The Shoulders of Atlas by Mary E. Wilkins — Read

Horace was right in his assumption that the case against Lucinda Hart and Hannah Simmons would never be pressed. Although it was proved beyond a doubt that Eliza Farrel had swallowed arsenic in a sufficiently large quantity to cause death, the utter absence of motive was in the favor of the accused, and then the suspicion that the poison might have been self-administered, if not with suicidal intent, with another, steadily gained ground. Many thought Miss Farrel's wonderful complexion might easily have been induced by the use of arsenic.

At all events, the evidence against Lucinda and Hannah, when sifted, was so exceedingly flimsy, and the lack of motive grew so evident, that there was no further question of bringing them to trial. Still the suspicion, once raised, grew like a weed, as suspicion does grow in the ready soil of the human heart. For a month after the tragedy it seemed as if Sylvia Whitman's prophecy concerning the falling off of the hotel guests was destined to fail. The old hostelry was crowded. Newspaper men and women from all parts of the country flocked there, and also many not connected with the press, who were morbidly curious and revelled in the sickly excitement of thinking they might be living in the house of a poisoner. Lucinda Hart sent in her resignation from the church choir. Her experience, the first time she had sung after Eliza Farrel's death, did not exactly daunt her; she was not easily daunted. But she had raised her husky contralto, and lifted her elderly head in its flowered bonnet before that watchful audience of old friends and neighbors, and had gone home and written her stiffly worded note of resignation.