The Wychford Poisoning Case Read online

  ‘It’s an ingenious defence,’ Roger said gravely. ‘Do you agree, Dr Purefoy?’

  ‘That she’s innocent? No, I’m afraid not. I wish I could say that I did, but I can’t see the faintest possibility of it.’

  ‘Now, I’m quite sure she’s innocent,’ Sheila murmured.

  ‘Sheila, Sheila!’ said her mother.

  ‘Sorry, mum; but you know perfectly well that father’s never been known in all his life to grasp any stick except by the wrong end. To my mind, that proves it. I’d better write to the woman’s solicitor.’

  ‘You see the respect with which we parents are treated nowadays,’ smiled Dr Purefoy.

  ‘Sheila,’ said Alec suddenly, ‘I think I’ll scrag you after dinner. Like I used to when we were kids.’

  ‘Why this harshness?’ inquired Miss Purefoy.

  ‘Because you jolly well deserve it,’ said Alec, and relapsed into silence again.

  ‘Thank you, Alec,’ Dr Purefoy said pathetically. ‘You’re a brave man. I wish I had your courage.’

  ‘I like that, father,’ said his daughter indignantly. ‘When you absolutely ruined my best evening frock only last week.’

  But Roger had no intention of allowing the conversation to wander off into the paths of family badinage. ‘Do you know the Bentleys or any of the people mixed up in the case personally?’ he asked the girl at his side.

  ‘Not the Bentleys. I know the Saundersons more or less, and I believe I’ve met Allen. Of course I know Dr James and Dr Peters.’

  ‘You know Mrs Saunderson, do you?’ Roger said with interest. ‘What sort of woman is she?’

  ‘A damned little cat,’ said Miss Purefoy frankly.

  ‘Sheila!’ This from her mother.

  ‘Well, she is, mum, as jolly well you know; so why on earth not say so? Isn’t she, father?’

  ‘If my information is correct, your remark was a laudable understatement, my dear,’ Dr Purefoy said with a perfectly grave face.

  ‘I’d rather gathered that, from the newspaper reports,’ Roger murmured. ‘In what way, Miss Purefoy?’

  ‘Well, look at what she did! That’s enough, isn’t it? Of course she hasn’t got a husband to teach her decent behaviour (she’s a widow, you know), but there are some things that simply aren’t done. After all, she was supposed to be the Bentley’s friend, wasn’t she? But that’s just like her; double-faced little beast. She’d give her soul to be talked about. Of course she’s in the seventh heaven now. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if it turned out that she’d poisoned the man herself just to get her name in the papers. That’s the sort of daisy she is.’

  ‘Is she, though?’ Roger said softly. ‘That’s very interesting. And what about Mrs Allen?’

  ‘Oh, she’s a good bit older. Older than her husband, too. Always happens, doesn’t it?’ went on this sophisticated damsel. ‘Any woman who marries a man younger than herself deserves all that’s coming to her, in my opinion. But of course Mr Allen is a bit of a lad, you know. I heard about him before I was out of my teens. You know, whispers in dark corners and breath well bated. Well, it’s a matter of common knowledge that he—’

  ‘That will do, Sheila!’ said Mrs Purefoy, whose expression had during the last minute been growing more and more apprehensive.

  ‘Mother always shuts me up before I can get on to the really spicy bits,’ confided Miss Purefoy to the world at large.

  The entry of the parlourmaid cut short any further attempts on the part of her daughter to add to the grey in Mrs Purefoy’s lustrous dark hair. The conversation which ensued would have satisfied a Sunday school teacher.

  It was not until the three men were left alone together after dinner that Roger re-introduced the subject. He did not wish, for the present at any rate, to advertise the reason for his visit to Wychford, even to the Purefoys; and too great an interest in the murder, unless its cause were to be more fully explained, would only appear to spring from a curiosity unbridled to the point of indecency. When the two women had retired, however, and the doctor’s excellent port was circulating for the second time, he did feel at liberty to raise the matter.

  ‘About this Bentley case, doctor,’ he remarked. ‘Of course you know the two doctors concerned. Is there any point of particular interest, do you think, in the medical evidence?’

