I shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do any more.’
‘But is there no antidote to this poison?’
‘No, I’m afraid there isn’t.’
‘Well. . .’ He looked down with drawn face at the unconscious animal. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening to Jasper when he goes stiff like he did? I’m only a layman, but I like to understand things.’
‘I’ll try to explain it,’ I said. ‘Strychnine is absorbed into the nervous system and it increases the conductivity of the spinal cord.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that the muscles become more sensitive to outside stimuli so that the slightest touch or sound throws them into violent contractions.’
‘But why does a dog stretch out like that?’
‘Because the extensor muscles are stronger than the flexors, causing the back to be arched and the legs extended.’
He nodded. ‘I see, but . . . I believe it is usually fatal. What is it that . . . that kills them?’
‘They die of asphyxia due to paralysis of the respiratory centre or contraction of the diaphragm.’
Maybe he wanted to ask more, but it was painful for him and he stayed silent.
‘There’s one thing I’d like you to know, Mr Bartle,’ I said. ‘It is almost certainly not a painful condition.’
‘Thank you.’ He bent and briefly stroked the sleeping dog. ‘So nothing more can be done?’
I shook my head. ‘The barbiturate keeps the spasms in abeyance and we’ll go on hoping he hasn’t absorbed too much strychnine. I’ll call back later, or you can ring me if he gets worse. I can be here in a few minutes.’
Driving away, I pondered on the irony that made Darrowby a paradise for dog killers as well as dog lovers. There were grassy tracks everywhere: wandering by the river’s edge, climbing the fell-sides and coiling green and tempting among the heather on the high tops. I often felt sympathy for pet owners in the big cities, trying to find places to walk their dogs. Here in Darrowby we could take our pick. But so could the poisoner. He could drop his deadly bait unobserved in a hundred different places.
I was finishing the afternoon surgery when the phone rang. It was Mr Bartle.
‘Has he started the spasms again?’ I asked.
There was a pause. ‘No, I’m afraid Jasper is dead. He never regained consciousness.’
‘Oh . . . I’m very sorry.’ I felt a dull despair. That was the seventh death in a week.
‘Well, thank you for your treatment, Mr Herriot. I’m sure nothing could have saved him.’
I hung up the phone wearily. He was right. Nothing or nobody could have done any good in this case, but it didn’t help. If you finish up with a dead animal there is always the feeling of defeat.
Next day I was walking on to a farm when the farmer’s wife called to me. ‘I have a message for you to ring back to the surgery.’
I heard Helen’s voice at the other end. ‘Jack Brimham has just come in with his dog. I think it’s another strychnine case.’
I excused myself and drove back to Darrowby at top speed. Jack Brimham was a builder. He ran a one-man business and whatever job he was on – repairing roofs or walls or chimneys – his little white rough-haired terrier went with him, and you could usually see the little animal nosing among the piles of bricks, exploring in the surrounding fields.
Jack was a friend, too. I often had a beer with him at the Drovers’ Arms and I recognised his van outside the surgery. I trotted along the passage and found him leaning over the table in the consulting room. His dog was stretched there in that attitude which I dreaded.
‘He’s gone, Jim,’ he muttered.
I looked at the shaggy little body. There was no movement, the eyes stared silently. The legs, even in death, strained across the smooth surface of the table. It was pointless, but I slipped my hand inside the thigh and felt for the femoral artery. There was no pulse.
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ I said.
He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I’ve been readin’ about this in the paper, Jim, but I never thought it would happen to me. It’s a bugger, isn’t it?’
I nodded. He was a craggy-faced man, a tough Yorkshire-man with a humour and integrity which I liked and a soft place inside which his dog had occupied. I did not know what to say to him.
‘Who’s doin’ this?’ he said, half to himself.
‘I don’t know, Jack. Nobody knows.’
‘Well I wish I could have five minutes with him, that’s all.’ He gathered the rigid little form into his arms and went out.
