After shaking hands with the doctor, whose last name was Briggs he took me into his medical confidence and shared what he had learned from his examination.
Dr. Michael Briggs - whose parents are Dr George Briggs (retired from the faculty of medicine Imperial College London) and his wife Mrs Catherine Briggs, was born in London in 1896. He completed his medical training in 1917 at Newcastle University with the purpose of becoming a general practitioner.
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A general practitioner is a medical doctor who treats acute and chronic illnesses and provides preventive care and health education to patients.
General Practitioners intend to practise a holistic approach that takes into consideration the biological, psychological and social environment in which patients live. Their duties are not confined to specific organs of the body, and they have particular skills in treating people with multiple health issues.
With the Great War still raging in Europe Doctor Briggs had attempted to enlist in the army as a front line ambulance orderly but due to a health condition it had rendered him unsuitable for military service.
Deciding instead to broaden his medical experience he immigrated to the Dominion of Canada. There he located a position with a medium sized hospital in the western part of the country and began his internship.
During his residency he came to hear from the returning wounded British soldiers about a small town named Gravesend located in Northwest Kent, England. Making inquiries and finding they did not have a resident doctor he decided he would return to England at the end of the war to set up a modest practice there.
Chapter 7
126 Hill House Road,
London
Dr. Briggs:
On the recommendation of Mr. Mycroft Holmes (by way of introduction the elder brother to Mr. Sherlock Holmes) and for the expert criminal forensic skill you provided to Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself during the criminal investigation in Gravesend I am seeking your professional medical assistance in revealing the possible cause of my husband’s unexplained death. The medical certificate and the cylindrical glass medical vial containing a miniature blue coloured pellet I am sending on to you are the only clues I have to offer.
I would not be writing to you concerning this matter except that Mr. Holmes senior has informed me that you have dealt with a similar article to this before and that you were able to establish both the type of poison used and how it was delivered. While this pending information may or may not help to uncover the person or persons who ended my husband’s life it will give me some small comfort and remove the troubling uncertain nature of his death.
Respectfully
Mary N. Watson
Chapter 8
Returning home in the early evening from my busy day of volunteering I was eager to see if a small brown paper wrapped package (similar to the one I had sent) had made its way from 65A Perry Street, Gravesend to 126 Hill House Road, London via the afternoon post.
Removing my hat and coat and hanging them up... then picking up and carrying the much anticipated parcel... it and I made our way into the study. Setting it down in front of me on my desk... I switched on the desk lamp and examined the package for a few minutes not sure as to if or how Dr. Briggs had responded to my unusual request.
Finally deciding to unwrap it to find the answer I located a pair of scissors next to me to cut the twine securing the small box. Carefully slitting the brown wrapping paper covering it I opened it to reveal the contents. First removing the certificate and vial (I had sent) from the packing material within I then took out the letter that had accompanied both. Unfolding it I read the following:
Mrs. Watson:
I am at your service in this matter. To begin Mr. Holmes was correct in that the last time I saw an object similar to the one you have sent was while performing an autopsy on a young woman named Gabriela Paraskeva. Because both Miss Paraskeva and Doctor Watson displayed similar symptoms during their 3 to 5 days of illness after exposure to a toxic substance and each had presented comparable medical evidence during their respective autopsies... in my professional medical opinion the cause of death in both cases was by way of a poison that has been identified as ricin.
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Having previous knowledge that I was a trained medical nurse Doctor Briggs with his letter went on to explain the symptoms, nature and delivery of the poison.
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The initial symptoms are likely to affect the respiratory system and can include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and cough. The symptoms of ricin poisoning are then likely to rapidly progress to include problems such as worsening respiratory symptoms, pulmonary oedema (fluid within the lungs), and eventually, respiratory failure.
As to the unique method of delivery it is a pity that something as beautiful as Delft porcelain was chosen. I came to this conclusion while examining the pellet you had sent noticing its distinctive blue colour.
Although the Delftware potters preferred to call their earthenware “porcelain”, it was only a cheaper version of the real Chinese porcelain. Delft Blue was not made from the typical porcelain clay, but from clay that was coated with a tin glaze after it was fired.
As to the method of how the fatal substance may have been fixed to the pellet I can only offer at best some conjecture. It is my belief however that once the ricin was applied there was a second covering of wax or paraffin applied after allowing the pellet to be safely handled.
The pellet now with this protective coating or layer once it had been injected would start melting allowing the poison to slowly be released into the body of the intended person causing a slow and agonizing death. I also believe with this method of delivery there would be no trace of the poison that could be detected during or after an autopsy.
