I was, in point of fact, not too happy about the Coroner, a Torminster solicitor named Rigwell: an honest and conscientious little man, no doubt, but, like too many coroners, impressed by his own importance.
Frances suddenly nudged me.
‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘Along there, next to Mr Waterhouse. I believe that must be Maurice.’
I glanced along the bench on which we were sitting. Beyond our own little group there was a gap. Then, almost level with the Coroner’s table, was a trio of men: Cyril Waterhouse, a dapper little man in a black coat and pepper-and-salt trousers with ‘solicitor’ written all over him, and a young man, rather stout, with a pale, fleshy face and fair hair, who might have been any age between twenty and thirty. His likeness to both John and Cyril was unmistakable. I agreed with Frances that it must be Maurice.
‘What do you think of him?’ she asked.
‘Not a very pleasing specimen,’ I whispered back.
‘I think he looks a dreadful youth. A sort of caricature of John’s bulk combined with Cyril’s sharpness. No wonder John couldn’t stand him.’ She turned to Rona. ‘Rona, is that Maurice?’
Rona glanced along the bench. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s Maurice.’
‘Hush,’ I whispered.
The Coroner was beginning his address. In pleasantly informal tones he warned the jury to disregard everything they had heard outside the court and pay attention to the evidence only. Then Cyril Waterhouse was called and gave formal evidence of identification.
‘Now let me see, Mr Waterhouse,’ said the Coroner chattily. ‘I believe I am right in saying that you are primarily responsible for the fact that we are holding this enquiry at all today?’
‘That is so,’ agreed Waterhouse firmly.
‘You sent a telegram from London, immediately on learning of your brother’s death, to the sexton here instructing him not to fill in the grave?’
‘Yes. Notification of my brother’s death did not reach me till after his funeral. I then sent the telegram.’
‘And you agreed with your sister-in-law, Mrs Waterhouse, that a post-mortem was advisable?’
‘I persuaded my sister-in-law that a post-mortem was advisable,’ Waterhouse corrected grimly.
‘She did not want one?’
‘At first, no. I persuaded her.’
I groaned inwardly. Waterhouse was evidently determined to show no mercy.
‘Now, so far as anyone knew at that time, your brother’s death was a natural one. It had been certified as such, and I think no one suspected anything to the contrary. What reason had you for wishing a post-mortem?’
‘I was not satisfied,’ Cyril replied crisply. ‘I knew my brother. He was a very healthy man. His death did not strike me as a natural one.’
‘You felt that even in London, before you had so much as learned all the circumstances?’
‘I did. I also formed the suspicion that things were being hushed up in some way.’
‘Hushed up?’
‘Concealed from me.’
‘You therefore determined on an investigation?’
‘That is so.’
The Coroner then went on to bring out the circumstances in which the will had been found, the witness’ astonishment on learning the size of the sum for which his brother had been insured, and the subsequent search carried out by him that same evening and subsequently. Waterhouse deposed that certain articles found during the search had been handed over by him to the police. The Coroner, I was thankful to notice, did not ask him his reason for making the search.
Then came the first sensation of the day, with an account by Waterhouse of how the parlourmaid had handed over to him a certain letter which Mrs Waterhouse had given her to post, and how he had opened and read it, afterwards giving it to the police. The Coroner, who, after all, was quite a decent fellow, would, I think, have been glad to avoid reading out the letter in open court, but so much importance was evidently attached to it by the police that he had no option but to lay it before the jury. I watched the reporters’ pencils racing as they kept pace with the hurried tone in which the Coroner got over a plainly distasteful task.
That concluded Waterhouse’s evidence, but Mr Bellew received permission to put a question.
‘Mr Waterhouse, you have told us that you carried out an intensive search throughout the whole house for arsenic. Did you in point of fact find any arsenic?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing remotely resembling arsenic?’
‘So far as I know, no.’
‘Nor any other kind of poison?’
‘No.’
‘Thank you.’
We resettled ourselves on the hard benches, glancing at each other surreptitiously. Waterhouse’s evidence, in spite of the little cross-examination at the tail, had been about as damaging for Angela as the man had evidently wished to make it.
Rookeway, the surgeon, was the next witness, a dark, clean-shaven, self-possessed man who clearly had plenty of experience of coroners’ quests behind him.
With an occasional question from the Coroner he described the post-mortem at which he had officiated, and the appearance of the body, which he called that of ‘a healthy, well-nourished man.’ There was no disease in any of the organs sufficient to account for death, the only unusual appearances being the slight reddening of the duodenum and, in a lesser degree, the jejunum. The witness added further details and referred to the good state of preservation of the body, and he was then asked point-blank by the coroner whether the appearances which he had described would be consistent with death from epidemic diarrhoea. Mr Rookeway replied that they would be perfectly consistent. Pressed further, he stated that at the post-mortem examination there was nothing at all, except possibly the preservation of the body, to indicate that death had not occurred from epidemic diarrhoea.
