Page 37 of A Study in Scarlet Women
“That will suit us very well.”
They were shown into Dr. Harris’s study. Dr. Birch was a livelyman with a gleam in his eye. He responded to Treadles’s questions with quick, to-the-point answers. Yes, his doorbell had rung shortly after seven that day and he had to dash off a quick note to the proprietor of the village inn, where there was an elderly traveler waiting for him, in pain and in need of morphine. And since his dogcart was already hitched, he drove, following Tommy Dunn to Curry House.
“It really was too bad that young Dunn couldn’t tell me anything relevant about Mr. Sackville, except that he couldn’t be roused and appeared to be in a bad way. Or I’d have been better prepared.”
“You’d have brought strychnine?”
“Most likely, if I’d suspected an overdose of chloral. And I would have if I’d been told about Mr. Sackville’s body temperature—that is a telltale symptom of chloral poisoning.”
“Isn’t strychnine a deadly poison in itself?”
“One of the deadliest. Administered to a healthy person, strychnine would cause fatal muscular convulsions. But that property makes it an effective antidote to chloral: It stimulates the heart’s function and stops the slide of decreasing body temperature.”
“Now, doctor, do you believe the chloral that killed Mr. Sackville to have been self-administered?”
“Dr. Harris and I spoke about it and we saw absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t have been so,” Dr. Birch answered confidently. “The chloral that Dr. Harris prescribed for Mr. Sackville was in the form of grains. It is very difficult to force a man to ingest anything he doesn’t wish to—and there were no signs of violence anywhere. The only explanation that makes sense is that Mr. Sackville miscounted the number of grains and paid for his mistake.”
The bespectacled Dr. Harris was more deliberate in his demeanor than Dr. Birch. But he confirmed without hesitation that Mr. Sackville’sgastric episodes had been ongoing, nothing unusual. And that he had indeed prescribed the chloral, for Mr. Sackville’s insomnia.
“When was the last time you saw Mr. Sackville in a professional capacity?” asked Treadles.
“Six weeks ago. He had a persistent cough and was worried that it might turn into pneumonia.”
“It didn’t, I presume?”
“No. Once the weather turned warmer, the cough cleared.”
“He didn’t consult you about his gastric attacks?”
“He mentioned them from time to time, but he was resigned. He’d been suffering from them since he was a young man and had accepted that they would continue to plague him for as long as he lived.”
“I see,” said Inspector Treadles.
He was about to ask another question when Dr. Harris said, “His new cook showed far greater interest in his digestion than he did. She came and conferred with me once, on her half day no less. Interesting woman. She wanted to cure Mr. Sackville of his ‘tummy aches’ by modifying his diet to exclude those items that could be proven to irritate his innards.
“Her plan was to start with one item known to be fine for him to eat and then add in other items one by one, with at least forty-eight hours between each addition, so that any single item that set him off could be pinpointed and eliminated right away—very sound methodology, that. But Mr. Sackville scoffed at her suggestion. He might suffer abdominal turmoil once in a while but he was still a man who like a good supper and a proper pudding with every meal. Having so limited a diet for any length of time was unthinkable for him.”
“So Mrs. Meek attempted to enlist the weight of your professional opinion in persuading Mr. Sackville to change his mind?”
“Precisely. I commended her for her dedication and initiative—I wish my own cook thought half so much of my digestion. But if I’velearned anything in my years of dealing with patients it’s that it is nigh impossible to change a grown man’s habits. I told her I’d put in a word with Mr. Sackville the next time I saw him—but I never did see him again.”
“A shame,” said Treadles. “Let me now ask you the same question I posed to Dr. Birch. Do you believe that Mr. Sackville died because he took the wrong number of chloral grains?”
Dr. Harris took off his spectacles and polished them with a handkerchief. “Let me tell you a secret, Inspector: Dr. Birch is a terrible player at whist—he would be hopeless if it weren’t for his sister, who is formidable on a green baize table. But as a physician, he is thoroughly observant and exceptionally competent and would have made a successful name for himself in the city if he didn’t greatly dislike city life. So if he tells me that there was no sign the chloral got into Mr. Sackville by force or trickery, then I will gladly take his word for it.”
Treadles sighed inwardly. With every interview, Holmes’s first foray onto the public stage looked more likely to be a stumble rather than a triumph. So much for the hope that his genius would carry Treadles to widespread acclaim, thereby bolstering Alice’s social standing.
“On the other hand,” Dr. Harris went on, “as much as the most obvious explanation seems the most logical and likely, I am uneasy about accepting the theory of miscounted grains of chloral.”
Treadles sat up straighter. “Oh?”
“Years ago, while I was still a student at medical school, a good friend of mine committed suicide by ingesting chloral. His death left a lasting impression.” The physician donned his glasses again and looked meaningfully at Treadles. “In my own practice I never dispense vials with more than eight grains of chloral inside.”
Treadles’s fingertips tingled: He remembered the vial in Mr. Sackville’s nightstand, still with two grains of chloral left. “I take it eight grains do not amount to enough to kill a man.”
“Precisely. Mr. Sackville’s insomnia was sporadic rather than frequent. He sent for a vial a few times a year. If one assumed that he sent for more when he’d run out, then there wouldn’t have been enough chloral at Curry House to harm him.”
Sergeant MacDonald, who had been largely bent over his notebook, glanced at Treadles, surprise and excitement in his eyes. Treadles felt that same flutter in his stomach. “Is it reasonable to assume that he sent for more only when he ran out?”
