Chapter 13

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_ CHAPTER XIII

Veronica was well satisfied, and slept peacefully, dreaming of the pleasure she had given the old priest, and of the good which he could do with her money. And then in her dream, the scene of his first visit was acted over, and suddenly Veronica started up awake in the dark. She must have uttered an unconscious exclamation, just as she awoke, for in a moment the door opened and she heard Elettra's voice asking her if she needed anything, but in a tone so anxious and changed that it seemed to Veronica to belong to her dream rather than to any reality.

"Are you there?" she asked, in the darkness, surprised that the woman should have come in so unexpectedly.

"Yes," answered Elettra, briefly, and she groped for the matches on the little table beside the bed.

She struck a light and lit a candle. Veronica saw that her face was very pale, and that she was half dressed, wearing a black skirt and a white cotton jacket. As the young girl looked at her she realized how strange it was that she should have appeared at the slightest sound.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, with a little smile. "What time is it?" She looked at the watch, holding it up to the flame of the candle. "Three o'clock! What is the matter, Elettra? Why have you come?"

Elettra looked down, in real or pretended confusion.

"Excellency," she said in a humble tone, "my room is very cold and damp in this rainy weather. For some nights I have slept on the sofa in the dressing-room. I hope your Excellency will pardon me. And I heard you cry out, just now. Then, forgetting that I ought not to have been sleeping there, I got up and came."

"Oh! Did I cry out? Yes--I woke up suddenly. I was dreaming of Don Teodoro and of--" She checked herself. "Why did you not tell me that your room is damp? You shall have another."

"Excellency, if you will forgive me, it would give trouble at this time. If you will allow me to sleep on the sofa until the weather is fine again. I will make no noise. You have seen--in the morning no one would know it, and I am very well there."

Veronica looked at her and hesitated a moment. In the stillness she heard a soft sound.

"What is that?" she asked quickly.

"It is the cat," answered the maid, peering down below the level of the candle-light.

"It did not sound like the cat," said Veronica, pushing her dark, brown hair back with her slim hand, and looking down over the edge of the bed. "It was more like a footstep," she added, with a little laugh.

But at that moment she caught sight of the Maltese cat's green eyes in shadow. The creature came forward from the door, sprang instantly upon the foot of the bed and lay down, purring, its forepaws doubled under it, and its eyes shut.

"It is a heavy cat," said Elettra, thoughtfully. "It is so fat. One can hear it when it walks across the room."

She scratched its head gently, and it purred more loudly under her hand.

"Excellency, you will allow me to sleep in the dressing-room, just for these days," she said presently.

"Oh yes--if you like," answered Veronica, laying her head down upon the pillow, sleepy again.

The maid bent over her and drew the things up about her neck in a half-tender, motherly way, looking at the girl's face. Then she hesitated before putting out the light.

"Excellency," she said, "let us go to Muro. The air of this house is not good for you. It is damp, and you are pale in these days. In the mountains the colour will come back. The people will make a feast when you come. It will amuse you. Excellency, let us go."

Veronica laughed sleepily.

"You are dreaming, Elettra. Go away. I want to go to sleep."

The woman sighed softly, extinguished the light, and groped her way to the door in the dark. Veronica was very sleepy, as she said, but somehow after her maid had gone away, she became wakeful again for a time. The cat had remained on the foot of the bed, and its soft purring disturbed her a little, because she was accustomed to absolute silence. There had been a curious cross-fitting of her dream and of the little realities of Elettra's entrance. She had dreamt over again the priest's earnest warning that her life was in danger, and she had imagined that she heard a footstep of a person coming up quickly behind her. Then, somehow, in the same instant, recalling what Don Teodoro had told her about her uncle's frauds, she had seemed to know that he had refused the money in the afternoon because there was no more to take, nor to be given to her. Waking suddenly, she had heard Elettra's anxious voice, giving the strong impression that she was really in present peril. Then she had really thought that she heard another footstep, somewhere, while Elettra was standing still beside her. It had only been the cat, of course. It was such a very fat cat, as Elettra said, and the floors were of the old-fashioned sort, laid on wooden beams, and trembled very easily, as they do in old Italian houses. But each detail had fitted with another, into a sort of whole which was a reflexion of the priest's story. Some of it all at once looked true, and instead of going to sleep at once, Veronica's eyes were wide open, and she turned uneasily on her pillow.

Of course, it was absurd, for she had received the money when she had insisted upon having it, and if Elettra's room was damp, that quite explained her presence. Besides, Elettra could not be supposed to know what Don Teodoro had said to Veronica. And then, there was the rest of the story, all that connected Bosio and Matilde. She absolutely refused to think of believing that. She would not even admit that there might have been some little foundation for it in the past.

