Strong Poison Read Free

mention here what I should have mentioned before, namely, that the arsenic purchased from Mr. Brown was the ordinary commercial arsenic, which is coloured with charcoal or indigo, as the law requires, in order that it may not be mistaken for sugar or any other innocent substance.”
    Salcombe Hardy groaned: “How long, O Lord, how long shall we have to listen to all this tripe about commercial arsenic? Murderers learn it now at their mother’s knee.”
    “I particularly want you to remember those dates – I will give them to you again – the 10th. April and the 5th. May.” (The jury wrote them down. Lord Peter Wimsey murmured: “They all wrote down on their slates, ‘She doesn’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.’ ” The Hon. Freddy said “What? What?” and the judge turned over another page of his notes.)
    “About this time, Philip Boyes began to suffer from renewed attacks of a gastric trouble to which he had been subject from time to time during his life. You have read the evidence of Dr. Green, who attended for something of the sort during his University career. That is some time ago; but there is also Dr. Weare, who, in 1925 prescribed for a similar attack. Not grave illnesses, but painful and exhausting, with sickness and so on, and aching in the limbs. Plenty of people have such troubles from time to time. Still, there is a coincidence of dates here which may be significant. We get these attacks – noted in Dr. Weare’s case-book – one on the 31st. of March, one on the 15th. of April and one on the 12th. of May. Three sets of coincidences – as you may perhaps think them to be – Harriet Vane and Philip Boyes meet ‘towards the end of March,’ and he has an attack of gastritis on March 31st; on April 10th Harriet Vane purchases two ounces of arsenic – they meet again ‘in the second week in April,’ and on April 15th, he has another attack; on May 5th there is the purchase of weed-killer – ‘some time in May’ there is another meeting, and on May 12th he is taken ill for the third time. You may think that this is rather curious, but you must not forget that the Crown have failed to prove any purchase of arsenic before the meeting in March. You must bear that in mind when considering this point.
    “After the third attack – the one in May – the doctor advises Boyes to go away for a change, and he selects the north-west corner of Wales. He goes to Harlech, and spends a very pleasant time there and is much better. But he has a friend to accompany him, Mr. Ryland Vaughan, whom you have seen, and this friend says that ‘Philip was not happy.’ In fact, Mr. Vaughan formed the opinion that he was fretting after Harriet Vane. His bodily health improved, but he grew mentally depressed. And so on June 16th, we find him writing a letter to Miss Vane. Now that is an important letter, so I will read it to you once more:
    “ ‘Dear Harriet,
    Life is an utter mess-up. I can’t stick it out here any longer. I’ve decided to cut adrift and take a trip out West. But before I go, I want to see you once again and find out if it isn’t possible to put things straight again. You must do as you like, of course, but I still cannot understand the attitude you take up. If I can’t make you see the thing in the right perspective this time I’ll chuck it for good. I shall be in town on the 20th. Let me have a line to say when I can come round.
    ‘Yours,
    ‘P.’
    “Now that, as you have realised, is a most ambiguous letter. Sir Impey Biggs, with arguments of great weight, has suggested that by the expressions ‘cut adrift and take a trip out west,’ ‘I can’t stick it out here,’ and ‘chuck it for good,’ the writer was expressing his intention to make away with himself if he could not effect a reconciliation with the accused. He points out that ‘to go west’ is a well-known metaphor for dying, and that, of course, may be convincing to you. But Mr. Urquhart, when examined on the