THE POISON BOTTLE
"AS well look for green peas in March as for sentiment in a Government analyst," says Sergeant Dyce in his autobiography; yet that that phenomenon may occur is proved in the personal reminiscences of the late Professor Ganthony, some extracts only from which have appeared in the public prints. From what remains we are free to select the following passages, in irrefutable testimony to the existence of that verdant spot in the constitution of the great pathologist; and it is with the purpose rather to vindicate their narrator's memory from a charge of moral insensibility, than to recapitulate the evidences in a pretty recent cause célèbre, that the choice is made. The allusion is to what the reader will remember as the Footover Poison-bottle case.
As curious and touching a case as any in my experience, says the Professor, was that of young Langdon. I refer to it particularly, because circumstances brought me into unwonted association with some parties to the affair, and to the knowledge, connected with it, of as strange an instance of youthful clairvoyance as might be related.
Young Harry Langdon was the heir presumptive to the Langdon baronetcy and estates, at that time enjoyed—save the irony of the term—by his great-uncle Sir Hugh Langdon, who was a childless widower and paralytic. The boy was, I understand, a particularly bright intelligent youngster of fourteen at the time of his death, which was due to poisoning by cyanide of potassium. I received officially—here follow some details which may be omitted—and attended the inquest in due course, to give my evidence. It was plain enough, for all my concern in the matter; painfully plain, moreover, it appeared, from the ex-professional point of view. The boy, with his little sister Marjory, had been on a visit to Langdon Court, South Hampshire, a county famous for its lepidoptera. Naturally he had started to make a collection of butterflies—bug-hunting, in the modern vernacular; and had secured for his lethal purposes one of those squat wide-mouthed bottles—containing a deposit, to about a tenth of their depth, of inspissated cyanide of potassium—which are used by collectors to kill their insects when netted. This bottle had been found upon the poor young fellow's dressing-table, incident upon the discovery of its owner's body lying dead in an arm-chair near the fire-place. The cork was out; the stuff at the bottom showed unmistakable signs of having been prodded and raked at, and the boy's own penknife, smeared with the poison, lay beside. Circumstantially the case was clear. Moved by one of those reckless explorative appetites to which youth is subject, attracted, no doubt, by the sweet almondy or peach-stony savour of the stuff, he had dared to taste, and had paid with his life for his mad temerity. The supposition was quite plausible. Indeed it is a frequent matter for wonder with me that unconsidering youth does not more often than happens fall a victim to the thousand temptations, in the way of insidious foods and drinks, which assail it.
My evidence, I say, was clear and unequivocal. The only other, of local importance, was contributed by William Brash, Sir Hugh's butler. It is necessary, before detailing this man's sworn testimony, to say a word as to the circumstances surrounding the case.
These two children, Harry and Marjory, were, it appeared, the only offspring of a widowed lady of adequate but not considerable means. The boy had been educated in virtual ignorance of his presumptive title to the baronetcy, and his fateful visit, with his little sister, to the Court, had been his first and last. It seemed that Sir Hugh, with the perversity of a sick-grained valetudinarian, had fought, until nearing his end, against the acknowledgment of his heir in the person of a remoter scion, and had only succumbed to the inevitable when that became obvious. Then, with what grace he could recover, he had sent for the children to visit him, and, from making a virtue of necessity, had come to take a delight in the bright fearless boy. The end had been at least as great a shock to him as to his household at large; to the mother it had come, of course, as a potential death-blow.
Langdon Court lies pretty sunk and secluded among the heathy environs of the New Forest. Its owner, at the period of the calamity, was living in a considerably self-restricted state, and much of the house was shut up. Visitors, the few. who came, were accommodated in a wing of the building remote from the neighbourhood of the nervous and suffering invalid, and but few servants were kept. Of these few, William Brash was the principal. He had been in Sir Hugh's service some two years when I saw him. He was a slow, large man, reserved of speech and with a very quiet manner. His face was round and impassive, with close black eyebrows, and a projecting lower lip. He had extraordinarily thick hands; and, when he turned, one saw a regular tonsure, like a monk's, sunk in the crown of a very thicket of hair. It was due to an old scurvy, I believe, and not to natural baldness. It is his evidence to which I now come.