Instinctively driving away the thought, she began to say certain prayers for the poor man, and little by little, repeating the words often, her mind grew calm, and she fell asleep once more. Yet in her sleep the needle of doubt ran through the little bits of memories, one by one, threading them in one continuous string. There was Bianca Corleone's look of blank surprise when Veronica had first spoken of a possible marriage with Bosio, and there was Taquisara's bold assertion, tallying with the priest's, that the Macomer wanted her fortune, and there was very vividly before her the gnawing anxiety she had seen in Matilde's face until the latter had caught sight of the artificial flower on that memorable evening. And the string on which the beads of memory were threaded was her long-repressed but profound distrust of Gregorio Macomer. It had seemed a wicked prejudice, a gratuitously false judgment, based upon something in his face, and she had always fought against it as unworthy, besides being irrational. Then, too, there was the will she had signed a fortnight since, for the sake of peace. If there was nothing in what the priest had said, why had they been so terribly anxious to get the document executed without delay? It was scarcely natural. And there were fifty other details, turns of phrases, changes of expression, little words of Gregorio's spoken in an enigmatic tone to his wife, which Veronica had not understood, but which she had therefore remembered, and which could mean that he was on the verge of ruin, and in great trouble of mind about his affairs. Amidst the wildly shifting scenery of dreams, the little doll figures of abiding facts out of memory joined hands in procession, showing their faces one by one and their likeness to one another more and more clearly. Even in her dream, it flashed upon her that it might all be true except that one part of it which said that Bosio had loved Matilde and not herself. That was not true. He had loved her, Veronica; they had known it, and had taken advantage of it. She did not blame them for that. She had been so fond of him,--she knew that she should soon have loved him,--and the dream swung back upon itself, and she was again standing beside the fire in the yellow room, with him so near to her. And after she awoke, she shed tears.

On that morning, after eleven o'clock, Matilde came to Veronica's room, bringing a piece of needlework with her, and she sat down to stay a while. They talked idly about dull subjects, and from time to time Matilde looked up and smiled sadly. She sat so that she could not see Bosio's photograph on the mantelpiece. After she had been there half an hour, she started, suddenly remembering something.

"I have done such a stupid thing!" she exclaimed, with an expression of annoyance. "I believe I am losing my memory!"

"What is it?" asked Veronica, naturally.

"I sent my maid out, just before I came to you, with a number of errands to do, and I forgot two things that I wanted very much. There was some medicine which I was to take before luncheon, and some jet beads that I needed. I do not care so much about the beads, but I need the medicine. I feel so horribly tired and weak, all the time."

"Send one of the men," suggested Veronica.

"A man could not buy jet things," objected Matilde. "You could not let Elettra go out for me, could you? It is a fine morning, for a wonder, and she need not be gone more than half an hour."

"Certainly," answered Veronica, promptly. "She has nothing to do, and the walk will be good for her."

She rose and rang for her maid.

"I will go and get the recipe," said Matilde, rising, too. "It is an old one, given me by our poor doctor who died last year, and I kept it because it did me so much good. They will make it up in ten minutes. She can go and buy the jet, and stop for it on the way back. Will you tell her that she may go?"

Elettra had entered the room, and Veronica explained to her what she was to do.

"Put on your hat, Elettra," said Matilde, "and then please come to my room, and I will give you the recipe. I must find it among my things. I will be back presently, dear," she said to Veronica.

She went out, followed by the maid, who did as she was bidden and then went to Matilde's room. The countess explained exactly what sort of jet she wanted, and then gave her the recipe.

"Tell the chemist that this is only for two doses," she said, "but that I wish him to make up twenty doses, because I am going to take it regularly. Say that it is for me, and go to Casadio for it, where we get everything. Have it put down on the bill. Do you understand? Here are twenty francs for the jet, but you will not need so much. You understand, do you?"

"Yes, Excellency."

Elettra stuck the little slip of paper, on which the recipe was written, into her shabby pocket-book without looking at it. She could read and write fairly well, and had been used to helping her husband the under-steward with his accounts at Muro, but even if she had looked at the recipe she would have understood nothing of the doctor's hieroglyphics and abbreviated Latin words. The prescription was for a preparation of arsenic, which Matilde had formerly taken for some time. The chemist would not make any difficulty about preparing twenty doses of it for the Countess Macomer, though the whole quantity of arsenic contained in so many would probably be sufficient to kill one not accustomed to the medicine, if taken all at once.

