A is for Arsenic (42 page)

In 1956 Janet Armstrong applied for a divorce from her husband; she accused him of beating her regularly. When the court refused to grant the divorce she went to the police and offered a statement. Janet asserted that her husband had told her to get rid of all the red capsules in the house three days after Terence's death, which she had done. Only later, when the cause of the baby's death had been revealed, did she become suspicious of her husband. She had not told the police at the time because she was terrified of another beating. John Armstrong was subsequently found guilty,
¹⁰⁴
but the trial raised concerns about the detection of barbiturate drugs in murder cases. The death of the Armstrongs' baby would probably have been dismissed as due to unknown natural causes if it had not been for the bad impression the baby's parents had given to those investigating the murder.
¹⁰⁵

Agatha and Veronal

In
Lord Edgware Dies
, Carlotta Adams's death is carefully staged to look like an accidental overdose. The actress drinks a Veronal-laced toast with her murderer a few hours before she dies; a bitter-tasting drink would have disguised the slightly bitter flavour of the barbiturate. Veronal's symptoms start to kick in up to an hour after ingestion, meaning that Carlotta had time to arrive back at her flat before beginning to feel the effects. She tries to make a phone call, but the Veronal makes
her tired so instead she goes to bed and drinks a glass of hot milk, prepared by her maid, Alice Bennett, before going to sleep. Carlotta is unlikely to have taken the drug herself when she got home; if she had, the feelings of drowsiness would have presented themselves after she had attempted to make the phone call. If she was already sleepy when she tried to make the call why would she have taken a dose of Veronal? For similar reasons we can rule out the glass of milk as the vehicle for the fatal dose. Also, Alice drinks the same milk the following morning with no ill effects.

Carlotta dies in her sleep during the night. Alice the maid finds her cold to the touch the next morning, so death must have occurred several hours before she is discovered. When the doctor arrives he quickly reaches the conclusion that her death was due to a Veronal overdose, because of the appearance of the body and the presence of the Veronal powder in a jewelled box in Carlotta's bag. There are no marks of a hypodermic syringe on the body, so the doctor concludes that Carlotta was not a drug addict. But the box does suggest that she had been a regular user. Her death is therefore assumed to have been accidental. Carlotta came home late at night feeling tired and ‘strung up' by her recent performances so she took a dose of Veronal to help her sleep, and mistakenly took too much. However, neither Alice the maid nor the victim's sister Lucie Adams believe Carlotta took sleeping drugs. ‘She had a horror of that kind of thing,' as Lucie remarks.

The dose of barbiturate she had been given was clearly sufficient to kill, but this need not have been a very large dose. If Carlotta's maid and sister were to be believed the actress did not use barbiturates, and therefore could not have developed a tolerance to the drug. By adding Veronal to an alcoholic drink the murderer was increasing its potency; just a few grams of the drug would have been enough to ensure that the sleepy Carlotta never woke up.

There is no mention of a post-mortem examination, but the doctor and police seem happy to accept the accidental overdose theory. Had her sudden death occurred without evidence of
Veronal (or a similar drug) in Carlotta's possession then a post-mortem might have been ordered. There are no characteristic signs of barbiturate poisoning on the body itself post-mortem – there may be indications of oedema, pneumonia and cerebral oedema, but these could be attributed to natural diseases – but toxicological analysis of the liver and stomach contents as well as the blood would have revealed the presence of barbiturates, even using 1930s techniques. This would have confirmed the presence of the drug. Vomit would be particularly useful for analysis, as it would be expected to contain the highest concentration of the drug if it had been administered by mouth. In
Lord Edgware Dies
it seems that Carlotta's death was not preceded by vomiting; if it had been, Alice the maid would have noticed that something was wrong a lot sooner.

Identifying which of the many barbiturates was present would have been difficult; even the melting points of different barbiturates can vary by only a couple of degrees, requiring very precise and careful experimentation on the part of the toxicologist. Today, detection and identification of barbiturates is much easier thanks to the development of chromatographic techniques, while an improved version of the Stas method is effective in extracting barbiturates from human tissue; even if a pathologist has to resort to an analysis of maggots that have fed on a cadaver, it is still possible to trace the drug.

In
Lord Edgware Dies
, there is no uncertainty over how Carlotta Adams died, but Poirot has serious doubts over the suggestion that she committed suicide. And, of course, he is right – Carlotta was murdered, and to find out the culprit you will have to read the book.

Agatha Christie's selection of barbiturates as the poison is an ideal choice, especially as the tragic death of the real actress Billie Carleton would have been familiar to many of her readers. Christie had no need to rely on exotic or obscure drugs to do away with her victim in this book. Barbiturates were regularly
prescribed at the time, and readers may well have had first-hand knowledge of such sedatives. The drug's details are supremely accurate, even down to the American name of the drug that killed her American victim.
Lord Edgware Dies
is perfect for its period – and contains all the key ingredients for a classic murder mystery from the Queen of Crime.

Notes

¹⁰⁰
Veronal was mostly sold in the United States, but in Britain the sodium salt of barbitone was available, under the name Medinal.

¹⁰¹
Pentothal (aka sodium thiopental) may make the subject more cooperative and talkative, but the value and reliability of what they may divulge is questionable.

¹⁰²
When the coroner's assistants went to the house to look for a daphne tree they found the parents calmly watching television, as if nothing had happened.

¹⁰³
Seconal was the barbiturate implicated in the death of Judy Garland.

¹⁰⁴
Armstrong was sentenced to death, but this was later reduced to life imprisonment. After the trial, Janet confessed to giving the child a capsule as she believed it would help make him sleep. The Home Secretary at the time considered reopening the case, but Janet couldn't be tried again. In the end it was decided that a single capsule would not have resulted in Terence's death. John Armstrong was still guilty of murder.

¹⁰⁵
Motives for these crimes never seem to have been established.

Appendix 1: Christie's Causes of Death

This table lists all the Agatha Christie novels and short stories in order of publication, and the cause of death in each of them. Agatha Christie's plays are not included, nor are the titles published under the name Mary Westmacott. Not all Christie books that were published in the UK were published in the US (and vice versa), especially the short-story collections, and these sometimes vary in composition. An interesting note:
Three Blind Mice
has never been published in the UK as it provides the basis for Christie's play,
The Mousetrap
, which is still running; the book's publication would give away the identity of the murderer.

In the table below, please note:

*         Suicide      **     Attempted murder

***      Medication withheld       ****       Invented drug