William Brash deposed to his pleasant intimacy with the deceased, who, he declared, with some hesitancy of emotion, was as handsome-spoken a young gentleman as one might wish to serve. The visit of the young lady and gentleman had extended to a fortnight when the disaster happened. During the last week of this fortnight Master Harry had developed an extraordinary interest in butterfly hunting, and, latterly, had got him, Brash, to procure him a poison-bottle, the one in question, from the local chemist in Footover. He had obtained it to command, had duly signed the book, and had handed over his purchase to the young gentleman on the evening preceding that morning of the fatal discovery. He was perfectly sure of the circumstances in their every detail. He had returned rather late, and had gone straight, by direction, to Master Harry's bedroom, where he found the boy busy in writing letters. He had placed the bottle on the dressing-table, and was about to withdraw, when Master Harry had detained him with a request for stamps, having none of his own, and it being too late to disturb his uncle. He had gone and procured the stamps desired from his own room, had returned with them to the young gentleman, and had seen him place them on his letters, which he had handed over to him, Brash, there and then, to put with the night post. They had been five in number, and had been addressed, one to his mother, and the other four, he thought, to provincial dealers in insects, of whom Master Harry, by his uncle's sanction, had more than once already bought specimens. He had then bidden the young gentleman good night, and had retired to his own part of the house, which was comparatively distant. The boy had been placed by himself, rather remote, in the west wing of the building. It was a housemaid who, coming with the hot water the next morning, had made the dreadful discovery. And so the matter ended. Incidentally it was demonstrated that the bottle still held its poison-label firmly attached, though some reference, unjustifiable, I think, was made to the inconspicuous position of the warning. The remainder of the evidence was of a piece with that quoted, and in the end the jury gave in their verdict of death by misadventure.
But before this happened, there had occurred one most curious little scene.
I suppose the minutest enquiry into cases of sudden and violent death, even where the face of the circumstances surrounding them appears plain as day, is persistently to be advocated; elsewise any suspicion of laxity in this respect would surely encourage the wrongdoer. Instances have occurred within my knowledge where a scrap of purely formal testimony, so regarded, has put an entirely new complexion upon hitherto accepted facts; and I have known more than one conviction result upon a chance insinuation offered at the eleventh hour. Nevertheless, it was, I confess, with a certain qualm that I heard the deceased's little sister called upon to give her atom of formal evidence, and a word of protesting pity was near coming to my lips when I saw the child brought forward by a servant. She stood up there before us all in her black frock, the most pathetically attractive little body one could imagine, with her solemn round face, full of fear and trouble, and the plentiful brown hair rolling down to her shoulders. The coroner, of course, designed to be very brief and gentle with her. His questions merely touched upon her knowledge of her brother's propensities in the matter of reckless experiments with forbidden things, and of any possible previous instance she might recall in which he had made himself ill by a venture of the like sort. Her answer, soft and infantine, took the court like a shock of electricity. Hal wasn't like that, she said; Hal didn't kill himself; it was Cousin Francis killed Hal.
I think for a minute a bluebottle in the pane had the silence all to himself. Then the coroner bent forward very quiet and serious.
"My dear," he said, "aren't you talking wildly? You must tell me who is Uncle Francis."
The little girl's lip came out and her lids down. She twined her fingers together. The attendant maid bent to catch her faltering whisper, and answered for her:
"She says she saw him look into her room that night when she was asleep, sir; and he had a bottle in his hand, which he shook at her, and then went on with it to Master Harry's room."
"When she was asleep?"
"I expect it was just a bad dream, sir—not that night, but since."
"I expect so too. Who is this Uncle Francis?"
But, before answering that question, the maid had to be sworn in.
So I describe her; but I had erred, it seemed, in my estimate. Miss Roper was, in fact, a sort of governess-companion in the Langdon, the visiting Langdon, household. She had not accompanied her charges at the first; but had arrived a day or two before that which was to terminate their visit, and had remained to represent the bereaved mother, hopelessly stricken down in her home, at the inquest. She presented the appearance of a sallow, dull-faced young woman, with hard steady brown eyes gleaming over dusky crescents, and with small-boned limbs. She was so austerely dressed, in a habit approaching that of a hospital nurse's, that my mistake was natural. Her accent was refined, but her speech reserved almost to lifelessness.
Her evidence amounted to little; but it was conclusive. Uncle Francis was her employer's deceased husband's half-brother. She knew little of him—certainly little to his credit; but his character, for good or bad, could be nothing to the point, inasmuch as he had emigrated to America some eighteen months before, and, to her sure knowledge, was there still. Once, on the eve of his departure, he had visited the Langdons for a few days, when, it was true, the little girl had developed against him one of those instinctive antipathies to which children are wont; and she supposed that this haunting impression was to account in the child's mind for the fancy which had overcome it under abnormal conditions of terror.
So we all thought; and there the matter ended. The verdict was delivered, with all the appropriate expressions of sympathy, the poor small body put to sleep in the family vault; and, a day or two later, the little girl was taken home by her governess.
