Prescription: Murder! Volume 1: Authentic Cases From the Files of Alan Hynd (6 page)

MacGregor, who had come to practice in the village five years before, was a native of London, Ontario, and, at the age of thirty, had an oily bedside manner. He was a dandy in dress and sported black sideburns and a handlebar moustache, and had an eye for the ladies despite the fact that he had a wife. Not that the good doctor was to be blamed, for his wife was a bleak little woman, ten years his senior, who would have won any contest as the woman a man would be least likely to choose as a mate on a desert island.

“Well… come on in,” said the doctor to Mrs. Sparling. “Come right in!” His voice was a rich, barbershop quartet baritone.

Mrs. Sparling told Doctor MacGregor that she had something in her eye. Her eyes were wide, brown and innocent.

“Which eye?” Asked the doctor. Mrs. Sparling pointed to her right eye, which was red and swollen. MacGregor, who was having a rough time financially, questioned the patient at length. Among other things, he learned that her husband was quite well fixed.

“Just step in there,” said the doctor, pointing to an adjoining room, “and take off your clothes.” Mrs. Sparling went into the other room and shortly reappeared wearing nothing but a look of embarrassment. The doctor, it was later to develop, got a thorough look at the patient, finally working his way up to the troublesome eye. Then he took a swab and removed a speck of dust.

“There,” he said, “you’re all fixed up—for the time being. I’ll be wanting to take another look at you,” he said. “I’ll drive out to your place some night next week. How’s that?”

Carrie Sparling was a woman who was no longer used to being looked at and didn’t mind the renewed attention. Her husband, John Wesley Sparling, always crowded the entire family into a buggy and hauled them off to church on Sundays, whether they wanted to go or not. He was fifty years old. Like many deeply religious men, he neither smoked nor drank but was a great believer in the propagation of the race. In the past, he had taken a good look, and then some, at his wife on an average of once a year, because he had four sons—Pete, Albert, Scyrel and Ray—whose ages were 24, 23, 21 and 20. (Something had apparently gone wrong during one of those years). Every Sabbath after church, the family, who were terrific eaters, fell on a gargantuan meal. The four Sparling boys were husky fellows with tree-trunk legs, brawny arms and barrel chests, but not too bright in the second story. Farm chores, heavy as they were, weren’t enough for the four Sparling boys. Instead of relaxing after the sun went down, they repaired to a sort of gymnasium on the upper floor of the barn and practiced weight lifting, chinned the bar and cavorted on the exercise rings until late at night.

Four days after Mrs. Sparling had dropped into Doctor MacGregor’s office, the handsome physician drove onto the Sparling farm. Mrs. Sparling had already told her husband and her sons what a fine man the doctor was, so Righteous-John and the boys gave the doctor a hearty welcome.

Doctor MacGregor, a very conscientious practitioner, didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and began looking around for a place in which to examine Mrs. Sparling’s eye. He examined first one room, then another, and finally settled on a bedroom on the second floor.

“Just come upstairs with me,” he said to Mrs. Sparling, and, while Righteous John and the four boys sat around the parlor, the good doctor and Carrie Sparling went upstairs. The doctor and the patient didn’t come downstairs for almost an hour. The doctor looked a little mussed up and Mrs. Sparling appeared to be flushed, one of the boys recalled to a friend later.

“We had quite a time,” said the doctor, a truthful man, “but everything seems to be fixed up. For the time being anyway.”

During the next several months, Doctor MacGregor managed to be in the neighborhood often. Although Mrs. Sparling’s eye trouble didn’t seem to get any worse it didn’t seem to clear up completely, either. Sometimes the doctor would stay for supper and take potluck with the family. Occasionally he would remain for the whole evening, leaving an office full of patients sitting around wondering where he was.

Doctor MacGregor observed, during the nightly sporting events in the barn, that the Sparling boys swigged great quantities of drugstore tonic. Most of the stuff contained a stout percentage of alcohol, as well as a small quantity of arsenic, not unusual for the day of unregulated medicines. Thus it was possible for a so-called teetotaler, if he didn’t mind the bitter taste, to get half crocked.

MacGregor’s closest friend was a young attorney in the town of Bad Axe, a few miles from Ubly and the seat of Huron County. His name was Xenophon A. Boomhower. MacGregor and Boomhower, with their wives, used to visit each other at night, and, after cards and refreshments, swap shoptalk.