‘We know in fact that death was not due to that cause,’ the Coroner remarked, ‘but in view of certain doubts which may be felt, I think we ought to clear this question up for once and for all. So far as post-mortem appearances go, then, you tell us that there is practically nothing to distinguish epidemic diarrhoea from arsenical poisoning. Now what about symptoms during life? Can they be distinguished?’
‘That depends on whether the arsenical poisoning is chronic or acute,’ Mr Rookeway replied with an air of patient helpfulness. ‘That is to say, whether the poisoning has been carried out over a long period by means of small, non-fatal doses, having a cumulatively fatal effect, or by means of one large fatal dose. But I think my distinguished colleague, Sir Frances Harbottle, is better qualified to describe these symptoms to you than I am.’
The Coroner agreed, put a few more questions to the witness as to what post-mortem appearances might have been expected in the case of death from chronic arsenical poisoning, established the fact that these were not present in this instance, and called Sir Frances Harbottle.
‘Good for the old boy,’ whispered Glen to me out of the side of his mouth. ‘He’s going to let me down lightly’
I nodded, equally relieved. I had been afraid that the Coroner might have conceived it as part of his duty to deal severely with Glen over his error in diagnosis, but was evidently going almost out of his way to exonerate him.
We leaned forward to get a good look at the famous analytical chemist who had come down to Anneypenny (as it almost seemed) to entertain us.
His evidence was short and very much to the point: he had found arsenic in all the organs and tissues submitted to him for analysis. The amount in the whole body he estimated at 1.43 grains. This meant that a much larger amount must have been swallowed. He gave it as his opinion that death had resulted from acute arsenical poisoning.
‘Yes,’ nodded the Coroner. ‘Now will you tell us, Sir Francis, taking the usual symptoms of acute arsenical poisoning, and assuming that a doctor is called i
n to attend a patient whom he already has reason to believe dyspeptic, and assuming, of course, that the doctor has no suspicion of arsenical poisoning, would there be anything in the symptoms to suggest to him that it was arsenical poisoning and not epidemic diarrhoea?’
‘Nothing at all,’ pronounced the witness. ‘The symptoms are practically identical. It is impossible to diagnose acute arsenical poisoning with any certainty. The only way, if suspicion has been aroused, is to send a sample from the eliminations for analysis.’
‘But in the ordinary way it is not likely suspicion would be aroused?’
‘No.’
Glen nudged me. ‘Notable example of solidarity of the medical profession,’ he whispered; but I could see that he was pleased.
The Coroner’s next questions were to ascertain the time which might be expected to elapse between the swallowing of the fatal dose and the appearance of the first symptoms. As to that, the witness would only give approximate figures. Nausea and some pain might be expected in anything between an hour or two hours, though it might be longer; vomiting would follow shortly afterwards; more pronounced symptoms would not appear for some hours after that. Death might ensue on the third day, but not earlier.
‘I see. That sounds as if it would not be easy, even by working backwards, to fix the exact time of swallowing the dose?’
‘It is impossible to fix the time exactly; the nearest one could get to it is with a half-hour’s margin either way. That is, assuming that the time of the appearance of the first symptoms is known. If the patient did not mention these and one has to work back from the major symptoms, the margin of error, of course, is greater – at least an hour either way, giving a period of two hours in all.’
The Coroner kept the great man another ten minutes, explaining the difference in symptoms between chronic and acute arsenical poisoning and such matters, and was able to establish beyond doubt that this could not have been a case of chronic poisoning and that in consequence the twinges from which John had suffered must have been due to indigestion alone and could not possibly have been caused by arsenic.
‘Let’s hope that knocks out friend Cyril’s theory once and for all,’ muttered Glen to me.
Glen himself was the next witness.
The Coroner in a friendly way proceeded to take him through John’s illness and the treatment he had prescribed. Glen admitted quite frankly that he had not at first regarded the case as a serious one; right up to the end he had not expected the patient to die, indeed had believed that his condition was improving; he had attributed death to syncope, or heart failure, following too great a strain. Epidemic diarrhoea had been fairly prevalent in the district that summer; it was sometimes ignorantly known as ‘English cholera,’ and was by no means always fatal; the witness had noticed no difference at all between the symptoms in the present case and those in the cases which he had been treating of epidemic diarrhoea. The treatment he had prescribed had been at first a combination of bismuth and morphia, the bismuth in ten-grain doses to stop the sickness and five-minim doses of morphia to soothe the pain. On the second day the violence of the symptoms had abated somewhat, and an effervescing mixture was in consequence prescribed consisting of citrate of potash and bicarbonate of soda. On the last day a bismuth-and-chalk mixture was administered. By that time the patient was in a decidedly weak state, but the witness had not considered his condition critical. On the last occasion when he saw him, the patient’s temperature was 99°. It had been once nearly up to 101° but for the most part had been only just above normal. Death had ensued quickly, after a short coma.
‘Thank you, Doctor Brougham,’ said the Coroner. ‘Yes, that is quite clear. And now we come to the time at which the poison must have been swallowed. You will understand, of course, how important it is for us to fix this within as narrow limits as possible. From your knowledge of the case, have you formed any opinion on the point?’