Now circumstances, which are neither here nor there, had detained me in Footover; and, so it chanced, my arrival on the platform was coincident with that of the two travellers. I observed that the woman recognised me; but I had no thought of her taking any further interest in my presence until we entered the Basingstoke train, when I found her deliberately following me into the compartment, an empty one, which I had selected. She acknowledged my formal bow with a salutation as grave, but showed no intention to speak, until, presently, the little girl fell asleep in her arms. And then, all in a moment, she seemed to flash into an intensity of being, and, looking across, addressed me in a low hurried tone.
"Please to pardon me; the time is so short, but, to me, so opportune. I want to know so much. He died of that poison? There is no doubt whatever about that, is there?"
Professionally I am insusceptible to surprise—habitually on my guard against it. My pulses just gave a little surge and regulated themselves.
"You heard the verdict given," I answered quietly. "In my opinion it was a just one."
She seemed to gulp, putting a hand to her bonnet-strings as if to adjust them. My demeanour, I am sure, gave no token of the wonder within.
"We shall see," she said. "If there is a God of Vengeance not too jealous to make a woman His instrument, we shall see, perhaps."
I did not answer, while she struggled to control herself. Presently she tightened her arm, inexpressibly fond, about the sleeping child.
"As I love this stricken one," she said, much more quietly now, "so by many degrees of priority did I love the other. So frank, so brave, so sensible, and to commit the act of a gluttonous lunatic! Did I know him or not? He never took the poison of his own free will."
I was startled from my reserve.
"You must hold your tongue," I said sternly. "You are suggesting nothing less than murder."
"Nothing less," she answered.
"Then," I said, "I refuse to listen to you. If you have knowingly withheld any evidence"
"None," she broke in. "But why did this child have her dream?"
At that I was as much relieved as disturbed. I believed that the poor woman's mind was unhinged by the catastrophe. I sought to humour, to mollify her.
"You yourself supplied the reason, a very plausible one, I think," I answered.
"I!" she said scornfully. "Was it my policy, do you suppose, to speak my suspicions? There are wicked powers that can be exerted from a distance—even half across the world. It has never occurred to you, I am sure, that by the removal of our darling, this man, this Uncle Francis, becomes the heir presumptive to the title and estates?"
I stopped her peremptorily.
"I will listen to no more. Lunatic nonsense—you must forgive me. I"
The train began to slow down. She leaned forward a little.
"If," she repeated low, "He will condescend to make a woman His instrument. Mad I may be—such grief could not keep its reason—but the mad can hate. Look in the papers."
I protested; she hushed me down, ineffably sweet and tender in a moment with her waking charge. At the last, as she left the carriage, she turned her head.
"Look in the papers," she repeated, "and perhaps, presently, you will come to see."
I did, and to recognise the truth that it is better for the wrongdoer to have a score of blood-hounds on his track than one vengeful woman.
Some months had passed, and the case in question was long dismissed from my mind, when, taking up my paper one morning, my eyes were confronted with the announcement, "Footover Poison-bottle Case: Starling Sequel: Arrest on a charge of murder," in thundering headlines. I stood open-mouthed a moment, then settled myself to peruse. Before I had read a dozen lines I was already profoundly absorbed; at the finish of the first paragraph I was murmuring to myself, "This is to be my case again"; and, in fact, a communication from the police reached me within the hour.
The contemporary public knows the end; to the new generation, for which I write, a précis of the processes by which that end was reached may be not without interest. The inquest had excited considerable comment, and a plentitude of moralising on the inefficiency of the by-laws affecting the sale of poisons. That was all beside the mark, as the following explanation will show. It was elicited, at length, before the magistrate, under examination and cross-examination; but, for the sake of brevity, I condense it into narrative form—a simple matter in reality, since the evidence of the witness-in-chief, Miss Roper, was all that counted in the first degree. It was given with a curious deadly precision—the matter of which I can reproduce, but hardly the manner—and is to be summed up as follows:
"William Brash, arraigned before Mr. ... on a charge of procuring the death of Henry Langdon by poison, Barbara Roper, witness for the prosecution, gave evidence:
"In the horror of the discovery we had all come into the room, the butler, the other servants and myself. After the first paralysing shock was overcome, I began quietly to take notes. The uncorked bottle stood on the dressing-table, and I looked into it. A faint odour, like almond or peach-kernels, rose to my nostrils. It occurred to me that the marks in the stuff did not tally with the shape of the penknife-blade, opened ostentatiously beside. They had a distinct, though irregular, elliptical form to my eyes, as though produced by the point of a very small scoop or spoon, and afterwards roughly effaced by a sharper instrument. I said nothing about this at the time, but was resolved to go unobtrusively about my observations. I started with two equipments for my task—an utter incredulity as to the deceased's inclination to so insane a deed; an instinctive prejudice or antipathy against the butler. They should have disqualified me, you will say. That is for the defence to prove.