But though Matilde was so anxious to have the stuff before luncheon, she had a number of doses of it put away in a drawer, which she took out and counted, after Elettra had gone. She opened one of the little folded papers and looked at the fine white powder it contained, took a little on the end of her finger and tasted it. Then, from the same drawer, she took a package done up in coarser paper, and opened it likewise, looked at it, smelt it, and touched it with the tip of her tongue very cautiously indeed. It was white, too, but coarser than the medicine. She was very careful in tasting it, and she immediately rinsed her mouth with water, before she tied up the package again, shut the drawer, and put the key into her pocket.

By and by Elettra came back and brought her the jet and the medicine, returning her the change without any remark. Matilde thanked her, and laid the package of twenty doses upon her dressing-table, before the mirror.

At luncheon, she persuaded Veronica to go out with her for a drive in the afternoon. She said that she felt ill and tired, and did not like to go alone. Gregorio said that he was too busy to accompany her, and it would not have been easy for Veronica to refuse. While it was still early, they drove out, past Bianca Corleone's house, over the hill, and down to Posilippo, on the other side. They talked very little, but Veronica enjoyed the bright afternoon air, after the long spell of bad weather. There was no dust, for the road was not yet dry, and a gentle land breeze just roughed the surface of the calm sea to a deeper blue. When they turned to drive home, there was already a purple mist about Vesuvius, and the great Sant' Angelo's crest was black against the sky, for these were the shortest days, and the sun set far to southward. It was almost dark when they got back to the city.

"Shall we have tea in your room?" asked Matilde as they went up the stairs together. "It is so dreary in the drawing-room."

"Certainly," answered Veronica, readily. "Yes--the rest of the house is horribly gloomy, now." Matilde was behind her on the stairs, evidently fatigued, but as the young girl spoke, a look of detestation flashed across her worn face. She hated Veronica, now that Bosio was dead. But for Veronica, Bosio would still have been alive. There was more than the mere desperate determination to save herself, and her husband with her, in what Matilde did after that. But when they entered the hall, the look was quite gone from her face. She had been very gentle, all that morning and afternoon. They had talked a little of the incident that had occurred on the previous day, of Gregorio's feeling about not letting Veronica spend money uselessly. He was so conscientious, Matilde had said. Though the guardianship had expired, he still felt it his duty to watch his former ward's expenditure. And he was not charitable--no, it had always been a cause of regret to Matilde that Gregorio, with all his good qualities, was hard to poor people. Bosio had been different. Ah--poor Bosio!

She spoke gently, and sometimes there was a true ring in her voice which Veronica heard and understood, for it was quite genuine. And now, she seemed tired and weak--she who was so strong.

So they went to Veronica's room, and Elettra brought the tea things, and Matilde made tea, and they both drank it, and talked a little more, and gave the Maltese cat milk in a saucer, on the lower shelf of the little two-storied tea-table.

Afterwards, Matilde went away to her room, and Veronica remained alone after Elettra had taken away the things.

Before dinner, Elettra came and told her mistress that the countess was suddenly taken very ill, and was crying aloud with the pain she suffered. Veronica hastily went to her aunt, and found that a doctor had already come and was making her swallow olive oil out of a full tumbler. A servant followed her into the room with a plate full of raw eggs, and the doctor was asking for magnesia. Gregorio Macomer was standing by, shaking his head, and occasionally supporting his wife with one hand, when her strength seemed to be failing. Veronica took the other side, and the doctor stood before the sick woman.

"What is it, Doctor?" asked Veronica, after a moment. "What is the matter with her?"

The physician looked over his shoulder and saw that there was no servant in the room. "It is arsenic," he answered in a low voice. "She has been poisoned. But there was not enough to kill her--she will be quite well to-morrow."

"Poisoned!" exclaimed Veronica, in horrified surprise. "By whom?" She looked at Gregorio, addressing the question to him.

He gravely raised his high shoulders and shook his head. Veronica expected to hear his awful laugh; but though his face twitched nervously, it did not come. He knew that the doctor might afterwards be an excellent witness to his peculiarities, in case he wished to prove himself insane; but on the other hand, had he shown any signs of insanity now, the doctor might have suspected him of having poisoned his wife. That would have been very unfortunate.

