The Poisonous Seed (2 page)

In the shop, Frances was deftly tidying everything away while Herbert sank weakly into the customers’ chair and dabbed his brow with a handkerchief. At twenty-two he was three years older than she, and had been apprenticed to William Doughty for a year. With the death of William’s son Frederick, Herbert had, without saying a word, assumed that he would in time be the heir to the business, a position which would probably require marriage to Frances. That she held no appeal for him either in form or character hardly mattered, and the fact that she would rather have been doomed to eternal spinsterhood than marry him was something he was unaware of. Slightly built and four inches shorter than Frances, he had deluded himself that his large moustaches made him an object of female admiration, and enhanced them with a pomade of his own mixing. Frances had never liked to tell him that in her opinion he used too much oil of cloves. When he was agitated, as he was now, the pointed tips quivered.

‘They’re saying that Mr Garton was poisoned by your father!’ he gulped. ‘It’s all over Bayswater! They know Mr Doughty has been ill and they’re saying he made a mistake and put poison in the medicine! But I can
swear
it was all right!’

‘Then that is what the analysis will show,’ said Frances, patiently. ‘You know what Bayswater is like; by tomorrow there will be a new sensation and all this will be forgotten.’

‘We’d best not mention it to Mr Doughty.’ He suddenly sat up straight. ‘In fact, I
insist
we do not!’

Frances, who was sure she knew better than he what was best for her father, bit back her annoyance. ‘I agree. I hope the matter may be disposed of without him being distressed by questioning.’ She removed her apron. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Munson, I shall see how he does.’

There was no direct connection between the shop premises and the family apartments above, so it was necessary for Frances to leave the shop by the customers’ entrance and use the doorway immediately adjacent. Ascending by the steep staircase, Frances found the maid, Sarah, in the parlour, wielding a broom with intense application, strewing yesterday’s spent tealeaves to collect the dust. Sarah had been with the Doughtys for ten years, arriving as a dumpy and sullen-looking fifteen year old. With unflagging energy and a fearless attitude to hard work, she had become indispensable. Now grown into a brawny young woman, solid, plain and unusually stern, she showed a quiet loyalty to the Doughtys that nothing could shake, and a tendency to eject by the back door any young man with the near suicidal temerity to court her.

‘Mr Doughty’s still asleep, Miss,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll bring him his tea and a bit of toast as soon as he calls.’

Frances eased open the door of her father’s room. He was resting peacefully, the deep lines that grief had carved into his face softened by sleep, his grey hair, which despite all Frances’ attentions never looked tidy, straggling on the pillow. For two months after Frederick’s death he had been an invalid, rarely from his bed, and the Pharmaceutical Society had sent along a Mr Ford to supervise the business. Frances had given her father all the care she could, but when he eventually rose from his bed, he was frail and stooped, while his mind was afflicted with a melancholy from which she feared he might never recover. Since the death of her mother, an event Frances did not recall as it had occurred when she was only three, all William Doughty’s hopes for the future had rested on his son, and nothing a daughter could do was of any consolation. Frederick’s clothes were still in the wardrobe, and despite Frances’ pleas, William would not consent to them being given to charity. Often, she found him gazing helplessly at the stored garments and once she had found him clutching the sleeve of a suit to his face, tears falling copiously down his cheeks. Only once before her brother’s death had she seen her father weep. She had been ten years old, and had asked many times to be taken to her mother’s grave to lay some flowers. After many weary refusals he had relented, and on a bleak winter day took her to the cemetery where she saw a small grave marker, hardly big enough to be a headstone, bearing simply the words ‘Rosetta Jane Doughty 1864’. To her horror, her father had fallen to his knees beside the stone and wept. When he had dried his eyes they went home, and she had never mentioned the matter to him again.

It was Frederick who had talked to her about their mother. ‘We had such jokes and merriment!’ he would say, eyes shining. ‘Sometimes we played at being lords and ladies at a grand ball, and danced until we almost fell down, we were laughing so much.’ Then he took his little sister by the hand, and whirled her about the room until William came in to see what all the noise was, and suggested that they would be better employed at their lessons.

