The Pigeon Pie Mystery (18 page)

“I say, what a marvellous view of the river,” enthused Charles Twelvetrees with a smile, striding towards the window. “I wouldn’t mind living here myself. Is the palace really haunted?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the butler. “I saw one of the latest apparitions myself. Dreadful moaning.”

“Any idea who it was?”

“None, sir.”

The constable, who had missed his breakfast, suddenly coughed. “The coffin’s on the table, sir,” he said.

Charles Twelvetrees span round. “Well, let’s get it open, man,” he snapped. “We can’t stand around here all day admiring the view.”

“The lid appears to be screwed down, sir,” the policeman replied.

The coroner turned to the group of gentlemen, who still hadn’t advanced further than the door. “Dr. Henderson, would you kindly do the honours? People will be wondering where we’ve got to.”

The general practitioner approached and traced his fingers lightly on the table. “I don’t seem to have a screwdriver on me,” he muttered.

The coroner looked at him for several seconds and then addressed the jurors. “Does anyone happen to have a screwdriver on them?”

Pockets were patted, and there was a collective shaking of heads.

The coroner sighed, then turned to the butler. “We’re in need of a screwdriver.”

“Screwdrivers aren’t my responsibility, sir,” he replied, staring into the distance.

“Whose responsibility are they?”

“One of the
under
servants, sir.”

“Well, go and get one.”

“They’re in the King’s Arms, sir. As I said, I’ve got a rebellion on my hands.”

“For God’s sake, someone go and fetch the undertaker!”

The constable, whose stomach had started to rumble, immediately headed for the door. After contemplating the view, the oil paintings, the green carpet, and the red wallpaper, the jurors pulled out the chairs from the table and sat down. After refusing an offer by Barnabas Popejoy to tell some jokes, they started playing cards with a pack they found on the mantelpiece. Citing a law that didn’t exist, the coroner gained entry to the kitchen, and persuaded the cook to make him a cup of tea, which he drank in a chair by the range with his boots off.

Eventually Mr. Blood arrived with the necessary instrument, and stood staring at the jurors playing poker around the coffin, on top of which was a bunch of rhubarb.

“Get on with it, man!” barked the coroner. “Otherwise we’ll have an adjournment on our hands, and Easter is nearly upon us.”

After battling with his tool, the undertaker removed the lid and propped it up against the wall with hands that had touched more of the dead than the living. The jurors winced and immediately reached into their pockets and covered their noses with their handkerchiefs as they peered at the discoloured General. The constable joined them out of curiosity, and lost his appetite in an instant.

HUNCHED AGAINST THE RAIN THAT
had been predicted by the coroner’s barometer, the party headed back to the Mitre. By then, the Countess and Lady Beatrice were sitting in the bar, having informed the officer they were feeling faint and were in need of some fresh air. As soon as they spotted the jury through the window, they knocked back their third sherry and rushed to the dining room, where they reclaimed their seats, landing on them with less poise than before. The witnesses, who hadn’t moved, immediately abandoned their contemplation of the ceiling and inspected the jurors as they filed back in looking considerably more sombre than when they had left. After tugging off his boots, the coroner called Dr. Henderson to the stand. The officer approached him and barked: “The evidence which you shall give to this inquest on behalf of our Sovereign Lady the Queen touching the death of Major-General George Bagshot shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God.”

Assuming the man was administering the oath, the doctor kissed the Bible and gave a brief medical preamble. Finally he got to the point: “I found small traces of arsenic in all of the deceased’s organs.”

The gossip-mongers suddenly stopped sucking their humbugs.

“Was it sufficient to be fatal?” the coroner enquired. As the pressmen prayed that it was, the residents leant forward, holding an anxious hand up to their throats.

The doctor paused. “It was, sir.”

A collective gasp sounded as neighbours were clutched with dread. They stared open-mouthed at the general practitioner for several seconds, after which the room erupted with the clamour of Billingsgate Market.

