“ ’Orrible white, he looked, when he came in,” said Mrs. Pettican the cook. “I see him when they sent for me to bring up the ’ot bottles. Three of them, they ’ad, one to his feet and one to his back and the big rubber one to ’is stummick. White and shiverin’, he was, and that dreadful sick, you never would believe. And he groaned pitiful.”
“Green, he looked to me, Cook,” said Hannah Westlock, “or you might perhaps call it a greenish yellow. I thought it was jaundice a-coming on—more like them attacks he had in the Spring.”
“He was a bad colour then,” agreed Mrs. Pettican, “but nothink like to what he was that last time. And the pains and cramps in his legs were agonising. That struck Nurse Williams very forcible—a nice young woman she was, and not stuck up like some as I could name. ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ she said to me, which I call it better manners than callin’ you Cook as they mostly do, as though they paid your wages for the right of callin’ you out of your name—‘Mrs. Pettican,’ said she, ‘never did I see anythink to equal them cramps except in one other case that was the dead spit of this one,’ she said, ‘and you mark my words, Mrs. Pettican, them cramps ain’t there for nothin’. Ah! little did I understand her meanin’ at the time.”
“That’s a regular feature of these arsenical cases, or so his lordship tells me,” replied Bunter. “A very distressing symptom. Had he ever had anything of the sort before?”
“Not what you could call cramps,” said Hannah, “though I remember when he was ill in the Spring he complained of getting the fidgets in the hands and feet. Something like pins and needles, by what I understood him to say. It was a worrit to him, because he was finishing one of his articles in a hurry, and what with that and his eyes being so bad, the writing was a trial to him, poor thing.”
“From what the gentleman for the prosecution said, talking it out with Sir James Lubbock,” said Mr. Bunter, “I gathered that those pins and needles, and bad eyes and so on, were a sign he’d been given arsenic regularly, if I may so phrase it.”
“A dreadful wicked woman she must ’a’ been,” said Mrs. Pettican, “—‘ev another crumpet, do, Mr. Bunter—a-torturin’ of the poor soul that long-winded way. Bashin’ on the ’ed or the ’asty use of a carvin’ knife when roused I can understand, but the ’orrors of slow poisonin’ is the work of a fiend in ’uman form, in my opinion.”
“Fiend is the only word, Mrs. Pettican,” agreed the visitor.
“And the wickedness of it,” said Hannah, “quite apart from the causing of a painful death to a fellow being. Why, it’s only the mercy of Providence we weren’t all brought under suspicion.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Pettican. “Why, when master told us about them diggin’ poor Mr. Boyes up and findin’ him full of that there nasty arsenic, it give me sech a turn, I felt as if the room was a-goin’ round like the gallopin’ ’orses at the roundabouts. ‘Oh, sir!’ I ses, ‘what, in our ’ouse!’ That’s what I ses, and he ses, ‘Mrs. Pettican,’ he ses, ‘I sincerely hope not.’ ”
Mrs. Pettican, having imparted this Macbeth-like flavour to the story, was pleased with it, and added:
“Yes, that’s what I said to ’im. ‘In our ’ouse.’ I said, and I’m sure I never slep’ a wink for three nights afterwards, what with the police and the fright and one thing and another.”
“But of course you had no difficulty in proving that it hadn’t happened in this house?” suggested Bunter. “Miss Westlock gave her evidence so beautifully at the trial, I’m sure she made it clear as clear could be to judge and jury. The judge congratulated you, Miss Westlock, and I’m sure he didn’t say nearly enough—so plainly and well as you spoke up before the whole court.”
“Well, I never was one to be shy,” confessed Hannah, “and then, what with going through it all so careful with the master and then with the police, I knew what the questions would be and was prepared, as you might say.”
“I wonder you could speak so exactly to every little detail, all that time ago,” said Bunter, with admiration.
“Well, you see, Mr. Bunter, the very morning after Mr. Boyes was took ill, master comes down to us and he says, sitting in that chair ever so friendly, just as you might be yourself, ‘I’m afraid Mr. Boyes is very ill,’ he says. ‘He thinks he must have ate something as disagreed with him,’ he says, ‘and perhaps as it might be the chicken. So I want you and Cook,’ he says, ‘to run through with me everything we had for dinner last night to see if we can think what it could have been.’ ‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘I don’t see that Mr. Boyes could have ate anything unwholesome here, for Cook and me had just the same, put aside yourself, sir, and it was all as sweet and good as it could be,’ I said.”
“And I said the same,” said the Cook. “Sech a plain, simple dinner as it was, too—no oysters nor mussels