My troubles were not over for that day. It was about 11 p.m. and I had just got into bed when Helen nudged me.
‘I think there’s somebody knocking at the front door, Jim.’
I opened the window and looked out. Old Boardman, the lame veteran of the First War who did odd jobs for us, was standing on the steps.
‘Mr Herriot,’ he called up to me, ‘I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but Patch is ill.’
I leaned further out. ‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s like a bit o’ wood – stiff like, and laid on ’is side.’
I didn’t bother to dress, just pulled my working corduroys over my pyjamas and went down the stairs two at a time. I grabbed what I needed from the dispensary and opened the front door. The old man, in shirt sleeves, caught at my arm.
‘Come quickly, Mr Herriot!’ He limped ahead of me to his little house about twenty yards away in the lane round the corner.
Patch was like all the others. The fat spaniel I had seen so often waddling round the top yard with his master was in that nightmare position on the kitchen floor, but he had vomited, which gave me hope. I administered the intravenous injection but as I withdrew the needle the breathing stopped.
Mrs Boardman, in nightgown and slippers, dropped on her knees and stretched a trembling hand towards the motionless animal.
‘Patch . . .’ She turned and stared at me, wide-eyed. ‘He’s dead!’
I put my hand on the old woman’s shoulder and said some sympathetic words. I thought grimly that I was getting good at it. As I left I looked back at the two old people. Boardman was kneeling now by his wife and even after I had closed the door I could hear their voices: ‘Patch . . . oh Patch.’
I almost reeled over the few steps to Skeldale House and before going in I stood in the empty street breathing the cool air and trying to calm my racing thoughts. With Patch gone, this thing was getting very near home. I saw that dog every day. In fact all the dogs that had died were old friends – in a little town like Darrowby you came to know your patients personally. Where was it going to end?
I didn’t sleep much that night and over the next few days I was obsessed with apprehension. I expected another poisoning with every phone call and took care never to let my own dog, Sam, out of the car in the region of the town. Thanks to my job I was able to exercise him miles away on the summits of the fells, but even there I kept him close to me.
By the fourth day I was beginning to feel more relaxed. Maybe the nightmare was over. I was driving home in the late afternoon past the row of grey cottages at the end of the Houlton Road when a woman ran waving into the road.
‘Oh, Mr Herriot,’ she cried when I stopped, ‘I was just goin’ to t’phone box when I saw you.’
I pulled up by the kerb. ‘It’s Mrs Clifford, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Johnny’s just come in and Fergus ’as gone queer. Collapsed and laid on t’floor.’
‘Oh no!’ An icy chill drove through me and for a moment I stared at her, unable to move. Then I threw open the car door and hurried after Johnny’s mother into the end cottage. I halted abruptly in the little room and stared down in horror. The very sight of the splendid dignified animal scrabbling helplessly on the linoleum was a desecration, but strychnine is no respecter of such things.
‘Oh God!’ I breathed. ‘Has he vomited, Johnny?’
‘Aye, me mum said he was sick in t’b
ack garden when we came in.’ The young man was sitting very upright in a chair by the side of his dog. Even now there was a half smile on his face, but he looked strained as he put out his hand in the old gesture and failed to find the head that should have been there.
The bottle of barbiturate wobbled in my shaking hand as I filled the syringe. I tried to put away the thought that I was doing what I had done to all the others – all the dead ones. At my feet Fergus panted desperately, then as I bent over him he suddenly became still and went into the horrible distinctive spasm, the great limbs I knew so well straining frantically into space, the head pulled back grotesquely over the spine.
This was when they died, when the muscles were at full contraction. As the barbiturate flowed into the vein I waited for signs of relaxation but saw none. Fergus was about twice as heavy as any of the other victims I had treated and the plunger went to the end of the syringe without result.
Quickly I drew in another dose and began to inject it, my tension building as I saw how much I was administering. The recommended dose was 1 cc per 5 lb body weight and beyond that you could kill the animal. I watched the gradations on the glass barrel of the syringe and my mouth went dry when the dose crept far beyond the safety limit. But I knew I had to relieve this spasm and continued to depress the plunger relentlessly.
