The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (84 page)

Mr Bravo said that Charles had discussed Mrs Cox with him, that he had nothing against her, but that she cost too much. Mr Joseph Bravo had agreed and advised Mrs Cox himself to return to Jamaica. She said she would not return. Mr Bravo also commented that while her husband was dying Mrs Bravo did not “appear much grieved” in any way at the state of affairs. He did admit that his son was quick tempered.

The doctors presented a solid antisuicide wall. They said they had never heard of a case of suicide by antimony, that the time of action was variable, and they positively stated that antimony could be administered without any taste in either water or burgundy. Several of the doctors testified to drinking out of the water bottle; but admitted that in the confusion it would have been easy to either switch or clean out the water jug. Dr Johnson testified that Mrs Bravo overheard him mention poison to Mrs Cox. Mrs Bravo asked: “Did he say he had taken poison?” “Yes, he did,” replied Mrs Cox. And that was the end of the conversation.

Rowe, the Butler, testified that Mr Bravo drank three glasses of burgundy at his last meal and that the half-full decanter was put away. On 19 April he opened another bottle of burgundy. He did not remember who drank it, but the other half bottle must have been gone. With Florence around it’s not surprising. He had never heard quarreling and called Charles Bravo “one of the kindest gentlemen I ever knew”.

Mary Anne Keeber, the maid, said she thought Mr and Mrs Bravo were very fond of each other and saw no signs of jealousy or ever heard Dr Gully’s name mentioned. She had emptied and cleaned the basin Mr Bravo had been vomiting in at Mrs Cox’s request.

Amelia Bushnell, Mrs Joseph Bravo’s maid, had heard Mr Bravo say he had taken nothing but laudanum and testified that Mrs Charles Bravo had been blaming his illness on something he ate at the club, cooked in a coppery pan.

John Pritchard, Dr Gully’s butler said there had been a great attachment between Dr Gully and Mrs Ricardo, but that, in November of the previous year, Dr Gully had given him instructions not to admit Mrs Ricardo or Mrs Cox. Dr Gully had returned pictures, presents, and key to the Priory, and Mrs Ricardo had done the same.

Colleagues testified that Charles Bravo had no worries or cares, that he had made a special study of forensic medicine, and would never knowingly take such a painful or uncertain medicine.

Mrs Campbell testified she was met by Mrs Cox when she arrived during Mr Bravo’s illness and was told it was poison, while Florence was still chattering about coppery pans at Charlie’s club.

Mrs Cox, spectacles glinting, looking middle-aged and dumpy in her black, said Charles Bravo had said she was welcome at the Priory, that he received an anonymous letter accusing him of marrying Gully’s mistress for her money. She had seen Dr Gully several times since Mrs Bravo’s marriage, had asked him for his remedy for ague and Jamaica fever, also something to make Mrs Bravo sleep after her miscarriage. Bravo had asked her, “Why did you tell them? Does Florence know I poisoned myself?”

“I was obliged to tell them. I could not let you die.”

Asked why she had not mentioned this conversation, Mrs Cox replied imperturbably, “He did not wish me to.” She had not mentioned Dr Gully’s name at the first inquest because it might have injured Mrs Bravo’s reputation. When she mentioned chloroform to Harrison, she was confused and meant poison. “Dr Gully was a very fascinating man—one who would be likely to interest women very much.” She said she had done everything she could to restrain Mrs Bravo from her habit of drinking, but without much success.

Mrs Bravo, immersed in grief and a voluminous mourning veil, testified that it was 26 April before she knew her husband was dying of poison. Bravo harped about Gully in spite of her 16 April letter to Mrs Bravo that Charles was happy as a king. At Brighton, after the first inquest, Mrs Cox told her Charles had poisoned himself on the account of Gully. She made a full admission of her “criminal relations” with Dr Gully, but even under a heavy barrage of insinuation, she maintained, under oath, that she was innocent of any extra-marital activities during her marriage to Captain Ricardo. But her protests of innocence were badly shaken when she was handed a letter, written by her to a woman named Laundon, who had been her maid. It was dated 17 November 1870, a date that preceded Captain Ricardo’s death by six months. In part the letter said: “I hope you will never allude in any way to anyone of what passed at Malvern.” Asked what she referred to, Mrs Bravo answered: “It was my attachment to Dr Gully, but not a criminal attachment then.” She burst into tears and appealed to the coroner to protect her. So much for semantics.

