The Wychford Poisoning Case. Anthony Berkeley

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СКАЧАТЬ there was none now. Brother Alfred put on his hat at once, went round to the two doctors and told them both the whole story. The three of them held a council of war, and decided that Mrs Bentley must be watched continuously.

      ‘Well, that was bad enough, but there was still another piece of news waiting for brother Alfred when he got back, and that certainly is the most damning thing of all. The nurse had come down a short time ago with a bottle of Bovril in her hand and explained that she had seen Mrs Bentley pick it up in a surreptitious way and convey it out of the bedroom, hiding it in the folds of her frock; a few minutes later she brought it back and replaced it, when she thought the nurse’s back was turned, in the exact spot from which she had taken it. That bottle was handed over to the doctors next day and was subsequently found to contain arsenic.’

      ‘Well, that I am dashed if you can get over!’ Alec observed.

      ‘It isn’t for me to get over it,’ pointed out Roger mildly. ‘I’m not saying the woman is innocent. All I say is that we ought to bear the possibility of her innocence in mind, and not assume her guilt as a matter of course. In any case I am most uncommonly interested to hear what she’s got to say about that particular incident. Well, up to this time, you’ve got to remember, Bentley’s condition, though serious, wasn’t considered to be in any way dangerous (which does go a long way to explain the somewhat flippant tone of Mrs Bentley’s letter to Allen that has helped to create so much prejudice against her); but that same night things took a very rapid turn for the worse. Both doctors were hurriedly summoned, and they were with him all night. By the next morning Mrs Bentley and the others were warned that there could be very little hope for him, at midday he became unconscious and at seven o’clock in the evening he died.

      ‘But that wasn’t all. Mrs Bentley had been removed at once, by brother Alfred’s orders, to her own bedroom, where she was kept practically a prisoner, and the other four immediately began a systematic search of the whole place. Their efforts were not unrewarded. In Bentley’s dressing-room there stood a trunk belonging to his wife. In the tray of this was a medicine bottle containing, as shown later, a very strong solution of arsenic in lemonade, together with a handkerchief belonging to Mrs Bentley which was also impregnated with arsenic. In a medicine-chest were the remains of the bottles of medicine prescribed by Dr James (two) and Dr Peters (one). None of these prescriptions contained arsenic, but arsenic was subsequently discovered in each bottle in appreciable quantities. And lastly, in a locked drawer in Mrs Bentley’s own bedroom there was found a small packet containing no less than two whole ounces of pure arsenic—actually enough to kill more than a couple of hundred people! And that was that.’

      ‘I should say it was!’ Alec agreed.

      ‘Of course the doctors refused a death-certificate. The police were called in, and Mrs Bentley was promptly arrested. Two days later a post-mortem was held. There was no doubt about the cause of death. The stomach and the rest of it were badly inflamed. Death due to inflammation of the stomach and intestines set up by an irritant poison—which in this case was the medical way of saying death from arsenical poisoning. The usual parts of the body were removed and placed in sealed jars for examination by the Government analyst. You read the result this morning in his evidence before the magistrates—at least three grains of arsenic in the body at the time of death, or half a grain more than the ordinary fatal dose, meaning that shortly before death there must have been a good deal more still; arsenic in the stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, everywhere! And also, significant in another way, arsenic in the skin, nails and hair; and that means that arsenic must have been administered some considerable time ago—a fortnight, for instance, or about the time of that picnic. Is it any wonder that the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict tantamount to wilful murder against Mrs Bentley, or that the magistrates have committed her for trial?’

      ‘It is not!’ said Alec with decision. ‘They’d have been imbeciles if they hadn’t.’

      ‘Quite so,’ said Roger. ‘Exactly.’ And he began to smoke very thoughtfully indeed.

      There was a little pause.

      ‘Come on,’ said Alec. ‘You know you’ve got something up your sleeve.’

      ‘Oh, no. I’ve got nothing up my sleeve.’

      ‘Well, there’s something in your mind, then. Let’s have it!’

      Roger took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the short stem at his companion as if to drive his next remark home with it. ‘There is a question that I can’t find an answer to,’ he said slowly, ‘and it’s this—why the devil so much arsenic?’

      ‘So much?’

      ‘Yes. Why enough to kill a couple of hundred people when there’s only one to be killed? Why? It isn’t natural.’

      Alec pondered. ‘Well, surely there might be two or three explanations of that. She wanted to make sure of the job. She didn’t know what the fatal dose was. She—’

      ‘Oh, yes; there are two or three explanations. But not one of them is the least bit convincing. You don’t think people go in for poisoning without finding out what the fatal dose is, do you? Poisoning is a deliberate, cold-blooded job. Such a simple measure as looking up the fatal dose in any encyclopædia or medical reference book would be the very first step.’

      ‘Um?’ said Alec, not particularly impressed.

      ‘And then there’s another thing. Why in the name of all that’s holy buy fly-papers when there’s all that amount of arsenic in the house already?’

      ‘But perhaps there wasn’t,’ Alec retorted quickly. ‘Perhaps she got the other arsenic after the fly-papers.’

      ‘Well, suppose she did. The same objection applies just as well. Why buy all that amount of arsenic when she’d already got half a dozen fatal doses out of the fly-papers? And once more, I haven’t seen any police evidence offered to prove that Mrs Bentley did buy that arsenic. It’s proved to have been in her possession, but it hasn’t been shown how it came there. The police seem to be taking it completely for granted that as she had it, it must have been she who bought it.’

      ‘Is that very important?’

      ‘I should have said, vitally! No, look at it how you like, the question of this superabundance of arsenic does not simplify the case, as everybody seems to have assumed; in my opinion it infernally complicates it.’

      ‘It is interesting,’ Alec admitted. ‘I’d never looked on it like that before. What do you make of it, then?’

      ‘Well, there seem to me only two possible deductions. Either Mrs Bentley is the most imbecile criminal who ever existed and simply went out of her way to manufacture the most damning evidence against herself—which, having formed my own opinion of her character, I am most unwilling to believe. Or else—!’ He paused and rammed down a few straggling ends of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe.

      ‘Yes?’ Alec asked with interest. ‘Or else what?’

      Roger looked up suddenly. ‘Why, or else that she didn’t murder her husband at all!’ he said equably.

      ‘But my dear chap!’ Alec was compelled to protest. ‘How on earth do you make that out?’

      Roger folded his arms and fixed an unseeing gaze on the meadow on the other side of the little stream.

      ‘There’s too much evidence!’ he began in an argumentative voice. ‘A СКАЧАТЬ