As a thief in the night

by R. Austin Freeman

“But,” I objected, “what of the Fowler’s Solution which was found in the medicine?”

“Exactly,” said he. “That was the discrepancy that attracted my attention. The assumption was that deceased had taken in his medicine a quantity of Fowler’s Solution representing about a grain and a half of arsenious acid. If that had been so we should have expected to find a very appreciable quantity in the stomach: much more than was actually found. The condition of the body did not agree with the dose that was assumed to have been taken; and when one came to examine the evidence of the various witnesses there was further room for doubt. Two of them had noticed the medicine at the time when the Fowler’s Solution had not been added; but no witness had noticed it after the alleged change and before the death of deceased. The presence of the Fowler’s Solution was not observed until several days after his death. Taking all the facts together, there was a distinct suggestion that the solution had been added to the medicine at some time after Monkhouse’s death. But this suggestion tended to confirm my suspicion that the poison had not been swallowed. For the discovery of the Fowler’s Solution in the medicine would tend to divert inquiry—and did, in fact, divert it—from any other method of administering the poison.

“To finish with the depositions: not only was there a complete lack of evidence even suggesting any one person as the probable delinquent; there was not the faintest suggestion of any motive that one could consider seriously. The paltry pecuniary motive applied to all the parties and could not be entertained in respect of any of them. The only person who could have had a motive was Barbara. She was a young, attractive woman, married to an elderly, unattractive husband. If she had been attached to another man, she would have had the strongest and commonest of all motives. But there was nothing in the depositions to hint at any other man; and since she was absent from home when the poisoning occurred, she appeared to be outside the area of possible suspicion.

“And now to look at the evidence as a whole: you remember Miller’s comment. There was something queer about the case; something very oddly elusive. At the first glance it seemed to bristle with suspicious facts. But when those facts were scrutinized they meant nothing. There were plenty of clues but they led nowhere. There was Madeline Norris who prepared the victim’s food—an obvious suspect. But then it appeared that the poison was in the medicine, not in the food. There was Wallingford who actually had poison in his possession. But it was the wrong poison. There was the bottle that had undoubtedly contained arsenic. But it was nobody’s bottle. There was the bottle that smelled of lavender and had red stains in it and was found in Miss Norris’s possession; but it contained no arsenic. And so on.

“Now all this was very strange. The strongest suspicion was thrown on a number of people collectively. But it failed every time to connect itself with any one individually. I don’t know precisely what Miller thought of it, but to me it conveyed the strong impression of a scheme—of something arranged, and arranged with extraordinary skill and ingenuity. I had the feeling that, behind all these confusing and inconsistent appearances, was a something quite different, with which they had no real connection; that all these apparent clues were a sort of smoke-screen thrown up to conceal the actual mechanism of the murder.

“What could the mechanism of the murder have been? That was what I asked myself. And by whom could the arrangements have been made and carried out? Here the question of motive became paramount. What motive could be imagined? And who could have been affected by it? That seemed to be the essential part of the problem, and the only one that offered the possibility of investigation.

“Now, as I have said, the most obvious motive in cases of this kind is that of getting rid of a husband or wife to make room for another. And ignoring moral considerations, it is a perfectly rational motive; for the murder of the unwanted spouse is the only possible means of obtaining the desired release. The question was, could such a motive have existed in the present case; and the answer was that, on inspection, it appeared to be a possible motive, although there was no evidence that it actually existed. But, assuming its possibility for the sake of argument, who could have been affected by it? At once, one saw that Madeline Norris was excluded. The death of Harold Monkhouse did not affect her, in this respect, at all. There remained only Barbara and Wallingford. To take the latter first: He was a young man, and the wife was a young, attractive woman; he had lived in the same house with her, appeared to be her social equal and was apparently on terms of pleasant intimacy with her. If he had any warmer feelings towards her, her husband’s existence formed an insuperable obstacle to the realization of his wishes. There was no evidence that he had any such feelings, but the possibility had to be borne in mind. And there were the further facts that he evidently had some means of obtaining poisons and that he had ample opportunities for administering them to the deceased. All things considered, Wallingford appeared, prima facie, to be the most likely person to have committed the murder.

“Now to take the case of Barbara. In the first place, there was the possibility that she might have had some feeling towards Wallingford, in which case she would probably have been acting in collusion with him and her absence from home on each occasion when the poisoning took place would have been part of the arrangement. But, excluding Wallingford, and supposing her to be concerned with some other man, did her absence from home absolutely exclude the possibility of her being the poisoner? There were suggestions of skilful and ingenious arrangements to create false appearances. Was it possible that those arrangements included some method by which the poison could be administered during her absence without the connivance or knowledge of any other person?

“I pondered this question carefully by the light of all the details disclosed at the inquest; and the conclusion that I reached was that, given a certain amount of knowledge, skill and executive ability, the thing was possible. But as soon as I had admitted the possibility, I was impressed by the way in which the suggestion fitted in with the known facts and served to explain them. For all the arranged appearances pointed to the use of Fowler’s Solution, administered by the mouth. But this could not possibly have been the method if the poisoner were a hundred miles away. And as I have said, I was strongly inclined to infer, from the patient’s symptoms and the condition of the body, that the poison had not been administered by the mouth.

“But all this, as you will realize, was purely hypothetical. None of the assumptions was supported by a particle of positive evidence. They merely represented possibilities which I proposed to bear in mind in the interpretation of any new evidence that might come into view.