by John Burke
‘Why did you move the bottles you found: did not the doctor usually do that?’
‘Not very often. She was always in such a hurry — in a country place you don’t get much chance to potter about the house when folk are sending for you at all hours of the day and night —’
‘Quite so. We appreciate that, Mrs. Swanton. So it was usually left to you to put the bottles out on the shelf?’
‘Not always me,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘Gil used to do it. But as he was upstairs, and I was tidying the place up anyway, I did it. I used to do it before he came, anyway.’
‘You knew the bottles were not intended for delivery by your grandson on his bicycle?’
‘They weren’t done up,’ said Mrs. Swanton loftily. She cast a glance around the court as though to appeal to everyone to listen to the silly things she was being asked.
‘Will you explain that point, please?’
‘They weren’t done up. I mean, there was a parcel of others in white paper, with a bit of sealing-wax — Laura always did them that way if they were to go by bus or in Gil’s saddle-bag.’
‘And the bottles you found were not done up in that fashion?’
‘I’d have left them, if they had been.’
At this juncture Mrs. Swanton began, for no particular reason, to cry quietly. When she had recovered, angrily jerking her head to make herself stop, counsel went on.
‘Now, I want you to cast your mind back, Mrs. Swanton, and think carefully before you answer my next question. Was one of the bottles you picked up standing some distance away from the others?’
Mrs. Swanton took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes.
‘I think it was,’ she said.
‘You only think it was: cannot you be sure?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Please take your time,’ said the judge quietly. ‘And do not say you are sure merely because you want to finish with the question.’
‘I am obliged to your lordship,’ said counsel.
There was a long pause.
At last Mrs. Swanton said: ‘I think so. But I only think so.’
‘I think you will have to leave it at that, Mr. Ferguson,’ said the judge.
‘I agree, your lordship.’ Counsel picked up a scrap of paper, looked at it, and then said: ‘Did you read any of the names on the bottles in question?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever look at the names on the medicine bottles you handled?’
‘Sometimes. When they caught my eye. When it was someone I knew, and I wondered how they were getting on.’
‘Your daughter sometimes discussed patients with you?’
‘She was a doctor,’ said Mrs. Swanton testily, ‘and doctors don’t gossip about their patients.’
‘Of course not. But if it was a mutual acquaintance, and she was worried about them, did she not occasionally mention the state of their health to you — as a daughter, discussing things with her mother?’
Mrs. Swanton stared. The concept of Laura as a girl seeking advice from her mother, leaning on her judgment, was a new one. She said dubiously:
‘Off and on, I suppose. If it was something terribly important.’ The idea appealed to her, and she tried to connect it up with some warming incident in her memory. There were so few of them, though. ‘If there was anything on her mind,’ she valiantly attempted, ‘she’d have told me.’
‘I’m sure of it. Very natural. Yet although the prosecution claim that she was that day deeply concerned with a threat to the family happiness in the shape of an unexpected intruder, she gave no sign whatever of any unusual perturbation?’
‘None,’ said Mrs. Swanton firmly.
‘She prepared her medicines in the usual way, and left the usual bottles on the bench to be set out for patients to call for them. Now, Mrs. Swanton: were you wearing your glasses that day?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Is it not true that you are extremely long-sighted?’
Mrs. Swanton bridled. ‘When I was a girl I had the best eyesight —’
‘But today, without your glasses, your near vision is very poor?’
‘Yes.’ The admission was grudging.
‘If you had been wearing your glasses, you might have noticed the names on the labels — you would have recognised the name of anyone you knew?’
‘I suppose I would.’
‘If you had seen a label with ‘Mrs. Swanton’ written on it you would have wondered about it, surely?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘What would have been your idea if you had seen such a label?’
‘I’d have thought it was for Charlotte — my daughter-in-law, who was upstairs.’
‘But you had seen your grandson carrying a bottle of medicine upstairs to her.’
‘I might have thought he’d taken the wrong bottle. If I’d seen it, I’d have gone up after him.’
‘But you didn’t see it?’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Swanton. ‘No, that’s right. I remember now. I’d left my glasses on the mantelpiece in the kitchen.’
‘You are sure of that?’
‘Yes.’
Counsel for the prosecution cross-questioned Mrs. Swanton, but in spite of her vagueness and the ease with which she could be thrown into fluttering, confused lamentations, she was positive enough about the essentials. She had not been wearing her glasses — she would swear to that now — she had not seen the names on the labels, she had taken the bottles from the bench and put them on the shelf in the waiting-room . . . and it was all her fault, they had no business to be accusing her daughter of murder when the whole thing was due to her own carelessness.
‘If I’d left that lot of bottles, then that awful poison would have still been there when Laura got back, and she’d have labelled it properly . . . it was only because she was rushed off her feet, poor girl . . .’
She was soothed down, and prosecuting counsel asked one or two further questions. Was it not true that Laura was devoted to her brother Peter? Of course it was. They had always been inseparable when they were young. And had she not talked a great deal about the things they would do when he was released from prison? Had she not regularly paid money to Gilbert’s grandfather, the late Mr. Drysdale, so that Peter should not be worried?
