August 23, 2025 • 39 mins
17 - Thorndyke Retraces The Trail. As A Thief In The Night by R. Austin Freeman.
As one of the many stories written by R. Austin Freeman this book includes the most interesting character of Dr. Thorndyke. He commands the skills of a doctor, a lawyer and an investigator all rolled up into one remarkable man. In this case he must solve a murder mystery perpetrated by a most unusual criminal. There is also love and intrigue at play involving the other main characters
As one of the many stories written by R. Austin Freeman this book includes the most interesting character of Dr. Thorndyke. He commands the skills of a doctor, a lawyer and an investigator all rolled up into one remarkable man. In this case he must solve a murder mystery perpetrated by a most unusual criminal. There is also love and intrigue at play involving the other main characters
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seventeen of As a Thief in the Night by R.
Austin Freeman. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Thorndyke retraces the trail. Apparently Thorndyke had seen me from
the window as I crossed the walk, for when I
reached the landing, I found him standing in the open
doorway of his chambers, and at the sight of him,
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whatever traces of unreasonable resentment may have lingered in my
mind melted away. Instantly. He grasped my hand with almost
affectionate warmth, and, looking at me earnestly and with the
most kindly solicitude, said I am glad you have come, Mayfield.
I couldn't bear to think of you alone in your chambers,
haunted by this horrible tragedy. You have heard then about Barbara,
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I mean yes, Mother called and told me. Of course,
he is righteously angry that she has escaped, and I
sympathize with him. But for us, for you and me,
it is a great deliverance. I was profoundly relieved when
I heard that she was gone, that the axe had
fallen once for all. Yes, I admitted, it was better
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than the frightful alternative of a trial in what would
have followed. But still it was terrible to see her
lying dead, and to know that it was my hand,
the hand of her oldest and dearest friend, that had
struck the blow. It was my hand, Mayfield, not yours,
had actually struck the blow. But even if it had
been yours instead of your agents, what could have been
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more just and proper than that retribution should have come
through the hand of the friend and guardian of that
poor murdered girl. I assented with a shudder to the
truth of what he had said, But still my mind
was too confused to allow me to see things in
their true perspective. Barbara, my friend, was still more real
to me than Barbara the murderous. He nodded sympathetically enough
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when I explained this, but rejoined firmly. You must try,
my dear fellow, to see things as they really are.
Shocking as this tragedy is, it would been immeasurably worse
if that terrible woman had not received timely warning. As
it is, the horrible affair has run its course swiftly
and is at an end. And do not forget that
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if the axe has fallen on the guilty. Its menace
has been lifted from the innocent. Madeline Norris and Anthony
Wallingford will sleep in peace to night, free from the
specter of suspicion that has haunted them ever since Harold
Monkoffs died. As to the woman whose body you found
this morning, she was a monster. She could not have
been permitted to live. Her very existence was a menace
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to the lives of all who came into contact with her. Again,
I could not but ascend to his stern indictment and
his impartial statement of the facts. Very well, Mayfield said.
He then, try to put it to yourself that for you,
the worst has happened and is done with. Try to
put it away as a thing that now belongs to
the past, and is in so far as it is possible,
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to be forgotten, as far as is possible, I repeated, Yes,
of course you are quite right, Thorndyke. But forgetfulness is
not a thing which we can command at will. Very true,
he replied, But yet we can control, to a large
extent the direction of our thoughts. We can find interests
and occupations. And speaking of occupations, let me show you
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some of Polton's productions. He rose, and, putting a small
table by the side of my chair, placed on it
one or two small copper plaques and a silver medallion
which he had taken from a drawer. The medallion was
the self portrait of Stella, which had lain dormant in
the wax mold through all the years which had passed
since her death. And as I took it in my
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hand and gazed at the beloved face, I found it beautiful,
beyond my expectations. It is a most charming little work,
I said, holding it so that the lamp light fell
most favorably on the relic. I am infinitely obliged to you. Thorndyke,
don't thank me, said he. The whole credit is due
to Polton that he wants any thanks. But the work
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has yielded him hours of perfect happiness. But here he
is with the products of another kind of work. As
he spoke, Polton entered with a tray and began, in
his neat, noiseless way to lay the table. I don't
know how much he knew, but when I caught his
eye and his smile of greeting, it seemed to me
that friendliness and kindly sympathy exuded from every line of
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his quaint, crinkly face. I thanked him for his skillful
treatment of my treasures, and then, observing that he was
apparently laying the table for supper, would have excused myself.
But Thorndyke would hear of no excuses. My dear fellow,
said he. You are the very picture of physical exhaustion.
I suspect that you have had practically no food to day.
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Amir will help you to begin to get back to normal,
And in any case, you mustn't disappoint Polton, who has
been expecting you to supper, and has probably made a
special effort to do credit to the establishment. I could
only repeat my acknowledgments of Polton's goodness, noting that he
certainly must have made a special effort to judge by
the results which began to make themselves evident, and conquering
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my repugnance to the idea of eating, take my place
at the table. It is perhaps somewhat humiliating to reflect
that our emotional states, which we are apt to consider
on a lofty spiritual plane, are controlled by matters so
grossly material as the mere contents of our stomachs, but
such as the degrading truth, as I now realized, for
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no sooner had I commenced a reluctant attack on the
products of Polton's efforts and drunk a glass of burgundy
delicately worn by that versatile artist to the exact optimum temperature,
than my mental and physical unrest began to subside and
allow a reasonable normal outlook to develop, but a corresponding
bodily state. In effect. I made quite a good meal
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and found myself listening with lively interest to Thorndyke's account
of the technical processes involved in converting my little plaster
plaques and the wax mold into their final states in
copper and silver. Nevertheless, in the intervals of conversation, the
unforgettable events of the morning and the preceding night tended
to creep back into my consciousness, and now a question
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which I had hitherto hardly considered, began to clamor for
an answer. Towards the end of the meal, I put
it into words apropos of nothing in our previous conversation,
I asked, how did you know Thorndyke, And as he
looked up inquiringly, I added, I mean, how were you
able to make so confident a guess, for of course
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you couldn't actually know. When do you mean, he asked,
I mean that when you applied for a Home Office authority,
you must have had something to go on beyond a
mere guess. Certainly I had, He replied. It was not
a guess at all. It was a certainty. When I
made the application, I was able to say that I
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had positive knowledge that stelocine had been poisoned with arsenic
The examination of the poor child's body was not for
my information. I would have avoided it if that had
been possible, but it was not. As soon as my
declaration was made, the exhumation became inevitable. The Crown could
not have prosecuted on a charge of poisoning without an
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examination of the victim's body. But Thorndyke, I expostulated, how
could you have been certain? I mean certain in a
legal sense. Surely it could have been no more than
a matter of inference. It was not, he replied, It
was a matter of demonstrated fact. I could have taken
the case into court and proved the fact of arsenical poisoning.
