'I remember that race,' the Attorney-General remarked ruefully. 'I laid on Pastrycook and lost four hundred guineas.'
Swindell laughed. 'And if Doubt had lost too, Sir, we shouldn't be drinking this bottle of claret together! Come, let me spin you the yarn of how I was doctored for death in case of her defeat. Nay, Sir, I assure you, Billy Palmer would think no more of poisoning a man to gain his ends than a chemist would of dosing a mangy cat or a decrepit dog. On the Saturday night, then, as we sat in our private room at The Swan, drinking brandy and water, I asked him: "Why do you always empty your glass at one gulp, Doctor, instead of sipping at it, and prolonging the pleasure?"
Billy explained that, in the first place, he gained more flavour by so doing and, in the second, he found the practice less intoxicating. "Why not try it?" Billy asked. I did so, and certainly the flavour was fuller; but by Heaven! how sick the drink made me! I put my gripings down to the shellfish we had eaten—one should never eat shellfish in the Midlands, especially during August—and, still feeling pretty queer the next day, I told him: "Billy, I'm not seeing out the race tomorrow; I'm for home." "Nonsense," said he, "you can't miss all the fun. I'll give you some pills that will set you right." Remembering Hodgy's warning, I replied: "No, I'm off." However, he persuaded me to stay (for, indeed, I wasn't fit for a ride in the train) by saying: "If you like, I'll get a second opinion for you. There's another doctor in this hotel." He went out and fetched a person named Thirlby . . .'
'His own assistant, ha!' exclaimed the Attorney-General.
' So I understand now,' agreed Swindell, 'though I didn't know it at the time; and the man's not a qualified doctor, but a mere country chemist. Thirlby advised me against travelling, for my bowels were turned to water, as the Psalmist says, and it would have been an awkward journey." Dr Palmer is treating you admirably," Thirlby assured me, when told what the pills contained. "You couldn't be in better hands." '
'I wonder how much Thirlby knows?' the Attorney-General ruminated.
'On Monday,' Swindell went on, 'I was no better, but weak, very weak, and my mind had clouded over, though I foolishly continued to swallow Billy's pills. That was Handicap day. Of the nine starters, Musician and Pastrycook were the most fancied, but the odds had shortened on Doubt—she started at five to one. Neither Musician nor your own fancy, Sir, gained a place, although Montagu seemed like a winner until Sharpe, who was at his best that season, pulled Doubt ahead to finish in the lead by half a length. Well, The Swan Hotel stands close to the course, and the crowd was roaring like a stormy sea off Dover; yet how could I bring myself to care what beast won or lost? It hadn't occurred to me, do you see, that if Doubt came in first, which (not to pun upon her name) was far from certain, Billy Palmer stood to make three thousand five hundred pounds, as well as securing the stakes; but that he was protecting himself against the danger of losing his five hundred pounds by doctoring me to death—for every fool knows that "death before settling day voids the wager". Thanks be to the Almighty, despite Billy's having jeopardized my existence by his damned poisons, all was well. Doubt ran for my life, and brought it off! If I were to die, Billy would lose the three thousand five hundred pounds I owed him, so he hared back from the course, not troubling to acknowledge the congratulations of his supporters, and burst like a whirlwind into my bedroom. In the twinkling of an eye he and Thirlby had me out of bed before a big fire, and began rubbing the calves of my legs. Then they poured some exceedingly hot soup into me, and within a couple of hours I felt somewhat recovered, but weak as a newborn pup. It was a narrow shave, a near tiling, a deuced near thing!'
'Fred,' said the Attorney-General, 'I can't understand how you ever had the heart to do business with Palmer again! But I'm sure to hang him—sure!'
'Oh, go easy with him,' said Hodgman, grinning. 'He was only giving Fred a little purge to reduce his weight. Fred could well afford to lose a couple of stone.'
'Easy?' cried the Attorney-General, 'yes, I'll go easy, by God! You mark my words, I'll hang him for that! I don't think poor Cook is much loss to the world, but if my Fred had perished untimely, where should I be?'
Though not believing Swindell's story to be wholly fictitious, we cannot rule out his prejudice against Dr Palmer. In our opinion, tainted shellfish are just as likely as not to have caused Swindell's stomachic disorder; nor was Swindell ever above improving a story beyond all recognition. The symptoms reported by him were vague enough; the remedy said to have been prescribed is more dramatic than plausible—how came a large fire in his room at the very height of summer?—and if Dr Palmer drank a couple or more tumblers of brandy and water at a gulp, he was never seen to do so before or since. Moreover, his supposed gains at Wolverhampton do not correspond with what is known of his financial position a week later. Nor do we believe that he ever purposely dosed a man to death: the Abley case having been, in our opinion, a pure mischance.
Equally dubious is the story told by Tom, the Boots at The Junction Hotel, Stafford, whom we have been at pains to question. The hotel stable is in the courtyard, a low-roofed, whitewashed building with stalls for five horses. On one side a ladder stands flat against the wall, up which one climbs to the hayloft. Here Tom sleeps: a ragged, ferret-faced young man, notable for a cast in one eye and a very strong bodily smell compounded of liquor, blacking, stable and foul linen. Tom is a proud man these days: a local celebrity, a victim of Dr Palmer's poisoning who has lived to tell the tale. He declares that, after his interview with Inspectors Field and Simpson, Dr Palmer met him on the road between The Junction and the railway station, and asked: 'Tom, what will you have?'
The rest of the story is best told in Tom's own words, and he must here be imagined rubbing his hair to shine up his thoughts, then picking his nails as though the dirt they concealed were the evidence he was seeking, and finally crouching on a stone mounting block, knees to chin, and hugging his ill-shaped boots—which, for a Boots' boots, are singularly devoid of polish.
TOM THE BOOTS
I says: 'I'll take a drop of brandy, if anything, Doctor. It's a chill evening.'
'Then let's go to The Junction,' says he. 'I dpn't want to offend old Lloyd by standing you treat elsewhere.'
So we came back to the bar and he mixed the brandy and water. 'Take it here?' asks the Doctor. To which I answered: "Well, I'd rather take it outside.'
'No, here,' he says. 'What are you afraid of?' And I drank.
The queer thing was it didn't taste queer, but oh, my dear Lord! what happened after? It was just like common brandy and water, as is made hot with sugar, my favourite drink, and I shouldn't have drunk it if it had tasted bad—because I'm very particular with my drinks, always have been, but oh, my dear Lord!
I went out into the yard, and was I took bad? I was indeed! I felt drunk, like. I didn't know where I was, like. I certainly had some recollection of what was said, but my senses were gone, like. Directly I'd drunk it, I knew I'd been nobbled: the drink lay heavy on my stomach, like a crab. Then up it all came. I clapped my hand over my mouth, I ran out that way into the yard and there, just where you're standing, Sir, I threw it up, together with my supper—pig's liver, ale, soused herring, red cabbage and all. It was a fair mess, like. I never was took that way after drinking