“Have you any doubt as to the cause of Mr. Burnaby’s symptoms?”
“No. They were certainly due to atropine poisoning.”
“Has Mr. Burnaby any constitutional peculiarity in respect of atropine?”
“Yes. He is abnormally susceptible to the effects of atropine.”
“Was this peculiar susceptibility known to the accused?”
“Yes. It was communicated to her by me.”
“Was it known, so far as you are aware, to any other persons?”
“Mr. Parker was present when I told her, and Mr. Burnaby and his brother, Dr. Burnaby, were also informed.”
“Is there any way, so far as you know, in which the accused could have obtained possession of atropine?”
“Only by having the oculist’s prescription for the eye-drops made up.”
“Do you know of any medium, other than the food, by which atropine might have been taken by Mr. Burnaby?”
“I do not,” I replied; and this concluded my evidence. But as I stepped out of the witness-box, I reflected gloomily that every word that I had spoken was a rivet in the fetters of the silent figure in the dock.
The next witness was the cook. She testified that she had killed and skinned the rabbit and had then handed it to the accused, who made it into a fricassee and prepared it for the table. Witness took no part in the preparation and she was absent from the kitchen on one occasion for several minutes, leaving the accused there alone.
When the cook had concluded her evidence, the name of James Burnaby was called, and the doctor entered the witness-box, looking distinctly uncomfortable, but grim and resolute. The first few questions elicited the circumstances of his visit to his brother’s house and of the sudden attack of illness. That illness he had at once recognised as acute atropine poisoning, and had assumed that the poison was in the specially prepared food.
“Did you take any measures to verify this opinion?” counsel asked.
“Yes. As soon as I was alone, I took part of the remainder of the rabbit and put it in a glass jar which I found on the mantelpiece and which I first rinsed out with water. Later, I carried the sample of food to Professor Berry, who analysed it in my presence and found it to contain atropine. He obtained from it a thirtieth of a grain of atropine sulphate.”
“Is that a poisonous dose?”
“Not to an ordinary person, though it is considerably beyond the medicinal dose. But it would have been a poisonous dose to Frank Burnaby. If he had swallowed this, in addition to what he had already taken, I feel no doubt that it would have killed him.”
This concluded the case for the prosecution, and a black case it undoubtedly looked. There was no cross-examination; and as Thorndyke had arrived some time previously and conferred with Mr. Harratt and his counsel, I concluded that the defence would take the form of a counter-attack by the raising of a fresh issue. And so it turned out. When Thorndyke entered the witness-box and had disposed of the preliminaries, the counsel for the defence “gave him his head.”
“You have made certain investigations in regard to this case, I believe?” Thorndyke assented, and the counsel continued: “I will not ask you specific questions, but will request you to describe your investigations and their result, and tell us what caused you to make them.”
“This case,” Thorndyke began, “was brought to my notice by Dr. Jardine, who gave me all the facts known to him. These facts were very remarkable, and, taken together, they suggested a possible explanation of the poisoning. There were four striking points in the case. First, there was the very unusual nature of the poison. Second, the abnormal susceptibility of Mr. Burnaby to this particular poison. Third, the fact that all the food in which the poison appeared to have been conveyed came from the same source: it was sent by Mr. Cyril Parker. Fourth, that food consisted of pigeon’s eggs, pigeon’s flesh, and rabbit’s flesh.”
“What is there remarkable about that?” the counsel asked.
“The remarkable point is that the pigeon and the rabbit have an extraordinary immunity to atropine. Most vegetable-feeding birds and animals are more or less immune to vegetable poisons. Many birds and animals are largely immune to atropine; but among birds the pigeon is exceptionally immune, while the rabbit is the most extreme instance among animals. A single rabbit can take without the slightest harm more than a hundred times the quantity of atropine that would kill a man; and rabbits habitually feed freely on the leaves and berries of the belladonna or deadly nightshade.”