Then Griffiths, a former coachman to Dr Gully and Mrs Bravo, took the stand. He had worked for Mrs Bravo but had been fired by Mr Bravo for carelessness. He seems to have been a nineteenth-century hotrod and was accident prone. His testimony, however, established the presence of antimony in the form of tartar emetic at the Priory. He had bought a large amount to treat the horses. He had kept it locked in a cupboard in the stable and poured it all down the drain when he left. However, no inquiry was made as to what kind of lock was on the cupboard, and there is only Griffiths’s word that after being fired, he conscientiously poured a large âmount of medicine down the drain. It would seem more natural for him to go off in a huff, leaving the tartar emetic for the next coachman. But although Griffiths was called an “unreliable witness”, he did establish, for the first time in the case, the presence of the poison which killed Charles Bravo.

Dr Gully was the last witness to be called during the twenty-three-day inquest, which rivaled the Tichborne trial in public interest, if not length, when a 350-pound pretender consumed eight years and a total of 290 days trying to prove he was the long-lost Sir Roger Arthur Orton. Dr Gully’s testimony backed up Florence Bravo’s contention that there had been nothing improper pass between them during Captain Ricardo’s lifetime, but when asked about his relations with Captain Ricardo’s widow his rueful reply was “too true, sir; too true”. He swore he had nothing to do either directly or indirectly with Charles Bravo’s death and told of his chance meetings with Mrs Cox who told him repeatedly that Mr and Mrs Bravo were “getting along well”.

The verdict turned out to be the most damaging aspect of the inquest. It concluded that “Charles Bravo was willfully murdered by the administration of tartar emetic, but there is not sufficient evidence to fix the guilt upon any person or persons.” The jury significantly declined to use the standard, more familiar wording, “administered by some person or persons unknown”.

And by the verdict of the jury, the Balham Mystery remains an official cipher. The suicide theory, with a nod of admiration in the direction of a lurking Mrs Cox, does not hold up. Against the unsupported word of Mrs Cox, there is a parade of friends, colleagues, and family who picture Charles Bravo as a happy man, contented with his career and marriage. His letters both to Florence and his family reflect Bravo’s unsuicidal, rather complacent state of mind. As for Mrs Cox’s statement that “he took poison for Gully”, he had known of Dr Gully’s relationship to Florence before he married her, and, according to every witness, Mrs Bravo never saw Dr Gully after her marriage. The only other possibility for suicide would be delayed-action remorse and jealousy, and Charles Bravo just wasn’t the brooding type. His repeated denials to the doctors that he had not taken poison and his affectionate attitude toward his wife at his sick bed also lower the boom on the suicide theory. The accident theory can quickly be eliminated. The only place that antimony in the form of tartar emetic was kept at Priory was in the stables, and it is hardly conceivable that Mr Bravo would ever dose himself in the stable on horse physic, while all medicines found in the house tested out as harmless.

Sir John Hall, considered the leading authority on the Bravo case, claims that it had to be both Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox because they supported each other consistently in their statements, so at variance with all the other witnesses. But consider, Florence Bravo’s actions after her husband is taken ill. Still befuddled by wine, she sends for the nearest doctor and later for specialists. She talks of food poisoning from the coppery pans at his club. The conversation between the doctor and Mrs Cox, which she claims not to have heard, could also be the result of combined hysteria and hangover.

Mrs Bravo said she first heard of poison and suicide when Mrs Cox broke the news to her after they were settled at Brighton. Since Mrs Bravo was in a state of shock and did not appear at the first inquest, she begins backing up Mrs Cox only after the Brighton sojourn. So, Mrs Bravo emerges as an upset, concerned wife, extremely fond, talking of food poisoning, and then after the trip to Brighton with Mrs Cox she accepts and, by testimony, backs up the suicide theory and fortifies Mrs Cox’s position.

Something happened at Brighton, and everything points to a little genteel blackmail. Mrs Cox knew her relationship with Dr Gully was more than a harmless infatuation. She knew of her heavy drinking. She knew of the post-Kissengen illness—not hard for a woman with three sons and sickroom experience to diagnose as a miscarriage. And Florence Bravo, must above all, be considered within a specific frame of reference, that of nineteenth-century morals and manners. Within this frame, you have a woman who has made a slip and bounced from the category of “pure” to “fallen” woman. She had made an attempt at being respectable again, and Mrs Cox knew intimately the details of the transition. Her knowledge could bounce Florence right back into the latter category. In an age when women blushingly asked for a “slice of bosom” when being served chicken and female legs were as unmentionable as four letter Anglo-Saxon words, public disgrace could assume more importance than suspected murder; and, in Florence Bravo’s case, it did.

