Peter Lovesey - Mad Hatter

‘How do you account for so sudden an attack?’

‘There is no accounting for asthma,’ said Prothero. ‘We in the profession are only too conscious of the limitations in our knowledge. A hundred different things might have provoked the attack. The most negligible, intangible things-animal emanations, for example. The late Dr. Hyde Salter, the author of the standard work on the subject, was himself asthmatic and established a definite relationship between his own asthma and the presence of a cat.’

‘Our cats are never allowed in the lounges,’ protested the manager at once.

‘That was merely an example,’ said Prothero wearily. ‘There may be a hundred other agents of the complaint. Pollen, for instance, is known to induce hay-fever.’

The inspector looked up with the suddenness indicative of an inspiration. ‘Do you think that the horses-‘

‘He has ridden horses since he was a small child,’ said Prothero, ‘and never suffered a reaction. Nor is there likely to be any connection with the meal which you have recorded so slavishly in your pocket-book. Asthma is a respiratory disorder, not a digestive one.’

‘Are you quite sure, Doctor, that your son’s death was due to asthma?’ asked Cribb.

‘Haven’t I indicated that already? I know what I am talking about, Sergeant. I have written a dozen monographs on the subject. Examine the boy’s body and you will find the classic indications of asthmatic death: the slightly bluish tinge to the colouring, the clammy feel of the skin arising from the heavy perspiration and the quick drop in temperature, and the characteristic clenching of the hands.’

Cribb went to the ottoman, lifted the sheet that had been draped over Guy’s body and verified everything Prothero had said.

‘I shall therefore make out a death certificate indicating that he died from natural causes,’ said Prothero.

‘And I shall ask the coroner for authority for a post mortem examination,’ said Cribb. ‘The circumstances warrant it, sir, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. And in the meantime I shall be obliged if you will advise me of all your movements so that I may keep in touch with you.’

‘I propose to return to Dorking,’ said Prothero, ‘and I shall be there until further notice.’ And he added in a lower tone, ‘With your permission, of course, Sergeant Cribb.’

After Prothero had left the room, with the manager in tow, probably mindful of the unpaid bill, the inspector asked Cribb, ‘What do you expect to get from a post mortem? It’s a clear case of asthma.’

‘Looks like that, sir.’

‘Surely you don’t expect to prove that it was induced in some way? You’d never convince a jury of that, Sergeant.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well in that case I’m damned if I can see the point of going to the trouble of a post mortem examination.’

‘That’s where we differ, then, sir. I suppose I see it from another point of view. Today I was ready to arrest Guy Prothero for the Brighton beach murder. The boy was a homicidal maniac. I should have arrested him a week ago if I hadn’t had to grope my way through a welter of false statements invented by his family. Quite apart from any protective sentiments the Protheros had towards him, their own livelihood was at stake, you see. Respectable general practice in a country town-imagine the effect of a sensational murder trial on that. Now in my experience people of their station in life generally have a way of dealing with the member of the family who threatens to create a scandal; there’s private institutions that cater for almost any human aberration you can think of if someone’s prepared to pay. Guy Prothero would probably have been committed to some asylum for the well-to-do if he hadn’t gone as far as murder. That altered things. When it gets as serious as that, the law can’t be bought off, you see. Justice has to run its course. Oh, they wriggled and squirmed and tried to avoid it, but I was closing in day by day. And, as I tell you, I was ready to make the arrest today. What happens? The boy suffers a fatal attack of asthma on the way home. If that sounds like pure chance to you, sir, you’re entitled to believe it. If you tell me asthmatic death can’t be induced, I’ll take your word for it, but that won’t stop me from using every means at my disposal to ascertain whether it was asthma that killed Guy Prothero.’

Inspector Wood frowned. ‘You’ll find it difficult to get round those symptoms, Sergeant. The manager was there as a witness. I questioned him closely before I interviewed Dr. Prothero. He described it all in a layman’s terms, of course, but his statement bears out everything you heard the doctor say. It’s a singular thing to have happened, as you imply, but I think we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that the boy died from natural causes.’

As if not one word of the inspector’s had percolated into his thoughts, Cribb asked, ‘What happened to the plates they ate from?’

‘Fortunately they hadn’t been washed when I arrived,’ said the inspector. ‘I had them put aside with the sherry glasses and the coffee cups as a matter of routine. One never knows, in cases of sudden death.’

‘Good,’ said Cribb, the gleam at last returning to his eye.

‘I’d like everything analysed by the best man available. As a matter of routine, sir,’ he added. ‘One never knows.’

Over a pint of half and half that evening, when all the arrangements had been made and every possible scrap of evidence removed to be examined by experts, Thackeray was sufficiently encouraged by Cribb’s more buoyant mood to observe, ‘You’ve worked out how Prothero could have arranged it, haven’t you, Sarge? It’s something the boy was given to eat or drink, something that could bring on an attack like that.’

Cribb gazed contemplatively into the beer-glass. ‘Just an idea, Thackeray. A memory of something I read. D’you remember the Wimbledon poisoning case last spring?’

‘That doctor?’

‘Yes. Lamson. Hanged at Wandsworth Prison for murdering his young brother-in-law. It interested me at the time because of the poison he employed-none of your conventional arsenic or strychnine. No, it was a doctor’s choice of poison, so rarely used that the lawyers could find only one other case to quote during the trial, and again the poisoner was a doctor. Aconitine, Thackeray. People grow it in their gardens and call it wolf’s-bane. The leaf is not unlike parsley, and the roots, if I remember correct, bear a close resemblance to horse-radish.’

‘Horse-radish! Blimey, Sarge! Horse-radish sauce!’

‘But let’s not leap to conclusions, Constable. Lamson’s victim took nearly four hours to die. Guy was dead within an hour of eating his lunch.’

‘A strong dose, Sarge?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cribb. ‘We’ll need to find out more about it from the experts. The symptoms, so far as I recall, begin a few minutes after the poison is taken-a numbing of the mouth and throat, obstructing the victim’s breathing. Stomach pains, vomiting and convulsions. Breathing becomes progressively feebler, and eventually death is due to asphyxia or shock. Close enough to Guy’s symptoms to make it worth investigating, anyway.’

‘Worth investigating, Sarge? I should think you’ve got it! He finally decided that he couldn’t save his son from the gallows, so he saved his own reputation instead by slipping him the aconitine, knowing everyone would think it was asthma the boy had died of. It’s a good thing you was there today or there wouldn’t have been no post mortem at all!’

Cribb accepted this heart-felt tribute with a small shrug and added deprecatingly, ‘The pity of it is that there’s no chemical test for identifying aconitine in the human body. It’s about the most difficult of all poisons to base a prosecution on. There are just two ways of identifying it: by taste and by administering it to animals. It’s going to take more than a few dead mice to build a case against Prothero.’