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But of course the jury would have demanded evidence from
an examination of the body, and quite properly too. Every
possible corroboration should be obtained in a criminal trial. Certainly,
I agreed, But still I find your statement incomprehensible. You
speak of demonstrated fact, but what means of demonstration had
you there? Was my diary. I take it that that
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was the principal source of your information. In fact, I
can't think of any other. But the diary could only
have yielded documentary evidence, which is quite a different thing
from demonstrated fact. Quite he agreed, the diary contributed handsomely
to the train of circumstantial evidence that I had constructed.
But the demonstration, the final positive proof, came from another's source,
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A very curious and unexpected source, I suppose, said I.
As the case is finished and dealt with, there would
be no harm in my asking you how you arrived
at your conclusion. Not at all, he replied. The whole
investigation is a rather long story, but I will give
you a summary of it if you like. Why a summary,
I objected. I would rather have it in extent, so
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if it will not weary you to relate it, it
will be more likely to weary you, he replied, But
if you are equal to a link the exposition, let
us take to our easy chairs and combine bodily comfort
with forensic disc We drew up the two armchairs before
the hearth, and when Polton had made up the fire
and placed between us a small table furnished with a
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decanter and glasses, Thorndyke began his exposition. This case is,
in some respects one of the most curious and interesting
that I have met within the whole of my experience
of medical legal practice. At the first glance, as I
told you at the time, the problem that it presented
seemed hopelessly beyond solution. All the evidence appeared to be
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in the past and utterly irrecoverable. The vital questions were
concerned with events that had passed unrecorded, and of which
there seemed to be no possibility that they could ever
be disinterred from the oblivion in which they were buried.
Looking back now on the body of evidence that has
gradually accumulated, I am astonished at the way in which
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the apparently forgotten past has given up its secrets one
after another, until it has carried its revelation from surmise
to probability, and from probability at last to incontestable proof.
The inquiry divides itself into certain definite stages, each of
which added new matter to that which had gone before.
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We begin naturally with the inquest on Herald Monkhouse, and
we may consider this in three aspects, the ascertained condition
of the body, the evidence of the witnesses, and the
state of affairs disclosed by the proceedings viewed as a whole. First,
as to the body, there appeared to be no doubt
that Monk House died from our cynical poisoning, but there
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was no clear evidence as to how the poison had
been administered. It was assumed that it had been taken
in food or in medicine, that it had been swallowed,
and no alternative method of administration was suggested or considered.
But on studying the medical witness's evidence and comparing it
with the descriptions of the patient's symptoms, I was disposed
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to doubt whether the poison had actually been taken by
the mouth at all. Why, I exclaimed, how else could
it have been taken? There are quite a number of
different ways in which poisonous doses of arsenic can be
taken finely. Powdered arsenic is readily absorbed by the skin.
There have been several deaths from the use of violet
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powder contaminated with arsenic, and clothing containing powdered arsenic would
produce poisonous effects. Then there are certain arsenical gases, notably
arsene or our sinuated hydrogen, which are intensely poisonous and
which possibly account for a part of the symptoms in
poisoning from arsenical wall papers. There seemed to me to
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be some suggestion of arsenical gas in Monkhouse's case, but
it was obviously not pure gas poisoning. The impression conveyed
to me was that of a mixed poisoning, that the
arsenic had been partly inhaled and partly applied to the skin,
but very little, if any, taken by the mouth. You
are not forgetting that arsenic was actually found in the stomach, No,
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but the quantity was very minute, and a minute quantities
of no significance. One of the many odd and misleading
facts about arsenic poisoning is that in whatever way the
drug is taken, a small quantity is always found in
the stomach, and there are always some signs of gastric irritation.
The explanation seems to be that arsenic, which has got
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into the blood in any way through the skin, the lungs,
or otherwise, tends to be eliminated in part through the stomach.
At any rate, the fact is that the presence of
minute quantities of arsenic in the stomach affords no evidence
that the poison was swallowed. But I objected, what of
the Fowler solution which was found in the medicine? Exactly?
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Said he. That was the discrepancy that attracted my attention.
The assumption was the deceased had taken in his medicine
a quantity of Fowler solution representing about a grain and
a half of arcinious 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
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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 solution had
not been added, but no witness had noticed that after
the alleged change and before the death of deceased, the
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presence of the Fowler 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
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solution and 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.
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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.
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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
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the first glance, it seemed to bristle with suspicious facts.
But when those facts were scrutinized and 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
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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
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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 Milber 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
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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 concealed 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?
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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
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moral considerations, it is a perfectly rational motive for the
murder of the unwonted 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.
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But assuming its possibility for this argument, who could have
been affected by it? At once one saw that Madeleine
Norris was excluded. The death of Harold Monco's 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.
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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 warm
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
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to be borne in mind, and there were 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
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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 a
absence from home absolutely exclude the possibility of her being
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the poisoner? There were suggestions of skillful 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
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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
Fouler solution administered by mouth, but this could not possibly
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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 conditions
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
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I proposed to bear in mind in the interpretation of
any new evidence that might come into view. This brings
us to the end of the first stage, the conclusions
arrived at by a careful study of the depositions. But
following hard on the inquest was your visit to me
when you gave me the particulars of your past life
and your relations with Barbara and Monkhouse. Now your little
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autobiographical sketch was extremely enlife, and as it turned out,
of vital importance. In the first place, it made clear
to me that your relations with Barbara were much more
intimate than I had supposed. You were not merely friends
of long standing. You were virtually in the relation of
brother and sister. But with this very important difference that
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you were not brother and sister. An adopted brother is
a possible husband, an adopted sister is a possible wife.
And when I considered your departure to Canada, with the
intention of remaining there for life, and your unexpected return,
I found that the bare possibility that Barbara might wish
to be released from her marriage had acquired a certain
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measure of probability. But further, your narrative brought into view
another person who had died, and the death of that
person presented a certain analogy with the death of Monkhouse,
For if Barbara had wished to be your wife, both
these persons stood immovably in the way of her wishes.
Of course, there was no evidence that she had any
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such wish, and the death of Stella was alleged to
have been due to natural causes. Nevertheless, the faint hypothetical
suggestion offered by these new facts were strikingly similar to
those offered by the previous facts. The next stage opened
when I read your diary, especially the volume written during
the last year of Stella's life. But now when came
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out of the region of mere speculative hypothesis into that
of very definite suspicion, I had not read very far
when from your chance references to the symptoms of Stella's illness,
I came to the decided conclusion that, possibly mingled with
the symptoms of real disease were those of more or
less chronic or cynical poisoning. And what was even more impressive,
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those symptoms seem to be closely comparable with Monkhouse's symptoms,
particularly in the suggestion of a mixed poisoning, partly due
to minute doses of our scene. I need not go
into details, but you will remember that you make occasional
reference to slight attack of jaundice, which is very characteristic
of our scene poisoning, and to eye stream which the
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spectacles failed to relieve. But redness, smarting, and watering of
the eyes is an almost constant symptom of chronic arsenic poisoning,
and there were various other symptoms of a decidedly suspicious
character to which you refer, and which I need not
go into now. Then a careful study of the diary
brought into view another very impressive fact. There were considerable
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fluctuations in Stella's condition. Sometimes she appeared to be so
far improving as to lead you to some hopes of
her actual recovery. Then there would be a rather sudden
change for the worse, and she would lose more than
she had gained. Now, at this time, Barbara had already
become connected with the political movement, which periodically called her
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away from home for periods varying from one to four weeks.
