Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh
Page 19
Miggs: Right.
O’Connor: Miss Miggs, will you tell his Lordship and the jury how the days are spent since you took this job?
Miggs: I relieve the night nurse at 8:00 a.m. and am with the case until I’m relieved in the evening.
Judge: With the “case”?
O’Connor: Miss Freebody, my lord.
Judge (fretfully): Why can’t we say so, for pity’s sake? Very well.
O’Connor: Do you remain with Miss Freebody throughout the day?
Miggs: Yes.
O’Connor: Never leave her?
Miggs: Those are my instructions and I carry them out.
(Dr. Swale, who has been looking fixedly at the witness, writes a note, signals to the Usher and gives him the note. The Usher takes it to Mr. Golding, who reads it and shows it to his junior and the solicitor for the prosecution.)
O’Connor: Do you find Miss Freebody at all difficult?
Miggs: Not a bit.
O’Connor: She doesn’t try to — to shake you off? She doesn’t resent your presence?
Miggs: Didn’t like it at first. There was a slight resentment but we soon got over that. We’re very good friends, now.
O’Connor: And you have never left her?
Miggs: I said so, didn’t I? Never.
O’Connor: Thank you, Miss Miggs. (Defense Counsel sits.)
Golding (rising): Yes. Nurse Miggs, you have told the court, have you not, that since you qualified as a mental nurse, you have taken posts in ten hospitals over a period of twenty years, the last appointment being of two years’ duration at Fulchester Grange?
Miggs: Correct.
Golding: Have you, in addition to these engagements, taken private patients?
Miggs (uneasily): A few.
Golding: How many?
Miggs: I don’t remember offhand. Not many.
Golding: Nurse Miggs, have you ever been dismissed— summarily dismissed—from a post?
Miggs: I didn’t come here to be insulted.
Judge: Answer the question, nurse.
Miggs: There’s no satisfying some people. Anything goes wrong—blame the nurse.
Golding: Yes or no, Miss Miggs? (He glances at the paper from Dr. Swale.) In July 1969, were you dismissed by the doctor in charge of a case under suspicion of illegally obtaining and administering a drug and accepting a bribe for doing so?
Miggs (breaking in): It wasn’t true. It was a lie. I know where you got that from. (She points to Dr. Swale.) From him! He had it in for me. He couldn’t prove it. He couldn’t prove anything.
Golding: Come, Miss Miggs, don’t you think you would be well advised to admit it at once?
Miggs: He couldn’t prove it. (She breaks down.)
Golding: Why did you leave Fulchester Grange?
Miggs: I won’t answer. It’s all lies. Once something’s said about you, you’re done for.
Golding: Were you dismissed?
Miggs: I won’t answer.
Golding: Were you dismissed for illegally obtaining drugs and accepting a bribe for so doing?
Miggs: It wasn’t proved. They couldn’t prove it. It’s lies!
Golding: I have no further questions, my lord.
Judge: Mr. Defense Counsel? (O’Connor shakes his head.) Thank you, Miss Miggs. (She leaves the witness box.) Have you any further witnesses, Mr. Defense Counsel?
O’Connor: No, my lord.
Judge: Members of the jury, just let me tell you something about our function—yours and mine. I am here to direct you as to the law and to remind you of the salient features of the evidence. You are here as judges of fact; you and you alone have to decide, on the evidence you have heard, whether the accused is guilty or not of the charge of attempted murder…
You may think it’s plain that the liver which the dog ate was poisoned. The prosecution say that whoever poisoned that liver must have known that it might have been eaten by the late Major, and was only given to the dog by accident. The vital question, therefore, you may think, is who poisoned that liver. The prosecution say that Miss Freebody did. They say she had the opportunity to take the meat from the safe, poison it and replace it, having for some reason or other changed the paper in which it was wrapped. They say she had a motive—her antagonism to the Major as evidenced by the threatening letters which she wrote. But, say the defense, and you may think it is a point of some weight, the fact that the Major actually died before your eyes of cyanide poisoning at a time when the accused would have had no opportunity to administer the poison is evidence that someone else wanted to and did kill the Major. So if someone other than the accused did kill the Major in the second attempt on his life, how can you believe that the accused rather than the culprit of the second attempt was guilty of the first attempt?