Finally as to how the pellet came to be lodged in the body of both Miss Paraskeva and Doctor Watson? In the case of Dr. Watson due to the nature of the entry wound and subsequent bruising after... it was in all likelihood injected by a high powered spring loaded or compressed air weapon commonly disguised as an umbrella.
It should be noted that you can be exposed to ricin either by ingesting (swallowing) or inhaling (breathing) material containing ricin. In a few rare, past cases, injections of ricin have led to poisoning. This is a very unlikely method of exposure because it requires someone to actually inject the material into you.
However if this particular method of delivery is chosen all that is needed to introduce the poison into an individual would be to stand next to the intended person... gently press the tip of the weapon against them... pull the trigger device... then simply walk away.
I am returning your husband’s medical certificate of death and the medical glass vial with a list of possible cities and respective companies where I believe both the pellet and the ricin may have been manufactured. With the information I have provided I hope you will be able to make some connection to both.
Beyond what I have shared with you as a medical doctor I cannot offer any aid in regards as to who may have been responsible for this act and why it has taken place. However if I can be of any further assistance in the matter of your husband’s autopsy please do not hesitate to contact me.
Your servant
Dr. Michael Briggs M.D.
Chapter 9
I laid Dr. Briggs response letter down next to the now opened package on my desk and looked up... then out of the large bay window facing east in my study and while watching the stars come out in the evening sky above Hill House Road I began to reflect on what I had just read.
In doing so my mind began to fill with questions first as those of a wife and then as a detective. Some I could possibly address and others alternatively not address.
Recalling what Mycroft Holmes had said in passing as I was leaving his office “unless Dr Watson had made some dangerous ene
mies while he was associated with my brother... you and I are at a loss as to why this has taken place” only added to the difficulty I was about to face.
Starting with the same sound deductive reasoning I had learned from Sherlock I found myself asking three opening questions.
First... was John the intended target... second was he instead a secondary or substitute target in place of Sherlock... or third and the most unlikely had the attack been an unintended mistake? No matter which path I set out to follow all three lead to the same inevitable beginning... who had under taken this and why?
Suddenly I found myself turning and gazing at John’s journals on the book shelves lining the study and mentally reviewing all of the case notes my husband had chronicled over the years that I had read many times on my own.
From their content imagining as many probable suspects and scenarios as well as improbable ones to explain the present situation. Then thinking in the end that each one that came to mind was in all likelihood improbable.
I felt that following this route there was to be no possible beginning then I heard a familiar voice of reason say to me...”when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
From that point I knew how I would be spending my evenings at home. After dinner instead of switching on the wireless to listen to a programme presented by the BBC I would sit quietly and comfortably in my arm chair in the parlour.
First turning on a reading lamp then with a cup of tea by my right side I would start from the beginning reading all of John’s chronicles. Certainly somewhere in his hand written notes the answer to my problem might be discovered.
Chapter 10
Deciding I would only study one of John’s chronicles each evening I would began with his first “A Study in Scarlett.” This was the one in which he establishes himself as the role of chronicler and sets up the narrative stand-point that the work to follow is not fiction, but fact: “Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, MD, Late of the Army Medical Department.”
The account begins when my husband having returned to London from abroad, runs into an old friend, Stamford, who had been a dresser under him at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.
John confides in Stamford that, due to a shoulder injury that he sustained in a battle during the war he has been forced to leave the armed services and is now looking for a place to live.
Stamford mentions that an acquaintance of his, a Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat at 221B Baker Street, but he cautions John about the man’s eccentricities.
Stamford takes John back to St. Bartholomew’s where, in a laboratory, they find Sherlock experimenting with a reagent, seeking a test to detect human haemoglobin. He explains the significance of bloodstains as evidence in criminal trials.
After Stamford introduces John to Sherlock, he shakes my husband’s hand and comments, “You have been in battle, I perceive?” Though Sherlock chooses not to explain why he made the comment, John raises the subject of their parallel quests for a place to live in London, and Sherlock explains that he has found the perfect place in Baker Street.
At Sherlock’s prompting, the two review their various shortcomings to make sure that they can live together. After seeing the rooms at 221B, they move in and grow accustomed to their new situation.
John is amazed by Sherlock, who has profound knowledge of chemistry and sensational literature, very precise but narrow knowledge of geology and botany; yet knows little about literature, astronomy, philosophy, and politics. Sherlock also has multiple guests visiting him at different intervals during the day.
After much speculation by John, Sherlock reveals that he is a “consulting detective” and that the guests are clients. Facing my husband’s doubts about some of his claims, Sherlock casually deduces to John that one visitor, a messenger from Scotland Yard is also a retired Marine sergeant. When the man confirms this, John is astounded by Sherlock’s ability to notice details and assemble them.
