Jimmy Latter took it hard. But in the very completeness of the destruction which it brought to all that he had ever believed or thought about Lois there was some hope for the future. No man can cling sentimentally to the memory of a woman who has tried to poison him. The shock of learning what she had done was tremendous. It smashed his married life and its memories so entirely that there was nothing left. Presently, when the dust and fragments had been cleared away, there would be a space on which to build again. Even now, in these first hours, there was an undercurrent of relief. With so much else, the fear that had ridden him was gone. It wasn’t he who had driven Lois to her death.
The inquest opened at four o’clock in the afternoon. The Coroner, old Dr. Summers, handled it very firmly. He had had a session with Chief Inspector Lamb, with whom he had found himself very much in accord. The evidence would be limited to what was strictly necessary, and sensational elements would not be encouraged. A sober jury sat with him— mostly local farmers, with the landlord of the Bull, a middle-aged spinster who bred dogs, and one or two tradesmen thrown in. The village hall was packed—reporters squeezed into a solid mass by sheer pressure of village interest; both moral and physical temperatures high and rising; the latter strongly tinged with varnish and the smell of hot humanity.
Police and medical evidence first. No doubt about the cause of death—morphia. The number of grains stated.
Then Dr. Summers called Jimmy Latter.
“You had been married two years?”
“Yes.”
“You were on good terms with your wife?”
From the other side of the gulf which had opened in his life, Jimmy Latter said,
“Yes.”
“But this week there had been a serious breach?” Dr. Summers settled his pince-nez and said firmly, “I do not propose to enquire any further into this breach, but I feel obliged to ask you whether it was indeed a very serious one.”
Since the whole village already knew from Gladys Marsh that Mrs. Latter had been found by her husband in Mr. Antony’s room in the middle of the night, with Mr. Antony saying no—such a nice gentleman and engaged to Miss Julia—it had quite enough inside knowledge very heartily to endorse Jimmy Latter’s “Yes.” There was a murmur of whispered talk. Dr. Summers quelled it.
“Would you say that the breach was of such a serious nature that it might have led to a separation?”
Jimmy Latter said “Yes.” After which he was taken briefly through the events of Wednesday evening and dismissed.
Julia was called, to describe how she had found Lois Latter in a collapsed condition.
Then Polly Pell.
On this fourth time of telling her story the words came almost of themselves. She described the scene in the bathroom, her voice a child’s voice, low and shy, but quite audible. Perhaps she remembered that on this very platform she had tripped as a fairy in selected scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or stood on guard over a manger, in a long white nightgown and a pair of wings. She had a pretty singing voice, and one year she had sung the Page to the sexton’s Good King Wenceslas. This didn’t frighten her too much, because in private life the sexton was Uncle Fred and she had known everyone in the hall since she was a baby. These memories may have had a supporting influence.
The Coroner told her she was giving her evidence very nicely. She was shown the snuffbox after she had described it, and said at once, “Yes, that’s the one.” At the end he asked her the same question as Miss Silver had done—had she seen Mrs. Latter’s face, had she noticed her expression? She gave the same answer.
“Oh yes, sir. She looked ever so pleased.”
The close air in the hall seemed to stir. Everyone there except the gentlemen of the Press had known Lois Latter, by sight at least. Most of them had spoken to her one way or another. They all knew about the looking-glass walls in her bathroom and bedroom at Latter End, the general verdict being that it wasn’t quite nice. They could all make a picture of her like the picture which Polly had seen reflected from the bathroom wall—the beautiful Mrs. Latter hammering upon a folded paper with the heel of her shoe, and looking “ever so pleased.” To the more imaginative the picture conveyed a rather sinister thrill. There was that stir in the air.
Polly went back to her seat.
The Coroner called Minnie Mercer.
She had no black to wear for Lois Latter, but she had put on the darkest dress she had, the navy cotton which she had been wearing all the summer whenever it was hot enough, and the dark blue straw hat in which the village had seen her in church on every fine Sunday since April. Between hat and dress her face showed so thin and bloodless that the Coroner looked at her with concern. He had been her father’s friend, and there had been a time, some forty years buried in the past, when she used to sit on his knee and feel in his waistcoat pocket for peppermints.
He took her through her story very kindly. The history of the morphia first.
“It was part of your father Dr. Mercer’s stock of drugs?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you keep it?”
“In the medicine-cupboard in my room.”
“Did you keep the cupboard locked?”
“Yes.”
“And where did you keep the key?”
