Lynn Shepherd - Murder at Mansfield Park

He had hoped to shock the man out of his timid complacency, and his words had their effect — though not, at first, on the apothecary.

"What do you mean, sir?" cried Mrs Baddeley in terror, rising unsteadily from her chair. "Do you talk of poison ? And in this house? The poor girl has had nothing but Mr Gilbert’s cordial, administered with my own hands."

"That may very well be the case," said Maddox, striding to the table of medicines, and beginning to examine them. "But are you in a position to swear that there was never a moment — never a single moment — in the last two days, when Miss Julia has been left alone?"

Mrs Baddeley flushed, and the two women exchanged a glance.

"I see you cannot," continued Maddox. "And here, I believe, is the result. This bottle breathes faintly of laudanum. Mr Phillips — your opinion, if you please."

The apothecary came forward, and lifted the bottle to his nose, before looking up with an expression of horror. "This is most alarming — someone has clearly tampered with the cordial. Heaven knows what Mr Gilbert will have to say to this — "

"Your efforts would be better directed to assisting your patient, Mr Phillips. Mrs Baddeley, do you happen to have a supply of ipecacuanha in the house? It may serve, as an emetic."

"I believe so, sir. It is long since I have had need of that evil physic, but there may still be a small quantity in the chest in my room. I will need to fetch the key."

"Then if you feel strong enough, I would ask you to make haste there with Mr Phillips, so that he may make up a tincture."

"Mrs Baddeley is not well, sir," intervened Miss Crawford, as the door closed behind them. "I know the chest to which she refers, and could just as easily have gone in her place."

"I wished to speak to you alone, Miss Crawford," said Maddox, "and prepare you for what is to come. Once the emetic has taken effect, we must try to get Miss Julia from her bed, and revive her a little by moving her about the room. With luck, we may prevent the onset of the final stupor. But it will not be an easy task, and may tax even your strength and fortitude. If you do not feel yourself equal to it, I will send for one of the servants, but, for reasons that will no doubt become clear to you when you have had time to reflect, I would prefer to keep the matter between our four selves, at least for the moment."

She did not answer at once, and when he turned his eyes towards her white and horrified face, he perceived that she was already blaming herself. She had administered the last doses of the cordial; she — all unwitting — had therefore been the purveyor of the poison; how she might feel if the girl were to die, he had not, then, the energy to contemplate.

He did not think it likely that either of them would forget the night they endured together, at Julia Bertram’s bed-side. The darkness without was nothing to the grim work they undertook within. The ipecacuanha brought upon such violent reachings as seemed to tear the girl’s frail constitution in pieces, and more than once he wondered whether the cure might not be more deadly than the malady, and he would prove, at the last, to be a murderer, not a saviour. He saw, too, that Mary Crawford was beset by doubts of a similar melancholy order, but she never uttered a word of doubt or misgiving, and directed her efforts to assisting Mr Phillips, and accomplishing the charge before them. And it was a soul-harrowing task; the reachings were soon followed by a foul-smelling vomit, and a sudden gush of liquid smelling strongly of laudanum, and even when the basins had been removed, and the patient cleansed, there was no possibility of rest. Knowing the state of prostration which would necessarily follow, and the stimulant measures necessary to counter it, if death were to be averted, Maddox had them take her bodily from the bed, and toil hour after hour by turns, half-carrying, half-dragging her cold and insensible body about the room.

As the dawn rose behind Sir Thomas’s woods, the two women began to fancy there was some slight improvement in the girl’s pulse: they waited, watched, and examined it again and again, and when the first rays of sunlight revealed a lightening of the venous darkness that had flooded her face, they dared at last to hope that she might be out of danger. Even Mr Phillips acknowledged a temporary revival, and ventured to give encouraging assurances, but Maddox was not so sanguine; he had seen this flattering symptom before, and knew that all too often it proved to be but the harbinger of a final and more fatal crisis; he did his best to keep the women from indulging the expectation of an amendment that might never come, but he could not dissuade them. Within the hour the girl’s breathing began to slow, until there was a considerable interval between the successive inspirations, and a cold sweat had broken out over her body; and then the pulse that had shewn such a decided improvement began to diminish gradually in fullness and strength. Mrs Baddeley could not be shaken from the hopes that had been so cruelly raised, but Maddox knew that they had laboured in vain, and he saw that Mary Crawford knew it too.

Julia Bertram died at exactly fifteen minutes after five o’clock, as by her watch on the table.

Mrs Baddeley burst at once into a torrent of grief, kissing the girl’s hands, and raising them to her own face, and sighing as if her heart would burst. "I never thought to see her depart this world before me — I used to dance her on my knee when she was a tiny child, and I thought one day I would do the same with her own babes, when she became a wife. But that will never be. Oh my sweet, sweet lady!" she sobbed, murmuring some other words, which her tears made inarticulate. And then, as if recollecting herself, "Forgive me, sir. I am quite overcome, as you would be yourself if you had known the poor dear young lady as I did, and as Miss Crawford did. And after all the other terrible things to have befallen this family — what will her ladyship and Mr Bertram have to say? And poor Sir Thomas, when he returns?"

"As to that, I will answer," said Maddox gently, raising her to her feet. "You would do best to take some rest and endeavour to restore your enfeebled spirits. I will have them send up chocolate and something nourishing to eat, but I charge you to speak to no-one — not even your husband — of what has occurred here this night, and remain in your room until I send for you."

Mr Phillips was not long in following the housekeeper from the room, and as he prepared to depart, Maddox laid upon him the same injunction with which he had dismissed Mrs Baddeley.

"You will appreciate that I must demand absolute secrecy as to the true cause of this piteous event. As far as the family are concerned, for the moment, this was merely the sad culmination of many weeks of previous indisposition.When the time is right, and only then, I will divulge the truth.You know, as well as I do, Mr Phillips, that the contamination of that cordial was calculated and deliberate, and that being so, I now have another murder to resolve at Mansfield Park, and by the same hand as the first. I must condition for the broadest possible freedom of movement and decision if I am to find the man responsible, and bring him to justice. I trust we understand one another?"

Mr Phillips nodded, and with a curt bow, took his leave. Maddox turned to Mary Crawford, who was sitting silently in the window-seat.

"And you, Miss Crawford? Do you agree to the same terms?"

She said nothing, and fixed her eyes instead on the sunlight now streaming across the lawns, and touching the woods with gold. It occurred to him that the repugnance he had seen in her countenance the evening before, when he had first entered the room, and which had vanished in the face of the far more pressing need to sink their differences for the sake of her friend, had now returned with renewed vigour. There was something else, too, beyond her immediate and understandable anguish, to which he could not yet put a name; but whatever had occasioned it, there were questions he would have to ask, and they could not wait.