Chapter 11
What had started as an undertaking of pure investigative research over the next several evenings was to become a very comfortable way to spend my time before retiring for the night.
There were occasions when it felt that I was all alone in the house with only the company of the mantle clock marking the hours while reading my husband’s words. Other times while pausing to gaze lovingly at his picture it was as if John was present sitting with me sharing what he had written so long ago.
With the well-chosen words in his journals, I could almost picture in my mind as to how the professional association and eventual personal friendship between John and Sherlock first began and grew.
While searching for possible clues I came to know more about the man who had become my husband and in turn about the person who had been a mentor first to John then to me.
As my evening project continued I found that with each journal I studied there was still no clue as to his unexplained death. Instead what I was discovering that with my continuing to read page after page there was a growing feeling within me of loss and loneliness for my husband I thought I had finally dispelled from my mind.
Realizing the emotional conflict that was taking place with the investigative course I had chosen I decided that if I could not find what I was seeking in the next journal to be read I would abandon my quest, contact Dr. Briggs to see what further help he might offer.
It was as if fate had played a hand in my next choice to read because I chose John’s journal, which he had titled “The Terrible Secret.” Here I hoped I would at last uncover a possible clue as to the cause of my husband’s death.
Chapter 12
It was (as John stated in the narrative) when I gave the details of a series of “by chance” meetings that happened in Zurich between the patent clerk and a person by the name of Margaretha Geertruida “M’greet” Zelle, and the lady in question has been described as a dancer and an entertainer.
“If it turns out (Sherlock had replied) it is the same woman then I know her as Mata Hari. Fraulein Zelle adopted her stage name in 1905 in Paris when she started to win fame as an exotic dancer. She poses as a Java princess of priestly Hindu birth, pretending to have been immersed in the art of sacred Indian dance since childhood”.
“There is a dark side to her that Mr. Einstein may not be aware of. Because the Netherlands remains neutral as a Dutch subject Margaretha Zelle is able to cross national borders freely.
To avoid the battlefields, she travels between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain and her movements inevitably attract attention. In early 1916, she was travelling by steamer from Spain when her ship called at the English port of Falmouth”.
“There she was arrested and brought to London where she was interrogated at length by Sir Basil Thomson, Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard in charge of counter-espionage. He gave an account, alleging that she eventually admitted to working for French Intelligence.”
It is unclear if she lied on this occasion, believing the story made her sound more intriguing, or, if French authorities were using her in such a way, but would not acknowledge her due to the embarrassment and international backlash it could cause.
Of course there is some evidence that Mata Hari acted as a German spy and for a time as a double agent for the French, but the Germans had written her off as an ineffective agent whose pillow talk had produced little intelligence of value.
It should be noted here that Holmes had thoughtfully commented “Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing, it may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”
The door man knocked on the dressing room door and in response Holmes heard a female voice answer on the other side of
the door answer “Oui?” “Un monsieur pour vousvoir mademoiselle”. “Come in Pieter”
When the lady turned to face her guest and Holmes entered the tiny dressing room there was a look of mutual surprise that passed between them. He for the somewhat revealing costume she was wearing, she for the fact that he was not dressed as a fellow Dutch citizen and therefore could not be Pieter Joost.
Turning back to face her dressing room table and mirror Mata Hari picked up the note she had just received and asked “Mr. Holmes?” The next question she framed in a way as if she had no idea of the events that led up to Holmes appearance in her dressing room.
“Why is it so important that you have taken great pains to speak to me about information I may, or may not, have? Who is the acquaintance you speak of and what are the consequences of this information falling into the wrong hands?”
Holmes sat down in the closest chair and gave Mata Hari a summary of his meetings with Einstein and myself (being John), going into great detail as to the where, why and gravity of the present situation.
Picking up her hand bag from the dressing table Mata Hari turned and faced Holmes. She smiled as she opened her hand bag pretending that she was looking for a precious article within.
“Mr. Holmes” she started as she changed her gaze from the imagined search of her bag to my friend “what a woman knows in her mind is the same as the contents of a woman’s hand bag both are personal and private. She can choose where, when and with whom she desires to share them.”
It was vain to urge that his time was already fully occupied, for the young lady had decided with some determination not to tell her story, and it was evident that nothing short of force could get her to do so.
With Mata Hari’s indifferent and somewhat laissez-faire answer, Holmes demeanour and attitude changed. Due to the urgency of the matter Holmes pressed the subject
Mary Watson And The Departed Doctor Page 3