Remember that before you can bring a verdict of guilty you must be satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused did make this attempt on the life of the late Major. Will you now retire, elect a foreman to speak for you when you return, and consider your verdict.
Clerk: All stand.
(The jury leave the room. Time passes, and the jury return to their seals.)
Clerk: Members of the jury, will your foreman stand. (The Foreman rises.) Just answer this question yes or no. Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?
Foreman: Yes.
Clerk: Do you find the accused, Mary Emmaline Freebody, guilty or not guilty on the charge of attempted murder?
Foreman (answers either “guilty” or “not guilty.”):
Clerk (if guilty): Is that the verdict of you all?
Judge (if not guilty): Mary Emmaline Freebody, you are free to go.
Court Reporter (if guilty): Mary Freebody was remanded in custody for psychiatric reports.
The Case with Five Solutions
At the end of the broadcast of Evil Liver the jury decided that Miss Freebody was not guilty, but nothing is recorded of their analysis of the prosecution’s case or of their opinion about who in fact was guilty. But we can act as armchair detectives and examine the case against Miss Freebody as well as other possible solutions.
SOLUTION 1
Miss Freebody poisoned the dog and, during the trial, murdered Major Ecclestone. The evidence supporting Miss Freebody’s guilt in the poisoning of the dog is given in detail by the prosecution. Everything is circumstantial but nonetheless persuasive: she had threatened the Major and his dog because of the death of her cat; a tin of wasp exterminator containing cyanide was found on her property; and she could have poisoned the liver shortly after it was delivered. In short, motive, means, and opportunity. It might be argued that only a mentally disturbed person would so openly have warned her victim, but (if we can trust Dr. Swale) Miss Freebody was obviously mentally disturbed.
The jury found Miss Freebody not guilty probably because it seemed impossible for her to have killed Major Ecclestone during the trial. She could not have been near enough to him to have placed the cyanide capsule into his plastic medicine case. Not only did Nurse Miggs swear that Miss Freebody was constantly under observation, but common sense indicates that nothing like that could have happened without someone noticing. Is there any way that Miss Freebody could have gotten the capsule to the Major? First, it would have been necessary that someone be her agent. Second, the agent would have to have been someone with access to cyanide. Third, the agent must have been someone Miss Freebody could trust, either because she could exert pressure or because the agent had a motive for helping her. Is there anyone who fits those qualifications? Yes, indeed—Nurse Miggs is the obvious candidate. As a nurse she had access to cyanide. She worked for twenty years in a hospital for people with mental problems, and she also had private patients. Miss Freebody, we have noted, was certainly unbalanced and could well have been one of those patients. Perhaps Miss Freebody threatened to reveal Nurse Miggs’s past. Or perhaps Nurse Miggs had a strong motive herself. She had a festering resentment against Dr. Swale, and having heard the testimony emerging
against him saw her opportunity to make him a suspect in a murder. Is it any wonder that she and Miss Freebody became “good friends” during the trial? The murder of Major Ecclestone would avenge them both.
All of this seems a strong case until we look closely and see that there is little evidence. To take the successful murder first, no one testified that Nurse Miggs had gotten near enough to the Major to slip a capsule into his container; had she left Miss Freebody long enough to do so, someone surely would have seen her. As for most of the rest—Miss Freebody’s being treated as a mental patient in the care of Nurse Miggs and so on—it’s just unsubstantiated speculation. The evidence that Miss Freebody poisoned Bang, the Alsatian, is stronger, but I find it unconvincing, especially in regard to the tin of wasp exterminator. Even a slightly deranged person would have known better than to toss such an incriminating bit of evidence onto her own property. As Miss Freebody herself pointed out, it has all the indications of a plant. If it was not part of a frame-up, it must have been discarded by someone who wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
SOLUTION 2
Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone poisoned the dog and killed the Major. We needn’t go over this theory in as much detail, for perhaps even more obviously than in the case against Miss Freebody, Dr. Swale had motive, means, and opportunity in the poisoning of the liver. If Dr. Swale did the deed, the killing of the dog must have been accidental, or a preliminary to the Major’s death when he ate the mixed grill, which we can assume was also poisoned. In regard to the successful attempt against the Major, we should note that Dr. Swale had access to cyanide and to capsules, and that Mrs. Ecclestone was sitting next to her husband and could have slipped the poisoned capsule into his medicine case. It’s a bit harder to know why the poisoning was done in the courtroom, especially since it seemed to exonerate Miss Freebody. The Major was about to accuse his wife and Dr. Swale, but unless he had new evidence the accusation would not have meant much. But did he have new evidence? We don’t know, though Dr. Swale may have feared that the Major could make the accusation stick.
