The Murder of My Aunt

by Richard Hull

  ‘Unless immediate treatment is adopted, collapse speedily occurs … death is likely to occur rapidly, e.g. within an hour, but it may be delayed.’ Undoubtedly make full inquiries. And I shall not give the antidote, a pint of lime water made into a thin cream with an ounce of chalk. It sounds disgusting.

  Arsenic. No; too much is known about arsenic. I am wise enough not even to read the paragraph through. ‘Prussic acid … is met with in commerce only in a dilute state.’ Still, it is met with. ‘Less than a teaspoonful of the two per cent acid has caused death. The symptoms of prussic-acid poisoning set in with great rapidity, and in consequence the onset of the symptoms is reckoned by seconds rather than minutes.’ This sounds promising. I don’t really like the idea of watching a slow process. Moreover, I see that ‘other soluble cyanides, more especially cyanide of potassium, a salt largely used in photography, are equally poisonous with hydrocyanic acid.’ That means it’s possible to get it. I think I had better put that on my list. I’ll just read the paragraph through again.

  No, I’ve struck it out. ‘The lightning-like character of the illness, and the speedy death of the patient, coupled with the peculiar odour of the acid, seldom leave any doubt as to the nature of the death.’ That won’t do at all – obviously. Careful, now. Be steady. Keep your head.

  What’s this? ‘Aconite poisoning. The ordinary aconite, wolfsbane, or monkshood, and an alkaloid extracted from it, aconitine, are perhaps the most deadly of known poisons. One-sixteenth of a grain of aconitine has proved fatal to a man’ – and therefore, I suppose, to a woman, but here we have the real point. ‘The root of aconite has been eaten in mistake for that of horse-radish.’

  Splendid and excellent. That awful Sunday dinner at Brynmawr nearly always consists of roast beef, and my aunt always eats plenty of horse-radish sauce, which I don’t touch – I never have. There can be no argument about it.

  Mary could bear out that statement. If I could substitute the aconite roots for the horse-radish ones the trick would be done. They must be sufficiently alike, if the mistake has been made before, for Cook not to notice it. By the way, I wonder if Cook or Mary eat horse-radish sauce? Probably there will be some disturbance before they start their dinner. It depends how quickly the thing acts. I hope there will be, but cook deserves anything she gets, and as for the kitchen-maid, she really doesn’t count. She’s barely human. Mary. Well, Mary has betrayed me. Still, on the whole, I hope they won’t have time to start on it.

  The next point, then, is to find out all about aconite. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know what it looks like, but with any luck I can find something out about it here: For the moment I think I have done enough and can call it a day. I hope this Club can provide me with a decent lunch; I feel I have deserved it after this very energetic morning.

  3

  Lunch was quite pleasant, even if the company of old fogeys who sit around look a bit depressing. They all have heavy, expensive-looking faces and drink quantities of vintage port to wash down heavy beef-and-mutton sort of meals. In fact, one near me I should describe in a paraphrase of the public-house offer as the sort of man who habitually lunched off two cuts off the joint and one veg. I listened to some of his conversation. He seemed to have only one thought, namely, when would the Stilton be fit to eat? So far, he complained, it was chalky and quite unripe.

  I chose my own lunch with more care and, I hope, a prettier taste. The dressed crab was excellent, and so was the perdreau perigourdin. I added an omelette espagnole and some very drinkable claret to accompany it. Rather a larger lunch than I usually have, but I must admit I was hungry – the efforts of the morning, I suppose. After a short rest I walked up Regent Street to look at the shops chiefly. My ideas may be a little out of date, I feel, after rusticating for so long. I am glad to notice that the fashion of putting stereotyped labels on clothes, as if they were vegetables, is departing. It used always to be ‘The latest’, ‘As worn’, ‘This season’s’, or at the most dashing ‘Very chic’. Now, however, I found a shop which has really broken away from that sort of thing. ‘Too, too divine’, ‘Dev’lish’ are its allurements. The sort of things one might say. ‘Simply scrumptious’ I thought was perhaps too slangy, especially as the garment, a brown jumper, seemed to me to be a very ordinary, rather drab affair. ‘Stupendously stunning’, however, was the mot juste for an orange slashed with grey tweed coat, with large mother-of-pearl buttons, and the suspicion of a fur collar. I could not help laughing as I wondered what my aunt would look like in it. The effect would be enough to knock anyone down. But then my aunt’s clothes usually are a source of amusement, not only to me, but I believe to most other people. I wish that shop sold men’s clothes, I feel sure they would have something that would appeal to me.