“Does the deadly nightshade contain atropine?” the counsel asked.
“Yes. Atropine is the active principle of the belladonna plant and gives to it its poisonous properties.”
“And if an animal, such as a rabbit, were to feed on the nightshade plant, would its flesh be poisonous?”
“Yes. Cases of belladonna poisoning from eating rabbit have been recorded—by Firth and Bentley, for instance.”
“And you suspected that the poison in this case had been contained in the pigeon and the rabbit themselves?”
“Yes. It was a striking coincidence that the poisoning should follow the consumption of these two specially immune animals. But there was a further reason for connecting them. The symptoms were strictly proportionate to the probable amount of poison in each case. Thus the symptoms were only slight after eating the pigeon’s eggs. But the eggs of a poisoned pigeon could contain only a minute quantity of the poison. After eating the pigeon the symptoms were much more severe, and the body of a pigeon which had fed on belladonna would contain much more atropine than could be contained in an egg. Finally, after eating the rabbit, the symptoms were extremely violent; but a rabbit has the greatest immunity and is the most likely to have eaten large quantities of belladonna leaves.”
“Did you take any measures to put your theory to the test?”
“Yes. Last Monday I went to Eltham, where I had ascertained that Mr. Cyril Parker lives, and inspected his premises from the outside. At the end of his garden is a small paddock enclosed by a wall. Approaching this across a meadow and looking over the wall, I saw that the enclosure was provided with small fowl-houses, pigeon-cotes, and rabbit hutches. All these were open and their inmates were roaming about the paddock. On one side of the enclosure, by the wall was a dense mass of deadly nightshade plants, extending the whole length of the wall and about a couple of yards in width. At one part of this was a ring fence of wire netting, and inside it were five half-grown rabbits. There was a basket containing a small quantity of cabbage leaves and other green stuff, but as I watched, I saw the young rabbits browsing freely on the nightshade plants in preference to the food provided for them.
“On the following day I went to Eltham again taking with me an assistant who carried a young rabbit in a small hamper. We watched the paddock until the coast was clear. Then my assistant got over the wall and abstracted a young rabbit from inside the ring fence and handed it to me. He then took the rabbit from the hamper and dropped it inside the fence. As soon as we were clear of the meadow, we killed the captured rabbit—to prevent any possible elimination of any poison that it might have swallowed. On arriving in London, I at once took the dead rabbit to St. Margaret’s Hospital, where, in the chemical laboratory, and in the presence of Dr. Woodford, the Professor of Chemistry, I skinned it and prepared it as if for cooking by removing the viscera. I then separated the flesh from the bones and handed the former to Dr. Woodford, who, in my presence, carried out an exhaustive chemical test for atropine. The result was that atropine was found to be present in all the muscles; and, on making a quantitative test, the muscles alone yielded no less than .93 grain.”
“Is that a poisonous dose?” the counsel asked.
“Yes; it is a poisonous dose for a normal man. In the case of an abnormally susceptible person like Mr. Burnaby it would certainly be a fatal dose.”
This completed Thorndyke’s evidence. There was no cross and the magistrate put no questions. When Dr. Woodford had been called and had given confirmato
ry evidence, Mrs. Burnaby’s counsel proceeded to address the bench. But the magistrate cut him short.
“There is really no case to argue,” said he. “The evidence of the expert witnesses makes it perfectly clear that the poison was already in the food when it came into the hands of the accused. Consequently the charge against her of introducing the poison falls to the ground and the case must be dismissed. I am sure everyone will sympathise with the unfortunate lady who has been the victim of these extraordinary circumstances, and will rejoice, as I do, at the clearing up of the mystery. The prisoner is discharged.”
It was a dramatic moment when, amidst the applause of the spectators, Mrs. Burnaby stepped down from the dock and clasped her husband’s outstretched hand But, overwhelmed as they both were by the sudden relief, I thought it best not to linger, but, after congratulations, to take myself off with Thorndyke. But one pleasant incident I witnessed before I went Dr. Burnaby had been standing apart, evidently some what embarrassed, when suddenly Mrs. Burnaby ran to him and held out her hand.
