“You have heard Mrs. Muncie describe how she prepared the gruel according to Mrs. Beaton’s admirable recipe and in the presence of Mary Huddy in case, as she said, ‘The master should take a fancy to it when I’m not at hand and you have to make it.’ After the gruel had been prepared, Mrs. Muncie tasted it with a spoon and Mary Huddy carried it upstairs to the main bedroom together with a jug of water to thin the gruel if it were too strong. As she reached the door, Mrs. Boxdale came out, her hands full of stockings and underclothes. She has told you that she was on her way to the bathroom to wash them through. She asked the girl to put the basin of gruel on the washstand by the window and Mary Huddy did so in her presence. Miss Huddy has told us that at the time she noticed the bowl of flypapers soaking in water and she knew that this solution was one used by Mrs. Boxdale as a cosmetic wash. Indeed, all the women who spent that evening in the house, with the exception of Mrs. Venables, have told you that they knew that it was Mrs. Boxdale’s practice to prepare this solution of flypapers.
“Mary Huddy and the accused left the bedroom together and you have heard the evidence of Mrs. Muncie that Miss Huddy returned to the kitchen after an absence of only a few minutes. Shortly after nine o’clock, the ladies left the dining room and entered the drawing room to take coffee. At nine-fifteen p.m., Miss Goddard excused herself to the company and said that she would go to see if her grandfather needed anything. The time is established precisely because the clock struck the quarter-hour as she left and Mrs. Venables commented on the sweetness of its chime. You have also heard Mrs. Venables’ evidence and the evidence of Mrs. Maurice Boxdale and Mrs. Henry Boxdale that none of the ladies left the drawing room during the evening, and Mr. Venables has testified that the three gentlemen remained together until Miss Goddard appeared about three-quarters of an hour after to inform them that her grandfather had become very ill and to request that the doctor be sent for immediately.
“Miss Goddard has told you that, when she entered her grandfather’s room, he was just finishing his gruel and was grumbling about its taste. She got the impression that this was merely a protest at being deprived of his dinner rather than that he genuinely considered there was something wrong with the gruel. At any rate, he finished most of it and appeared to enjoy it despite his grumbles.
“You have heard Miss Goddard describe how, after her grandfather had had as much as he wanted of the gruel, she took the bowl next door and left it on the washstand. She then returned to her grandfather’s bedroom and Mr. Boxdale, his wife and his granddaughter played three-handed whist for about three-quarters of an hour.
“At ten o’clock Mr. Augustus Boxdale complained of feeling very ill. He suffered from griping pains in the stomach, from sickness and from looseness of the bowels. As soon as the symptoms began Miss Goddard went downstairs to let her uncles know that her grandfather was worse and to ask that Doctor Eversley should be sent for urgently. Doctor Eversley has given you his evidence. He arrived at Colebrook Croft at ten-thirty p.m., when he found his patient very distressed and weak. He treated the symptoms and gave what relief he could but Mr. Augustus Boxdale died shortly before midnight.
“Gentlemen of the jury, you have heard Marguerite Goddard describe how, as her grandfather’s paroxysms increased in intensity, she remembered the gruel and wondered whether it could have disagreed with him in some way. She mentioned this possibility to her elder uncle, Captain Maurice Boxdale. Captain Boxdale has told you how he handed the bowl with its residue of gruel to Doctor Eversley with the request that the doctor should lock it in a cupboard in the library, seal the lock and keep the key. You have heard how the contents of the bowl were later analysed and with what results.”
An extraordinary precaution for the gallant captain to have taken, thought Dalgliesh, and a most perspicacious young woman. Was it by chance or by design that the bowl hadn’t been taken down to be washed up as soon as the old man had finished with it? Why was it, he wondered, that Marguerite Goddard hadn’t rung for the parlour maid and requested her to remove it? Miss Goddard appeared the only other suspect. He wished he knew more about her.
But, except for those main protagonists, the characters in the drama did not emerge very clearly from the trial report. Why, indeed, should they? The British accusatorial system of trial is designed to answer one question: is the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime charged? Exploration of the nuances of personality, speculation and gossip have no place in the witness box. The two Boxdale brothers came out as very dull fellows indeed. They and their estimable, respectable, sloping-bosomed wives had sat at dinner in full view of each other from eight until after nine o’clock (a substantial meal, that dinner) and had said so in the witness box, more or less in identical words. The ladies’ bosoms might have been heaving with far from estimable emotions of dislike, envy, embarrassment or resentment of the interloper. If so, they didn’t tell the court.
But the two brothers and their wives were clearly innocent, even if a detective of that time could have conceived of the guilt of a gentlefolk so well respected, so eminently respectable. Even their impeccable alibis had a nice touch of social and sexual distinction. The Reverend Arthur Venables had vouched for the gentlemen, his good wife for the ladies. Besides, what motive had they? They could no longer gain financially by the old man’s death. If anything, it was in their interests to keep him alive in the hope that disillusion with his marriage or a return to sanity might occur to cause him to change his will. So far Dalgliesh had learned nothing that could cause him to give the Canon the assurance for which he hoped.
It was then that he remembered Aubrey Glatt. Glatt was a wealthy amateur criminologist who had made a study of all the notable Victorian and Edwardian poison cases. He was not interested in anything earlier or later, being as obsessively wedded to his period as any serious historian, which indeed he had some claim to call himself. He lived in a Georgian house in Winchester—his affection for the Victorian and Edwardian age did not extend to its architecture—and was only three miles from Colebrook Croft. A visit to the London Library disclosed that he hadn’t written a book on the case but it was improbable that he had totally neglected a crime close at hand and so in period. Dalgliesh had occasionally helped him with the technical details of police procedure. Glatt, in response to a telephone call, was happy to return the favour with the offer of afternoon tea and information.
Tea was served in his elegant drawing room by a parlour maid wearing a frilly cap with streamers. Dalgliesh wondered what wage Glatt paid her to persuade her to wear it. She looked as if she could have played a role in any of his favourite Victorian dreams and Dalgliesh had an uncomfortable thought that arsenic might be dispensed with the cucumber sandwiches. Glatt nibbled away and was expansive.
“It’s interesting that you should have taken this sudden and, if I may say so, somewhat inexplicable interest in the Boxdale murder; I got out my notebook on the case only yesterday. Colebrook Croft is being demolished to make way for a new housing estate and I thought I would visit it for the last time. The family, of course, haven’t lived there since the 1914–18 war. Architecturally, it’s completely undistinguished but one grieves to see it go. We might drive over after tea if you are agreeable.