Well, among his friends was a Miss Bergen, supposed to be a respectable girl, who had written some very randy letters, inviting him into her bed. Says I: 'Doctor, don't mind me! When you're over at Stafford with Mr Walter and can't get back home to my arms, well, I know how you hate sleeping alone . ..'
So he kissed me and called me an angel, for he knew what I meant.
'But mind,' I told him, 'I don't want to hear about what you and she do together! It might make me jealous.'
The Doctor comes to me one day in a great pother. 'Lizzie, my duck,' he says, 'I'm in trouble with that Stafford girl. She's in pod and wants me for her husband. But I promised you that I wouldn't marry anyone save your little self; so here you'll have to advise me.'
'It's no business of mine, Doctor,' says I. 'Do as you think fit.'
Well, he wrote to Miss Bergen, giving the name of an abortionist who would be as silent as the grave; and the baby was turned away, with nobody none the wiser. But when she wrote that her 'stomach ache', as she called it, had got better, the cold tones of his answer warned her she had no hope of becoming Mrs Palmer. So Miss Bergen threatened to show her father the letters he had written. Now, that was serious, because he was none other than Mr Daniel Scully Bergen, Chief Superintendent of the Stafford Rural Constabulary! First the girl demanded a hundred pounds for their return, and then fifty; but in the end she settled for forty, and he gave her the halves of four ten-pound notes, undertaking to send the others when all the letters were safe in his hands. The money he paid her was part of the sum that he had from Mr Cook to settle bills owing in London. Well, when Captain Hatton made the arrest, Dr Palmer called me and said privately: 'Lizzie, pray do me a service. Take this packet to Miss Bergen. In it are the other halves of those four ten-pound notes. They're no good to me, and I'd rather keep my word even to a bad woman.'
So I went, and right glad I am that I did, as it turned out. You may know that when they took him away, he gave me a fifty-pound note, all the money he had, bless his kind soul! Captain Hatton tried to take it from me, but I wouldn't give it up. He says: 'Mr Stevens has a list of the numbers of all the ten-pound and fifty-pound notes paid to Mr Cook at Shrewsbury, and this will be one of them. It s wanted as evidence.'
The Doctor turns very coolly to Captain Hatton and says: 'I think you'll be wise to leave Miss Eliza in possession of the note.'
'And why, may I ask?' the Captain wants to know.
'I'll tell you why,' Dr Palmer answers. 'The money was entrusted to mc by Mr Cook, not stolen from him and, with his consent, I sent four of the ten-pound notes to pay off a young lady who has been blackmailing me because of some foolish letters I wrote her.'
'That's no concern of mine,' says the Captain.
'By your leave, Sir, it should be,' retorts the Doctor. 'The young lady is the daughter of a colleague of yours; and the letters show that she wanted the money to pay for an illegal operation.'
At this point I break into their conversation: 'Yes, Captain Hatton,' I says, 'it's true. I brought her the other halves of the notes—for the Doctor had sent only half-notes to make sure she'd play fair—and watched while she gummed them together and went to change them at the bank. The bank clerks, they'll have taken the numbers, I've no doubt, and the notes can be traced to her.'
This piece of news seemed to dismay the Captain, so I went on: 'Come, Sir, your hand on the bargain! You leave me with this fifty-pound note, which I'll change at the same bank, and trust me to keep silent.'
'Nobody would believe a word of what you say, you common slut,' Captain Hatton shouts.
'Now, just for that,' says I, quiet but very vexed, 'I've a good mind to do what I first thought of doing, which is to sell the young lady's blackmailing letters to The Illustrated Times. I could get another fifty pounds for them quite easy.'
'Where are they?' the Captain asks threateningly.
'Ah, wouldn't you like to know?' I answers, laughing in his face, I was so emboldened by rage.
The Captain grins back at me and says: 'You're a smart lass.' Then we shake hands on our bargain. But he turns to the Doctor and growls: 'This smart trick of yours isn't going to help you, Palmer!'
The Doctor answers, most polite: 'I trust that you'll do nothing dishonourable, Captain Hatton. The Stafford Constabulary have a high reputation for fair dealing, you know.'
Chapter XXI
IF DOCTORS DISAGREE .. .
WQE refer our readers to The Times's verbatim report for details of the plentiful and complicated medical evidence offered. Dr Bamford, suffering (curiously enough) from English cholera, the very disease to which he had attributed the late Annie Palmer's death, was unable to attend the trial, but made a sworn statement to the effect that the antimony which Professor Alfred Taylor found in Cook's organs had not been prescribed by himself in the form of tartar emetic.
So far, so good; then the egregious Professor Taylor mounted into the witness box. He had at first diagnosed antimony as the cause of death, though discovering only half a grain, which is no more than most of us healthy modern men carry about in our vitals, without trouble or hazard. He conveyed this opinion to Mr Gardiner in the letter which Cheshire, the Rugeley Postmaster, intercepted and opened at Dr Palmer's request; but hearing then that Cook had been overcome by a convulsion shortly before he died, and that Dr Palmer had bought the strychnia from Messrs Hawkins's shop, the Professor changed his mind. Death, he now concluded, must have resulted from strychjiine poisoning, because the human body can absorb up to sixty grains of antimony and suffer no fatal consequences. To us this seems a non sequitur. As a wag has put it:
In antimony, great though his faith, The quantity found being small, Taylor's faith in strychnine was yet greater, For of that he found nothing at all.
When Professor Taylor laid stress on this negative evidence, the Lord Chief Justice remarked, with a challenging look at Serjeant Shee: 'Of course, upon this the whole Defence rests.' Since it had yet to be proved that Cook did not the of natural causes, the absence of strychnia in the organs examined struck many judicious persons as a most feasible defence! But Professor Taylor led the hanging-party with the contention: 'Though no strychnia was found, it would be very improper to believe that none had been administered.' 'Then why trouble to analyse for strychnia?' some asked, 'if its presence and its absence may alike point to its having caused death?' Others remembered the Professor's strange message, unwarrantably presuming murder, which he addressed to a daily newspaper some weeks before the triaclass="underline" 'Society demands a victim in this case!' They commented: 'We may legitimately doubt whether Dr Palmer fell a victim to the demands of society in general, rather than to those of the racehorse owners whom he had dishonoured, and the insurance company shareholders whom he had defrauded. But certain it is that British Justice has likewise fallen a victim.'
The Professor's admission on his volte face deserves particular scrutiny. A plain question was put to him: 'Can you say upon your oath that, from the traces of antimony found in Cook's body, you were justified in concluding death to have been caused by this poison?' He answered: 'Yes, perfectly and distinctly.' We fail to see what sophistical process can divest so direct, so positive, and so unqualified a statement of its simple meaning. Professor Taylor did believe that Cook died from the effects of antimony; and he arrived at that belief not merely from finding slight traces of the poison in Cook's remains, but from the reports given him of Cook's vomitings and convulsions. Then, when a new light shone within, and the claims of strychnia made him a renegade, his rational powers were severely taxed to satisfy the needs of this sudden change. He knew well that the healthiness of Cook's brain was quite inconsistent with strychnine poisoning; and that so was the length of time—one and a half hours—between the alleged administration of the strychnine pills and the tetanic paroxysms. Yet, for the jury, his total conversion from antimony to strychnia seemed a proof that here was an honest man who cheerfully admitted former error.