“I suppose, Margaret,” he said gruffly, “you think I’m an old beast?”
“Indeed I don’t,” she replied. “You acted quite properly, and I respect you for having the moral courage to do it. And don’t forget, Jim, that you action has saved Frank’s life. But for you, there would have been no Dr. Thorndyke; and but for Dr. Thorndyke, there would have been another poisoned rabbit.”
“What do you make of this case?” I asked, as Thorndyke and I walked away from the court. “Do you suppose the poisoning was accidental?
He shook his head. “No, Jardine,” he replied. “There are too many coincidences. You notice that the poisoned animals did not appear until after Mr. Parker had learned from you that Burnaby was abnormally sensitive to atropine and could consequently be poisoned by an ordinary medicinal dose. Then the sending of the animals alive looks like a precaution divert suspicion from himself and confuse the issue Again, that ring fence among the belladonna plans has a fishy look, and the plants themselves were not only abnormally numerous but many of them very young and looked as if they had been planted. Further, I happen to know that Parker’s firm published, only last year, a book on toxicology in which the immunity of pigeons and rabbits was mentioned and which Parker probably read.”
“Then do you believe that he intended to let Mrs. Burnaby—the woman with whom he was in love—bear the brunt of his crime? It seems incredibly villainous and cowardly.”
“I do not,” he replied. “I imagine that the rabbit that I captured, or one of the others, would have been sent to Burnaby in a few days’ time. The cook would probably have prepared it for him and it would almost certainly have killed him; and his death would have been proof of Mrs. Burnaby’s innocence. Suspicion would have been transferred to the cook. But I don’t suppose any action will be taken against him, for it is practically certain that no jury would convict him on my evidence.”
Thorndyke was right in his opinion. No proceedings were taken against Parker. But the house of the Burnabys knew him no more.
A MYSTERY OF THE SAND-HILLS (1925)
I have occasionally wondered how often Mystery and Romance present themselves to us ordinary men of affairs only to be passed by without recognition. More often, I suspect than most of us imagine. The uncanny tendency of my talented friend John Thorndyke to become involved in strange, mysterious and abnormal circumstances has almost become a joke against him. But yet, on reflection, I am disposed to think that his experiences have not differed essentially from those of other men, but that his extraordinary powers of observation and rapid inference have enabled him to detect abnormal elements in what, to ordinary men, appeared to be quite commonplace occurrences. Certainly this was so in the singular Roscoff case, in which, if I had been alone, I should assuredly have seen nothing to merit more than a passing attention.
It happened that on a certain summer morning—it was the fourteenth of August, to be exact—we were discussing this very subject as we walked across the golf-links from Sandwich towards the sea. I was spending a holiday in the old town with my wife, in order that she might paint the ancient streets, and we had induced Thorndyke to come down and stay with us for a few days. This was his last morning, and we had come forth betimes to stroll across the sand-hills to Shellness.
It was a solitary place in those days. When we came off the sand-hills on to the smooth, sandy beach, there was not a soul in sight, and our own footprints were the first to mark the firm strip of sand between high-water mark and the edge of the quiet surf.
We had walked a hundred yards or so when Thorndyke stopped and looked down at the dry sand above tide-marks and then along the wet beach.
“Would that be a shrimper?” he cogitated, referring to some impressions of bare feet in the sand. “If so, he couldn’t have come from Pegwell, for the River Stour bars the way. But he came out of the sea and seems to have made straight for the sand-hills.”
“Then he probably was a shrimper,” said I, not deeply interested.
“Yet,” said Thorndyke, “it was an odd time for a shrimper to be at work.”
“What was an odd time?” I demanded. “When was he at work?”
