"To return, then, to the old lady, the ancient woman of your race, who came unexpectedly to the Christmas re-union and was put to sleep in the Grey Room at her own wish.She was found dead next morning on the floor.She had not entered the bed.The exact facts have long disappeared from human knowledge, and it is only possible to re-construct them by inference and the support of those straightforward events that followed.I conceive, then, that though the old lady did not create the warmth that liberated the evil spirit of the bed and so destroyed her, that warmth was nevertheless artificially created.What must have happened, think you? The bed is made up in haste and the fire lighted.But the fire is a long way from the bed, and would have no effect to create the necessary temperature.There is, however, a hot-water bottle in the bed, or a hot brick wrapped in flannel.The old lady is about to enter her bed.She has extinguished her candie, but the flame of the fire gives light.She has prayed; she throws off her dressing-gown and flings back the covering of the bed, to fall an instant victim to the miasma.She drops backward and is found dead next morning, by which time the bottle and bed are also cold.
"Taken alone, I grant this explanation may fail to win your sympathy; but consider the cumulative evidence in store.The old lady may, of course, have died a natural death.She may not have turned down the bed.There is nobody living to tell us.All that Sir Walter can recollect is that she was found on the floor of the room dead.Exactly where, he does not remember.But for my own part I have no doubt whatever that her death took place in that way.
"We are on safer ground with the other tragic happenings, though, save in the case of Nurse Forrester, there is nothing on the surface of events to connect their deaths with the accursed bed.You will see, however, that it is very easy to do so.In the lady's case all is clear enough.She goes to bed tired and she sleeps peacefully into death without waking.She is probably asleep within ten minutes, before her own warmth has penetrated through sheet and blanket to the mattress beneath and so destroyed her.
Suppose that she is dead in half an hour.She retired to rest at ten o'clock; she is called at seven; the room is presently broken into and she is then not only dead, but cold.The demon has gone to sleep again under its lifeless burden.Now had she been stout and well covered, there had hardly been time for her to grow cold, and those who came to her assistance might even have perished, too.But she is a little, thin thing, and the heat has gone out of her.This assured the safety of those who came to the bedside.One can make no laws as to the time necessary for a dead body to grow as cold as its surroundings.The bodies of the old and the young cool more quickly than those of adult persons.If the conditions are favorable a body may cool in six to eight hours.Prince took but five, poor little bag of bones.