  Dr Purefoy stroked his lean jaw with the palm of his hand. ‘No, I don’t think so, Sheringham. It all seems perfectly straightforward. Do you mean about the cause of death?’

  ‘Well, yes. That or anything else.’

  ‘Because that, of course, isn’t in doubt for a minute. As clear a case of arsenical poisoning as there could possibly be. Actually more than a fatal dose found in the man’s body after death, and that’s very rare indeed; a great deal is always eliminated between the time of swallowing the dose and death.’

  ‘How much would you say he had been given, then?’

  ‘Well, it’s impossible to say. Might have been as little as five grains; might have been as much as twenty. Making a pure guess at it, I should say about eight to ten grains. He didn’t vomit nearly as much as one might expect, James told me, which points to a comparatively small dose.’

  ‘A fatal dose being about three grains?’

  ‘Yes, two and a half to three. Two and a half is reckoned an average small fatal dose, but it would have been ample for Bentley, I imagine.’

  ‘Why for him particularly?’

  ‘Well, he was rather a poor creature. Undersized, delicate, poor physique; a bit of a little rat, to our way of thinking.’

  ‘And very fussy about his health, I gather?’

  ‘Exactly. One of those maddening patients (we all have ’em) who think they know a sight more about their ailments and the right drugs to cure them than their doctor does. Oh, quite impossible people; and I understand from James that Bentley was as bad a specimen of the tribe as you’d hope to see.’

  ‘Oh? In what way?’

  ‘Well, you prescribe for ’em and all that, and then find that the prescription can’t be used because the fellow’s already been prescribing for himself before he came to you at all, and the two prescriptions clash; and then you prescribe something else, and the fellow goes and takes something perfectly different that he thinks is going to suit his case better. Oh, hopeless! That’s just the lunatic Bentley was. Always dosing himself from morning to night: never happy unless he was stuffing some drug or other inside his skin.’

  ‘Do you mean that he drugged? Morphia, or anything like that?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no. I was using the word in its correct sense, not the particular meaning with which the public seem to invest it. No, I don’t mean that he took any harmful drugs; just that his chief joy in life seemed to lie in turning his long-suffering stomach into a fair imitation of the inside of a chemist’s shop.’

  ‘So that it wouldn’t take a big dose of arsenic to finish him off?’

  ‘Just so. His stomach must have been in a very delicate state. You might say that he had already a predisposition to gastro-enteritis. That’s why James hadn’t the least hesitation in diagnosing it when he was called in to see him the morning after the picnic, if you remember. Of course there hadn’t been any talk of arsenic then.’

  ‘Oh, yes; that was another thing I meant to ask you about. Two things, in fact. One of them is—why did Dr James diagnose acute dyspepsia on that occasion? You’ve answered it partially, but was there anything else to make him think so? Had Bentley eaten anything to disagree with him at the picnic, so far as you know?’

  ‘Dear me,’ Dr Purefoy smiled, ‘this is a regular cross-examination!’

  ‘Am I being frightfully rude?’ Roger asked in concern. ‘I am, aren’t I, Alec?’

  ‘Not more than usual,’ grunted that gentleman.

  ‘Not a bit!’ the doctor protested. ‘I was only joking.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am, for all that,’ Roger laughed. ‘But I must plead an overwhelming interest in this case, as you’ve no doubt
gathered.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. It’s a most interesting case, in spite of the lack of any element of doubt about it. And if I can tell you anything you want to know, I shall be only too pleased. James and I are very old friends, and I know almost as much about his share in it as he does.’

  ‘Well, I must say I’d be most awfully obliged. About this picnic business, now?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, it wasn’t so much what he’d had to eat that prompted James’s diagnosis, as the climatic conditions. It wasn’t by any means a warm day and Bentley had gone off in the car without his overcoat. Added to which he undoubtedly sat on the damp grass. Those facts would have been quite enough to give a man in his state of health an internal chill, which would perfectly well have accounted for that particular set of symptoms.’

  ‘But you think now that Dr James was wrong?’

  ‘There’s no doubt about it. James says so himself. That attack was certainly the result of a first administration of arsenic.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the second question I had in mind. Why is the medical evidence so firm that this attack was due to arsenic?’