The question that was not asked was the question that all these others added up to: Was it not true that Laura’s devotion bordered on fanaticism, and that she would not stop at murder if she wished to eliminate someone who threatened to interfere in those plans she had been making for the future? This was not, could not be, asked directly. But all the other accumulated questions meant this and nothing else.
The final witness for the defence was the accused herself.
Chapter Eight
Examined by Mr. Ferguson, Laura Swanton identified herself and her profession, told the court how many years she had been in practice, and confirmed that her father had been in practice for many years in Brookchurch before her.
‘It it a busy practice?’
‘Like all country practices, it covers a good deal of ground. I am liable to be called out at any hour of the day or night, and have to travel considerable distances.’
They had rehearsed all this. It was only a matter of remembering her lines, and they seemed so innocuous that this was not difficult.
‘You dispense all your own medicines?’
‘Most of them. There is no chemist in Brookchurch, and only on special occasions do I send a patient into Jury with a prescription.’
‘Have you ever made any serious mistake in your dispensing through haste or carelessness?’
‘Never.’
‘Will you tell the court in your own words what happened on the morning of the 4th of August?’
Once again the story, already covered by Gilbert, was told. The breaking of the stopper, the pouring of the belladonna into a twelve-ounce bottle . . .
‘And what did you do with the bottle?’
‘I put it on
the shelf,’ said Laura, ‘out of harm’s way.’
‘It has been suggested that you instructed Gilbert Drysdale to write a label bearing the words ‘Mrs. Swanton’ and that you then confused him so that he stuck the label on the bottle of poison. Is that true?’
‘No. It is not true.’
‘You are sure you put the bottle on the shelf where it would not be confused with other bottles containing medicine?’
‘I am quite sure.’
‘Will you explain how the label in the boy’s handwriting came to be on the bottle of poison?’
Laura put one hand on the edge of the witness box and held tightly on to it. She took a deep breath.
It was all, really, Gilbert’s fault. She ought not to have relied on him. In trying to implicate him, to let him be the one who took the poison knowingly up to Charlotte, she had over-estimated her influence on him. It could all have been accomplished so much more smoothly if only events had not conspired to put the provocative idea into her mind. If she had only been content with letting him remain innocent, it could have been done. Or if only he had done what she had expected him to do instead of being a weak, cowardly little fool. If only he had taken that poison up and given it to Charlotte . . .
What then? Laura knew that on that day she had gone out quite sure everything would be all right. It had all seemed neat and foolproof. She would have come back and found the body. She would have cleaned up the mess and called in old Whiting. Tragic. So upsetting, her own sister-in-law.
There would have been few traces of belladonna in the bowel: just enough to justify her admission that she had used a medicine containing belladonna, as was common in cases of gastric trouble. Whiting would not have been suspicious; but even if he had, a postmortem would not have been more than mildly embarrassing. It could all have been glossed over, all plausibly accounted for.
She had been sure of that then, hadn’t she?
If only . . .
There were so many regrets. If only she had been able to get some sense out of Gil that afternoon when she had returned and asked where the bottle of poison had gone. It was missing, but he would not tell her what had happened to it. He would hardly speak to her. She should have persisted. But, white-faced, he had said simply, ‘I don’t know.’ There had been loathing in his eyes. He had turned against her; had swung around to fear and hatred of her, renouncing all her plans and all her insinuations, rejecting the insidious idea she had tried to plant in his mind.
‘You took Mrs. Swanton’s medicine up?’ she had calmly asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And what did you do with the other bottle?’
‘Nothing. I never touched it.’
‘But it’s not here now.’
‘Well, I don’t know.’
‘You must have moved it. Have you broken it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you hiding it somewhere?’ She had infused warmth into her voice, trying to coax out of him some tacit admission that he had not betrayed her but was merely thinking it over, keeping the bottle ready for the time when his courage was ripe.
‘No, I’m not. I haven’t been in here since you left. I don’t . . . don’t want . . .’
And then he had run off and left her; and she had been unable to find the bottle.
It had not taken long for its whereabouts to be discovered. The police had not wasted time. First there had been courteous questions, and then the change to stern suspicion. That woman’s letter had arrived, and by then it was too late to worry about the things that might have been. She had made a statement, and now the facts must be juggled with so that they would fit in neatly with that statement.
Facts . . . that had led her to this box in a courtroom, with the man who claimed to be defending her blinking owlishly up, waiting for her to reply.
She said: ‘The boy was in the consulting-room when I left the house. He could have written out another label and put it on the bottle of belladonna.’
‘You mean that he might have done that by mistake?’
‘Of course not. He could have done it deliberately, with the intention of giving it to his mother.’
She ignored the gasp that ran round the public benches. She stared straight ahead, her brow furrowed in what might have been taken for austere regret.
‘Did he know of the existence of his mother?’
