Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [41]
“Perhaps you would explain further, Dr. Murray. What precisely are you referring to? Was Sir Arthur depressed, worried over some matter, or anxious?”
Now there was a breathless silence in the room. Journalists sat with pencils poised.
“Not in the sense you mean, sir,” Murray replied with confidence. “He had bad dreams, nightmares, if you will. At least that is what he told me when he came to see me. Quite appalling dreams, you understand? I do not mean simply the usual unpleasant imaginings we all suffer from after a heavy meal, or some disagreeable experience.” He shifted his position slightly. “He seemed to be increasingly disoriented in his manner, and had developed suspicions of people he had trusted all his life. I admit, I assume that he was suffering some senile decay of his faculties. Regrettably, it can happen to even the most worthy people.”
“Very sad indeed,” the coroner said gravely.
Matthew could bear it no longer. He shot to his feet.
“That’s absolute nonsense! He was as lucid and in command of his mind as any man I know!”
A flash of anger crossed Murray’s face. He was not accustomed to being contradicted.
The coroner spoke quite quietly, but his voice carried across the entire room, and everyone turned to stare.
“Sir Matthew, we all understand your grief and the very natural distress you feel at the loss of your father, and especially at the manner of it, but I will not tolerate your interruptions. I will question Dr. Murray as to his evidence.” He turned to look at Murray again. “Can you give any instance of this behavior, Doctor? Were it as strange as you suggest, I am surprised you gave him laudanum in sufficient quantities to allow the event which brings us here.”
Murray did not seem in the least contrite, and certainly not guilty. His words, like Osborne’s, were full of apology, but his face remained perfectly composed. There were the marks of neither pain nor humor in it.
“I regret this profoundly, sir,” he said smoothly, and without looking towards Matthew. “It is a sad thing to have to make public the frailties of a good man, especially when we are met to ascertain the causes of his death. But I understand the necessity, and the reason for your pressing the point. Actually I was not aware of all these things myself at the time I prescribed the laudanum, otherwise, as you say, it would have been a questionable act.”
He smiled very faintly. One of the men in the front now nodded.
“Sir Arthur told me of his nightmares and his difficulty in sleeping,” Murray resumed. “The dreams concerned wild animals, jungles, cannibals and similar frightening images. He seemed to have an inner fear of being overwhelmed by such things. I was quite unaware of his obsession with Africa at that time.” He shook his head. “I prescribed laudanum for him, believing that if he would sleep more easily, and deeply, these thoughts would trouble him less. I only learned afterwards from some of his friends how far his rational thoughts and memory had left him.”
“He’s lying!” Matthew hissed, not looking at Pitt, but the words were directed to him. “The swine is lying to protect himself! The coroner caught him out so he twisted immediately to excuse himself.”
“Yes, I think he is,” Pitt said under his breath. “But keep your counsel. You’ll never prove it here.”
“They murdered him! Look at them! Sitting together, come to blacken his name and try to make everyone believe he was a senile old man who had so lost his wits he accidentally killed himself.” Matthew’s voice was cracking with the bitterness which overwhelmed him.
The man on the far side of him looked uncomfortable. Pitt had the distinct impression he would have moved away were it not that it would have drawn such attention to him.
“You won’t succeed by attacking him face-to-face,” Pitt said harshly between his teeth, aware—with a chill in his stomach—of a new fear: that they had no way of knowing who was involved, who was friend and who enemy. “Keep