And when I drew up a table of the dates
of her departures and returns, I found that the periods
included between them, that is, the periods during which he
was absent from home, coincided most singularly with Stella's relapses.
The coincidence was so complete that, when I had set
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the data out in a pair of diagrams in the
form of graphs, the resemblance of the two diagrams was
most striking. I will show you the diagrams presently But
there was something else that I was on the lookout
for in the diary, But it was only quite near
the end that I found it. Quite early, I learned
that Stella was accustomed to read and work at night
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by the light of a candle, But I could not
discover what sort of candle she used, whether it was
an ordinary household candle or one of some special kind.
At last I came on the entry in which he
described the making of the wax mold, and then I
had the information that I had been looking for. In
that entry, you mentioned that you began by lifting the
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reflector off the candle, by which I learned that the
receptacle use was not an ordinary candlestick. Then you remarked
that the candle was of a good hard wax, by
which I learned that it was not an ordinary household candle,
these being usually composed of a rather soft paraffin wax.
Apparently it was a steering candle, such as is made
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for use in candle lamps. But I expostulated, how could
it possibly matter what sort of candle she used? The
point seems to be quite irrelevant. The point, I replied,
was not only relevant, it was of crucial importance, But
I had better explain. When I was considering the circumstances
surrounding the poisoning of Monk House, I decided that the
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probabilities pointed to Barbara as the poisoner, but she was
a hundred miles away when the poisoning occurred. Hence, the
question that I asked myself was this, Was there any
method that was possible and practicable in the existing circumstances
by which Barbara could have arranged that the poisoning could
be effected during her absence? And the answer was that
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there was such a method, but only one. The food
and the medicine were prepared and administered by those who
were on the spot, but the candles were supplied by
Barber and by her put into the bedside candle box
before she went away, and they would operate during her absence.
But I exclaimed, do I understand you to suggest that
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it is possible to administer poison by means of a candle? Certainly,
he replied, it is quite possible and quite practicable if
a candle is charged with finely powdered arsenius acid white arsenic.
When the candle is burnt, the arsenius acid will be
partly vaporized and partly converted into our scene or our
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sinuated hydrogen. Most of the arcine will be burnt in
the flame and reconverted into arsenius acid, which will float
in the air as it condenses in the form of
an almost invisible white cloud. The actual result will be
that the air in the neighborhood of the candle will
contain small traces of our scene, which is an intensely
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poison in his gas, and considerable quantities of arcinius acid
floating about in the form of infinitely minute crystals. This
impalpable dust will be breathed into the lungs of any
person near the candle, and will settle on the skin,
from which it will be readily absorbed into the blood
and produce all the poisonous effects of arsenic Now, in
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the case of Harold monk House, not only was there
a special kind of candle supplied by the suspected person,
but as I have told you, the symptoms during life
and the appearances of the dead body all seem to
me to point to some method of poisoning through the
lungs and skin, rather than by way of the stomach
and also suggested a mixed poisoning in which are seen
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played some part, so that the candle was not only
a possible medium of the poisoning, it was by far
the most probable. Hence, when I came to consider Stella's
illness and noted the strong suggestion of arsenic poisoning, and
when I noted the parallelism of her illness without monk hosts,
I naturally kept a watchful eye for a possible parallelism
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in the method of administering the poison. And not only
did I find that parallelism, but in that very entry
I found strong confirmation of my suspicion that the candle
was poison You will remember that you mentioned the circumstance
that on the night following the making of the wax mold,
you were quite seriously unwell. Apparently you were suffering from
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a slight attack of acute or cynical poisoning due to
your having inhaled some of the fumes from the burning candle. Yes,
I remember that, said I. But what is puzzling me
is how the candles could have been obtained. Surely it
is not possible to buy our cynical candles. No, he replied,
it is not, but it is possible to buy a
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candle mold with which it is quite easy to make them.
Remember that not so very long ago most country people
used to make their own candles, and the hinged molds
that they used are still by no means rare. You
will find specimens in most local museums and in curio
shops in country towns, and you can often pick them
up in farmhouse sales. And if you have a candle mold,
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the making of our cenical candles is quite a simple affair. Barbara,
as we know, used to buy a particular German brand
of steering candles. All that she had to do was
to melt the candles, put the separated wicks into a mold,
stir some finely powdered white arsenic into the melted wax,
and pour it into the mold. When the wax was cool,
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the mold would be opened and the candles taken out.
These hinged molds usually made about six candles at a time.
Then it would be necessary to scrape off the seam
left by the mold and smooth the candles to make
them look like those sold in the shops. It was
a most diabolically ingenious scheme, said I it was. He agreed,
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The whole villainous plan was very completely conceived and most
efficiently carried out. But to return to our argument, the
discovery that Stella had us used a special form of
candle left me in very little doubt that Barber was
the poisoner and that poison candles had been the medium
used in both crimes. For we were now out of
the region of mere hypothesis. We were dealing with genuine,
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circumstantial evidence. But that evidence was still much too largely
inferential to serve as the material for a prosecution. We
still needed some facts of a definite and tangible kind.
And as soon as you came back from your travels
on the Southeastern circuit, fresh facts began to accumulate, passing
over the proceedings of Wallingford and his follower and the
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Infernal Machine, all of which were encouraging as offering corroboration,
but of no immediate assistance. The first really important accretion
of evidence occurred in the connection with our visit to
the empty house in Hillborough Square. Ha I exclaimed, then
you did find something significant in spite of your pestimistic
tone at the time. I may say Thorndyke that I
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had a feeling that you went to that house with
a definite expectation of finding some specific thing. Was I wrong? No,
you were right. I went there with the expectation of
finding one thing and a faint hope of finding another,
and both the expectation and the hope were justified by
the event. My main purpose in that expedition was to
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obtain samples of the wallpaper from monk House's room, but
I thought it just possible that the soot from the
bedroom chimneys might yield some information, and it did. To
begin with the wallpaper, the condition of the room made
it easy to secure specimens. I tore off about a
dozen pieces and wrote a number on each to correspond
(30:40):
with numbers that I marked on a rough sketch plan
of the room, which I drew first. My expectation was that, if,
as I believed, arsenical candles had been burnt in that room,
arsenic would have been deposited on all the walls, but
in varying amounts proportionate to the distance of the wall
from the candle. The loose piece of paper on the
wall by the bed was of course, the real touchstone
(31:02):
of the case, for if there was no arsenic in it,
the theory of their cynical candle would hardly be tenable.