“You know, Xenophon,” MacGregor said one night, “I’m worried about Mr. Sparling.”

“Righteous John Sparling? Why, he looks like he’ll live to a hundred,” said Boomhower.

MacGregor shook his head. “That’s just it. He’s like an apple that’s healthy on the outside with a malignant worm inside.”

“Meaning what?” asked Boomhower.

“Meaning that John Wesley Sparling,” Doctor MacGregor explained, “might be suffering from Bright’s disease. That would be my guess.

Bright’s disease, as it was known at the time, was a fatal kidney ailment of the day, involving a serious inflammation and malfunction of that organ. In the day, Ty Cobb suffered from it, though he survived it, as did Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, who died from it. To be diagnosed with it, was more likely than not, to receive a death sentence. Nonetheless, the good Dr. MacGregor put Sparling Senior on some medications.

But inevitably, one day in June, less than six months after MacGregor had first taken a look at Mrs. Sparling, the righteous farmer with the long black beard did something most unusual. He quit his work in the fields in the middle of the day and took to his bed. Pete, the eldest son, hustled over to Ubly to summon the doctor.

MacGregor drove down to the Sparling farm every morning and every night after that to minister to the patient, who seemed to have trouble keeping any food in his stomach. While Righteous John was in bed, the Sparling faun received a second visitor, a loud, belligerent little man of seventy, who lived near Ubly. He too was named John Sparling.

The visitor, however, was known as Old John. He was an uncle of Righteous John, a former State Senator and, in his earlier days, a renowned auctioneer. He was still a spry little character, and his vocal apparatus was mercilessly unimpaired, so that, when he spoke in his auctioneer’s voice, he could be heard practically in the next county.

On this day when he came to visit his nephew, after having heard he was seriously ill, the four boys were out in the fields, so Old John went right up to Righteous John’s bedroom. Righteous John was in no shape to receive a visitor, or even talk to one, since he was in a semi-conscious condition and practically on fire with fever.

Old John thereupon began a prowl of the house for Carrie Sparling. When, at last, he had looked everywhere for the lady except in her bedroom, he decided to try there.

Old John was used to barging through houses and opening doors without knocking—a carry-over from his auctioneer days—and so when he approached Mrs. Sparling’s bedroom he just turned the knob of the door and kept on going.

But the door was locked and Old John; moving too fast to stop, crashed into the door and shook himself up. When the door opened there stood the doctor and the farmer’s wife. Old John measured Mrs. Sparling and the doctor and walked away.

A few days later, Righteous John Sparling died. Old John was at the graveside. When the coffin was being lowered, he exploded.

“There’s somethin’ danged funny about why my nephew died!” he yelled.

“Danged funny! You all hear?”

Folks were in the habit of ignoring the old windbag, however. And they did again this day as they had in the past.

A few months after the head of the Sparling household had gone to his reward, MacGregor, looking to the future, decided it would be a good idea if the four boys took out some life insurance.

“But we’re all as healthy as can be,” said Pete, now the nominal head of the house.

“You never can tell by appearances,” said MacGregor. “Take your father. Look what happened to him.”

“You’ll do as the good doctor says,” said Mrs. Sparling. “He’s going to examine all of you for insurance policies and then we’re going to buy insurance.”

Conveniently, the doctor’s father, Alexander MacGregor, was an insurance agent in London, Ontario. The Doctor examined applicants for policies in his father’s company. A few weeks later, policies of $1,000 on each of the four boys with the Sun Life Association of Canada came across Lake Huron from the offices of Doctor MacGregor’s father.

It was a lovely night in the spring of the following year. The good doctor and his wife were spending an evening with their friends the Xenophon Boomhowers. Everybody was in good spirits except the doctor. He was depressed.

“What’s wrong, Doc?” asked Boomhower.

“It’s Pete Sparling.”

“Pete?” asked Boomhower, who knew the lad. “Why, he looks the picture of health. What’s the matter with him?”

“Acute pancreatitis.”

“Sounds serious. Exactly what is it?” The doctor reduced the ailment to layman’s language and indeed it was serious. At age twenty-five and at six feet two-hundred pounds, Peter should have been the very picture of Dairy State health. Instead, these days he was walking around the farm clutching his stomach. And, sure enough, Pete died shortly afterward, little more than a year after his father had died.