I did it in the grim knowledge that if he died now I would never know whether to blame the strychnine or myself for his death.
The big dog had received more than a lethal amount before peace began to return to the taut body and even then I sat back on my heels, almost afraid to look in case I had brought about his end. There was a long agonising moment when he lay still and apparently lifeless, then the rib cage began to move almost imperceptibly as the breathing recommenced.
Even then I was in suspense. The anaesthesia was so deep that he was only just alive, yet I knew that the only hope was to keep him that way. I sent Mrs Clifford out to phone Siegfried that I would be tied up here for a while, then I pulled up a chair and settled down to wait.
The hours passed as Johnny and I sat there, the dog stretched between us. The young man discussed the case calmly and without self-pity. There was no suggestion that this was anything more than a pet animal lying at his feet – except for the tell-tale reaching for the head that was no longer there.
Several times Fergus showed signs of going into another spasm and each time I sent him back into his deep, deep insensibility, pushing him repeatedly to the brink with a fateful certainty that it was the only way.
It was well after midnight when I came sleepily out into the darkness. I felt drained. Watching the life of the friendly, clever, face-licking animal flicker as he lay inert and unheeding had been a tremendous strain, but I had left him sleeping – still anaesthetised but breathing deeply and regularly. Would he wake up and start the dread sequence again? I didn’t know and I couldn’t stay any longer. There was a practice with other animals to attend to.
But my anxiety jerked me into early wakefulness next morning. I tossed around till seven thirty telling myself this wasn’t the way to be a veterinary surgeon, that you couldn’t live like this. But my worry was stronger than the voice of reason and I slipped out before breakfast to the roadside cottage.
My nerves were like a bowstring as I knocked on the door. Mrs Clifford answered, and I was about to blurt out my enquiries when Fergus trotted from the inner room.
He was still a little groggy from the vast dosage of barbiturate but he was relaxed and happy, the symptoms had gone, he was himself again. With a gush of pure joy I knelt and took the great head between my hands. He slobbered at me playfully with his wet tongue and I had to fight him off.
He followed me into the living room where Johnny was seated at the table, drinking tea. He took up his usual position, sitting upright and proud by his master’s side.
‘You’ll have a cup, Mr Herriot?’ Mrs Clifford asked, poising the teapot.
‘Thanks, I’d love one, Mrs Clifford,’ I replied.
No tea ever tasted better, and as I sipped I watched the young man’s smiling face.
‘What a relief, Mr Herriot! I sat up with him all night, listenin’ to the chimes of the church clock. It was just after four when I knew we’d won because I heard ’im get to his feet and sort o’ stagger about. I stopped worryin’ then, just listened to ’is feet patterin’ on the linoleum. It was lovely!’
He turned his head to me and I looked at the slightly upturned eyes in the cheerful face.
‘I’d have been lost without Fergus,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t know how to thank you.’
But as he unthinkingly rested his hand on the head of the big dog who was his pride and delight I felt that the gesture alone was all the thanks I wanted.
That was the end of the strychnine poisoning outbreak in Darrowby. The older people still talk about it, but nobody ever had the slightest clue as to the identity of the killer and it is a mystery to this day.
I feel that the vigilance of the police and the publicity in the press frightened this twisted person off, but anyway it just stopped and the only cases since then have been accidental ones.
To me it is a sad memory of failure and frustration. Fergus was my only cure, and I’m not sure why he recovered. Maybe the fact that I pushed the injection to dangerous levels because I was desperate had something to do with it, or maybe he just didn’t pick up as much poison as the others. I’ll never know.
But over the years when I saw the big dog striding majestically in his harness, leading his master unerringly around the streets of Darrowby, I always had the same feeling.