In the December that followed Frederick’s death, William had once again assumed his duties in the shop. In truth, he was there only as the nominal qualified pharmacist. His professional knowledge was intact, but his hands were weaker than they had been, with a slight tremor. The work of preparing material for the stock of tinctures and extracts fell largely to Herbert and Frances. In the stockroom at the back of the main shop there was a workbench where the careful grinding, sifting and drying of raw materials was carried out, the mixing and filtering of syrups and assembling the layers of the conical percolator pot. Although William observed the work, he seemed unaware that by unspoken agreement, Herbert and Frances were also watching him. He had confined himself to making simple mixtures from stock and filling chip boxes with already prepared pills. The sprawling writing in the book recording Garton’s prescription had been his. Behind the counter it was usually Frances’ nimble fingers which would wrap and seal the packages so William could hand them to customers with a smile. It was the only moment when he looked like his old self.

Gazing at her sleeping father, Frances noticed, with a tinge of concern, the small ribbed poison bottle by his bedside, which contained an ounce of chloroform. He had taken to easing himself to sleep by sprinkling a few drops on a handkerchief and draping it over his face, declaring, when Frances expressed her anxiety, that if it had benefited the Queen it could scarcely do
him
any harm.

She closed the door softly and returned to the parlour. ‘Sarah, I don’t know if you have heard about Mr Garton.’

‘I have, Miss,’ she said grimly. ‘I had it off Dr Collin’s maid. I don’t want to upset you, but they’re saying terrible lies about Mr Doughty.’

‘I know,’ said Frances with a sigh.

‘I’ve heard that it’s Mrs Garton herself, who’s accused him. Well I’ve said that the poor lady is so beside herself she doesn’t know what to think.’

Frances sometimes wondered if the servants of Bayswater had their own invisible telegraphy system, since it seemed that once any one of them knew something, so the rest of them instantly knew it too. ‘My father mustn’t be troubled with this,’ she said. ‘He’s too unwell.’

‘I know, Miss, I’ll never say a word.’

Despite what Frances had said to soothe Herbert’s panic, she remained deeply concerned, but there was nothing she could do except write to the family solicitor Mr Rawsthorne asking him to attend the inquest, and hope that the post-mortem examination on Percival Garton would show that he had died from some identifiable disease.

The winter season with its coughs and chills was normally a busy time in a chemist’s shop, but as the day went on it became apparent that the residents of Bayswater were taking their prescriptions elsewhere, while medicines made up the previous day and awaiting collection remained on the shelf. There were some sales of proprietary pills and mixtures, but Frances had the impression that the customers had only come in out of curiosity. Some asked pointedly after the health of William Doughty, and those ladies who were in the shop when he made a brief appearance later in the day, shrank back, made feeble excuses and left. William frowned and commented on the lack of custom, implying by his look that it was somehow the fault of Frances and Herbert. He seemed to be the only person in Bayswater who did not know of his assumed involvement in the death of Mr Garton. Herbert went out in the afternoon for a chemistry lecture, and returned in a state of some distress. A Mrs Bennett, a valued customer of many years, had stopped him in the street and explained at great length and with many blushes that she wanted to take a prescription to the shop and she did so like the way Herbert prepared her medicine and could he promise her that if she brought it in he would do it with his very own hands?

‘I didn’t know what to say!’ whispered Herbert, frantically as he and Frances made up some stock syrups in the back storeroom. ‘She’s one of our best customers and she’s afraid to come into the shop!’ For the sake of the ailing man, Frances and Herbert did their best to behave as if nothing was the matter, and at four o’clock William muttered that they could see to the shop for the rest of the day, and went back upstairs to read his newspaper.

Early the following morning, Constable Brown returned, and this time he was accompanied by a large man with a bulbous nose and coarse face who he introduced as Inspector Sharrock.

‘Is Mr Doughty about?’ said Sharrock, glancing quickly about the shop. ‘We need to speak to him.’

‘He is unwell,’ said Frances. ‘He is in his bedroom, resting.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw Herbert starting to panic again.

