Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake

“Quite. Quite. Quite,” chattered the complacent coroner.

“Well then, to continue. When we had done what had to be done, I got into touch with another doctor. The local practitioners were all engaged or out but finally I reached Dr. Field-Innis of Upper Quintern. He very kindly drove over and together we made further examination.”

“Finding?”

“Finding that she had died of an overdose. There was no doubt of it, at all. We found three half-dissolved tablets at the back of the mouth and one on the tongue. She must have taken the tablets four or five at a time and lost consciousness before she could swallow the last ones.”

“Dr. Field-Innis is present, is he not?”

“He is,” Basil said with a little bow in the right direction. Dr. Field-Innis bobbed up and down in his seat.

“Thank you very much, Dr. Schramm,” said the coroner with evident respect.

Dr. Field-Innis was called.

Verity watched him push his glasses up his nose and tip back his head to adjust his vision just as he always did after he had listened to one’s chest. He was nice. Not in the least dynamic or lordly, but nice. And conscientious. And, Verity thought, at the moment very clearly ill at ease.

He confirmed everything that Basil Schramm had deposed as to the state of the room and the body and the conclusion they had drawn and added that he himself had been surprised and shocked by the tragedy.

“Was the deceased a patient of yours, Dr. Field-Innis?”

“She consulted me about four months ago.”

“On what score?”

“She felt unwell and was nervy. She complained of migraine, sleeplessness and general anxiety. I prescribed a mild barbiturate. Not the proprietary tranquilizer she was found to have taken that evening, by the way.” He hesitated for a moment. “I suggested that she should have a general overhaul,” he said.

“Had you any reason to suspect there was something serious the matter?”

There was a longer pause. Dr. Field-Innis looked for a moment at Prunella. She sat between Gideon and Verity, who thought, irrelevantly, that like all blondes, especially when they were as pretty as Prunella, mourning greatly became her.

“That,” said Dr. Field-Innis, “is not an easy question to answer. There were, I thought, certain possible indications: very slight indeed, that should be followed up.”

“What were they?”

“A gross tremor in the hands. That does not necessarily imply a conspicuous tremor. And — this is difficult to define — a certain appearance in the face. I must emphasize that this was slight and possibly of no moment but I had seen something of the sort before and felt it should not be disregarded.”

“What might these symptoms indicate, Dr. Field-Innis? A stroke?” hazarded the coroner.

“Not necessarily.”

“Anything else?”

“I say this with every possible reservation. But yes. Just possibly — Parkinson’s disease.”

Prunella gave a strange little sound, half cry, half sigh. Gideon took her hand.

The coroner asked: “And did the deceased, in fact follow your advice?”

“No. She said she would think it over. She did not consult me again.”

“Had she any idea you suspected—?”

“Certainly not,” Dr. Field-Innis said loudly. “ I gave no indication whatever. It would have been most improper to do so.”

“Have you discussed the matter with Dr. Schramm?”

“It has been mentioned, yes.”

“Had Dr. Schramm remarked these symptoms?” The coroner turned politely to Basil Schramm. “Perhaps,” he said, “we may ask?”

He stood up. “I had noticed the tremor,” he said. “On her case-history and on what she had told me, I attributed this to the general nervous condition.”

“Quite,” said the coroner. “So, gentlemen, we may take it, may we not, that fear of this tragic disease cannot have been a motive for suicide? We may rule that out?”

“Certainly,” they said together and together they sat down. “Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Verity thought.

The resident nurse was now called: Sister Jackson, an opulent lady of good looks, a highish colour and an air of latent sexiness, damped down, Verity thought, to suit the occasion. She confirmed the doctors’ evidence and said rather snootily that of course if Greengages had been a hospital there would have been no question of Mrs. Foster having a private supply of any medicaments.

And now Prunella was called. It was a clear day outside and a ray of sunlight slanted through a window in the parish hall. As if on cue from some zealous stage-director it found Prunella’s white-gold head and made a saint of her.

“How lovely she is,” Gideon said quite audibly. Verity thought he might have been sizing up one of his father’s distinguished possessions. “And how obliging of the sun,” he added and gave her a friendly smile. This young man, she thought, takes a bit of learning.

The coroner was considerate with Prunella. She was asked about the afternoon visit to Greengages. Had there been anything unusual in her mother’s behaviour? The coroner was sorry to trouble her but would she mind raising her voice, the acoustics of the hall, no doubt, were at fault. Verity heard Gideon chuckle.

Prunella gulped and made a determined attempt to become fully vocal. “Not really,” she said. “Not unusual. My mother was rather easily fussed and — well — you know. As Dr. Schramm said, she worried.”

“About anything in particular, Miss Foster?”

“Well — about me, actually.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“About me ,” Prunella shrilled and flinched at the sound of her own voice. “Sorry,” she said.

“About you?”

“Yes, I’d just got engaged and she fussed about that, sort of. But it was all right. Routine, really.”

“And you saw nothing particularly unusual?”

“Yes. I mean,” said Prunella frowning distressfully and looking across at Dr. Field-Innis, “I did think I saw somethings — different — about her.”

“In what way?”

“Well, she was — her hands — like Dr. Field-Innis said — were trembly. And her speech kind of, you know, dragged. And there was — or I thought there was — something about her face. As if it had kind of, you know, blanked out or sort of smoothed over, sort of — well — slowed up. I can’t describe it I wasn’t even quite sure it was there.”

“But it troubled you?”

“Yes. Sort of,” whispered Prunella.

She described how she and Gideon took her mother back to the house and how she went up with her to her room.

“She said she thought she’d have a rest and go to bed early and have dinner brought up to her. There was something she wanted to see on television. I helped her undress. She asked me not to wait. So I turned the box on and left her. She truly seemed all right, apart from being tired and upset about — about me and my engagement.” Prunella’s voice wavered into inaudibility, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Miss Foster,” asked the coroner, “just one more question. Was there a bottle of tablets on her bedside table?”

“Yes, there was,” Prunella said quickly. “She asked me to take it out of her beauty-box: you know, a kind of face-box. It was on the table. She said they were sleeping-pills she’d got from a chemist ages ago and she thought if she couldn’t go to sleep after her dinner she’d take one. I found them for her and put them out. And there was a lamp on the table, a book and an enormous box of petits-fours au massepain. She gets — she used to get them from that shop, the Marquise de Sevigné—in Paris. I ate some before I left.”

Prunella knuckled her eyes like a small girl and then hunted for her handkerchief. The coroner said they would not trouble her any more and she returned to Gideon and Verity.