A Study In Scarlet Women (14 page)

“May I ask, Mrs. Cornish, why you gave a place to Jenny Price?”

“Oh, I didn't, Inspector. Mrs. Struthers—the former Mrs. Curry—she took Jenny in about ten years ago.”

“And why did Mrs. Struthers make that choice?”

“The Prices are yeoman farmers. Lots of men trudging about, especially during planting and harvest. And Jenny, well, I'm sure you wouldn't, Inspector, but there are men who would take advantage of a girl like that. Her parents tried to lock her in her room, but she gets in a bad way if she's locked up all the time.”

Mrs. Cornish opened the door to the maids' room. Two neatly made iron beds were arranged in the shape of an L. The one that presumably belonged to Jenny Price had a pair of slippers underneath. Inspector Treadles noted the bars on the window and the padlock on the door.

“Mrs. Struthers offered to take Jenny in,” Mrs. Cornish continued. “She was a widow then and except for the man who took care of her horses and her garden there was no other man on the property—and he lived above the stables, not in the house. Jenny can only manage simple tasks, but she works hard and Mrs. Struthers didn't have to pay her. In fact, to this day the Prices supply a good portion of the foodstuff that goes into the kitchen.”

“But with Mr. Sackville's arrival there were men in the house.”

“At first there was only Mr. Sackville himself—Mr. Hodges came later. It was when we knew that the house had been let to a gentleman that I put the lock on the maids' door—and the bars outside the window. I wasn't so much worried about anyone getting into Jenny's room as that she'd be lured out. But I needn't have worried. Mr. Sackville wasn't that kind of man—and neither is Mr. Hodges.”

They were now in Mrs. Meek's room. A photograph of
her
younger self sat on a desk. She had not been nearly as pretty as the young Mrs. Cornish, but she beamed with confidence.

“I haven't asked you this, Mrs. Cornish. What is your opinion of Mr. Sackville as a man?”

Mrs. Cornish was taken aback. “He was a gentleman, of course.”

“Many men are born gentlemen, but not all are worthy of that term.”

“Well, he was a true gentleman. He was always courteous to everyone. And considerate. We used to do all our own washing here, in the house. When Mr. Sackville saw how hard and rough the work was, he told me to have the laundry sent out—he'd pay for it.” Her voice cracked a little. “Now that was real kindness, that.”

Her anecdote left an impression on Sergeant MacDonald. As they walked away from the house, after saying good-bye to Mrs. Cornish, he said, “A shame this Mr. Sackville died. He seemed a real gentleman.”

“It would appear so. But if experience has taught me anything, those who knew the deceased are unlikely to speak ill of him so soon after his passing—especially not to a pair of police officers.”

From Curry House, they were to head back to the village to call on Dr. Harris. But Treadles exclaimed softly, turned around, and rang the doorbell again.

Mrs. Cornish opened the door. “Inspector, did you forget something?”

“I did indeed, Mrs. Cornish. I forgot to ask where the Birtles live.” He and MacDonald could easily pay Becky Birtle a visit while they were in the area.

“They live in Yorkshire.”

“
Yorkshire?
” Young girls in service tended to find work nearby. Or they departed for the big cities via connections with family and
friends. For Becky Birtle to travel from Yorkshire to a barely on-the-map village four hundred miles away was unusual, to say the least.

“I worked in Yorkshire years ago and knew the Birtles. When Becky was old enough to work, they asked me if I had a place for her—they said they'd feel less worried if someone they trusted kept an eye on her.”

“I see. Did you inform Becky that the police would like a word with her?”

“I wrote her parents as soon as I heard. But I don't expect to hear back from them before tomorrow.”

“I see.”

Treadles collected the Birtles' address from Mrs. Cornish and made a mental note to find someone from the district's constabulary to speak with Becky.

Sherlock Holmes had better be uncannily brilliant in his conjectures about these deaths—or at least about Mr. Sackville's. Or he and Treadles would both end up looking very silly.

Very silly indeed.

At Dr. Harris's home, Treadles and MacDonald were pleasantly surprised to find not only Dr. Harris waiting for them, but also Dr. Birch, the physician who had attended Mr. Sackville on the latter's deathbed.

“Dr. Birch, Miss Birch, Mrs. Harris, and I play whist together quite often,” said Dr. Harris. “So we thought we'd make a party of it today, and save you gentlemen a trip to Barton Cross.”

“Your thoughtfulness is most appreciated,” said Treadles.

“I assume you will wish to speak to Dr. Birch first, since his intelligence is more germane to your case?”

“That will suit us very well.”

They were shown into Dr. Harris's study. Dr. Birch was a lively
man 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's
gastric 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've
learned 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?”

“Reasonable enough, since I could dispatch a vial back within minutes.”

“But in the end there was more than enough chloral at Curry House,” Treadles pointed out, doing his best to keep his voice even.

Dr. Harris set his hands at the edge of the desk and leaned forward. “Which to me suggested two possibilities. One, he had been purposefully accumulating chloral. Keep in mind though, the last time he had a vial from me was shortly after I saw him six weeks ago. Is it not odd, if he planned to kill himself, to wait that six weeks? Not to mention he never struck me as a man who had the least desire to die before his time.”

Treadles exchanged another look with Sergeant MacDonald. “And the other possibility?”

Dr. Harris exhaled and clasped his hands together. “Let's just say that I for one was not sorry that Mr. Sherlock Holmes of London took the trouble to write to the coroner.”