An Oxford Tragedy

by Norman Russell

  John, she saw, had gone suddenly grave. He was not a naturally sombre man, and his knitted brow, and nervous wringing of his hands made him look like a different person from her normally sanguine brother.

  ‘I don’t like it, Fanny,’ he said. ‘You and I have been saved from disaster by Father’s legacy, and I’ve no doubt that Tim will find his path smoothed by his inheritance. He can buy the freehold or whatever they call it of that parish of his, after the old buffer’s retired. If people are hinting at murder – there, I’ve said the word aloud – we three will be the immediate suspects. Not only that, but if it’s thought that we gained our legacies through murder, then our new fortunes will be forfeit to the Crown. I’ll try to find out more, and you can make some discreet enquiries at Oxford.’

  ‘Well,’ said Frances, dryly, ‘I didn’t murder Father.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t. Neither did I.’

  ‘I should think not. And I’m sure Tim… .’

  ‘Let’s leave Tim to speak for himself, shall we?’ said John. ‘In any case, I don’t suppose he had any debts to pay off. That fortune just fell into his lap. It would have been better if Father had left Tim to the bounty of God, and divided his portion between you and me.’

  He rose from his chair, came across to her, and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Dear Fanny,’ he said, with a tenderness that surprised his sister, ‘nothing must be allowed to destroy our good fortune. Father died of gastroenteritis. I’ll fight all rumours to the contrary with all the power at my command. I know you think I’m a pompous hypocrite, and a rogue, too, I expect, but I’ll not stand by, and see all our bright futures ruined by evil rumours.’

  The Reverend Timothy Fowler sat in the dim parlour of a cottage near St Mary’s church, listening to old Dr Hooper talking about deathbeds. This was the man who had attended their mother in her last illness, many, many years ago, and who had attended all three of them for a multitude of childhood ailments. Timothy knew that the old physician had had a lifelong interest in the subject of poisons. He wore a faded frock coat, with a black mourning-band on the sleeve.

  ‘Sometimes, Timothy,’ said Dr Hooper, ‘there can be no doubt of the cause of death – no ambiguities, you know. Your dear mother died of consumption of the lungs, a condition that had become fatally advanced before she sought medical treatment. Your father was often away, securing his position at Oxford, and your mother was placed almost entirely in the charge of nurses – well, of course, you remember all that, I’m sure.’

  Timothy Fowler let his mind go back in time to the year 1871, when Mother had died. John was twelve years old, he, Tim, was eight, and Fanny a tiny girl of four. Father had insisted on the three of them paying their last respects to Mother as she lay in her coffin. It had been a harrowing experience. John, white-faced, had put a reassuring arm round him, so that both of them had survived the ordeal. Little Frances had been terrified. She had screamed and screamed until one of their female relatives had picked her up and taken her away.

  ‘So that was what happened with your mother. I knew her before her marriage – oh yes, didn’t you know? Victoria Mary Hallett. She was a lovely girl, and married your father when she was twenty-one, here, at St Mary’s. She left him a great fortune, you know, but… .’

  Yes, thought Timothy, that ‘but’ speaks volumes. Mother’s private fortune, entailed to her during her lifetime, had passed to Father on her death. It was an open secret that Father was planning to make a massive gift to the university, an endowment of some sort. At the reading of the Will, Groom the lawyer had revealed that it was to have been a School of Medical Jurisprudence. No doubt Mother’s legacy, and a great deal more besides, would have been swallowed up in that airy project.

  Some weeks before Father’s death, on a visit to Reading, Timothy had met the Archdeacon of Berkshire, a former Lincoln College man, who had told him in confidence that Father was using this gift in order to secure a peerage. Moreover, the rumoured foundation of the School of Medical Jurisprudence would have put him in the front running for the Vice-Chancellorship of Oxford University, an office that was soon to fall vacant.

  Father’s cavalier attitude to his family didn’t bear thinking of. Well, he had gone now to wherever Providence had deemed fit to send him.

  The old doctor fixed Timothy Fowler with a pale but very intelligent eye. It was as though he was reading the young clergyman’s thoughts.