“In my dressing-table drawer.”
Her voice was like her face, quite drained of life and expression, but it was audible.
The Coroner went on.
“Did you notice that the bottle containing the morphia tablets had been moved?”
“Mr. Latter came to ask me for something to help him sleep. The cupboard was open because I had been getting some face-cream out of it. He took up the morphia bottle, and I took it away from him at once and said it was dangerous. I think it was in the front of the shelf when he picked it up, instead of at the back inside a box.”
“You saw Mr. Latter pick it up?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t take anything out of it?”
“Oh, no—he just picked it up. I took it away at once.”
“Did you notice that this bottle was out of its place when you were getting out the face-cream?”
“No. It was on a different shelf, amongst several other small bottles of the same kind. I didn’t notice it till Mr. Latter picked it up.”
“Did you notice anything about the bottle after you had taken it from Mr. Latter?”
“I thought it wasn’t as full as it ought to have been. I couldn’t be sure, because it was a long time since I had looked at it, but I thought it was emptier than it had been.”
“What did you give Mr. Latter to help him to sleep?”
“Two aspirins.”
“You locked the cupboard again after that?”
“Yes.”
“And put the key in the usual place?”
“Yes.”
“Did he see you put it away?”
“Oh no.”
“When did all this take place?”
“On Tuesday evening.”
“That would be rather more than twenty-four hours before Mrs. Latter’s death?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Summers settled his pince-nez.
“We will now come to the events of Wednesday evening. Will you tell us just what you saw and what you did when you came into the drawing-room after supper?”
In the same dead voice she repeated the story which she had told to Lamb that morning. The jury could make their picture of her standing there in the drawing-room doorway to watch Lois Latter tip a white powder from an old French snuffbox into one of the coffee cups upon the tray. They could see the coffee stirred, lump sugar and cognac added, the cup carried over to the table by Jimmy Latter’s chair. They could see the box packed with rose-leaves and slipped into the table drawer.
The hall was dead still. Each of the low words fell into the stillness like a stone falling into water. In the middle of that hot, breathless afternoon more than one person shivered or felt a cold drop run trickling down the spine. They all knew Mr. Jimmy. The older ones had known him for as far away back as he or they could remember. And it was Mr. Jimmy’s wife who had tipped that white powder into the cup and set it down where it would be handy for him to pick it up and drink it.
In the same strange hush they heard Minnie Mercer tell the Coroner, the jury, and all of them there in the hall how she had changed the cups. They all knew Miss Minnie. She had taught their children in Sunday school, she had gone in and out of their houses as a friend ever since she was a child herself. Behind her story there was the life which she had lived before them for eight-and-forty years. The light that beats upon a throne is nothing to the light that beats upon a village. It never entered the head of any of those village people that Miss Minnie’s story was anything but the very simple truth, It did not enter the Coroner’s mind either, but he put a few questions just to make things quite clear to the gentlemen of the Press.
“It didn’t occur to you that the powder which Mrs. Latter was putting into the cup could be anything but sugar?”
“I thought it was sugar, or some sweetening compound— something like saccharin. She went in for slimming treatment sometimes. I thought she was sweetening her own cup—she liked her coffee very sweet.”
“And when she took it over and set it down by Mr. Latter’s chair—what did you think then?”
Her voice faltered for the first time.
“I thought—she was angry with him. I thought she had— done it on purpose. He doesn’t like his coffee with more than one lump in it—that is why I changed the cups.”
“That was your only reason?”
“Yes.”
She was asked to identify the snuffbox.
“It is the one from which you saw the powder tipped into the coffee, and which Mrs. Latter afterwards filled with rose-leaves?”
It lay on the table between them, bright with its silver-gilt and its painted lid—a coquettish French Venus with a blue riband floating and roses in her hair—a laughing Cupid taking aim with a toy bow and arrow. Such a pretty trifle to carry poison.
Minnie looked at it and said, “Yes.”
The police analyst, recalled, deposed to having examined the box, and to having discovered particles of a white powder adhering to the sides and bottom under the dried rose-leaves. Traces of morphia had been found. The powder was identical with specimens from Mrs. Latter’s bathroom.
There were no more witnesses.
The Coroner summed up briskly. The jury retired. The hall broke into sound.