It wasn’t long after Pete’s death that Doctor MacGregor suggested to Mrs. Sparling that she and the boys leave the farm and move someplace else to get away from their sorrow. Everybody, especially Mrs. Sparling, was all for it. So Mrs. Sparling sold the farm and bought a smaller farm out of Sanilac County and up in Huron County, just outside of Ubly, where Doc MacGregor’s office was located. By this time, MacGregor was also acting as the merry widow’s financial advisor, so the move was quickly a done deal. The only dissenting voice was Old John Sparling who was now in the habit of popping off to anyone who would listen about the relationship between the esteemed country doctor and his late son’s wife. Gossip did begin to spread, but it didn’t have much traction.

A few months after the Sparlings moved into Huron County, fate intervened again. Who should become Prosecutor of the Huron County but Xenophon Boomhower? The Sparlings had just gotten themselves settled on their new farm and Xenophon had just gotten his seat warm as Prosecutor when Doctor MacGregor walked into his office one day with a worried look.

“What’s wrong, Doc?” asked the Prosecutor. Dr. MacGregor ran a nervous hand over his forehead.

“I’m worried, Xenophon,” he said. “Worried about Albert Spalding.”

“Good God, Doc!” said Boomhower. “Don’t tell me there’s something wrong with somebody else in that family!”

Well, sadly, yes. There was. Albert, Doc explained to the Prosecutor, had lifted a piece of farm machinery that had been too heavy for him and seriously injured himself internally. MacGregor paced up and down the Prosecutor’s office.

“I’m just scared,” he said. “Scared that we’re going to lose another Sparling. And I’d hate for any suspicion of foul play to fall on Carrie.”

“Heaven forbid, Doc!”

There was, MacGregor pointed out, a bright spot on the horizon. Thanks to his friendship and foresight, Mrs. Sparling was being well taken care of by insurance. The lady had, at his suggestion, taken out a couple of additional policies—one on Albert, the boy who had injured himself, and one on Scyrel, with a company called The Gleaners, which was also represented by the doctor’s father.

Boomhower got out a pencil and paper and began to do some figuring. Mrs. Sparling was now carrying in excess of $5,000 insurance, a lot of money then. When he was through, he looked up at MacGregor and said,

“Doc, it sure is a good thing that family met you. Why, with Old John and Pete dying and with Albert in danger, poor Mrs. Sparling would be in an awful fix if it weren’t for that insurance. You’ve been one real friend to that family, Doc, I must say.”

A week or so after his visit to Boomhower’s office, Doctor MacGregor stopped by the only automobile dealer in Bad Axe and said he wanted to buy an automobile. Doc selected his automobile and said he would want delivery in about a month.

“How do you want to pay for it?” asked the dealer.

“In cash,” said MacGregor. “I’ll have the money in about a month.”

A couple of Sundays later, Albert Sparling complained of increased pains in his stomach. At dinner, Albert had no enthusiasm for eating. Doctor MacGregor took him into his office, which was in the front of the house, and gave him some medicine.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” MacGregor told Albert. “You’ll be behind the plow in a few days.”

However, sadly enough, Albert wasn’t behind a plow at all in a few days. He was six feet under in the family plot, not far from his father and older brother. Doctor MacGregor ascribed the death to the stomach injury that he had mentioned to Prosecutor Boomhower.

Then, less than a fortnight after the burial of the third Sparling, Doctor MacGregor took possession of his horseless carriage, paying cash for it. It was now April, 1911. Uncle John went wild with his accusations. How, he wanted to know, could MacGregor have afforded a new motorcar? The doctor often received a bartered payment for a house call - chickens, eggs or butter - and when he did receive cash the payment was two dollars. Nor had he been a wealthy man, it was recalled, when he had first examined, so to speak, Carrie Sparling.

Nonetheless, after Peter’s unfortunate passing, the doctor and his wife - remember his wife? - set out on a drive to his native Ontario. While the MacGregors were away on the trip, Mrs. Sparling bought a fine white house, for investment purposes, right in the village of Ubly, not, in fact, more than a hoot and a holler from the Doctor’s residence. When the MacGregors returned from their trip, there was some interesting action in Ubly. The house that Mrs. Sparling purchased was a big rambling affair. Since MacGregor was only renting the house where he lived and had his office, Mrs. Sparling, the widow, suggested that Dr. and Mrs. MacGregor rent the house she had bought.