As the physician had foreseen, Matilde was soon better, and by bed-time she felt no ill effects from what had happened to her, beyond great weakness and lassitude. The doctor had asked many questions and had elicited the fact that Matilde had a preparation of arsenic in powders, which she took according to prescription, and which she showed him after the first spasms were passed. She assured him, however, that she had only taken one on that day, and had taken it just before luncheon. The rest of the powders were intact and still lay upon her toilet table. She showed them also. He took the next one, on the top of the pile, and said that he would examine it and ascertain whether the chemist had made any mistake. Then he went away, promising to come in the morning.

At last Matilde was alone with her husband. Veronica had gone to bed, and Gregorio waited for an opportunity of questioning his wife.

"Whom do you suspect?" he asked, sitting down by her bedside.

"No one," she answered. "I took it on purpose. You need not be anxious. I pretended to suffer more than I did, and I do not mind the pain at all."

He stared at her, trying to fathom her thoughts, but he altogether failed to understand her.

"Why did you do it?" he asked, drawing the lids close together over his small eyes.

"You are so dull!" she answered. "You shall see. I cannot explain now. I have been really poisoned and I feel ill and weak. Do not go out to-morrow before I see you."

He left her, but she did not sleep all night. In spite of what she had gone through on that evening and of all the mental suffering of many days, she was stronger still than any one knew. It was between two and three in the morning when she lighted a candle, wrapped herself in a dressing-gown and began to make certain preparations for the day.

In the first place she locked both her doors very softly, and arranged a stocking over each keyhole, twisting it round the keys themselves. Then she got some stiff writing-paper, and a heavy ivory paper-knife, and from the locked drawers she took that other package which was done up in coarse paper.

From this she took some of the rough, half-pulverized white stuff, laid it upon the marble top of the chest of drawers, and with the ivory paper-knife, pressing heavily, she little by little crushed it as fine as dust.

She then took nine of the eighteen little papers containing the arsenic, which were left, opened each one at the end and poured out the contents apart, into a little heap quite separate from the other. And of the other, she took a pinch for each little paper and dropped it in--about as much in quantity as she had taken out. Then she closed each of the papers, carefully slipping one folded end into the other as chemists do; when they were all closed, she made a tiny hole in each with the point of a needle, so that she should know the bad from the good, if necessary. This was only a precaution, and could do no harm. Then she arranged the good and the bad in their little packages of five, each in a tiny india-rubber band, laying bad ones and good ones alternately. When this was done, she put all the packages into the original paper, loosely opened, and laid them once more before her looking-glass, upon the toilet table. Her large white hands were exceedingly skilful, and it would have needed sharp eyes to see that the papers of medicine had been tampered with.

After this, she cut a sheet of the writing-paper into four square pieces, and very neatly made out of three of them three very small open boxes, for moulds, each of the size of a large lump of sugar, and she set them up side by side in a row. One was larger than the other two.

They had brought her powdered sugar, with the juice of a lemon in a glass and a decanter of water; she had said that if she were thirsty she would make herself a glass of lemonade in the night. She had also a bottle of ordinary sticking gum.

She took the sugar and mixed a very little with some of the stuff she had pulverized, and with a few drops of the gum, till it was a stiff, hard paste, and with the end of the paper-knife she carefully filled the largest of her three moulds with it. She was sure that it would be dry and hard by the next day, and it would have the size, the appearance, and somewhat the taste of a lump of sugar.

Then she halved the little heap of arsenic medicine as exactly as she could. There were nine powders in all. To produce the symptoms of poisoning in herself, she had taken four from her old supply, that evening. Half of nine would be four and a half, and that would not be too much. She mixed enough wet sugar and gum with each little pile to fill one of each of the smaller moulds, pressing the sticky mass firmly into the paper.

When all was finished, she carefully cleaned the marble top of the chest of drawers, and threw what little of the coarser powder remained into the ashes of the fire, in which a few coals still glowed. The heat would consume the powder immediately.

Having done this, she set the three little moulds on the warm marble hearthstone to dry, took the remainder of the package of coarser powder, twisted the stiff paper closely, so that it should not open, took the stockings from the keyholes, and, candle in hand, left the room, locking the door softly behind her. She made no noise as she traversed the dim rooms, in her felt slippers; but she avoided the yellow drawing-room and passed through a passage behind it. Her nerves were singularly good, but since Bosio's death she did not like to be alone in that room at night. Bosio had been fond of dabbling in spiritism and such things, and they had often talked about the possibility of coming back after death, in that very room, promising each other that, if it were possible, the one who died first would try to communicate with the other. Matilde turned aside from the room in which they had said those things to each other.