  ‘Well, you see, it’s like this. Arsenical poisoning can be of two kinds, chronic or acute. Chronic arsenical poisoning consists of a number of small doses spread over a period of time, the poison then acting cumulatively; acute arsenical poisoning is the result of one large fatal dose. Now this case has been proved to have been a mixture of both methods.’

  ‘The traces of arsenic found in the hair, nails and skin showing that the administration must have begun at the very least a fortnight before death,’ Roger put in promptly.

  ‘But you know as much about it as I do!’ exclaimed the doctor.

  ‘I have studied it a bit,’ Roger admitted, with childish enjoyment of his triumph. ‘Yes, I thought that was the reason, but I just wanted to verify it. And now another thing. I’ve often noticed, reading the trials of these poisoning cases, that the defence is nearly always based on the plea that the dead person did not die from the effects of poison but that death was due to natural causes—in spite of the inconvenient presence of poison in the body. And what’s more, they nearly always seem able to call experts in support of the contention. Now do you think that is likely to happen in this case? Of course we don’t know yet what the defence is to be; but supposing it does run on those lines, do you think that any expert will be found to give it as his opinion that Bentley did, in fact, die of natural gastroenteritis (I know that’s a medical contradiction in terms, but let it pass; you see what I mean) and not from arsenical poisoning?’

  ‘No!’ Dr Purefoy said with emphasis. ‘I do not. If there had been less arsenic found, then perhaps they might have got hold of somebody with pet theories about the symptoms of arsenical poisoning to come and say that all the symptoms he would have expected to see weren’t present and therefore death couldn’t possibly be due to arsenic. But nobody can get over those three grains.’

  ‘I see. Then in that case the defence will have to rest on some other basis, won’t it? And there’s only one other possible basis it can rest on, and that is that Mrs Bentley did not herself administer the poison but that someone else did.’

  ‘It’ll be interesting to see what they fake up,’ agreed Dr Purefoy pleasantly. ‘Alec, help yourself to some more port and pass the decanter along.’

  ‘No more for me, thanks,’ Alec said, jumping suddenly to his feet. ‘If you two’ll excuse me, I’m going along to the drawing-room.’

  ‘Why the hurry, Alexander?’ asked Roger. ‘Am I boring you so much?’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s not that. But I promised to scrag Sheila, and I’d better get it done before you two’ve finished gassing. So long!’

  ‘Alec,’ observed Dr Purefoy as the door closed, ‘is one of those rare and refreshing people who have nothing to say and therefore don’t say it. I’ve only met one before in my life, and that, it may surprise you to learn, was a woman. Well, help yourself to the port, Sheringham, and then push it along to me, will you? Now then, any more questions?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Roger said, re-filling his glass. ‘Yes, there is one other thing. What is the usual sort of period to elapse between the administration of a fatal dose of arsenic and death?’

  ‘Well, it’s really impossible to say. It may be anything between a couple of hours and several days.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Roger.

  ‘Twenty-four hours is usually reckoned the average, but death in three to eight hours is quite common.’

  ‘And when do the symptoms begin to show themselves after the dose has been swallowed?’

  ‘In half an hour to an hour.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Roger.

  There was a short pause, while Dr Purefoy sipped his port appreciatively. It was good port, but for the moment Roger appeared to have forgotten all about it.

  ‘Then in a disputed case, one might say that anybody was under suspicion who came into contact with the dead man during the penultimate half-hour before the symptoms appeared?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And anybody who did not do so would be automatically cleared?’

  ‘Within reasonable limits, yes. But it’s all rather anomalous.’

  ‘Um!’ said Roger, and finished his port off at a gulp.

  Dr Purefoy looked a trifle pained. It was good port, and undoubtedly it merited a little more consideration than that.

  CHAPTER VII

  MOSTLY IRRELEVANT

  ‘ALEC, you’re not to! Alec, you beast! Mother, tell him he’s not to. Alec, you’ll ruin this frock! Alec, I will not have it! You’ll have to buy me a new frock, you know. Oh, hell, there’s one of my suspenders gone. Mum, do for goodness’ sake tell him he’s not to! Are you going to sit there and see your daughter murdered? Alec! Alec, I swear I’ll—ALEC! I’ll kick your shins with my heels—I swear I will! Alec, I will not be treated like this. Alec, stop it! A joke’s a joke, but—Alec!—Oh, thank God, here’s father! Father, will you tell Alec—Alec, no! Not with Mr Sheringham here. No, this is too much of a good thing. I’ll get cross in a minute—I mean it! ALEC! Oh, father, do say something to the damned man, for Heaven’s sake.’