‘Can’t help that,’ said Sharrock, brusquely. He strode up to the counter and thumped it loudly with his fist directly in front of Frances. Herbert jumped and gave a little yelp. Sharrock jutted his chin forward, with an intense stare. It was meant to intimidate, but Frances, standing her ground and clenching her fingers, could feel only disgust. ‘Either he comes down here or we go up to him. You choose.’

The last thing Frances wanted was her father waking up suddenly to find strangers in the house. ‘I’ll fetch him,’ she said, coldly. As she passed Wilfred he gave her a sympathetic look, which she ignored.

It took several minutes to prepare her father for the interview she had hoped to avoid. He was tired and seemed confused, but she explained as best she could about Garton’s death and, amidst protests that he hardly knew how he could help, he agreed to speak to the police. She saw that his clothing was tidy and smoothed his hair, then brought him downstairs. When they entered the shop Sharrock put the ‘Closed’ sign on the door, and ushered William to the seat. ‘Is this your writing, Mr Doughty?’ said Sharrock, thrusting the open prescription book under William’s nose, and tapping the page with a large blunt finger.

‘I expect so,’ said William, fumbling in his pocket for his spectacles, getting them onto his nose at the third attempt and peering at the book. Sharrock pursed his lips and gave a meaningful glance at Wilfred. ‘Yes – that is my writing.’

‘And did you prepare the prescription for Mr Garton?’

‘Well – I – imagine I must have done. Yes – let me see –
tinctura nucis vomicae, elixir aurantii
– I believe he has been prescribed this before.’

‘The thing is,’ said Sharrock, ‘our enquiries show that the medicine you made for Mr Garton was the only thing he had on the night of his death that was not also consumed by another person. And the doctor who examined the body is prepared to say that the cause of death was poisoning by strychnine. What do you say to
that
?’

William frowned, and his lips quivered, but he said nothing.

‘Come now, Mr Doughty, an answer if you please!’ Frances, trembling with anger, was about to reprimand the policeman for bullying a sick man, but realised that to plead her father’s condition would only increase the suspicion against him. She came forward and stood beside her father, laying a comforting hand on his arm.

‘Really, Inspector,’ said William at last, ‘I can’t say anything other than that the mixture would not contain enough
strychnia
to kill anyone.’

Sharrock, towering over the seated man, leaned forward and pushed his face menacingly close. ‘Is it possible, Mr Doughty, that you made a mistake? Could you have put in more of the tincture than you thought? Or could you have put in something else instead? Something a lot stronger?’

‘Inspector, I must protest!’ exclaimed Herbert. ‘I myself was here when the mixture was made up, and it was exactly as prescribed.’ He drew himself to his full height – not a long journey – and as Sharrock stood upright and gazed down at him he quailed for a moment, the tips of his moustaches vibrating, then recovered. ‘I will say so under oath if required!’

Sharrock smiled unpleasantly. ‘And that is what you will have to do, Sir. I must tell you that we are working on the theory that Mr Garton was poisoned due to an error in the making up of his prescription.’

‘I am sure you will find that is untrue,’ said Frances quietly.

Sharrock glanced briefly at her but didn’t trouble himself to reply. Instead he tucked the prescription book firmly under one arm, strode over to the shop door and turned the sign back to ‘Open’.

‘Inspector,’ said Frances, following him before he could depart with the book. She held out her hand for it. ‘If you please.’

He smiled his humourless smile. ‘I’ll hold onto this for the time being. Evidence. We’ll take our leave now. You’ll be hearing from the coroner’s court very shortly. And if you’d like to take my advice, I’d say Mr Doughty looks unwell. He ought to rest.’

As Sharrock departed with Wilfred trailing unhappily after him, Herbert turned to Frances and mouthed ‘What shall we do?’ She shook her head in despair and returned to her father’s side, taking the cool dry hand and feeling it tremble.

‘He was right,’ said William, in a sudden miserable understanding of his condition, ‘I am unwell. I may never be well again. Perhaps I
did
poison Mr Garton.’

‘No, Sir, I will swear you did not!’ exclaimed Herbert.

‘Come with me, Father,’ urged Frances. ‘You need rest and a little breakfast.’

He sighed, nodded, and went with her. Once he was comfortably settled, with Sarah keeping a careful eye on him, Frances returned to the shop.