I therefore took the extra precaution of writing a full
description of his position on the back of the piece
and deposited it for a greater safety in my letter case.
As soon as I reached home that day, I spread
out the torn fragment on the wide stage of a
(31:24):
culture microscope and examined its outer surface with a strong
top light, and the very first glance settled the question.
The whole surface was spangled over with minute crystals, many
of them hardly a ten thousands of an inch in diameter,
sparkling in the strong light like diamonds, and perfectly unmistakable
the characteristic octahedral crystals of arcinious acid. But distinctive as
(31:48):
they were, I took nothing for granted. Snipping off a
good sized piece of the paper, I submitted it to
the marsh Burzellious test and got a very pronounced arsenical mirror,
which put the matter beyond any possible doubt or question.
I may add that I tested all the other pieces
and got an arsenic reaction from them, all varying roughly
(32:09):
according to their distance from the table on which the
candles stood. Thus, the existence of the arsenical candle was
no longer a matter of hypothesis or even of mere probability.
It was virtually a demonstrated fact. The next question was
who put the arsenic into the candle. All the evidence
such as it was pointed to Barbara, but there was
(32:30):
not enough of it. No single fact connected her quite
definitely with the candles, and it had to be admitted
that they had passed through other hands than hers, and
that the candle box was accessible to several people, especially
during her absence. Clear evidence, then was required to associate
her or someone else with those poisoned candles, and I
(32:52):
had just a faint hope that such evidence might be forthcoming.
This was how I reasoned. Here was a case of
poisoning in which the poison was self administered and the
actual poisoner was absent. Consequently, it was impossible to give
a calculated dose on a given occasion, nor was it
possible to estimate in advance the amount that would be
(33:13):
necessary to produce the desired result, Since the poison was
to be left within reach of the victim to be taken.
From time to time, it would be necessary to leave
a quantity considerably in excess of the amount actually required
to produce death. On any one occasion. It is probable
that all the candles in the box were poisoned. In
(33:34):
any case, most of them must have been, and as
the box was filled to last for the whole intended
time of Barber's absence, there would be a remainder of
poisoned candles in the box when monk House died. But
the incident of the faked medicine showed that the poisoner
was fully alive, to the possibility of an examination of
the room, it was not likely that so cautious a
(33:57):
criminal would leave such damning evidence as the arsenical candles
in full view, For if by chance one of them
had been lighted and the bearer had developed symptoms of poisoning,
the murder would almost certainly have been out. In any case,
we could assume that the poisoner would remove them and
destroy them after putting ordinary candles in their place. But
(34:17):
a candle is not a very easy thing to destroy.
You can't throw it down a sink or smash it
up and cast it into the rubbish bin. It must
be burnt, and owing to its inflammability, it must be
burnt carefully and rather slowly. And if it contains a
big charge of arsenic, the operator must take considerable precautions.
(34:37):
And finally, these particular candles had to be burnt secretly.
Hav In regard to these considerations, I decided that the
only safe and practicable way to get rid of them
was to burn them in a fireplace with the window
wide open. This would have to be done at night
when all the household was asleep, so as to be
safe from interruption and discovery, and a screen would have
(35:00):
to be put before the fireplace to prevent the glare
from being visible through the open window. If there were
a fire in the grate, so much the better. The
candles could be cut up into small pieces and thrown
into the fire one at a time. Of course, the
whole matter was speculative. There might have been no surplus candles,
or if there were, they might have been taken out
(35:21):
of the house and disposed of in some other way.
But one could only act on the obvious probabilities and
examine the chimneys. Remembering that whereas a negative result would
prove nothing for or against any particular person. A positive
result would furnish very weighty evidence. Accordingly, I collected samples
of soot from the various bedroom chimneys and from that
(35:43):
of Barber's boudoir, labeling each of them with the aid
of the cards which you had left in the respective rooms.
The results were, I think quite conclusive. When I submitted
the samples to analysis, I found them all practically free
from arsenic disregarding the minute traces of one expects to
find an ordinary soot. With one exception, the set from
(36:05):
Barbara's bedroom chimney yielded not mere traces, but an easily
measurable quantity, much too large to have been attributable to
the coal burnt in the grate. Thus you see, so
far as the murder of Monk House was concerned, there
was a fairly conclusive case against Barbara. It left not
a shadow of doubt in my mind that she was
the guilty person. But you will also see that it
(36:27):
was not a satisfactory case to take into court. The
whole of the evidence was scientific and might have appeared
rather unconvincing to the ordinary juryman, though it would have
been convincing enough to the judge. I debated with myself
whether I should communicate my discoveries to the police and
leave them to decide for or against the prosecution, whether
(36:47):
I should keep silence and seek for further evidence, And
finally I decided for the present to keep my own counsel.
You will understand why, yes, said I, you suspected that
Stella too had been poisoned. Exactly, I had very little
doubt of it. And you will notice that in this
case there was available evidence of a kind that would
(37:09):
be quite convincing to a jury, evidence obtainable from an
examination of the victim's body. But here again I was
disposed to adopt the waiting policy for three reasons. First,
I should have liked to avoid the exhumation if possible. Second,
if the exhumation were unavoidable, I was unwilling to apply
for it until I was certain that arsenic would be
(37:30):
found in the body. And third, although the proof that
Stella had been poisoned would have strengthened the case enormously
against Barbara, it would yet have added nothing to the
evidence that a poison candle had been used. But proof
of the poison candle was the kernel of the case
against Barbara. If I could prove that Stella had been
poisoned by means of a candle, that would render the
(37:52):
evidence absolutely irresistible. This I was not at present able
to do. But I had some slight hopes that the
efficiency might be made up, that some new facts might
come into view if I waited, And as there was
nothing that called for immediate action, I decided to wait,
and in due course the deficiency was made up, and
(38:12):
the new facts did come into view. As he paused,
I picked up Stella's medallion and looked at it with
a new and somber interest. Holding it up before him,
I said, I am assuming Thorndyke that the new facts
were in some way connected with this. Am I right? Yes,
they replied, you are entirely right. The connection between that
(38:33):
charming little work and the evidence that sent that monster
of wickedness to her death is one of the strangest
and most impressive circumstances that has become known to me
in the whole of my experience. It is no exaggeration
to say that when you and Stella were working on
that medallion, you were forging the last link in the
chain of evidence that could have dragged them murderous to
(38:53):
the gallows. He paused, and, having replenished my glass, took
the medallion in his hand and looked at the thought thoughtfully.
Then he knocked out and refilled his pipe, and I
waited expectantly for the completion of this singular story. End
of Chapter seventeen.
Chapter seventeen of As a Thief in the Night by R.