“All right, all right, all right. That’s quite enough,” snapped Charles Twelvetrees, raising his voice. He glared round the room, then addressed the jury. “In my experience, out of a hundred cases
of arsenic poisoning, around forty-six will be suicidal, thirty-seven homicidal, eight accidental, and the remaining nine are anybody’s guess. Let’s hope you can determine which it was,” he added doubtfully. Turning back to Dr. Henderson, he said that he had come across several cases where poisoners had tried to cover up their crimes by claiming that arsenic had been present in the soil surrounding the coffin, and had been conveyed into the body by water. “Was the body at all wet when you examined it?” he asked.

“No,” the doctor replied, shaking his head. “Neither was the inside of the coffin.”

The coroner dismissed him, then called Dr. Frogmore. While the general practitioner from Thames Ditton had been in particularly robust health when asked to perform the post-mortem examination, there was no trace of it now. Wiping his bald head with his handkerchief, he waddled over to the stand, his considerable girth no recommendation for the Banting method of weight loss he endorsed. After the officer administered the oath, the doctor merely brushed his lips on the Bible, such was his hurry to press upon the hearing that the symptoms of arsenic poisoning and English cholera were extremely similar.

“When the deceased returned from the picnic he initially asked to see his homeopath, which, of course, did him no good whatsoever,” said Dr. Frogmore, his voice as high as an altar boy’s. “When his symptoms persisted, his American houseguest naturally insisted that he see a general practitioner. Dr. Henderson was otherwise engaged with a patient, so he sent a carriage for me. By the time I arrived the General had been seized with vomiting and diarrhoea for some time. I was informed that he had just consumed a large amount of a particularly ugly pigeon pie at a picnic. I diagnosed English cholera, which is an acute gastroenteritis that often appears to be caused by unsuitable ingesta, such as sausages, meat pies, shell-fish, or food in a state of decomposition.
The symptoms are severe vomiting and diarrhoea. Any doctor would have made exactly the same diagnosis,” he added hastily.

Charles Twelvetrees peered at him, lacing his fingers. “And how did you treat the deceased?” he asked.

The doctor wiped his head. “I was horrified to learn that the homeopath, a Mr. Sparrowgrass, had asked that he be brought a cup of beef tea. It was utterly, utterly the wrong thing to do. A preliminary purge is out of the question in such instances, and hot drinks excite the actions of the bowels. I gave him arrowroot in plain water with a teaspoon of brandy to cement them. The next step would have been a tincture of opium with ether. But by then it was too late,” he added.

After an over-long description of the deceased’s tormented bowels, the coroner finally dismissed him. But Dr. Frogmore wouldn’t leave. With a glance at the pressmen with their ruinous pencils, he raised his voice and said, “I’m by no means the first doctor to have been caught out by the similarities of arsenic poisoning and English cholera.”

“Thank you, Dr. Frogmore,” said the coroner.

But still the doctor remained, staring helplessly at the reporters.

“Back to your seat or I’ll ask my officer to remove you,” Charles Twelvetrees snapped, and called Silas Sparrowgrass.

The homeopath from East Molesey scuttled to the stand wearing a long black overcoat with a short cape that had once belonged to a Burlington Arcade beadle. As he stood, his squint spiralling round the room, the jurors peered at him, trying to work out which way he was looking. The oath administered, he bent his head and kissed the Bible. Just as the officer was about to take the book away, he kissed it again, producing a loud smacking sound, and he continued pressing his lips back and forth against the cover until the coroner looked up to see what was the delay.

“Mr. Sparrowgrass!” he barked. “You’re in a court of law, not behind a privy with a landlord’s daughter.”

Slowly the witness raised his head and wiped his lips on the back of his sleeve.

“Now,” said the coroner. “I understand you were the first person the deceased asked for when he took ill.” He then looked towards the jury and added, “Just to help you along, a truly suicidal man would never call for medical intervention.”

The jurors nodded in appreciation.