  Dr Purefoy said something. He said: ‘Don’t mind me, Alec.’

  ‘Father, I loathe you!’ observed Miss Sheila Purefoy with intense feeling.

  It must be admitted that Miss Purefoy had reason for her emotion. She was standing in a curious position, bent like a hair-pin over the end of the big couch, her face, very red and unpowdered, burrowed upside-down among the loose cushions in the corner of the seat. She could not regain an erect position because Alec’s large hand was planted firmly on the nape of her neck. Every now and then she heaved violently in an effort to follow her head on to the seat of the couch; on these occasions Alec’s other hand would grab her hastily by the scruff of the back and pull her back again. Frequently too she would lash out with a vicious jab of her high-heeled shoe, and then Alec would either jump nimbly out of the way, or else be caught off his guard and suffer intense discomfort. Nor had Alec himself escaped all signs of conflict. His hair was decidedly ruffled, his tie unfastened and a button missing from his dinner-jacket.

  ‘Well, will you keep still while I smack you?’ he demanded reasonably.

  ‘No, I’m damned if I will? Let me up this minute, you hulking great bully.’

  ‘You’re not coming up till you’ve been smacked.’

  ‘But why not?’ cried Miss Purefoy plaintively. ‘I’ve never done anything to you. Why are you going on like this, curse you?’

  ‘Because it’s good for you, Sheila. You’re getting too jolly big for your shoes. Now then, stand still!’ He removed his hand from her back, and Miss Purefoy instantly dived forward on to her head. He was only just in time to grab her frock at the back and drag her back again. A rending sound arose.

  ‘Now, you’ve done it!’ wailed Miss Purefoy. ‘Alec, you hound of hell, let me up. Didn’t you hear me split then? I don’t feel as if I’d got
one whole garment left on me.’

  ‘Look here, Roger,’ Alec said, quite unperturbed, ‘I wish you’d come and whack her for me, will you? You see, whenever I take my hand off her back, she nearly gets away.’

  ‘Alec,’ Roger said with considerable emotion, ‘there are few things I wouldn’t do for you, but whacking my hostess’s daughter is most decidedly one of them.’

  ‘Thank you, Roger Sheringham,’ came a grateful if muffled voice from among the sofa cushions. ‘You’re a gent, you are. Alec, on the other hand, is a hound of hell.’

  ‘Sheila, will you stand still while I do it, then?’ demanded the hound of hell once more.

  ‘No, blast you, I won’t!’

  ‘Alec, dear,’ interposed Mrs Purefoy, ‘I think you might let her up now, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, thank heaven for miracles!’ gasped Miss Purefoy in stifled tones. ‘Mother’s found her heart.’

  ‘But she hasn’t been whacked yet, Molly,’ Alec protested.

  ‘No, but I think you’ve dealt with her drastically enough even without that, haven’t you?’

  ‘All right,’ Alec conceded reluctantly. ‘I’ll take pot-luck and whack her on the run. Now then, Sheila!’

  He whisked his hand away from Miss Purefoy’s back and applied it heavily three or four times to another portion of that young lady’s anatomy as she promptly hurled herself, with yet more rending sounds and a flourishing of green silk stockings, head over heels on to the couch.

  ‘And now,’ panted Miss Purefoy, picking herself up and smoothing down her dishevelled person, ‘somebody tell me a fairy-story. It’s more restful.’

  ‘I think you’ll find her a bit more like a human being for the next day or two now, Jim,’ observed Alec, dropping into a chair and applying a handkerchief to his brow.

  ‘Thank you, Alec,’ replied Dr Purefoy simply.

  His wife felt that it was time to impart a somewhat more conventional note to the proceedings. ‘Alec tells me that you and he may be staying some days here, Mr Sheringham,’ she remarked.