  ‘What has put this idea of mercuric chloride into your mind? The very fact that you come to me with your query – a doctor with an interest in such things – tell me what’s in your thoughts.’

  ‘I … I heard about it, you know,’ said Timothy. ‘Somebody told me that if it were used as a poison, its symptoms would be very like those of gastroenteritis.’

  ‘Hmm… . Be very careful, Timothy, before you come to any tentative conclusions that you may regret later. You tell me that Sir Montague died of gastroenteritis, certified as such by the attendant physicians. Why not leave it at that?’

  ‘This mercuric chloride,’ Timothy persisted, ‘I’m not a chemist or a medical man, but surely I am right in thinking that this is a noxious substance?’

  ‘It is. It’s sometimes called salts of white mercury, or corrosive sublimate. It’s a particularly cruel poison, which destroys the entire body system by absorption, similar in its effects to arsenic and antimony.’

  ‘Does it have any medical application?’

  ‘It does. It can be prescribed for the treatment of certain diseases consequent upon a life of vice. In some cases, it has killed the wretched patient. It would have had nothing to do with your poor father’s medical regime.’

  After a few civilities, Timothy left Dr Hooper’s cottage, and made his way back to Forest Park. The old doctor watched him from the window. Now what, he thought, was all that about? Timothy Fowler knows something, or is concealing something. I wonder what that ‘something’ is?

  5

  ‘Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues’

  Inspector James Antrobus followed the young nurse down the stone steps leading to the basement of the London Chest Hospital in Bonner Road, Victoria Park. This would be his last creosote treatment, as he was to be discharged at noon that day. They entered a chilly tiled room, where Antrobus sat in a chair, flinching as the nurse placed a light mask impregnated with creosote over his nose and mouth, securing it in place with elastic straps.

  ‘Half an hour will do today, Mr Antrobus,’ said the nurse. Her cheerful voice went well with her general air of crisply starched liveliness. ‘This is your tenth session, so you know what you have to do.’

  Yes, he knew what to do. Breathe in through both nose and mouth, hold your breath for four seconds, and then exhale. Do this without a break for thirty minutes. Keep your eye on the second-hand of the large clock fixed to the wall in front of you. Try not to cough until the half-hour was over.

  Anne Stuart – that was the nurse’s name – had retreated to the next room, where he could see her observing him through the special window let into the wall. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. He closed his eyes, and for a few moments imagined that he was weather-proofing a garden fence with the pungent tarry paint. Tar and milk – these were the defining smells of the basement, which also housed the kitchen and its annexes – the larders, some storerooms, and the milk pasteurization parlour.

  He had suffered from consumption of the lungs for over five years. After an alarming haemorrhage earlier in the year, the Chief Constable, no less, had arranged for him to become an in-patient for three weeks at this renowned London hospital. He had been assigned to one of the open wards, little more than wide balconies, where his damaged lungs could breathe what passed for ‘fresh air’ in smoky London day and night. Tomorrow, he would be back in his beloved Oxford.

  Anne Stuart came back into the room, and deftly removed the stifling mask. Almost immediately the tickling began in Antrobus’s throat. In a few moments, the coughing would start, heralding the
grim and painful clearing of his lungs. Without speaking, he nodded his thanks to the young nurse, and walked swiftly into the adjacent coughing-room.

  At eleven o’clock, dressed in the smart black suit that he favoured, James Antrobus was shown into the consulting-room of Dr Jelke, the hospital superintendent.

  ‘You will find your condition much improved, Inspector Antrobus,’ said Dr Jelke. ‘Continue to take the medicines I have prescribed, and be sure to visit your own physician at least once a month. I wish you well. We have ordered a cab, which is standing at the Bonner Road entrance, to convey you to Paddington Station.’

  Some minutes later, Antrobus stepped into the cab, and was waved on his way by Dr Jelke and Nurse Stuart.

  ‘What do you think, Dr Jelke?’ asked the nurse.

  ‘He could live for many years yet, Nurse, if he takes care of himself. But his lungs are very badly damaged, and he’ll never be free from sudden haemorrhages. His right lung is virtually useless, and will have to be removed at some time in the future. The creosote treatment will have been of enormous benefit to him, so I have hopes for his future. Yes, I have hopes for him.’

