This certificate was duly delivered to the registrar; and two others like it were forwarded to the assurance companies in each of which the life was insured for the sum of one thousand pounds.
Mr. Mole went away with his little parcel, and soon set to work in his own private room on his tests. From his observations on some mice, to which he gave an ethereal extract of the contents of the handkerchiefs, he was quite sure that muscarin or lorchelin had somehow found its way into the stomach of the deceased lady. But here was the difficulty. She had undoubtedly eaten of a dish of mushrooms previous to her death. Somehow or other a poisonous fungus might have got into that dish, by accident possibly, by intention more likely. Again, there was the mysterious incident of the pill. What was easier than to substitute a pill of bulbosin for one of the morphia pills which should have been given. Was it not strange that only one pill remained in a box which should have contained two if it had not been interfered with?
He must consult with Dr. Sones about this, and off he went to his place, taking with him all the materials for examination which he had left. Dr. Sones listened to his story with the interest of a toxicologist who was on the track of a terrible crime; for to that he agreed with Mr. Mole all the circumstances seemed to point.
“Leave everything with me for a week,” said he, “and then come again. Meanwhile, if I want you, I will write.”
Mrs. Crowe was buried in Highgate Cemetery, and the sincere condolences of all the staff were duly presented to the bereaved surgeon. Dr. Stanforth saw nothing at all peculiar in the circumstance of the death, and had not even thought of attributing it to other than a quite ordinary cause. After all, what was there to excite suspicion? There was some rather violent vomiting in a patient who was the subject of constant nausea, and the attendant symptoms of a chronically inflamed stomach. True, she died after a meal of mushrooms. Dangerous things at all times, she, of all people, should never have touched them; but they were some of the few articles of diet the poor lady ever fancied, and it was hard to deny them to her. “Had the mushrooms anything to do with her death?” asked Mr. Crowe. He thought not, except in causing perhaps an attack of acute dyspepsia. The fruiterer declared that it was impossible any deleterious fungus could have got into the basket; he had sold a dozen that same morning, and no other purchaser had found any fault with them.
At the expiration of the week Mr. Mole called upon Dr. Sones.
“You have,” said the latter, “not only the alkaloid muscarin here, but an acrid volatile principle which could not have remained in the mushrooms after cooking. This must have either been added to the dish after it left the kitchen, or been administered in some other form than the food in question. Now so powerful is this principle in the vomit in the handkerchief you have brought me, that I have come to the conclusion it could only have been derived from the Russian species we investigated together last year. I know no English fungus which contains it in precisely this form. Again, in the remains of the dish in the other handkerchief, though I find lorchelin plentifully, I do not find the irritant poison I have mentioned. I should conclude, therefore, that this was administered some other way.”
“The pill!” cried Mr. Mole. “Wasn’t it in the pill? Was not the box tampered with, and was not a pill compounded of this irritant poison substituted for the harmless morphia ones the box previously contained?”
“That is quite likely, and the poison either given as medicine, or added surreptitiously to the dish after it was prepared.”
To Dr. Stanforth, Mr. Crowe’s easy-going, amiable colleague, as we have said, the case presented no peculiar features whatever. Very few cases did so to this optimistic, complacent gentleman. His was the charity that thinketh no evil, and considered everything was “for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Perhaps, however, it was the nil admirari principle that most influenced him. He had acquired a certain distinction in his profession by having statistics ready for every class of case coming under his notice in his speciality, and it would have detracted from his glory to have permitted himself to be surprised at anything which might happen to a lady patient. “Had he ever seen such a case before?” some excited general practitioner who thought he had something interesting to show him would demand, only to be coolly set down with the reply, “Oh, certainly. As near as I can tell without reference to my notes, this makes the thirteenth case of the kind that I have examined since my connection with the hospital.”