"It was very shortly after—no farther than the next day—that I got upon my clue. I had occasion to go into the butler's pantry, and found William Brash there, smoking. He was to go to his master, and I remained behind. A coat of his, which I had seen him wear after hours, was hanging behind the door. I felt in its pockets and discovered in one of them a curious little instrument, a sort of smoker's combination tool, which consisted of a pipe-stopper, pick and cleaner, the three fastened together by a single pin or swivel. The last was in the form of a miniature spoon, and I put it to my nostrils. Barely, but just distinguishable, the same odour was thereto be recognised—the odour of peach-stones. From that moment I knew that William Brash had murdered Harry Langdon.
"There remained the method and the motive. I had my suspicions about the latter; the former, in the meantime, was to be my practical concern. It was quite incredible—to me, at least—that the boy would have allowed the butler to persuade him into tasting a spoonful of the stuff; how, then, and how insidiously, had it been administered? I thought over all the points of the butler's sworn testimony, and decided that it was unlikely that so finished a scoundrel—granting that my theory was correct—would have lied on questions of evidence open to easy proof or disproof. No, he had told the truth, in all its essential details, and to the truth I must look for a revelation of the truth. What was negotiable therein? 'He had found the boy busy in writing letters.' As in a flash of diabolic light, the heart of the mystery was revealed to me.
"He had written five letters, had borrowed stamps for them, and had had them posted. Within a day or two, in fact, answers to four were returned. I secured, privately, the addresses of the senders; and when, having left the court, I was free to act, I visited those addresses. Not one of the senders, as I feared, had preserved the envelope containing his original communication. That was unfortunate; still, my case was clear without such confirmatory evidence. The fifth letter had been written to the boy's mother, and I knew that my employer, Mrs. Langdon, never willingly parted with a scrap of her son's writing. In that one instance the envelope had been preserved, and its testimony was sufficient. As I held it before me, in the privacy of my room, I knew that my theory was justified, and that I had hit upon the truth. The stamp was much discoloured, and it still emitted a faint scent of peach-stones. I maintain that William Brash never delivered the bottle at all to Henry Langdon living; that he probably put the boy off with some excuse of his inability to procure it, and, afterwards, going to his own room for the stamps, smeared their backs with the mixture, and, returning, handed the poisoned paper to his victim, who, passing it over his tongue, was led to encompass his own death. I maintain that the knife and bottle were placed in the position in which they were found after the consummation of the deed, that the remoteness of the room lent itself to the act, and that, according to the medical testimony, the nature of the poison, rapid and deadly in its effects, rendered the perpetration of such a horror practicable. And I maintain, finally, my firm belief that this murder was committed by William Brash not on his own initiative, but at the instance and instigation of another who shall be nameless."
It was the case, exactly as she had said it. Such intuition and deadly persistence struck every one of her hearers, I think, appalled—not least the man in the dock, who collapsed before the terrific figure of the vengeance he had evoked. There was a tremendous scene in court. Pressed as to her last statement, the witness referred to the little girl's vision. "She dreamt it," she said, "on the very night of the occurrence. I implied otherwise at the inquest; but that was for a purpose. I designed to lead those interested off the scent I was following." Cross-examined, she admitted that her antipathy to Uncle Francis, born into existence on the one and only occasion when they had met, was inexplicable according to natural laws. He had been quite debonair and courteous. She was willing to acknowledge that the association of the child's nightmare with the fact of her having ascertained that the person in question had been seen in William Brash's company, on the occasion of his final visit to the Court before emigrating, might have served to antedate her prejudice, at least in the measure of its virulence. But as to his somehow complicity in the deed she declined to alter her opinion.
And she was right again. The dénouement—which was for psychologists rather than for sober analytical chemists—was a tremendous business. William Brash, in the hope, the mistaken hope, of his being accepted for King's evidence, made a full confession while awaiting his trial in prison after the magistrate's commitment. It was a very cruel plot he revealed—a plot of calculated and quite inhuman treachery. The murder and the method of it had been circumstantially planned between him and Uncle Francis, now the actual next of kin, fully eighteen months before, the early doom of the paralytic, and the probability of his having his great-nephew over to visit him, having been clearly foreseen. It was William Brash who had first persuaded the boy into starting his collection of insects. His reward for the deed was to have been more than substantial. I never took greater pleasure in helping to hang a man than I did in knotting the noose about that gross criminal neck.
Uncle Francis disappeared—absorbed into the wilds of his adopted country. I once saw a tinted photograph of him, and that was all. It showed a small, neat, red-haired man in a white waistcoat; and if ever one might imagine a weasel in human shape there was the picture of him.