“He came out of the sea at this place,” Thorndyke replied, glancing at his watch, “at about half-past eleven last night, or from that to twelve.”
“Good Lord, Thorndyke!” I exclaimed, “how on earth do you know that?”
“But it is obvious, Anstey,” he replied. “It is now half-past nine, and it will be high-water at eleven, as we ascertained before we came out. Now, if you look at those footprints on the sand, you see that they stop short—or rather begin—about two-thirds of the distance from high-water mark to the edge of the surf. Since they are visible and distinct, they must have been made after last high-water. But since they do not extend to the water’s edge, they must have been made when the tide was going out; and the place where they begin is the place where the edge of the surf was when the footprints were made. But the place is, as we see, about an hour below the high-water mark. Therefore, when the man came out of the sea, the tide had been going down for an hour, roughly. As it is high-water at eleven this morning, it was high-water at about ten-forty last night; and as the man came out of the sea about an hour after high-water, he must have come out at, or about, eleven-forty. Isn’t that obvious?”
“Perfectly,” I replied, laughing. “It is as simple as sucking eggs when you think it out. But how the deuce do you manage always to spot these obvious things at a glance? Most men would have just glanced at those footprints and passed them without a second thought.”
“That,” he replied, “is a mere matter of habit; the habit of trying to extract the significance of simple appearances. It has become almost automatic with me.”
During our discussion we had been walking forward slowly, straying on to the edge of the sand-hills. Suddenly, in a hollow between the hills, my eye lighted upon a heap of clothes, apparently, to judge by their orderly disposal, those of a bather. Thorndyke also had observed them and we approached together and looked down on them curiously.
“Here is another problem for you,” said I. “Find the bather. I don’t see him anywhere.”
“You won’t find him here,” said Thorndyke. “These clothes have been out all night. Do you see the little spider’s web on the boots with a few dewdrops still clinging to it? There has been no dew forming for a good many hours. Let us have a look at the beach.”
We strode out through the loose sand and stiff, reedy grass to the smooth beach, and here we could plainly see a line of prints of naked feet leading straight down to the sea, but ending abruptly about two-thirds of the way to the water’s edge.
“This looks like our nocturnal shrimper,” said I. “He seems to have gone into the sea here and come out at the other place. But if they are the same footprints, he must have forgotten to dress before he went home. It is a quaint affair.”
“It is a most remarkable affair,” Thorndyk
e agreed; “and if the footprints are not the same it will be still more inexplicable.”
He produced from his pocket a small spring tape-measure with which he carefully took the lengths of two of the most distinct footprints and the length of the stride. Then we walked back along the beach to the other set of tracks, two of which he measured in the same manner.
“Apparently they are the same,” he said, putting away his tape; “indeed, they could hardly be otherwise. But the mystery is, what has become of the man? He couldn’t have gone away without his clothes, unless he is a lunatic, which his proceedings rather suggest. There is just the possibility that he went into the sea again and was drowned. Shall we walk along towards Shellness and see if we can find any further traces?”
We walked nearly half a mile along the beach, but the smooth surface of the sand was everywhere unbroken. At length we turned to retrace our steps; and at this moment I observed two men advancing across the sand-hills. By the time we had reached the mysterious heap of garments they were quite near, and, attracted no doubt by the intentness with which we were regarding the clothes, they altered their course to see what we were looking at. As they approached, I recognized one of them as a barrister named Hallet, a neighbour of mine in the Temple, whom I had already met in the town, and we exchanged greetings.
“What is the excitement?” he asked, looking at the heap of clothes and then glancing along the deserted beach; “and where is the owner of the togs? I don’t see him anywhere.”
“That is the problem,” said I. “He seems to have disappeared.”
“Gad!” exclaimed Hallett, “if he has gone home without his clothes, He’ll create a sensation in the town! What?”
Here the other man, who carried a set of golf clubs, stooped over the clothes with a look of keen interest.
The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 113