‘We’d planned a rhubarb rag on Highpepper,’ she confessed. ‘The crowns are in those sacks. We’re certain they ragged us—with dead rats, too, as well as rhubarb!—and we thought we’d get our own back, that’s all.’
‘What was the plan of campaign? You could scarce hope to garden in mid-afternoon on the Highpepper estates.’
‘No. That was the point of the coach. We thought we’d stack the crowns inside until—until — ”
‘Until opportunity offered,’ concluded Dame Beatrice, with graceful tact. ‘All is explained, I see.’
‘I hope—I mean, it was all my idea in the first place,’ blurted out Miss Hopkins. ‘Nobody else is to blame.’
‘Here come the police,’ said Dame Beatrice.
The Superintendent excused the delay by stating that the local sergeant had referred the finding of the body to headquarters, as was only right and proper. He added that he might as well take a look, but that nothing could be done until his photographer and the police doctor came along. He glanced at the group of students.
‘I understand that one of the young ladies found the body,’ he observed. ‘I might as well be taking her statement.’ He opened the door of the coach and looked inside. ‘Very decayed,’ he said, with disapproval. ‘It won’t be a nice job, that post-mortem won’t. Rats have been at her, what’s more. Identification won’t be very easy.’
‘Unfortunately, it will be all too easy,’ said Miss McKay. ‘One of my students has been missing for the past three weeks or more, as I thought you knew. The police, I thought, had been trying to trace her.’
‘Oh, ah, of course, madam. Then that will be your college blazer she’s got on?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, perhaps if I could get a statement from the young lady who found her…’
‘More or less, they all found her, Superintendent. I may add that I fancy they did so because of a misguided attempt at ragging, but, of course, I don’t know.’
‘Well, the young gentlemen here at Highpepper borrowed the coach on one occasion,’ said the Superintendent, ‘so why not your young ladies? The equality of the sexes—isn’t that what they’re brought up to believe in nowadays? But this is a bad business—a very bad business.’ He shook his head lugubriously. ‘Perhaps you’d better get the ladies back to college. I’ll take their statements there.’
The body bore no signs of violence and the autopsy revealed no disease in any of the vital organs.
‘Poison,’ said Dame Beatrice, whose formidable medical degrees and whose official connection with the Home Office had obtained readily for her a permission to be present at the whole of the post-mortem examination, ‘and by one of the alkaloids, I should say.’
‘My opinion exactly,’ said a man named Clotford, in charge of the college laboratory. ‘Coniine, my bet.’ He also had obtained permission to be present. Both were now back in college.
‘Coniine?’ Dame Beatrice nodded.
‘More than likely. Anyhow, the organs will have to be Stas-Otto-ed if they’re to isolate the alkaloid. But coniine is a pretty good bet. Easy to get hold of, round here.’
‘The spotted hemlock, no doubt.’
‘Yes. Got it mixed up with some vegetable or other. Or, rather, somebody got it mixed up for her. On the face of it, I’d be inclined to say this was murder. Why else should she have been put into the coach?’
‘She could have been taken ill along the road and crawled into it to sit or lie down. She could have died in some innocent person’s car and been dumped when this person panicked. She could have taken the stuff, knowing it to be poison, and crept into the coach to die. Of these hypotheses, two are, of course, untenable, and another is highly unlikely.’
‘Oh?’
‘You did not see the inside of the coach after the body had been removed, but I did. There were no signs of vomiting and—there were no rats. I searched carefully, and so did the police, although I don’t know that we were looking for the same things.’
‘But the theory that she might have died in someone’s car and been dumped would still hold water. Why is it so unlikely?’ asked Miss McKay, later on when she and Dame Beatrice were discussing the tragedy and Mr Clotford had returned to duty.
‘Because, if she was dumped in the coach, she was dumped somewhere else first. There’s not much doubt but that the rats got at the body before it was put into the coach. Somebody has guilty knowledge of how that girl died.’
Carey, brought into consultation later, pointed out that the root of the spotted hemlock could be mistaken for parsnip, its growth of leaves for parsley.
‘You must remember that she was a student at an agricultural college,’ said his aunt. ‘She wouldn’t be likely to confuse things of that sort, would she?’
‘True enough. What, then, do you suspect?’
‘Foul play, of course. What else?’
‘Are you sure it couldn’t be suicide?’ Carey persisted.
‘There are easier ways of killing oneself. Death by most forms of poisoning is not a painless one, and death by spotted hemlock, though not to be compared with the agonies of taking the roots of the water hemlock, is very, very unpleasant. The symptoms of taking water hemlock are burning in mouth and throat, abdominal pains, nausea, palpitations, vertigo and brief fainting fits, followed by the most terrible convulsions at intervals of about fifteen minutes. Unless counter-measures are taken before the second of these convulsions, during which the patient screams, vomits and grinds his teeth, death follows as a matter of course. Poisoning by spotted hemlock is a paralytic illness, and quite often asphyxiation is caused by respiratory paralysis, although circulation remains comparatively normal. Of course, most of the cases one gets are those of children who have experimentally chewed the stuff, which looks and tastes rather like parsley, as you say.’
‘Children will chew anything,’ remarked Miss McKay, ‘in spite of all they are told in schools. We have water hemlock in one of the college ponds, and the spotted hemlock is of fairly wide distribution round here, but it has done flowering by now. It flowers in June and July. One relates it to Ancient Greece. Did not Socrates die from drinking an infusion of spotted hemlock?’
‘Yes, so we are told. Unfortunately for this poor girl, spotted hemlock is at its most deadly at this time of year, and we may suppose that her murderer knew it. But are you not rather rash to allow the water hemlock to grow on land where cattle are kept? The common name for water hemlock is the cowbane.’
‘To tell you the truth, I noticed it only the other day, when I was taking a short cut back to college. I think I will have it uprooted and burnt. Not that cattle are ever put into that particular field. You don’t mean that, after all, poor Miss Palliser took water hemlock and not spotted hemlock, do you?’
‘No, no. But have you an expert on poisonous plants, either a member of staff or a student? If so, I should be glad to make use of her specialised knowledge.’
‘Nobody, so far as I know. Ah, wait a moment! I believe the dead student herself had made some experiments. I must ask Mr Clotford. He will know. Well, now, Dame Beatrice, you’ve told us the symptoms and course of death by taking the water hemlock. How about the symptoms of poisoning by spotted hemlock? You did say it was a paralytic illness…’
‘Before I answer that, I think I ought to inform you, Miss McKay, that Miss Palliser was no longer Miss Palliser; she was a Mrs Coles. Moreover, I should have taken the body to be that of a woman of at least thirty. It is very odd.’
‘Oh, I guessed she had married,’ said the Principal, calmly. ‘Our students do, from time to time, before they have finished their course. When she disappeared, it occurred to me very soon that she might have gone to her husband. Do the police suspect him of the murder?’