If there had to be just one saved, I’m glad it was him. Only yesterday I opened my newspaper and read of an outbreak of deliberate strychnine poisoning in a country district. So it still goes on. There are still such people around. And, sadly, we have never found an antidote. My only successes have been by anaesthetising the victims and keeping them asleep for a prolonged period. Strychnine is so deadly that in order to obtain it a permit has to be obtained from the Ministry of Agriculture. This permit, which specifies the amount of the drug and the purpose for which it is to be used, has to be presented to the chemist, but despite all precautions tragedies still occur.
29. Locum
Siegfried and I were at breakfast in the big dining-room. My colleague looked up from a letter he was reading.
‘James, do you remember Stewie Brannan?’
I smiled. ‘I could hardly forget. That was quite a day at Brawton races.’ I would always carry a vivid recollection of Siegfried’s amiable college chum with me.
‘Yes . . . yes, it was.’ Siegfried nodded briefly. ‘Well I’ve got a letter from him here. He’s got six kids now, and though he doesn’t complain, I don’t think life is exactly a picnic working in a dump like Hensfield. Especially when he knocks a bare living out of it.’ He pulled thoughtfully at the lobe of his ear. ‘You know, James, it would be rather nice if he could have a break. Would you be willing to go through there and run his practice for a couple of weeks so that he could take his family on holiday?’
‘Certainly. Glad to. But you’ll be a bit pushed here on your own, won’t you?’
Siegfried waved a hand. ‘It’ll do me good. Anyway it’s the quiet time for us. I’ll write back today.’
Stewie grasped the opportunity eagerly and within a few days I was on the road to Hensfield. Yorkshire is the biggest county in England and it must be the most varied. I could hardly believe it when, less than two hours after leaving the clean grassy fells and crystal air of Darrowby, I saw the forest of factory chimneys sprouting from the brown pall of grime.
This was the industrial West Riding and I drove past mills as dark and satanic as any I had dreamed of, past long rows of dreary featureless houses where the workers lived. Everything was black: houses, mills, walls, trees, even the surrounding hillsides, smeared and soiled from the smoke which drifted across the town from a hundred belching stacks.
Stewie�
�s surgery was right in the heart of it, a gloomy edifice in a terrace of sooty stone. As I rang the bell I read the painted board: ‘Stewart Brannan MRCVS, Veterinary Surgeon and Canine Specialist.’ I was wondering what the Royal College would think about the last part when the door opened and my colleague stood before me.
He seemed to fill the entrance. If anything he was fatter than before, but that was the only difference. Since it was August I couldn’t expect him to be wearing his navy nap overcoat, but otherwise he was as I remembered him in Darrowby: the big, meaty, good-natured face, the greasy black hair slicked across the brow which always seemed to carry a gentle dew of perspiration.
He reached out, grabbed my hand and pulled me delightedly through the doorway.
‘Jim! Great to see you!’ He put an arm round my shoulders as we crossed a dark hallway. ‘It’s good of you to help me out like this. The family are thrilled – they’re all in the town shopping for the holiday. We’ve got fixed up in a flat at Blackpool.’ His permanent smile widened.
We went into a room at the back where a rickety kitchen-type table stood on brown linoleum. I saw a sink in one corner, a few shelves with bottles and a white-painted cupboard. The atmosphere held a faint redolence of carbolic and cat’s urine.
‘This is where I see the animals,’ Stewie said contentedly. He looked at his watch. ‘Twenty past five – I have a surgery at five thirty. I’ll show you round till then.’
It didn’t take long because there wasn’t much to see. I knew there was a more fashionable veterinary firm in Hensfield and that Stewie made his living from the poor people of the town; the whole set-up was an illustration of practice on a shoestring. There didn’t seem to be more than one of anything – one straight suture needle, one curved needle, one pair of scissors, one syringe. There was a sparse selection of drugs and an extraordinary array of dispensing bottles and jars. These bottles were of many strange shapes – weird things which I had never seen in a dispensary before.
James Herriot's Dog Stories Page 29