Austin Freeman. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Thorndyke retraces the trail. Apparently Thorndyke had seen me from
the window as I crossed the walk, for when I
reached the landing, I found him standing in the open
doorway of his chambers, and at the sight of him,
(00:23):
whatever traces of unreasonable resentment may have lingered in my
mind melted away. Instantly. He grasped my hand with almost
affectionate warmth, and, looking at me earnestly and with the
most kindly solicitude, said I am glad you have come, Mayfield.
I couldn't bear to think of you alone in your chambers,
haunted by this horrible tragedy. You have heard then about Barbara,
(00:46):
I mean yes, Mother called and told me. Of course,
he is righteously angry that she has escaped, and I
sympathize with him. But for us, for you and me,
it is a great deliverance. I was profoundly relieved when
I heard that she was gone, that the axe had
fallen once for all. Yes, I admitted, it was better
(01:07):
than the frightful alternative of a trial in what would
have followed. But still it was terrible to see her
lying dead, and to know that it was my hand,
the hand of her oldest and dearest friend, that had
struck the blow. It was my hand, Mayfield, not yours,
had actually struck the blow. But even if it had
been yours instead of your agents, what could have been
(01:28):
more just and proper than that retribution should have come
through the hand of the friend and guardian of that
poor murdered girl. I assented with a shudder to the
truth of what he had said, But still my mind
was too confused to allow me to see things in
their true perspective. Barbara, my friend, was still more real
to me than Barbara the murderous. He nodded sympathetically enough
(01:50):
when I explained this, but rejoined firmly. You must try,
my dear fellow, to see things as they really are.
Shocking as this tragedy is, it would been immeasurably worse
if that terrible woman had not received timely warning. As
it is, the horrible affair has run its course swiftly
and is at an end. And do not forget that
(02:11):
if the axe has fallen on the guilty. Its menace
has been lifted from the innocent. Madeline Norris and Anthony
Wallingford will sleep in peace to night, free from the
specter of suspicion that has haunted them ever since Harold
Monkoffs died. As to the woman whose body you found
this morning, she was a monster. She could not have
been permitted to live. Her very existence was a menace
(02:34):
to the lives of all who came into contact with her. Again,
I could not but ascend to his stern indictment and
his impartial statement of the facts. Very well, Mayfield said.
He then, try to put it to yourself that for you,
the worst has happened and is done with. Try to
put it away as a thing that now belongs to
the past, and is in so far as it is possible,
(02:57):
to be forgotten, as far as is possible, I repeated, Yes,
of course you are quite right, Thorndyke. But forgetfulness is
not a thing which we can command at will. Very true,
he replied, But yet we can control, to a large
extent the direction of our thoughts. We can find interests
and occupations. And speaking of occupations, let me show you
(03:19):
some of Polton's productions. He rose, and, putting a small
table by the side of my chair, placed on it
one or two small copper plaques and a silver medallion
which he had taken from a drawer. The medallion was
the self portrait of Stella, which had lain dormant in
the wax mold through all the years which had passed
since her death. And as I took it in my
(03:40):
hand and gazed at the beloved face, I found it beautiful,
beyond my expectations. It is a most charming little work,
I said, holding it so that the lamp light fell
most favorably on the relic. I am infinitely obliged to you. Thorndyke,
don't thank me, said he. The whole credit is due
to Polton that he wants any thanks. But the work
(04:01):
has yielded him hours of perfect happiness. But here he
is with the products of another kind of work. As
he spoke, Polton entered with a tray and began, in
his neat, noiseless way to lay the table. I don't
know how much he knew, but when I caught his
eye and his smile of greeting, it seemed to me
that friendliness and kindly sympathy exuded from every line of
(04:22):
his quaint, crinkly face. I thanked him for his skillful
treatment of my treasures, and then, observing that he was
apparently laying the table for supper, would have excused myself.
But Thorndyke would hear of no excuses. My dear fellow,
said he. You are the very picture of physical exhaustion.
I suspect that you have had practically no food to day.
(04:45):
Amir will help you to begin to get back to normal,
And in any case, you mustn't disappoint Polton, who has
been expecting you to supper, and has probably made a
special effort to do credit to the establishment. I could
only repeat my acknowledgments of Polton's goodness, noting that he
certainly must have made a special effort to judge by
the results which began to make themselves evident, and conquering
(05:08):
my repugnance to the idea of eating, take my place
at the table. It is perhaps somewhat humiliating to reflect
that our emotional states, which we are apt to consider
on a lofty spiritual plane, are controlled by matters so
grossly material as the mere contents of our stomachs, but
such as the degrading truth, as I now realized, for
(05:29):
no sooner had I commenced a reluctant attack on the
products of Polton's efforts and drunk a glass of burgundy
delicately worn by that versatile artist to the exact optimum temperature,
than my mental and physical unrest began to subside and
allow a reasonable normal outlook to develop, but a corresponding
bodily state. In effect. I made quite a good meal
(05:51):
and found myself listening with lively interest to Thorndyke's account
of the technical processes involved in converting my little plaster
plaques and the wax mold into their final states in
copper and silver. Nevertheless, in the intervals of conversation, the
unforgettable events of the morning and the preceding night tended
to creep back into my consciousness, and now a question
(06:13):
which I had hitherto hardly considered, began to clamor for
an answer. Towards the end of the meal, I put
it into words apropos of nothing in our previous conversation,
I asked, how did you know Thorndyke, And as he
looked up inquiringly, I added, I mean, how were you
able to make so confident a guess, for of course
(06:34):
you couldn't actually know. When do you mean, he asked,
I mean that when you applied for a Home Office authority,
you must have had something to go on beyond a
mere guess. Certainly I had, He replied. It was not
a guess at all. It was a certainty. When I
made the application, I was able to say that I
(06:54):
had positive knowledge that stelocine had been poisoned with arsenic
The examination of the poor child's body was not for
my information. I would have avoided it if that had
been possible, but it was not. As soon as my
declaration was made, the exhumation became inevitable. The Crown could
not have prosecuted on a charge of poisoning without an
(07:15):
examination of the victim's body. But Thorndyke, I expostulated, how
could you have been certain? I mean certain in a
legal sense. Surely it could have been no more than
a matter of inference. It was not, he replied, It
was a matter of demonstrated fact. I could have taken
the case into court and proved the fact of arsenical poisoning.
(07:37):
But of course the jury would have demanded evidence from
an examination of the body, and quite properly too. Every
possible corroboration should be obtained in a criminal trial. Certainly,
I agreed, But still I find your statement incomprehensible. You
speak of demonstrated fact, but what means of demonstration had
you there? Was my diary. I take it that that
(08:01):
was the principal source of your information. In fact, I
can't think of any other. But the diary could only
have yielded documentary evidence, which is quite a different thing
from demonstrated fact. Quite he agreed, the diary contributed handsomely
to the train of circumstantial evidence that I had constructed.
But the demonstration, the final positive proof, came from another's source,
(08:24):
A very curious and unexpected source, I suppose, said I.
