Free The Man of Gold by Evelyn Hervey

moment when he saw old Mr Partington still lying on the floor where Miss Unwin had found him.
    ‘Good gracious me,’ he said. ‘The poor fellow is
in extremis
. No doubt about that. No doubt at all.’
    He took his stethoscope from out of the tall silk hat he held, knelt with a little grunt beside Miss Unwin and began his examination.
    ‘Can we lift him on to his bed now, Doctor?’ Miss Unwin asked when he had eventually finished.
    ‘No. No, I think not.’
    The doctor got laboriously to his feet and turned to address Richard.
    ‘Mr Partington,’ he said, ‘unless I am very much mistaken your father will not rest on that bed again. I have to tell you that he has only minutes to live.’
    ‘My gold.’
    From the floor behind them the two words issued fromthe lips of the dying miser. In a few moments they were repeated. ‘My gold.’
    Miss Unwin could not help feeling that they were words spoken from beyond the grave.
    And they were the very last that the old man uttered. As the three of them stood helplessly looking down at him he gave one final short groan. The doctor dropped to his knees again beside him and applied his stethoscope.
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. He has gone. Poor fellow, may the Lord have mercy upon his soul.’
    Richard stepped forward to help him to his feet.
    He stood for a long moment looking Richard full in the face.
    Miss Unwin thought that he must simply be recovering his breath after the exertion and perhaps the inevitable shock, even for a medical man, of witnessing the moment of death. But she was soon disillusioned. The doctor had been in deep and perplexed thought. And at last he spoke.
    ‘Mr Partington,’ he said, ‘I have to tell you that I am by no means happy over your father’s demise. I have seen many men and women go to the great Beyond, and I know the symptoms of most illnesses as well as any man, though I say it.’
    He fell silent, still looking Richard straight in the eye.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ he continued, ‘I know what death from disease should look like. And those signs were not there with your father. But other signs there were. Unmistakable signs. Mr Partington, I believe your father died by poison. I cannot sign a death certificate. There will have to be a post-mortem examination.’

Chapter Seven
    No sooner had puffing old Doctor Sumsion spoken the word ‘poison’ than into Miss Unwin’s mind there came, vivid as a painting, a picture of the scene during the first parsimonious meal she had eaten in this chill house. She saw again the seven of them at the dining table, old Mr Partington at its head, Cousin Cornelia, honoured guest and though she herself had not known it at the time destined bride for Richard Partington, her brother Jack on old Mr Partington’s other side, lounging in his chair and looking decidedly ill-tempered at the shortage of wine, the twins sitting opposite each other, shabby and subdued in their ill-washed frocks. Then herself, a wary and perplexed newcomer, and Richard Partington at the far end from his father, giving her from time to time rueful, awkward smiles, very conscious of the deficiencies of the household. And, just as they had finished eating the small helpings of meat and the wretched boiled potatoes that had accompanied them, old Mr Partington had had his second attack of griping internal pain that evening and in refusing medical attention had blurted out his accusation of poisoning.
    Not once in the weeks she had been in the neglected, shabby house, as the weather had gradually warmed into spring and as old Mr Partington’s attacks had continued at intervals, had she heard him make the accusation again. If she ever thought of it in those cold, cramped days, it had been to dismiss the words as the expression of a momentary malignant fury.
    But now, with Doctor Sumsion’s considered judgmentstill ringing in her ears, she realised that, far from being some exasperated exaggeration, the accusation must have been true.
    Mr