Not to be Taken (12 page)

‘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 menthe. 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?’

‘I do.’

‘Does the amount of arsenic which you now have in your surgery tally with the amount shown in the book?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I seem to have half an ounce more than the book shows,’

Glen replied with an audible chuckle.

The Coroner did not smile. ‘How do you account for that?’

‘I can’t. Presumably a package of arsenic was added to the store at some time and not entered in the book, possibly by my father.’

‘When did you last check the arsenic entry?’

‘I’ve never checked it before,’ Glen replied blandly. ‘I enter in the poison book any supplies I buy, and make a note when the supply is exhausted. I’ve never bought white arsenic nor used it, so there are no entries.’

‘Isn’t that very haphazard?’

‘I don’t think so. I can hardly be expected to make an entry in the book every time I give a woman an injection of a hundredth of a grain of hyoscine, for instance. I’d be so busy making entries that I’d have no time to see any patients.’

The friendliness of the Coroner’s attitude had noticeably lessened. ‘Doctor Brougham,’ he said stiffly, ‘I am bound to consider the possibility that the arsenic which entered Mr Waterhouse’s body might have been somehow contained in the medicine which you dispensed and sent round to him. If the arrangements governing poisons in your surgery are as haphazard as you tell us, what precautions had you against such an error occurring?’

‘Merely that neither my sister nor myself are congenital idiots,’ Glen replied with a slightly contemptuous smile, ‘and that it would be impossible to mistake a small jar in the poison cupboard for a large jar on the shelves at the other end of the surgery. The suggestion is absurd.’

‘I’m glad you’re so sure,’ the Coroner replied drily. ‘Have you, as his medical attendant, any other theory as to how the arsenic may have been introduced into the body of the deceased?’

‘None. That’s the business of the police, not mine,’ Glen replied with airy composure. ‘I assume, though, that he took it in mistake for something else.’

‘Unfortunately there is no evidence on that point. Nevertheless what I am anxious to establish is that you are perfectly satisfied in your own mind that when that bottle of medicine left your surgery it could not by any possibility have contained arsenic – put in, let us say, in mistake for some other ingredient.’

‘I’m perfectly certain it didn’t. It’s out of the question.’

‘There was nothing in any of the prescriptions you made up that morning to cause you to get anything from the poison cupboard at all?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t go near it. I see you have my prescription book there. You can see that the other prescriptions were just as innocuous as this one,’ Glen said with a little smile.

‘Yes, yes. And so far as you can recall there was nothing in the slightest degree unusual in the making up of any of these prescriptions? I am sorry if I seem to be pressing you on this point, but you will understand that it is necessary to make as certain as is humanly possible.’

‘I quite understand,’ Glen said with a kindly air. ‘No, so far as I can recall there was nothing in the slightest degree unusual – except,’ he added with another little smile, ‘that the mag. carb. pond. jar was nearly empty, which was not like my sister’s usual efficiency, and I had to refill it from the store cupboard.’

‘Ah!’ The little coroner pounced on the point. ‘But I understand it was generally Miss Brougham who kept the jars full, not yourself. There is no possibility that you may have refilled the jar incorrectly?’

‘From the poison cupboard instead of the store cupboard?’ said Glen with an open grin. ‘No, I think not. If I had, half Anneypenny would have been dead by now… Besides, I refilled it after I had made up this prescription, not before.’

‘I see. Then I think we may take it as fairly certain that when the bottle of medicine left your surgery, it contained nothing of a harmful nature. In point of fact, at what time did it leave?’

‘The boy takes the bottles out for delivery as soon as they have been made up. On that day he would have taken out those four by about a quarter or twenty past ten.’

‘Yes, yes, I think there is some evidence that he delivered it at Mr Waterhouse’s door soon after half-past ten. The bottle was sealed?’

‘I corked, wrapped and sealed it myself, and wrote Mr Waterhouse’s name on the wrapping paper.’

‘Exactly. Then if it arrived in that condition, it could obviously not have been tampered with on the way… We shall perhaps be able to find out later,’ remarked the Coroner to the jury, ‘whether it was actually put into Mr Waterhouse’s hands in the same state. Now I understand, Doctor Brougham, that since Mr Waterhouse’s death this bottle has not been seen. Have you any knowledge of what happened to it?’

‘None. I can only tell you that it was not in his bedroom late on the evening of the third of September, because I looked round for it to give him a dose.’

‘Did you ask him what had become of it?’

‘Yes, but only casually. He thought it was still in the room, but I couldn’t find it.’

‘Very curious. Perhaps even significant. And certainly unfortunate. Very well, Doctor Brougham, I think that is all. Oh no. Did you ever discuss the question of the cremation of her husband’s body with Mrs Waterhouse?’

‘I did.’

‘I believe she wished it to be cremated?’

‘I don’t think she minded either way. She asked me what I advised.’

‘And what did you advise?’

‘I advised that it should be cremated, if this had been Mr Waterhouse’s own wish. However, in the end Mrs Waterhouse decided against it.’

‘I see. Thank you, Doctor Brougham.’

Glen strolled back to his seat.

‘Thank God that’s over,’ he muttered to me as he dropped back on to the hard bench.

Rona followed her brother to the witness stand.

Her evidence was on more stereotyped lines. She gave a brief account of John’s illness and death, explained how it was that she came to be nursing him, went out of her way to emphasise the loving anxiety and distress of Angela whom she was now nursing in her turn, prostrate as she was over her husband’s death (in actual fact I thought Rona rather overdid Angela’s distress, in view of the letter which we had recently heard read out), and confirmed her brother’s evidence concerning the surgery arrangements and how it had come about that he dispensed the bottle of medicine for Oswald’s Gable instead of herself. Asked if she knew what had become of the bottle, she equally had no explanation for its disappearance and said she had not noticed it in the bedroom when she took charge there. I remarked that the Coroner asked her no questions about the rather drastic treatment which she had meted out to John before Glen arrived that evening, and deduced that she had not thought it necessary to say anything about that to the police. Privately I agreed with her. The police are apt to be fussy over such matters as the administration of hypodermic injections of morphia by unqualified persons; though no doubt they would have passed the stomach pump. Personally I would have felt less qualms at taking an injection from Rona than from many doctors; but if she wanted her unorthodoxy covered, I was quite prepared to help her do so. Rona was able to assist to some extent in fixing the onset of John’s illness by describing his condition when she arrived that evening. As she had come straight from the station and the five fifty-seven train from Torminster, the moment of her arrival could be fixed within a minute or two. This evidence went some way to confirm Glen’s opinion that the fatal dose must have been swallowed in the middle of the morning. The Coroner asked her one or two questions, framed so as to convey the impression that Angela had been anxious to have the body cremated but had been dissuaded. Rona, seizing on the innuendo rather than the actual question asked, took the opportunity to affirm bluntly that Angela had wished nothing of the sort; the question of cremation had only come up quite casually, and it was clear that Angela had not cared either way.