  However, I had a little experimental work to do. I turned into a large chemist’s. At least, they used to be chemists, but really, nowadays, they seem to be everything else as well. My idea was simply to find out if I could buy any oxalic acid crystals. Not that I have made up my mind to use them, but knowledge is always power, as some platitudinous poet remarked.

  Now what followed was really curious, and I put it down just to remind myself of one of the few moments of real weakness I have ever had. I sidled in over a pavement curiously inlaid with drawings of tooth-brushes and hairbrushes, and even sponges and combs – very modern, but rather odd – and finally made my way towards a jade-green, octagonal counter displaying myriads of bath salts piled up in charming array with most seductive wrappers. There were several kinds I was sure I should like – they were shaded so delicately and so alluringly named – only my aunt makes such a fuss over the delicate perfume. I turned away reluctantly and not quite sure which way to go. Immediately one of these all too efficient shop-walkers swept down on me, making me feel about twelve.

  ‘Can I assist you, sir? What department do you require?’

  Why couldn’t the fellow say ‘want’? However, I found it equally impossible to say ‘The poison department’, and for some absurd reason I found I simply could not say ‘I want to buy some oxalic acid crystals.’

  The fellow looked as if he could see right through me, and – stupid though it sounds – I completely lost my head and said the first thing that came into my mind. ‘I – er – want – er – some – er – Christmas cards,’ was my idiotic reply.

  ‘Certainly, sir, on the second floor, sir. They will direct you there, sir. You will pardon my saying so, sir, but your forethought in seeing to the matter so early – it is only September, sir – is very wise, sir, I am sure, sir. But I rather wonder, sir, if our department will have their full stock yet, sir. This way, sir. The lift will take you.’ And with that he pushed me, rather than ushered me, into a lift already full of women with faces like brussels sprouts, and snapped ‘Christmas cards’ to the lift-boy, who, for the moment, to judge by the surprise on his face, clearly thought that this was an ejaculation, startling in one so decorous. The brussels-sprout-faced women all sniffed, and one, with more truth than she knew, murmured audibly, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  I crawled out of the place as wise as when I went in, and considerably shaken, with a most ridiculous picture of a robin trying to eat a very prickly holly leaf in my pocket.

  On the way back I came across another branch – slightly less grandiloquent in appearance. This time I rushed in, and, addressing a pale-faced bespectacled youth, exclaimed in one breath:

  ‘Can – I – buy – some – oxalic – acid – crystals – please?’

  The youth folded up a sheet of paper and looked at me disapprovingly. ‘One minute, sir, please. I’m serving this lady, now.’

  I was in such a state of nerves that I could have sworn that she was one of the brussels-sprout women from the lift, but really she couldn’t be. All that sort of women are so alike, though, anyhow.

  Eventually the youth turned to me. ‘Oxalic acid crystals, sir? You know it’s a poison, sir?’

  If he had only known how funny his questio
n was, we should have been all square in knowledge. However, I kept my head.

  ‘Of course.’

  The youth regarded me gravely. ‘Excuse me, sir, but for what purpose do you require them?’

  ‘To clean my straw hat.’

  The youth was visibly startled by this rather unexpected reply.

  ‘Er – yes, sir, certainly, sir. So many gentlemen find it simpler to get their hatters to save them the trouble, but they are getting more fashionable, sir.’ He brightened visibly.

  It was necessary to make an effort. ‘I live in the depth of the country with no intelligent hatter within miles, and I find it inconvenient to come up to London every time I want my hat cleaned. If you wouldn’t mind serving me –’

  ‘Certainly, sir, I’ll just call Mr Marshbanks. Certain formalities, you know, sir, as it is a poison. Shan’t keep you waiting a second. The register has to be signed, I believe, sir. Mr Marshbanks knows all about it. Just a second, sir.’

  ‘Oh, if there’s all that trouble, thank you, I won’t worry. No doubt something else will be adequate for my purpose. I was told that was the best stuff, though.’

