to the meanest intelligence that the unfortunate lady had not fallen into a state of morbid dejection for nothing, and that perhaps there existed a third person who could throw more light on her strange and sudden death than the unhappy, bereaved young widower.
“That the death was more mysterious even than it had at first appeared became very soon apparent. You read the case at the time, no doubt, and must remember the excitement in the public mind caused by the evidence of the two doctors. Dr. Arthur Jones, the lady’s usual medical man, who had attended her in a last very slight illness, and who had seen her in a professional capacity fairly recently, declared most emphatically that Mrs. Hazeldene suffered from no organic complaint which could possibly have been the cause of sudden death. Moreover, he had assisted Mr. Andrew Thornton, the district medical officer, in making a postmortem examination, and together they had come to the conclusion that death was due to the action of prussic acid, which had caused instantaneous failure of the heart, but how the drug had been administered neither he nor his colleague were at present able to state.
“ ‘Do I understand, then, Dr. Jones, that the deceased died, poisoned with prussic acid?’
“ ‘Such is my opinion,’ replied the doctor.
“ ‘Did the bottle found in her satchel contain prussic acid?’
“ ‘It had contained some at one time, certainly.’
“ ‘In your opinion, then, the lady caused her own death by taking a dose of that drug?’
“ ‘Pardon me, I never suggested such a thing; the lady died poisoned by the drug, but how the drug was administered we cannot say. By injection of some sort, certainly. The drug certainly was not swallowed; there was not a vestige of it in the stomach.’
“ ‘Yes,’ added the doctor in reply to another question from the coroner, ‘death had probably followed the injection in this case almost immediately; say within a couple of minutes, or perhaps three. It was quite possible that the body would not have more than one quick and sudden convulsion, perhaps not that; death in such cases is absolutely sudden and crushing.’
“I don’t think that at the time anyone in the room realized how important the doctor’s statement was, a statement which, by the way, was confirmed in all its details by the district medical officer, who had conducted the postmortem. Mrs. Hazeldene had died suddenly from an injection of prussic acid, administered no one knew how or when. She had been travelling in a first-class railway carriage in a busy time of the day. That young and elegant woman must have had singular nerve and coolness to go through the process of a self-inflicted injection of a deadly poison in the presence of perhaps two or three other persons.
“Mind you, when I say that no one there realized the importance of the doctor’s statement at that moment, I am wrong; there were three persons, who fully understood at once the gravity of the situation, and