  Captain Stanley Fitzmaurice, the Senior Tutor, looked up from his work as the door opened and his scout, Hammond, came into the room. It was a hot summer’s day, and the perfume of the great wisteria covering that side of the hall which gave on to the second quad wafted through the open window.

  ‘Yes, Hammond, what is it?’

  The scout, a tall, balding man in his fifties, was wearing a canvas apron over his dark suit, and there were smears of soot on his hands. Evidently he had started the blackleading of the grates. It was 20 June, and the undergraduates had gone down five days earlier when Trinity Term ended.

  ‘Captain Fitzmaurice, sir,’ said Hammond, ‘I’ve been plucking up courage to speak to you for some days now, but as I’ve been working here on staircase VI this morning, and knowing that you were here, sir, I’ve taken the liberty of knocking.’

  Fitzmaurice laid aside the letter that he was reading and gave the man his full attention.

  ‘And what is the matter, Hammond? How can I help you?’

  ‘Sir, there are rumours going round – rumours about the late Warden. Not just here, in St Michael’s, but in other places, too, places where you gentlemen wouldn’t go to, or know about. Alehouses, and the like. So I’ve come to you, sir.’

  Years ago, Hammond and Fitzmaurice had served in the same regiment, Fitzmaurice as officer commanding ‘C’ Company, and Hammond one of the two corporals in the senior platoon. Their experiences in the field had forged a bond between them. Fitzmaurice motioned to a chair.

  ‘You’d better sit down, Hammond. See that the oak’s sported first, so that we’ll not be disturbed. Now, tell me about these rumours.’

  The scout sat down gingerly on the chair, and cleared his throat nervously.

  ‘Captain Fitzmaurice, sir,’ he began, ‘the Warden died in the Lodgings on the third, and his death was brought in as stomach trouble. Now, sir, I have a daughter, Lucy, and when the wife died, I sent her to live in the country with her aunt, my wife’s sister. It was the Warden, God rest him, who got her a place with his son, the Reverend Timothy Fowler, in a place called Clapton Parva. It’s a little village in Hampshire.’

  Fitzmaurice leaned back in his chair. Evidently, Hammond was going to take his time.

  ‘Well, sir, Lucy’s not the brightest of girls, I must admit, but she’s got more sense than people give her credit for. Begging pardon, sir, but gentlefolk talk among themselves as though their servants were deaf, and Lucy knows that the reverend gentleman and his good wife call her “the Slow Girl”. But it works both ways.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Hearing what people say, sir. A few days after the Warden had died, Lucy was in the scullery, washing up, when she heard the mistress cry out in alarm. She rushed out into the passage and heard Mrs Fowler say: “Oh, Tim, what have you done? What am I to do?” And then she began crying for her mother. She’s twenty-four, so Lucy tells me, but acts more like a girl of eighteen. Not lacking, exactly, sir, but immature.’

  ‘This is all very interesting, Hammond,’ said Fitzmaurice, ‘but where’s it all leading?’

  ‘I’m coming to that, sir, now. Later that day, Lucy used her mistress’s key to open the desk in Mr Fowler’s study. She knew where Mrs Fowler hid things, you see. And in the desk she found – well, let me show you the letter that she wrote me.’

  Hammond produced the letter from the pocket in his apron, and handed it to Fitzmaurice. It had been written on a sheet of printed note paper, headed ‘The Curate’s House, Clapton Parva, via Beaulieu, Hants.’ For a servant girl who was supposedly ‘slow’, it was surprisingly well written. One paragraph stood out from the rest because it had been written in capital letters.

  OH PA, I SAW A PACKET OF SOME STUFF, AND IT WAS THIS THAT HAD MADE THE MISTRESS CRY OUT. I SAW IT IN HER HAND BEFORE SHE PUT IT BACK. I HAVE WRITTEN OUT EXACTLY WHAT IT SAID ON THE PACKET. IT SAID IT WAS POISON. HERE IT IS.

  Beneath these words Lucy Hammond had reproduced exactly what had been written on the label:

  POISON! Mercuric Chloride. POISON!