  ‘Just as you please, sir; but I really shouldn’t have to keep you more than a minute. Ah, there is Mr Marshbanks.’

  Mr Marshbanks from a distance appeared to be the twin brother of the shop-walker up the road. The resemblance was so great that I accidentally exclaimed ‘Christmas cards’ and then, turning back to the startled assistant, hurriedly refused to let him take any more trouble. The thing, I explained, was too trivial. I left the shop with an unpleasant feeling that I was an object of extreme suspicion to the pale-faced youth now talking rapidly to Mr Marshbanks.

  But nothing like so bad an object of suspicion as I should have been if I had been fool enough to sign that register with my own name and address, and then used the stuff successfully on my aunt. And as for giving a false name and address, it’s awfully hard to think of one on the spur of the moment with any realism at all. Besides, they might have wanted to post it or to verify it or goodness knows what. Really, the laws of this country are positively ridiculous if you can’t buy a few crystals to clean a straw hat without all this fuss and bother. I suppose it’s Dora or some silly Act like that. I should really like to go into Parliament just to pass one Act, namely, one to repeal all stupid, obsolete, vexatious, irritating, unnecessary, tyrannical, and useless Acts and all parts of all other Acts which were stupid, obsolete, etc. The statute book would be quite considerably shorter.

  Meanwhile the Encyclopaedia has let me down. Oxalic acid apparently can be made by oxidizing sugar with nitric acid – but the details of how to do so are not given. You can also start with sawdust made into a stiff paste with a mixture of strong caustic potash and soda solution, and heated in flat iron pans to 200–250 degrees – which is impossible, though it sounds a lovely mud-pie. Again you can, if you are able, heat sodium in a current of carbon-dioxide to 350 degrees centigrade. Thank you so much. And again they go on to encourage one by talking of its similarity to Epsom salts – a very tiresome book. It will have to be aconites.

  4

  However, first catch your aconite, and then cook it.

  ‘The aconite has a short, underground stem, from which dark-coloured, tapering roots descend. The horse-radish root is much longer than that of the aconite, and it is not tapering; its colour is yellowish, and the top of the root has the remains of the leaves on it.’ On the whole I wish it was the other way round, since then one could take the root, shorten it, make it taper, add a little yellow paint and remove the leaves, but if I do that now, I’m merely making a piece of horse-radish look like an aconite, making the sheep put on wolf’s clothing – wolfsbane clothing, one might say. However, probably Cook won’t know all that, though it would be just like that tiresome woman to say, ‘This doesn’t look right somehow,’ and throw my possibly laboriously acquired aconite roots away.

  But to continue. ‘The roots of aconitum ferox supply the famous Indian (Nepal) poison called bikh, bish, or nabee. It contains considerable quantities of the alkaloid pseud-aconitine which is the most deadly poison known.’ I pause to smile. ‘As garden plants the aconites are very ornamental, hardy perennials. They thrive very well in any ordinary garden soil, and will grow beneath the shade of trees.’ Well, that ought to make it easy to grow them at Brynmawr. I wonder, by the way, if I shall have to grow some from seed, or if I can get some small plants? If it’s seeds I may have to wait till next spring before I sow them, and that will make a year in all. Perhaps I can buy fully grown plants with luck. I suppose I shall have to go to one of these nursery gardeners. I hope they aren’t as particular about poisonous plants as chemists are!

  Still, however, I don’t know what the things look like. The Encyclopaedia goes on to burble about veratryl-pseud-aconine, veratric acid, Japaconitine (obtained from the Japanese aconites, known locally, but not by me, as ‘kuzauza’), and finally gets involved in japbenzaconine. It then remarks, ‘Many species of aconite are cultivated in gardens, some having blue, and others yellow flowers,’ from which, of course, it will be quite easy to find it. Oh, yes. So have pansies; and that’s all that can be got from that except the comforting statement that the only postmortem sign is that of asphyxia; not that it matters, since even if the cause is discovered, the reason is going to be the carelessness of Evans.

  But I still have not caught my aconite.

  As a reference library this club is sadly lacking. As I think I said before, religion and the classics are here in quantities – but who wants either? Except the solvers of those obscure crossword puzzles by Torquemada. Poetry, Travel, Belles-Lettres, History, Dictionaries – all have their place in the notice giving a guide to the method in which it is arranged, but Botany does not seem to be a leading subject. However, by the aid of a great deal of research in the most curious card-index, I have amassed a short selection.