‘It’s difficult to say, of course, but my opinion is that the poison must have been swallowed sometime between 11 a.m. and midday on the day when the illness first occurred.’
‘On the third of September,’ nodded the Coroner.
‘Yes. You can’t put it within narrower limits than that?’
‘No; and it’s possible those may be too narrow.’
‘On what do you base those limits, Doctor Brougham?’
‘On the times at which Mr Waterhouse complained of various symptoms, and the degree of their intensity.’
‘Quite so. Mr Waterhouse gave you a full account of his symptoms? Perhaps you will tell us what he said?’
‘He said he had a slight pain shortly before lunch and felt a disinclination to take any food. He did eat a moderate lunch, however, and felt no discomfort during the meal; but was sick about half an hour after it, with more severe pain in the stomach. The pain passed off but recurred at intervals during the afternoon. Just before teatime the symptoms became more pronounced, and of such violence as to alarm the household. I understand that Mr Waterhouse himself did not wish to send for me, assuming that his illness was the same as that for which I had already begun to treat him, but Mrs Waterhouse rang up my surgery. When she heard I was out, I believe she sent a message to Mrs Sewell.’
‘Yes, yes. Now you say that you were already treating Mr Waterhouse. What were you treating him for?’
‘Gastric trouble. There had been a conversation a few days earlier in which Mr Waterhouse had admitted to having some digestive trouble, and –’
‘One minute. This conversation was a private one between you and Mr Waterhouse?’
‘No. It was after dinner one evening, and several people were present.’ Glen enumerated the party. ‘Mr Waterhouse was a little reluctant to admit that there was anything wrong with his general health; he was very proud of it. I don’t think he really believed in doctors, but the others pressed him to let me examine him, and in the end he agreed. We were all intimate friends, and the conversation was mostly a joking one.’
‘You had the opinion at that time that there was some digestive trouble?’
‘I knew there was. I told him that evening that he probably had a gastric ulcer developing and ought to cut down his smoking and put himself on a diet.’
‘What was his reply to that?’
‘He said he wouldn’t take any medicine I sent him, and I think I told him that would be his responsibility. There was some mention of Christian Science. Mr Waterhouse gave us to understand he didn’t believe in medicine or drugs. He was maintaining that there was nothing really wrong with him. I told him he needed a holiday.’
‘In any case, as a result of that conversation you did in fact examine him?’
‘Yes, a few days later. He was in pretty good condition, for his age, and his heart seemed sound. I repeated my advice that he should give up smoking for three months, and told him I would make out a diet for him and send him round a bottle of medicine.’
‘Did he undertake to follow your advice?’
‘Not he. He said he’d sooner have indigestion than go on a diet, and I needn’t bother to make up any medicine for him because he’d only pour the filthy stuff down the sink.’
The Coroner joined in the laughter which this answer produced.
‘I told him I’d send round a nice-tasting medicine,’ Glen added, ‘and he’d have to pay for it whether he drank it or not. He said in that case perhaps he’d better drink it.’
‘In fact the whole thing was treated between you as a joke between old friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you did send round a bottle of medicine?’
‘The next morning, yes.’
‘That is, on the day he was taken ill. What did the medicine consist of?’
Glen explained that the medicine had been an ordinary sedative composed of bicarbonate of soda, bismuth oxicarbonate, mag. carb. pond., a trace of morphia, and aqua m
enthe. pep., or in other words peppermint water.
‘Did you make up this medicine yourself?’ enquired the Coroner, so casually that I pricked up my ears.
‘I did.’
‘That is your usual practise?’
‘No, usually my sister does the dispensing for me. On this occasion she wanted to catch a train soon after breakfast, and as there were only three or four bottles of medicine to make up I told her I would do them.’
‘At what time did you make up this bottle?’
‘Directly surgery was over, about ten o’clock.’
‘And the others at the same time?’
‘Yes.’
‘They would have been made up, I understand, in accordance with the prescriptions which you enter in a book kept in the surgery for that purpose. Is that correct?’
‘Perfectly. I have shown the police my prescription book, with the prescriptions entered for that day, including Mr Waterhouse’s.’
‘Quite so. You have had plenty of practice in dispensing medicines, Doctor Brougham?’
‘Plenty’
‘Of course. Still, there are one or two questions I must put to you in this connection, just as a matter of form. You have a supply of white arsenic in your surgery, I believe?’
‘I have. The remains of an old lot belonging to my father.
It hasn’t been used for years.’
‘Where is it kept?’
‘In the poison cupboard.’
‘Is the poison cupboard kept locked?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘But isn’t it a regulation that the poison cupboard should be kept locked?’
‘I think if you were to examine the poison cupboards of every doctor in this country at this moment, not one in a thousand would be locked.’
‘That seems to me a very sweeping statement,’ commented the Coroner, not without severity, ‘and I sincerely hope it is not correct. At any rate you keep a poison book?’
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