At Brighton, Mrs Cox probably told Florence that her husband said, “I have taken poison for Gully.” She told the young widow that if she would follow her lead, Mrs Cox would protect her reputation. In view of all the public agitation, they would have to make statements. The arrangement was that Mrs Cox would tell of Bravo’s “Gully statement” but would testify that relations between Florence and Dr Gully were imprudent but innocent and Charles Bravo was jealous of his wife’s past. Florence, in turn, would tell her story of her husband’s baseless jealousy of Dr Gully. This way Florence’s character would stay comparatively blameless, while Mrs Cox’s suicide theory would be reinforced. And how could Florence say no to perpetrating this half-truth, when the entire truth would mean ruin. Besides, she probably believed Mrs Cox’s story of Charlie’s suicide.

So, Florence Bravo became an ex post facto accessory. By the time Mrs Cox threw her to the wolves at the second inquest in the interest of self-preservation, Mrs Bravo had gone so far in her statements that she was irrevocably implicated. During the second inquest, Mrs Cox had begun to panic. She could bolster the suicide theory by admitting that Mrs Bravo had told her of her intimate relations with Dr Gully and that Charles Bravo knew and brooded over his wife’s past sins, or she could protect Mrs Bravo’s reputation. Mrs Cox couldn’t afford to let the suicide theory languish, or she would be in a most suspicious position. So Florence’s reputation had to go by the boards, and, too late to do anything, Florence realized with growing horror, that Mrs Cox was not the friend she pretended to be, but a blackmailer consumed with some dark purpose of her own. Florence was left with no alternative but to admit her “criminal relationship” with Dr Gully, which gave the illusion that she was still “backing up” Mrs Cox, while in actuality these two sherry-sipping ladies had come to a parting of the ways.

Mrs Bravo moved to Bus cot to live with her mother. Mrs Cox stopped in Manchester Street and planned to leave for Jamaica at the close of the inquiry. Florence was no intellectual giant, but she knew when she had been had.

It is the only theory that could account for Florence Bravo’s opposite actions before and after Brighton. Mrs Bravo, by herself, had neither sufficient character or motive to do the dirty deed. Nor did she have a strong enough reason to act in conjunction with Mrs Cox. She certainly wouldn’t condone the murder of her husband to keep Mrs Cox from returning to Jamaica. The weakness of Florence Bravo’s character forms the strength of her innocence. To complain, to pout, to shed a few tears was her course of action, not poison. There have been suggestions that the relationship between Mrs Bravo and Mrs Cox was of an unhealthy hue. But with Florence’s affinity for men, about the only unhealthy thing about their relationship was the amount of sherry they consumed.

Mrs Cox, too, falls with rigid delineation into this frame of reference. In our own era of the freewheeling career girl, it is difficult to remember that in Mrs Cox’s day a working woman was an unhappy exception, just a cut above serfdom. In most cases, a governess, a companion, or a poor relation who “earned her keep” was a step above the servants and a step below the lord and lady of the house, isolated on a lonely plateau without social contacts or standing.

When Charles Bravo showed unmistakable symptoms of snapping the purse shut and shipping her back to her Jamaican home and family, it was not simply a matter of a new job or surroundings. It was social and financial annihilation, and it was a motive. By removing Charles Bravo, she could relieve the pressure being exerted for her to return to Jamaica. She would be once again the dear friend of Florence, whom she could completely dominate, and return to the good old days when Dr Gully’s courtly charm caused a flutter under her formidable black bombazine exterior and Florence’s home and funds were at her disposal.

Mrs Cox, however, did not know her poisons as well as she knew the gentle art of conniving. By administering a large, economy-sized dose of poison, Mrs Cox was under the impression that Charles Bravo would die immediately. She did not realize that antimony was a variable and unpredictable poison. When it became apparent that Mr Bravo was going to linger awhile, Mrs Cox had to come up with some quick answers off the top of her chignon, and she was in a good position. Bravo was in an incoherent state, and Mrs Bravo, during those first chaotic hours, had a case of the hot-and-cold shakes and dry pipes, while the servants were trained to take orders unquestioningly from Mrs Cox. It is only after the doctors agreed that it was a case of irritant poisoning that Mrs Cox came up with the “I took poison—don’t tell Florence” statement. Only after there is a strong suspicion of murder and a second inquest is looming does Mrs Cox add Dr Gully’s name to the statement to give the suicide theory a strong motive. And only at the second inquest, when the jury and public were taking an increasingly dimmer view of the suicide theory, did she tell of the conversation when Bravo asks, “Why did you tell them?” Only Mrs Cox heard these three conversations with Charles Bravo. There were no witnesses except the necessarily mute Charles, and these words are the only indications of suicide. All the other testimony, all the other facts pointed to murder. Mrs Cox may not have been telling the truth, but she was a fast girl with a cue.