Like the case against Miss Freebody, the above outline seems at first glance plausible, but it founders on a problem. Mrs. Ecclestone certainly and Dr. Swale probably knew that liver was always given to the dog. They also were familiar enough with the Major’s character to know that he would have assumed that he was the target. Why, if they planned to murder the Major, did they devise a scheme by which the dog would die first? They could have made certain that the Major ate the poisoned food first—the mixed grill—then fed a bit to the dog so that Miss Freebody’s threatening letters would make her the obvious suspect in both deaths. Moreover, if they did not poison the liver, they had no reason to fear any courtroom revelations from the Major, and therefore no reason to kill him during the trial.
SOLUTIONS 3 AND 4
Miss Freebody poisoned the dog, but Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone poisoned the Major. Solution 4 is the reverse: Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone poisoned the dog, but Miss Freebody poisoned the Major. As experienced mystery readers, we don’t have to agree with the Judge’s opinion that both crimes were the work of the same person, but in this case it’s difficult to accept a Miss Freebody-Dr. Swale-Mrs. Ecclestone combination. This solution, no matter how the details are juggled about, combines the weaknesses of the previous solutions. In order to show why a Solution 5 is necessary, let’s summarize the conclusions that seem to exonerate the obvious suspects:
The First Crime:
Miss Freebody probably did not poison the liver because she would not have left the tin of wasp exterminator in her own shrubbery.
Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone probably did not poison the liver because they would not have poisoned the dog first.
The Second Crime:
Miss Freebody probably did not murder the Major because she was watched at all times and her only possible agent, Nurse Miggs, could not have poisoned him without someone noticing that she was no longer guarding Miss Freebody.
Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone probably did not murder the Major because they would not have done it during the trial unless they were guilty of the first crime which, as we have pointed out, is unlikely.
Having finally eliminated these three suspects, we are left with—
SOLUTION 5
A person or persons previously unsuspected committed both crimes. Ngaio Marsh, like her contemporaries Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, and Ellery Queen, often used the least-likely-person gambit. Would Marsh have chosen someone like Miss Freebody, Mrs. Ecclestone, and Dr. Swale, who had such obvious motives? She carefully shows that others had less obvious but perhaps just as compelling motives to kill Major Ecclestone. The Major quarrelled with everyone he dealt with, including his landlord, his late doctor, the secretary of his club, the postman, and the butcher. In fact, he threatened the butcher’s boy with his dog. Whether this boy was Thomas Tidwell or, more likely, a lad who worked with him, Tidwell had a motive to kill the dog and by extension the Major himself. But how could Tidwell have gotten the poison and the capsule in which to put it? Quite easily: he was apparently a friend of the local chemist, with whom he is sitting in the final scene. The tin of wasp exterminator came from the chemist. We recall that Mrs. Ecclestone testified that Tidwell delivered the meat shortly after 3:00, but that Tidwell himself said that he left at 3:30. What was he doing during that half hour? Though he probably did not know of Miss Freebody’s motive, he knew that Dr. Swale was having an affair with Mrs. Ecclestone, and that Miss Freebody could swear to their frequent meetings. He must have been waiting for Dr. Swale’s arrival so that an obvious suspect was present. He poisoned the liver, and then changed the wrappings to indicate that someone had opened the parcel after he had handled it. But he feared being caught with the tin of poison, so he simply threw it into the nearest shrubbery. During the trial, Miss Freebody seemed genuinely surprised by the evidence against Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone. Not only was Tidwell not surprised, but he carefully pointed it out. To make his case against Dr. Swale and Mrs. Ecclestone complete and to make Major Ecclestone finally pay for his threats, Tidwell decided to poison the Major during the trial. Did he do it himself, or did his friend the chemist manage it? We don’t know, for Ngaio Marsh’s stage directions are a bit vague, but she points out that the two of them sat between the Ecclestones. In both the death of the dog and the murder of the Major, Thomas Tidwell had the most obvious opportunity, and when that is combined with his motive and, through the chemist, the means, it is clear that he should be the defendant in the next session of “Crown Court.”
—Douglas G Greene
The End
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