  To be administered only by a physician.

  William Hart, Chemist. Winery Lane,

  Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.

  Fitzmaurice stirred uneasily. His mind flew back to his conversation with Gerald Templar, the Junior Dean, who had hinted at poison while the Warden was still alive. And this substance – this mercuric chloride – surely Templar had mentioned it as a means of doing away with people? He looked at Hammond the scout, still sitting uncomfortably on his chair. Servants hated being told to sit in the presence of their master or mistress.

  ‘Will you leave the matter with me, Hammond? I promise you that I’ll look into it. I will copy out your daughter’s letter now, and return the original to you. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?’

  ‘Only that rumours are still going round here, in Oxford, sir. Mr Ballard, the Warden’s secretary – he’s got his suspicions. And that nurse – I shouldn’t wonder if she hasn’t a tale to tell. Will that be all, sir?’

  ‘I think so. You’ve set my mind racing, Hammond. When I’ve discovered anything tangible, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, there’s no need for your daughter’s name to be mentioned in all this. Let us try to keep her out of it all.’

  Hammond rose from his chair. He looked both pleased and relieved.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s very hot today. I’ll bring you up a glass of iced barley water presently.’

  ‘An excellent idea. Are you doing the grates?’

  ‘I am, sir. Now the young gentlemen have gone down, there’s plenty to be done!’

  Obviously grateful for the change of subject from possible murder to something more mundane, the scout thrust his daughter’s letter back into his apron pocket, and left the room. He returned in a few minutes with the promised barley water, and then went about his duties.

  It was half past eleven. Where would Gerald Templar be, now? With no undergraduates to tutor or discipline, he would have gone about his own business. It was Wednesday, the day when Templar left the college to earn himself a welcome additional stipend in the service of the city authorities.

  On the eastern side of St Aldate’s, and within sight of Christchurch Meadow, was to be found a little street called Floyd’s Row, part of the slate-grey suburb of St Ebbe’s. Here was situated the Oxford City Mortuary. Stanley Fitzmaurice mounted the steps from the road and entered the gloomy building. He was assailed immediately by the smell of formalin, which mingled with the cleansing scent of carbolic.

  Doors to left and right, doors with frosted windows, led, he knew, into the silent chambers where corpses lay beneath their white sheets. Thankfully, he had no business there.

  He found Gerald Templar in a long room at the rear of the building, sitting at a bench covered with chemical apparatus. Racks against the walls h
eld numerous glass jars, the screw caps of which were sealed with red wax. Each jar had affixed to it a label, which held details of what the liquids inside them contained, and from whose body they had been taken. Other jars, decently obscured with crepe paper, held the organs of bodies that had required a fuller version of the standard autopsy.

  Templar looked up from the microscope through which he had been peering, and smiled a greeting. He looks for all the world like one of those Russian anarchists with which the newspapers delight in frightening us, thought Fitzmaurice. The ill-disciplined beard, the glittering pince-nez, the slightly threadbare suit contrived to make him look older than his years. He was only twenty-five.

  ‘Fitzmaurice! What brings you here? Or needn’t I ask?’

  Templar removed a glass slide from the microscope, and set it carefully aside.

  ‘I’ve been examining specimens of lung tissue this morning,’ he said. ‘They all confirm that the late owners of the tissue had died from emphysema, despite some busybody policeman suggesting that they had been poisoned. Poison has been in the air over the last ten years. Remember George Lamson and his deadly aconite, in ’81? And Pritchard, with his antimony? But what brings you here?’

  Fitzmaurice told his friend the story that the scout Hammond had recounted. While he was speaking, he saw that the young man was becoming more and more excited. When he had finished, Templar burst into speech.

  ‘I felt all along that the Warden had been poisoned,’ he said. ‘In fact, I more or less told you my own suspicions. I’ve done a lot of mortuary work here over the past two years, and have learnt much about the effects of poison, and how easily they can be mistaken for the concluding stages of fatal illnesses. And now Hammond brings us this story… .’

  Fitzmaurice produced the copy that he had made of the label that Lucy Hammond had seen on the packet of poison, and handed it to the young chemist.