As the case is finished and dealt with, there would
be no harm in my asking you how you arrived
at your conclusion. Not at all, he replied. The whole
investigation is a rather long story, but I will give
you a summary of it if you like. Why a summary,
I objected. I would rather have it in extent, so
(08:46):
if it will not weary you to relate it, it
will be more likely to weary you, he replied, But
if you are equal to a link the exposition, let
us take to our easy chairs and combine bodily comfort
with forensic disc We drew up the two armchairs before
the hearth, and when Polton had made up the fire
and placed between us a small table furnished with a
(09:07):
decanter and glasses, Thorndyke began his exposition. This case is,
in some respects one of the most curious and interesting
that I have met within the whole of my experience
of medical legal practice. At the first glance, as I
told you at the time, the problem that it presented
seemed hopelessly beyond solution. All the evidence appeared to be
(09:28):
in the past and utterly irrecoverable. The vital questions were
concerned with events that had passed unrecorded, and of which
there seemed to be no possibility that they could ever
be disinterred from the oblivion in which they were buried.
Looking back now on the body of evidence that has
gradually accumulated, I am astonished at the way in which
(09:48):
the apparently forgotten past has given up its secrets one
after another, until it has carried its revelation from surmise
to probability, and from probability at last to incontestable proof.
The inquiry divides itself into certain definite stages, each of
which added new matter to that which had gone before.
(10:09):
We begin naturally with the inquest on Herald Monkhouse, and
we may consider this in three aspects, the ascertained condition
of the body, the evidence of the witnesses, and the
state of affairs disclosed by the proceedings viewed as a whole. First,
as to the body, there appeared to be no doubt
that Monk House died from our cynical poisoning, but there
(10:30):
was no clear evidence as to how the poison had
been administered. It was assumed that it had been taken
in food or in medicine, that it had been swallowed,
and no alternative method of administration was suggested or considered.
But on studying the medical witness's evidence and comparing it
with the descriptions of the patient's symptoms, I was disposed
(10:51):
to doubt whether the poison had actually been taken by
the mouth at all. Why, I exclaimed, how else could
it have been taken? There are quite a number of
different ways in which poisonous doses of arsenic can be
taken finely. Powdered arsenic is readily absorbed by the skin.
There have been several deaths from the use of violet
(11:12):
powder contaminated with arsenic, and clothing containing powdered arsenic would
produce poisonous effects. Then there are certain arsenical gases, notably
arsene or our sinuated hydrogen, which are intensely poisonous and
which possibly account for a part of the symptoms in
poisoning from arsenical wall papers. There seemed to me to
(11:33):
be some suggestion of arsenical gas in Monkhouse's case, but
it was obviously not pure gas poisoning. The impression conveyed
to me was that of a mixed poisoning, that the
arsenic had been partly inhaled and partly applied to the skin,
but very little, if any, taken by the mouth. You
are not forgetting that arsenic was actually found in the stomach, No,
(11:56):
but the quantity was very minute, and a minute quantities
of no significance. One of the many odd and misleading
facts about arsenic poisoning is that in whatever way the
drug is taken, a small quantity is always found in
the stomach, and there are always some signs of gastric irritation.
The explanation seems to be that arsenic, which has got
(12:17):
into the blood in any way through the skin, the lungs,
or otherwise, tends to be eliminated in part through the stomach.
At any rate, the fact is that the presence of
minute quantities of arsenic in the stomach affords no evidence
that the poison was swallowed. But I objected, what of
the Fowler solution which was found in the medicine? Exactly?
(12:40):
Said he. That was the discrepancy that attracted my attention.
The assumption was the deceased had taken in his medicine
a quantity of Fowler solution representing about a grain and
a half of arcinious 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
(13:02):
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 solution had
not been added, but no witness had noticed that after
the alleged change and before the death of deceased, the
(13:23):
presence of the Fowler 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
(13:43):
solution and 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.
(14:05):
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.
(14:27):
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
(14:47):
the first glance, it seemed to bristle with suspicious facts.
But when those facts were scrutinized and 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
(15:07):
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
(15:29):
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 Milber 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
(15:50):
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 concealed 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?
(16:12):
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
(16:35):
moral considerations, it is a perfectly rational motive for the
murder of the unwonted 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.
(16:58):
But assuming its possibility for this argument, who could have
been affected by it? At once one saw that Madeleine
Norris was excluded. The death of Harold Monco's 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.
(17:20):
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 warm
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
(17:40):
to be borne in mind, and there were 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
(18:02):
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 a
absence from home absolutely exclude the possibility of her being
(18:24):
the poisoner? There were suggestions of skillful 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
(18:47):
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
Fouler solution administered by mouth, but this could not possibly
(19:10):
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 conditions
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
(19:34):
I proposed to bear in mind in the interpretation of
any new evidence that might come into view. This brings
us to the end of the first stage, the conclusions
arrived at by a careful study of the depositions. But
following hard on the inquest was your visit to me
when you gave me the particulars of your past life
and your relations with Barbara and Monkhouse. Now your little
(19:57):
autobiographical sketch was extremely enlife, and as it turned out,
of vital importance. In the first place, it made clear
to me that your relations with Barbara were much more
intimate than I had supposed. You were not merely friends
of long standing. You were virtually in the relation of
brother and sister. But with this very important difference that
(20:19):
you were not brother and sister. An adopted brother is
a possible husband, an adopted sister is a possible wife.
And when I considered your departure to Canada, with the
intention of remaining there for life, and your unexpected return,
I found that the bare possibility that Barbara might wish
to be released from her marriage had acquired a certain
(20:39):
measure of probability. But further, your narrative brought into view
another person who had died, and the death of that
person presented a certain analogy with the death of Monkhouse,
For if Barbara had wished to be your wife, both
these persons stood immovably in the way of her wishes.
Of course, there was no evidence that she had any
(21:00):
such wish, and the death of Stella was alleged to
have been due to natural causes. Nevertheless, the faint hypothetical
suggestion offered by these new facts were strikingly similar to
those offered by the previous facts. The next stage opened
when I read your diary, especially the volume written during
the last year of Stella's life. But now when came
(21:22):
out of the region of mere speculative hypothesis into that
of very definite suspicion, I had not read very far
when from your chance references to the symptoms of Stella's illness,
I came to the decided conclusion that, possibly mingled with
the symptoms of real disease were those of more or
less chronic or cynical poisoning. And what was even more impressive,
(21:44):
those symptoms seem to be closely comparable with Monkhouse's symptoms,
particularly in the suggestion of a mixed poisoning, partly due
to minute doses of our scene. I need not go
into details, but you will remember that you make occasional
reference to slight attack of jaundice, which is very characteristic
of our scene poisoning, and to eye stream which the
(22:06):
spectacles failed to relieve. But redness, smarting, and watering of
the eyes is an almost constant symptom of chronic arsenic poisoning,
and there were various other symptoms of a decidedly suspicious
character to which you refer, and which I need not
go into now. Then a careful study of the diary
brought into view another very impressive fact. There were considerable
(22:29):
fluctuations in Stella's condition. Sometimes she appeared to be so
far improving as to lead you to some hopes of
her actual recovery. Then there would be a rather sudden
change for the worse, and she would lose more than
she had gained. Now, at this time, Barbara had already
become connected with the political movement, which periodically called her
(22:49):
away from home for periods varying from one to four weeks.