The party from Latter End sat silent whilst the village hummed. They did not even speak to one another. Julia looked once at Minnie, and hoped with all her heart that she wasn’t going to faint. Jimmy Latter looked at no one. He sat on the end seat of the front row with the wall on his left, pitch-pine and sticky with varnish, and his cousin Antony on his right. All that anyone else could see of him was the back of his head, and perhaps a glimpse of ear and cheek. He sat there and looked down at the boarded floor. The boards had sprung a little and there was dust in the cracks. A very small spider came up out of the dust and ran along one of the boards. It ran a few inches and then stopped, crouched down and shamming dead. Jimmy watched it with a strained attention. Would it go on, or would it stay where it was? What made it come out of the crack, and why did it stop and pretend to be dead? What made people do any of the things they did do? What made Lois try to poison him?
The spider moved, ran another inch or two, and went dead again. He went on watching it.
The jury were only out for a quarter of an hour. Their foreman, a big hearty looking farmer, said his say in a very slow, weighty, and deliberate manner. He had a paper in his hand, and he read from it.
“We find that the deceased lady died of morphia poisoning—that the morphia was in the coffee which she prepared for her husband and placed beside his chair—that Miss Mercer exchanged the cups without knowing that there was poison in one of them, and that she is in no way to blame for what happened. And we would like to say that we are quite satisfied that she took all proper precautions about keeping the morphia locked up, and that she is in no way to blame.”
There was a murmur of applause, immediately checked by the Coroner.
“That is a verdict of Accidental Death.”
“Yes, sir. But we want it put on record that there was no one else to blame. And we’d like, if it’s proper, to express our sympathy with Mr. Latter.”
Jimmy Latter got up and went out by the side door. Antony went with him. A moment later the rest of the party followed them. The village of Rayne was left to the discussion of the biggest sensation it had had since Cromwell’s troopers stabled their horses in the church.
Antony came out of the study. He met Minnie and Julia, and was in two minds about delivering his message. She looked as if she had come to the end of her strength, almost to the end of everything. Julia said, “What is it?” and it was to her he spoke.
“He wants to see Minnie—but she doesn’t look fit.” Minnie Mercer straightened herself. When we think we have come to the end, there is always something left. She couldn’t have found it for herself, but she found it for Jimmy. She went into the study and shut the door. He was standing by the window with his back to her. He didn’t turn round. When she had come up to him he moved to make room for her. They sat down side by side upon the window seat. It was some time before he spoke. Whilst that time went by, her fear was passing too. It had tormented her day and night since Lois died—the fear that Jimmy would hate her for what she had done. She had done it innocently, but perhaps he would never be able to forget that she had done it. If he had had the thought, she would have known it, sitting there beside him with the silence round them. She had known him so long and so well, and had loved him so deeply, that he could not have hidden the thought. It came to her with a clear certainty that there was nothing to hide. He was desperately hurt, desperately unhappy. He needed comfort, her poor Jimmy, and he needed her.
He said at last, “It’s a bad business, Min.”
“Yes, my dear.”
After another pause he put out a hand and touched hers.
“You saved my life.”
She couldn’t speak. The touch had been withdrawn at once. After a moment he said,
“I don’t seem to take it in yet. I’ve been a great trouble to everyone. They’ve all been so good to me. Will you tell them, and say I’m going to do my best? Everybody’s been so good.”
“Yes, I’ll tell them.”
He leaned back against the window jamb. She felt that he was relieved—that he had said something that was difficult to say and it had relieved him. She knew as well as if he had put it into words that what he had really said was, “You saved my life. I won’t throw it away.” The most terrible weight of all was lifted from her.
After a little he began to talk about Ronnie Street.
“I’ve told Ellie she can bring him here any time after the funeral. It won’t be too much for you, will it, if Mrs. Huggins comes in every day?”
“No, it won’t be too much. She’s been coming the last few days.”
He rubbed his nose with the old familiar gesture.
“If you want more help, will you arrange about it? You and Ellie mustn’t do too much. Julia said you were doing too much. I want you to arrange about everything just as you used to… You won’t go away, Min?”
“Not if you want me.”
“I’ve always wanted you. I want you to take everything over. I don’t want those people who were coming, the butler and the two maids. Will you see about that—pay them something and say we’re making other arrangements? We don’t want strangers here just now. Only you and Ellie mustn’t do too much—I can’t have that.”
“I’ll see about everything, Jimmy. Connie Traill would come in for an hour or two in the morning if we wanted her. It might be a good thing—until Ronnie is on his feet again. It would give Ellie a rest.”
They slipped into a discussion which was so like old times that both of them were taken back to the days before Lois came.