‘Yes. I had told him.’
Why should she not say this? It was all Gilbert’s fault. Gilbert had destroyed his own happiness and the happiness of others: why should he not suffer? It was his word against hers.
‘Did he know his mother would be visiting the surgery that afternoon?’
Really, for a man who was supposed to be defending her he was being extremely unhelpful. She supposed he would claim that he was trying to elucidate matters.
‘I didn’t know it myself,’ she said, as though she found the question an eminently reasonable one. ‘But he may well have decided to take it over on his bicycle and then thought he had had a stroke of luck when she actually appeared.’
The judge leaned forward and made a terse observation about the need for dealing with facts and not with theories.
But she had done what she had to do. Once before she had tried to implicate Gilbert, and he had rejected her. He should not escape so easily this time. She, a doctor of good repute in the district, would surely give more plausible testimony than a boy like Gilbert Drysdale.
She was innocent of this crime. Not, perhaps, innocent of another, attempted crime; but certainly innocent of this one.
Cross-examination followed the lines she would have expected. Again and again the weapon flashed out, trying to stab her into the admission that she had deliberately prepared poison for Molly Drysdale, that she had told the boy to stick the label on the bottle, that she had, perhaps, told him to take it over to Legacy or else to put it out on the shelf. By whatever means it was meant to reach Molly Drysdale, the intention was certainly — was it not? — that it should reach her?
‘No.’
She was upright, virtuous, indignant.
Was it not true — here they came again — that she was devoted to her brother Peter? Of course. Would it be true to say that she would have killed anyone who threatened his happiness?
A figure of speech, no more. She was cool — as cool and clear-headed as she had been during the whole course of the trial.
Great play was made in the closing speech for the prosecution of the factor of motive. It was cleverly suggested, though lack of any corroborative evidence made it impossible to say this openly, that Molly Drysdale had probably asked Laura Swanton for money as well as for help in her trouble. And the accused, already saddled with the burden of helping her brother when he came out of prison, and committed to helping young Gilbert Drysdale with his education, had decided to get rid of Molly Drysdale.
Great scorn was heaped on poor, vague Mrs. Swanton, who had, devoted mother that she was, tried to make out that the whole thing was an accident.
The shape of the case, the progression of the arguments . . . these things would be happily assessed by the readers of the evening papers who made a hobby of such things.
The design was worked out. It was interesting to the uninvolved strategist; interesting to make predictions and await their fulfilment.
Chapter Nine
‘It is my duty now,’ said Mr. Justice Ember, ‘to tell you what is the law on the matters which have been put before you, and you must accept my direction without question. The interpretation of the facts and opinions which have been brought forth during this case, and the meaning of the evidence offered, is, however, your responsibility. Having observed the attention which you have all so conscientiously paid throughout this trial, I have no doubt whatsoever that the decision you reach will be a sound one.’
Go on, thought Laura impatiently; go on.
She felt more keyed-up than she had expected. Her fingers twitched, and one side of her face felt strangely frozen, so t
hat she had to keep massaging her cheek with her finger-tips in order to make sure that it was still all right.
She wanted that intolerable man to hurry on and be done with this pomp and circumstance. How many more times were they going to go over the same ground, prodding at it, turning it over, picking things up and brooding over them?
‘If you think,’ he was saying, ‘that the prisoner intentionally administered belladonna to this woman Molly Drysdale, and that the woman died from the effects of that poison, you must return your verdict accordingly. By ‘administered’ I do not mean that she did with her own hands give the poison. It is enough that she should have prepared the poison and despatched it to this woman with the intention that the woman should drink it and be thereby killed.
‘If you are satisfied that such was not the prisoner’s intention, then there is an end to the charge of murder.
‘You may wish to accept the suggestion which has been put forward to the effect that the death of Miss Drysdale was due to an extremely careless mistake — or, rather, a sequence of mistakes. It has been suggested that the prisoner, whom various witnesses have declared to be a methodical person by nature — the word ‘pernickety’ has been used several times — that this normally careful doctor was for some reason negligent on this one occasion, and allowed a bottle of deadly poison to be supplied in place of a bottle of medicine. Should this be your decision, you will realise that criminal negligence on the part of the prisoner is involved, and you may wish — indeed, you are entitled to do so — to return a verdict of manslaughter.
‘You have heard it alleged that the prime mover in this case has been not the prisoner but her nephew, Gilbert Drysdale. It has been suggested that this boy took advantage of the prisoner’s carelessness on this occasion and deliberately took, or allowed to be sent, poison to his mother in order to prevent her disturbing his present way of life. Quite apart from the vagueness of these suppositions and the likelihood of a boy doing such a thing — and these are matters on which you will certainly make up your own minds — it is my duty to point out to you most emphatically that this court is not putting witnesses on trial. The case is that of the Crown against Laura Felicity Swanton, and you are concerned only with her innocence or guilt. It is not your function to make charges against any other individual or individuals. You are concerned with the prisoner and with nobody else.