And when I drew up a table of the dates
of her departures and returns, I found that the periods
included between them, that is, the periods during which he
was absent from home, coincided most singularly with Stella's relapses.
The coincidence was so complete that, when I had set
(23:10):
the data out in a pair of diagrams in the
form of graphs, the resemblance of the two diagrams was
most striking. I will show you the diagrams presently But
there was something else that I was on the lookout
for in the diary, But it was only quite near
the end that I found it. Quite early, I learned
that Stella was accustomed to read and work at night
(23:31):
by the light of a candle, But I could not
discover what sort of candle she used, whether it was
an ordinary household candle or one of some special kind.
At last I came on the entry in which he
described the making of the wax mold, and then I
had the information that I had been looking for. In
that entry, you mentioned that you began by lifting the
(23:52):
reflector off the candle, by which I learned that the
receptacle use was not an ordinary candlestick. Then you remarked
that the candle was of a good hard wax, by
which I learned that it was not an ordinary household candle,
these being usually composed of a rather soft paraffin wax.
Apparently it was a steering candle, such as is made
(24:13):
for use in candle lamps. But I expostulated, how could
it possibly matter what sort of candle she used? The
point seems to be quite irrelevant. The point, I replied,
was not only relevant, it was of crucial importance, But
I had better explain. When I was considering the circumstances
surrounding the poisoning of Monk House, I decided that the
(24:36):
probabilities pointed to Barbara as the poisoner, but she was
a hundred miles away when the poisoning occurred. Hence, the
question that I asked myself was this, Was there any
method that was possible and practicable in the existing circumstances
by which Barbara could have arranged that the poisoning could
be effected during her absence? And the answer was that
(24:58):
there was such a method, but only one. The food
and the medicine were prepared and administered by those who
were on the spot, but the candles were supplied by
Barber and by her put into the bedside candle box
before she went away, and they would operate during her absence.
But I exclaimed, do I understand you to suggest that
(25:18):
it is possible to administer poison by means of a candle? Certainly,
he replied, it is quite possible and quite practicable if
a candle is charged with finely powdered arsenius acid white arsenic.
When the candle is burnt, the arsenius acid will be
partly vaporized and partly converted into our scene or our
(25:39):
sinuated hydrogen. Most of the arcine will be burnt in
the flame and reconverted into arsenius acid, which will float
in the air as it condenses in the form of
an almost invisible white cloud. The actual result will be
that the air in the neighborhood of the candle will
contain small traces of our scene, which is an intensely
(25:59):
poison in his gas, and considerable quantities of arcinius acid
floating about in the form of infinitely minute crystals. This
impalpable dust will be breathed into the lungs of any
person near the candle, and will settle on the skin,
from which it will be readily absorbed into the blood
and produce all the poisonous effects of arsenic Now, in
(26:21):
the case of Harold monk House, not only was there
a special kind of candle supplied by the suspected person,
but as I have told you, the symptoms during life
and the appearances of the dead body all seem to
me to point to some method of poisoning through the
lungs and skin, rather than by way of the stomach
and also suggested a mixed poisoning in which are seen
(26:42):
played some part, so that the candle was not only
a possible medium of the poisoning, it was by far
the most probable. Hence, when I came to consider Stella's
illness and noted the strong suggestion of arsenic poisoning, and
when I noted the parallelism of her illness without monk hosts,
I naturally kept a watchful eye for a possible parallelism
(27:04):
in the method of administering the poison. And not only
did I find that parallelism, but in that very entry
I found strong confirmation of my suspicion that the candle
was poison You will remember that you mentioned the circumstance
that on the night following the making of the wax mold,
you were quite seriously unwell. Apparently you were suffering from
(27:25):
a slight attack of acute or cynical poisoning due to
your having inhaled some of the fumes from the burning candle. Yes,
I remember that, said I. But what is puzzling me
is how the candles could have been obtained. Surely it
is not possible to buy our cynical candles. No, he replied,
it is not, but it is possible to buy a
(27:46):
candle mold with which it is quite easy to make them.
Remember that not so very long ago most country people
used to make their own candles, and the hinged molds
that they used are still by no means rare. You
will find specimens in most local museums and in curio
shops in country towns, and you can often pick them
up in farmhouse sales. And if you have a candle mold,
(28:09):
the making of our cenical candles is quite a simple affair. Barbara,
as we know, used to buy a particular German brand
of steering candles. All that she had to do was
to melt the candles, put the separated wicks into a mold,
stir some finely powdered white arsenic into the melted wax,
and pour it into the mold. When the wax was cool,
(28:29):
the mold would be opened and the candles taken out.
These hinged molds usually made about six candles at a time.
Then it would be necessary to scrape off the seam
left by the mold and smooth the candles to make
them look like those sold in the shops. It was
a most diabolically ingenious scheme, said I it was. He agreed,
(28:50):
The whole villainous plan was very completely conceived and most
efficiently carried out. But to return to our argument, the
discovery that Stella had us used a special form of
candle left me in very little doubt that Barber was
the poisoner and that poison candles had been the medium
used in both crimes. For we were now out of
the region of mere hypothesis. We were dealing with genuine,
(29:14):
circumstantial evidence. But that evidence was still much too largely
inferential to serve as the material for a prosecution. We
still needed some facts of a definite and tangible kind.
And as soon as you came back from your travels
on the Southeastern circuit, fresh facts began to accumulate, passing
over the proceedings of Wallingford and his follower and the
(29:36):
Infernal Machine, all of which were encouraging as offering corroboration,
but of no immediate assistance. The first really important accretion
of evidence occurred in the connection with our visit to
the empty house in Hillborough Square. Ha I exclaimed, then
you did find something significant in spite of your pestimistic
tone at the time. I may say Thorndyke that I
(29:59):
had a feeling that you went to that house with
a definite expectation of finding some specific thing. Was I wrong? No,
you were right. I went there with the expectation of
finding one thing and a faint hope of finding another,
and both the expectation and the hope were justified by
the event. My main purpose in that expedition was to
(30:20):
obtain samples of the wallpaper from monk House's room, but
I thought it just possible that the soot from the
bedroom chimneys might yield some information, and it did. To
begin with the wallpaper, the condition of the room made
it easy to secure specimens. I tore off about a
dozen pieces and wrote a number on each to correspond
(30:40):
with numbers that I marked on a rough sketch plan
of the room, which I drew first. My expectation was that, if,
as I believed, arsenical candles had been burnt in that room,
arsenic would have been deposited on all the walls, but
in varying amounts proportionate to the distance of the wall
from the candle. The loose piece of paper on the
wall by the bed was of course, the real touchstone
(31:02):
of the case, for if there was no arsenic in it,
the theory of their cynical candle would hardly be tenable.
