Christmas Day came and to all appearances the family was united. Chantrelle opened a bottle of champagne for dinner, and sent his wife and the two boys to the theater. He gave them money to take a cab home.
On New Year’s Day Mrs. Chantrelle gave Mary Byrne a holiday, and Mary was out until about ten o’clock. When she came back she found her mistress in bed with the baby, and complaining of feeling ill.
She had always had good health, and the servant was surprised. Elizabeth asked Mary to give her some lemonade from a glass standing by the bed, and a piece of orange, and the servant did as she was asked and left her mistress. The gas was burning halfway up as usual. It was kept so all night.
A Smell of Gas
The servant heard nothing more during the night except the hushing of the baby by Master Eugene, which showed that Chantrelle had removed the baby from his wife’s room and taken it to his own which he shared with the two boys. The servant’s bedroom was next to that occupied by Chantrelle.
Between six and seven Mary Byrne rose, and as she was going downstairs to light the kitchen fire heard a strange sound from her mistress’s bedroom.
The door was open and she looked in, and then went to the bed, and found Elizabeth unconscious and gasping. The gas was out, turned off, for there was no smell of gas in the room or elsewhere.
She ran into Chantrelle’s bedroom and roused him. He took some time to come and she stood by her mistress’s bed till he did come. She had told him his wife could not speak. Chantrelle bent over the bed. “Lizzie, what is wrong? Can’t you speak?” It was the first time Mary had heard Chantrelle call his wife by name. He usually addressed her as madame.
He stood there, and then sent the servant to his own room saying he thought he heard the baby cry and she had better go and see what was the matter. She found the baby asleep and came back to the bedroom, just in time to see Chantrelle moving away from the window.
In a few minutes he asked her if she did not feel a smell of gas. She said she felt no smell, but soon afterward there was a strong smell of gas and she ran down and turned the gas off at the meter.
Indicted for Murder
Chantrelle who was a doctor in all but the possession of a degree, and prescribed for a number of private patients, mostly French people, dressed hastily and went out for a registered doctor. This was Dr. Carmichael who accepted Chantrelle’s statement that his wife was suffering from gas poisoning. Carmichael set two assistants to giving artificial respiration, and called in Dr. Littlejohn, medical officer of the city, and Elizabeth was removed to Edinburgh Infirmary.
There Professor Maclagan, a poisons expert, came to the conclusion that the symptoms indicated not gas, but narcotic poisoning.
Elizabeth Chantrelle died that afternoon without regaining consciousness, leaving three children motherless. That which she had suffered and endured for, the bringing up and safeguarding of her children had been cut short by the hand of the man who should have shared that burden of love.
Maclagan had declared on first examination that he did not think it was a case of gas poisoning, but one of a narcotic poison, such as opium or morphia.
The post-mortem failed to show the presence of any narcotic poison, nor was there any signs of gas poison, no taint in the breath when alive, or taint in the body when opened after death.
Still the speedy absorption of narcotic poison might have obliterated all trace of it within some hours after administration. Chemical analysis yielded negative results.
This was rather a setback, but Mary Byrne directed attention to the night dress and the sheets used by her mistress. On them were stains of matter which had escaped from Mrs. Chantrelle’s mouth.
These articles were submitte to Maclagan, Littlejohn and two other experts, who found unmistakable traces of opium. Chantrelle had a whole drug store in a closet, including extract of opium. He had bought a drachm of extract of opium on November 29.
Opium mixed rapidly with lemonade. The bitter taste was slight and covered by the taste of the lemonade. Opium could easily be conveyed in a lift of orange.
On the day on which Elizabeth Chantrelle was laid to rest, a funeral at which Chantrelle showed himself with tear-stained face, two men stepped up to him, and told him he was under arrest, and he was conveyed to Calton jail.
The indictment read that he had murdered his wife within his dwelling house in George Street, Edinburgh, by tire administration of opium in lemonade and orange.
“She Was Funny!”
Three days later he made a declaration.
He was forty-three years old. He denied that he had administered poison of any sort to his wife. She was very seldom ill, and never had any serious ailment. When she was sick he prescribed for her and always put her right. Upon the whole they lived happily.
He then made statements damaging to Elizabeth, no longer there to defend herself.
“My wife had her peculiarities. I do not know whether she thought I was not sufficiently attentive to her. I was as attentive as I could be. I had a great deal to do. I was not at all jealous of her.
“We had a young man named Driggs, who had lived with me three years before our marriage, and continued to do so for one year after. There was a great deal of affection between my late wife and myself, but she was sometimes funny.
“For instance, when I was going out to teach at Leith High School, she would tell me she was going to drown herself. This happened several times and I would say: ‘Nonsense, my dear. What would you do that for?’
“One Saturday, when she played the same game, I was so annoyed I said to her: ‘Go and do it.’ That would be five, not nine years ago.
“She was in the habit of washing herself in a tub in her bedroom before going to bed. On several occasions on my going up to her room after an hour afterward expecting to find her in bed, I found her stooping in a sitting posture, her head bent forward, her nose on the edge of the tub as if to put her face into the water.
“I frequently raised her up, and she appeared to be in a swoon, so that I had to lay her on the bed and rub her to bring her round. I soon came to think she was only feigning unconsciousness and told her so. She stopped it.
Jealousy Incarnate!
“She had not done anything of the kind I have described for about six years. I never thought that she seriously meant to make away with herself, but merely that reading penny trashy novels she had thought foolishly to reproduce the scenes she had read in them. My wife was the last person I could imagine trying to put an end to her life.
“If there was any bad feeling, we always made it up together. She was extremely jealous of me. On one occasion I was smoking and sipping my coffee after dinner when she came into the room and looked daggers at me. She asked me afterward what I meant by looking at ‘that woman.’ I assume she meant a woman whom I saw at a lodging house window opposite.
“With jealousy she kicked out of my house the Driggs family, Driggs, his mother and sister, who were worth two hundred and fifty pounds a year to me. She never got on with Mrs. Driggs, who had been a patient of mine three years previously.
“Sometimes when my wife was in the room, Mrs. Driggs would be lying on the sofa, and I sitting beside her in a low chair. She would be whispering to me about her illness, and when my wife saw this she would turn up her nose and walk out of the room.