Silas Sparrowgrass coughed loudly and waited until he had the room’s attention. “That poor sweet man. Dead!” he whimpered. After asking if he could take a moment, he wiped the corner of his good eye, then continued. “I was indeed the first person the deceased asked for. After Dr. Barnstable died last year, only I have treated him. You would have thought the General would have chosen Dr. Henderson over there as his medical man, being as though he lives so close to the palace and has all those fancy letters after his name. But he wouldn’t hear of it.”

Everyone turned to look at Dr. Henderson, who frowned.

“And why was that, do you think?” the coroner enquired.

The homeopath caressed the remains of his Newgate fringe. “People say Dr. Henderson’s medicine smells like gravedigger’s breath and you’d be paying twice the amount for the pleasure of it. Look at all those patients he’s got. If he could cure them, they wouldn’t keep coming back. I never see the majority of mine again.”

The general practitioner crossed his arms and scowled.

“Quite so, Mr. Sparrowgrass.” Charles Twelvetrees nodded. “No doctor has ever got to the bottom of my piles. No pun intended. And how did
you
attend to the deceased?”

The homeopath tugged down his checked waistcoat. “The General informed me he had eaten a large amount of pigeon pie. Should vomiting arise from over-repletion, or from indigestible food, the best course of action is a hot drink or tickling the throat with a feather until the offending material is expelled,” he added.

Charles Twelvetrees tapped his pen. “And did you tickle the General?”

“I did, sir.”

The coroner made a note. “Continue.”

“As for the diarrhoea, evacuations following over-indulgence at the table should not be interfered with. In the event that atmospheric influences were also at play, I gave him some white bryony, for Silas Sparrowgrass is a man of infinite subtlety. It would have worked, too, if he hadn’t died so quickly. I then advised him that people liable to diarrhoea should always wear flannel abdominal-belts, and offered to perform a little trick to raise his spirits. But he was too busy vomiting.”

The coroner raised his eyebrows. “A little trick?” he repeated.

“Yes, sir. Everyone loves a bit of magic.”

The coroner leant forward with a smile. “You perform magic tricks, Mr. Sparrowgrass? How splendid! Let’s see one,” he said, slapping his hand on the table.

A murmur of excitement ran round the room. The homeopath immediately called for a hat, and a member of the jury swiftly reached under his chair and passed him one. Opening his arms, Silas Sparrowgrass declared: “And next, ladies and gentlemen, I shall require five florins.”

There was a flurry of activity as the coroner, the jurors, the witnesses, and the public reached for their pockets and bags. Silas Sparrowgrass held up his hands. “Do not trouble yourselves, ladies and gentlemen,” he begged. “I sense there is so much money in this room I shall help myself.” He then strode over to Lady Beatrice and picked up her foot. “Why, there’s a florin underneath this lady’s shoe,” he announced. She tittered behind her hand as he dropped a coin into the hat. “And there’s one in these Piccadilly weepers,” he announced, reaching into the whiskers of William Sheepshanks, sat behind her, and dropping a coin into his topper. The Keeper of the Maze gave an embarrassed smile.
Approaching the Countess, the homeopath cried, “Look, there’s one in this bonnet!” He stretched out his hand and threw another coin in his hat as the aristocrat beamed and felt for more. The homeopath then ran across the room, watched by his entranced audience, and produced a florin from the butterman’s ear. He then approached Charles Twelvetrees, plucked one out of thin air in front of him, and dropped both florins into his hat, cocking his ear as they landed. Raising his hat above his head for all to see, he overturned it onto a pile of court documents on the table, and out rolled five florins.

The room erupted into applause. “Excellent!” declared Charles Twelvetrees, beaming. “Perhaps we should have one more? It is raining, after all.”

There were loud calls in agreement.

Silas Sparrowgrass pulled down his waistcoat. “For my next trick, ladies and gentlemen, I shall require a watch,” he announced. His squint spiralled around the room as he added, “It only works with a gold one.”