I therefore took the extra precaution of writing a full
description of his position on the back of the piece
and deposited it for a greater safety in my letter case.
As soon as I reached home that day, I spread
out the torn fragment on the wide stage of a
(31:24):
culture microscope and examined its outer surface with a strong
top light, and the very first glance settled the question.
The whole surface was spangled over with minute crystals, many
of them hardly a ten thousands of an inch in diameter,
sparkling in the strong light like diamonds, and perfectly unmistakable
the characteristic octahedral crystals of arcinious acid. But distinctive as
(31:48):
they were, I took nothing for granted. Snipping off a
good sized piece of the paper, I submitted it to
the marsh Burzellious test and got a very pronounced arsenical mirror,
which put the matter beyond any possible doubt or question.
I may add that I tested all the other pieces
and got an arsenic reaction from them, all varying roughly
(32:09):
according to their distance from the table on which the
candles stood. Thus, the existence of the arsenical candle was
no longer a matter of hypothesis or even of mere probability.
It was virtually a demonstrated fact. The next question was
who put the arsenic into the candle. All the evidence
such as it was pointed to Barbara, but there was
(32:30):
not enough of it. No single fact connected her quite
definitely with the candles, and it had to be admitted
that they had passed through other hands than hers, and
that the candle box was accessible to several people, especially
during her absence. Clear evidence, then was required to associate
her or someone else with those poisoned candles, and I
(32:52):
had just a faint hope that such evidence might be forthcoming.
This was how I reasoned. Here was a case of
poisoning in which the poison was self administered and the
actual poisoner was absent. Consequently, it was impossible to give
a calculated dose on a given occasion, nor was it
possible to estimate in advance the amount that would be
(33:13):
necessary to produce the desired result, Since the poison was
to be left within reach of the victim to be taken.
From time to time, it would be necessary to leave
a quantity considerably in excess of the amount actually required
to produce death. On any one occasion. It is probable
that all the candles in the box were poisoned. In
(33:34):
any case, most of them must have been, and as
the box was filled to last for the whole intended
time of Barber's absence, there would be a remainder of
poisoned candles in the box when monk House died. But
the incident of the faked medicine showed that the poisoner
was fully alive, to the possibility of an examination of
the room, it was not likely that so cautious a
(33:57):
criminal would leave such damning evidence as the arsenical candles
in full view, For if by chance one of them
had been lighted and the bearer had developed symptoms of poisoning,
the murder would almost certainly have been out. In any case,
we could assume that the poisoner would remove them and
destroy them after putting ordinary candles in their place. But
(34:17):
a candle is not a very easy thing to destroy.
You can't throw it down a sink or smash it
up and cast it into the rubbish bin. It must
be burnt, and owing to its inflammability, it must be
burnt carefully and rather slowly. And if it contains a
big charge of arsenic, the operator must take considerable precautions.
(34:37):
And finally, these particular candles had to be burnt secretly.
Hav In regard to these considerations, I decided that the
only safe and practicable way to get rid of them
was to burn them in a fireplace with the window
wide open. This would have to be done at night
when all the household was asleep, so as to be
safe from interruption and discovery, and a screen would have
(35:00):
to be put before the fireplace to prevent the glare
from being visible through the open window. If there were
a fire in the grate, so much the better. The
candles could be cut up into small pieces and thrown
into the fire one at a time. Of course, the
whole matter was speculative. There might have been no surplus candles,
or if there were, they might have been taken out
(35:21):
of the house and disposed of in some other way.
But one could only act on the obvious probabilities and
examine the chimneys. Remembering that whereas a negative result would
prove nothing for or against any particular person. A positive
result would furnish very weighty evidence. Accordingly, I collected samples
of soot from the various bedroom chimneys and from that
(35:43):
of Barber's boudoir, labeling each of them with the aid
of the cards which you had left in the respective rooms.
The results were, I think quite conclusive. When I submitted
the samples to analysis, I found them all practically free
from arsenic disregarding the minute traces of one expects to
find an ordinary soot. With one exception, the set from
(36:05):
Barbara's bedroom chimney yielded not mere traces, but an easily
measurable quantity, much too large to have been attributable to
the coal burnt in the grate. Thus you see, so
far as the murder of Monk House was concerned, there
was a fairly conclusive case against Barbara. It left not
a shadow of doubt in my mind that she was
the guilty person. But you will also see that it
(36:27):
was not a satisfactory case to take into court. The
whole of the evidence was scientific and might have appeared
rather unconvincing to the ordinary juryman, though it would have
been convincing enough to the judge. I debated with myself
whether I should communicate my discoveries to the police and
leave them to decide for or against the prosecution, whether
(36:47):
I should keep silence and seek for further evidence, And
finally I decided for the present to keep my own counsel.
You will understand why, yes, said I, you suspected that
Stella too had been poisoned. Exactly, I had very little
doubt of it. And you will notice that in this
case there was available evidence of a kind that would
(37:09):
be quite convincing to a jury, evidence obtainable from an
examination of the victim's body. But here again I was
disposed to adopt the waiting policy for three reasons. First,
I should have liked to avoid the exhumation if possible. Second,
if the exhumation were unavoidable, I was unwilling to apply
for it until I was certain that arsenic would be
(37:30):
found in the body. And third, although the proof that
Stella had been poisoned would have strengthened the case enormously
against Barbara, it would yet have added nothing to the
evidence that a poison candle had been used. But proof
of the poison candle was the kernel of the case
against Barbara. If I could prove that Stella had been
poisoned by means of a candle, that would render the
(37:52):
evidence absolutely irresistible. This I was not at present able
to do. But I had some slight hopes that the
efficiency might be made up, that some new facts might
come into view if I waited, And as there was
nothing that called for immediate action, I decided to wait,
and in due course the deficiency was made up, and
(38:12):
the new facts did come into view. As he paused,
I picked up Stella's medallion and looked at it with
a new and somber interest. Holding it up before him,
I said, I am assuming Thorndyke that the new facts
were in some way connected with this. Am I right? Yes,
they replied, you are entirely right. The connection between that
(38:33):
charming little work and the evidence that sent that monster
of wickedness to her death is one of the strangest
and most impressive circumstances that has become known to me
in the whole of my experience. It is no exaggeration
to say that when you and Stella were working on
that medallion, you were forging the last link in the
chain of evidence that could have dragged them murderous to
(38:53):
the gallows. He paused, and, having replenished my glass, took
the medallion in his hand and looked at the thought thoughtfully.
Then he knocked out and refilled his pipe, and I
waited expectantly for the completion of this singular story. End
of Chapter seventeen.
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