She walked more and more cautiously as she came to the other end of the long apartment, where Veronica lived, and she stopped in a dark corridor before the door of Elettra's room. It was not ajar this time, but closed. Matilde did not hesitate, and began to turn the handle very slowly. Then she pushed the door and looked in, shading her candle with her hand, from her eyes, so as to look over it. She had determined, if she found the woman in bed, to wake her boldly, to say that she felt ill again and to tell her to go and heat some water. That would have taken some time. But Elettra was not there, and the bed, as usual of late, was untouched.

Matilde looked about her hastily, at the same time extracting the package from the wide pocket of her dressing-gown. The furniture was scant and simple--the bed, a table covered with things belonging to Veronica, beside which lay sewing-materials, two chairs, a shabby chest of drawers, a deal washstand--that was all. Italian servants are not accustomed to very luxurious quarters. A couple of coarse, uncoloured prints of saints were tacked to the wall over the bed, and a bit of a dusty olive branch, from the last Palm Sunday, nine months ago, was stuck behind one of them.

Matilde looked about her, and hesitated a moment. Then, setting the candlestick down, she knelt upon the floor, and thrust the package as far as she could under the chest of drawers. Of all the things she had to do, in the course of that night and the following day, this was the only one with which any danger was connected, for at any moment Elettra might have come from Veronica's room to her own. The thing was possible, but not probable, between three and four o'clock in the morning. It did not happen, and when Matilde left the room and softly closed the door behind her, all was safe.

Before she went to bed, she entered the dining-room, poured herself out a glass of strong Sicilian wine from a decanter on the sideboard and drank it at a draught, for she was very tired. She left the decanter and the glass on the table, so that any one might see them. If by any remote possibility some wakeful person had chanced to hear her moving about in the night, she would say that she had felt ill, and had left her room in order to find the stimulant. She thought of every possible detail which could in any way hereafter be brought up in evidence.

At last she went back to her room, unlocked the door, and locked herself in.

Her plan was simple, though the details of it were complicated, so far as the preparation was concerned. It was an extremely bold plan, but one not at all likely to fail in the execution. Almost all the difficulty had lain in the preparations, and she had spared no pains and no suffering for herself, in the preliminaries.

She knew the story of Elettra's husband very well, and of how he had been murdered by peasants near Muro in trying to collect the exorbitant rents Macomer had attempted to exact. She was a good enough judge of character to see that Elettra had the revengeful disposition common to many of the southern hill people, and the woman's dark complexion, sombre eyes, and thin frame would all help to strengthen the impression in the mind of an unprejudiced judge.

She intended to make it appear that Elettra had poisoned the whole family, beginning with Matilde herself, out of revenge for her dead husband. Veronica was to die, but Gregorio and Matilde herself would only suffer a certain amount of pain for a few hours, and then recover. She had begun by half poisoning herself, both to remove all suspicion, and as a sort of experiment, to be sure that she was giving herself and her husband a sufficient amount to produce the real symptoms of poisoning by arsenic. No half measures, no mere acting, would be of any avail.

The stuff in the package wrapped in coarse paper was an almost pure salt of arsenic, sold by grocers as rat-poison.

The two small lumps of sugar and arsenic medicine were for herself and her husband; the large lump of almost pure poison was for Veronica.

In the examination which would follow upon the deed, the package of rat-poison would be found under the chest of drawers in the maid's room, half empty. It would be discovered that every alternate paper of Matilde's medicine had been tampered with, and it would be supposed that Matilde had at the first time taken one of those containing poison, whereas the doctor who had attended her had taken the next, which was untouched and only had medicine in it.

She intended to make tea on the following afternoon in Veronica's room. She could easily find an excuse for bringing in Gregorio who, like many modern Italians, had acquired the habit of drinking tea every day. She herself would make the tea, and put in the sugar and cream. Elettra would, as usual, have brought in the tea-tray with the silver urn, for Veronica always preferred being served by her maid when she had anything in her own room. It would go hard, if Matilde could not divert Veronica's attention for one moment while she dropped the lumps into the cups, having concealed them in her handkerchief beforehand. There would be no servant in the room, for Elettra would have gone out. Gregorio would know beforehand what was to be done and would help to divert Veronica at the right moment. Arsenic had little or no taste, and Veronica would drink her cup readily like the rest.

She would die before the next morning. That was certain. Everything would tend to throw the suspicion of having attempted to commit a horrible wholesale murder, upon Elettra. The will could be kept back until the first uproar and excitement should be over. Then Matilde would have the fortune, Gregorio would be saved, and Elettra would be condemned to penal servitude for life.

It was certainly a very bold plan, and Matilde did not see where it could fail. _

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