  The Illustrated Dictionary of Gardening (an Encyclopedia of Horticulture), bought in 1911 and written, I should think, by Queen Victoria’s grandmother.

  Withering’s Botany (1812).

  London’s Encyclopedia of Plants (1855).

  The Latin Names of Common Plants, by a member of the Club I observe.

  The English Flower Garden, 1st Edition 1883, 6th Edition 1898.

  These five, so far as I can make out, complete the list. Whoever buys the books for this Club seems to be echoing Mr Hardcastle. ‘I love everything that is old; old books, old wine, and even an old wife.’ I agree with Mrs Hardcastle’s disgusted reaction to the remark. How I hated that play when I had to read it as a holiday task!

  The second and third of my selection of books can be discarded at once. They are so incredibly learned as to be completely incomprehensible and merely full of signs, abbreviations, and dog Latin, which I am unable even to read. As for The Latin Names of Common Plants, it’s a scholarly book on the origin of names, pleasant enough in its way, but not helpful to my purpose.

  The English Flower Garden looks a bit shorter and less prosy and pedantic than the Dictionary. Let’s try that first. The aconitum or monkshood, I read, is a tall and handsome herbaceous plant of the buttercup order, dangerous from its poisonous roots. ‘There are many names, not so many species, the best are of some value for our gardens.’ And then it becomes, in the circumstances, unconsciously a trifle amusing. ‘Few would risk their being planted where the roots could be by any chance dug up by mistake for edible roots, as they are so deadly; but almost all the kinds may be easily naturalized in copses or shrubberies away from the garden proper.’ So if we have got any growing at Brynmawr – and it really seems quite possible from what they say – they would be well away from the walled garden where the fruit and vegetables grow, and probably under trees. I must bear that in mind. The book continues, ‘They are tall plants from three to five foot high, flowering from July to September.’ Well, slowly we’re building up a picture. Pansies, for instance, are not ‘three to five foot high’.

>   As a matter of fact there is also a picture, so called, in this work, but it’s a very poor thing. The Aconite appears to be a lanky plant running to seed and looking very dull. I’m sure I should pull it up as a weed if one of those dreadful moments arrived when my aunt compelled me to weed. She does sometimes; but though I will keep the illustration open beside me in case it gives me an idea, it is much too blurred and small to be of any help at all really.

  And now for the Illustrated Dictionary. Aconitum is named after a harbour at Heraclea in Bithynia, near which it is said to abound. Well, I’m not going there to get some, even if I knew where Heraclea was and even if the author was sure, which he does not seem to be. Aconite, monkshood, or wolfsbane is a very ornamental hardy perennial. I can only say it didn’t look it in the last illustration. ‘Flowers in terminal racemes; sepals five, the upper one helmet-shaped, the two sides broader than the two back ones; petals five, small, the two upper with long claws hooded at the tip; the three inferior smaller or undeveloped; leaves palmate. Will produce fine panicles of handsome flowers. Although very unlike horse-radish, they have frequently been mistaken for it, with fatal results; and none of the species should be cultivated in or near the kitchen garden.’ All right, all right, we all know that by now.

  Now I must admit that this man, though over-technical, is a trier, and incidentally I apologize for destroying his grammar by abbreviating. If only I knew what ‘racemes’, ‘sepals’, ‘palmate’, and ‘panicles’ were, I should be getting on. I suppose I must look them up in the dictionary.

  However, there are also three illustrations. He appears, however, to disagree with the man who said there were many names, but not so many species. He lists dozens and dozens of species, but unfortunately does not illustrate ‘ferox’, who appears to be the little darling for my purpose.

  But, by George, this third illustration does seem familiar. Let me think. Let me imagine that as three to five foot high, blue or yellow – rather pale yellow seems right somehow – growing under a tree. Yes, yes, hurrah yes, under the copper-beech on the right of the lawn as you look out of the drawing-room window. Undoubtedly, that’s it. In full flower now, for things are generally late at Brynmawr, and not so far from the kitchen-garden, either, though it’s true there is a wall in between; there has my aunt planted and carefully tended the aconite. The old wolf shall have her bane.