As a thief in the night

by R. Austin Freeman

“Now, with regard to his medicine. Did deceased usually take it himself?”

“No, he didn’t like to have the bottle on the bedside table, as it was rather crowded with his books and things. The bottle and the medicine-glass were kept on the mantelpiece and the medicine was given to him by whoever happened to be in the room when a dose was due. Sometimes I gave it to him; at other times Mrs. Monkhouse or Miss Norris or Mr. Wallingford.”

“Do you remember when the last bottle of medicine came?”

“Yes. It came early in the afternoon of the day before he died. I took it in and carried it up at once.”

When he had written down this answer, the coroner ran his eye through his previous notes and then glanced at the jury.

“Do any of you gentlemen wish to ask the witness any questions?” he enquired; and as no one answered, he dismissed the witness with the request that she would stay in the court in case any further testimony should be required of her. He then announced that he would take the evidence of Sir Robert Detling next in order to release him for his probably numerous engagements. Sir Robert’s name was accordingly called and a grave-looking, elderly gentleman rose from near the doorway and walked up to the table. When the new witness had been sworn and the formal preliminaries disposed of, the coroner said:

“I will ask you, Sir Robert, to give the jury an account of the circumstances which led to your making a certain communication to me.”

Sir Robert bowed gravely and proceeded at once to make his statement in the clear, precise manner of a practised speaker.

“On Friday, the 8th instant, the Reverend Amos Monkhouse called on me to arrange a consultation with Dr. Dimsdale who was in attendance on his brother, the deceased. I met Dr. Dimsdale by appointment the following afternoon, the 9th, and with him made a careful examination of deceased. I was extremely puzzled by the patient’s condition. He was obviously very seriously—I thought, dangerously—ill, but I was unable to discover any signs or symptoms that satisfactorily accounted for his grave general condition. I could not give his disease a name. Eventually, I took a number of blood-films and some specimens of the secretions to submit to a pathologist for examination and to have them tested for micro-organisms. I took them that night to Professor Garnett’s laboratory, but the professor was unfortunately absent and not returning until the following night—Sunday. I therefore kept them until Sunday night when I took them to him and asked him to examine them with as little delay as possible. He reported on the following day that microscopical examination had not brought to light anything abnormal, but he was making cultures from the secretions and would report the result on Wednesday morning. On Wednesday morning at about half-past nine, I received a telegram from the Reverend Amos Monkhouse informing me that his brother had died during the night. A few minutes later, a messenger brought Professor Garnett’s report; which was to the effect that no disease-bearing organisms had been found, nor anything abnormal excepting a rather singular scarcity of micro-organisms of any kind.

“This fact, together with the death of the patient, suddenly aroused my suspicions. For the absence of the ordinary micro-organisms suggested the presence of some foreign chemical substance. And now, as I recalled the patient’s symptoms, I found them consistent with the presence in the body of some foreign substance. Instantly, I made my way to Professor Garnett’s laboratory and communicated my suspicions to him. I found that he shared them and had carefully preserved the remainder of the material for further examination. We both suspected the presence of a foreign substance, and we both suspected it to be arsenic.