must speak to Mr Gardiner.'
'I'll give him a message, if you like,' said Boycott. 'No,' cried Newton in agitation, 'I'd rather address him personally.'
When pressed, he explained: 'I'm in a pretty dangerous position, Boycott. You see, on the night of Monday, I did what I shouldn't have done. Dr Palmer stopped at Salt's surgery where I'm employed, and wished me to sell him three grains of strychnine. I told him I couldn't sell it, for that's not Dr Salt's way; besides, he and Salt are on bad terms. Yet I gave it him, wrapped in a paper. You see, Ben Thirlby's working for Palmer and, as you perhaps know, I'm his natural son; that's why I obliged him. But if these spasms of Cook's were due to strychnine poisoning, I'm afraid of being hanged as an accomplice or, at the best, transported.'
Boycott asked him: 'Why don't you tell the Coroner?'
'I daren't,' said Newton. 'I made no entry in the Poison Book, as I should have done. However, I'll tell Mr Gardiner on oath, just to clear myself, if there's trouble.'
Meanwhile Jim, the ostler at The Talbot Arms, had been told to drive Mr Stevens in the hotel fly to Stafford, after having taken tea at home. Dr Palmer presendy met Jim coming back from his tea, and said: ' Good evening, Jim. Boots has the fly waiting for you, I see. Are you going over to Stafford?'
'Those arc my orders,' Jim answered.
'It's a humbugging concern!’ cried the Doctor. 'This meddle-some fool arranges a
Dr Palmer was laughing as he spoke, but Jim replied with mock gravity: 'I don t think as I could do it for ten pound, Doctor; why, I might end in jail, or the Infirmary, which would be worse!'
Dr Palmer then offered Jim a drink, which he declined, being already two minutes late. At nightfall, Dr Palmer caused a stir in Rugeley by reeling through the streets, drunk and muttering to himself. He had never been seen in such a condition before.
Professor Taylor, the toxicological expert at Guy's Hospital, and his assistant Dr Rces, received the jar. Professor Taylor made some harsh remarks about it, saying that the contents had been so jolted and shaken on the train journey that the feculent matter from the intestines and the liquid contents of the stomach were all mixed together. He judged these remains inadequate for the close investigation demanded by Mr Stevens, and telegraphed at once for further organs. This time Dr Monckton and Dr Freer, who took charge of the examination, sent him up, in another sealed jar, the kidneys, part of the liver, the spleen, what remained of the dissected heart and brain, and three teaspoonfuls of blood from the
lungs.
The Stafford Coroner summoned a jury for Thursday, November 29th, at The Talbot Arms Hotel; but all they did that day was to view the body, the inquest being then adjourned until December 5th.
Here, while observing that Dr Palmer showed no fear of strychnine being found, we may express the opinion that it was Newton who pushed Devonshire; Newton who punctured the jar with a lancet; Newton who, when he emptied the stomach, unasked, into the jar, deliberately spilled some of the contents; and Newton who vigorously shook this jar, while Boycott left the carriage at Rugby for refreshment. His motive throughout is clear: to make the strychnia, which he believed Dr Palmer to have administered, less easily discoverable.
Cook was buried on November 30th, not in the family vault near London, but in Rugeley churchyard. Dr Palmer attended the funeral service with Jeremiah Smith. Among the other mourners were Mr Stevens, his son-in- law Mr Bradford, and George Herring, the commission-agent, who grew very angry indeed when he learned from Mr Stevens that Cook had never received the money entrusted to Dr Palmer, and that the betting-book was missing. Yet because the Doctor walked weeping miserably behind the bier, Herring did not have the heart to speak his mind until the funeral was well over—but then found that he had slipped away. Afterwards, Dr Palmer frequented The Talbot Arms bar and stood treat to all the assembled riff-raff, who voted him a jolly good fellow. Of his former friends only Myatt, the saddler, Jeremiah Smith, the solicitor, Ben Thirlby, the chemist, and Samuel Cheshire, the Postmaster, remained loyal. When Dr Palmer complained of being almost universally called a poisoner, Cheshire asked what he could do to clear him of so cruel a suspicion.
'God bless you!' said the Doctor. 'Just keep your eyes and ears open, like a dear fellow!'
On the Sunday evening, December 2nd, Dr Palmer visited Cheshire's house in a pitiable state of anxiety and inquired, in his wife's presence, whether he had heard or seen anything fresh. Cheshire led him into another room and said: 'Billy, if you are tempting me to show you the contents of a sealed letter, that I dare not do.'
' Oh, no,' the Doctor cried, 'you mustn't injure yourself on my account! But I can't sleep of nights for worrying what Professor Taylor will report to Mr Gardiner about that damnable analysis. Though it's true that I've done nothing wrong, what if Mr Stevens should have manufactured evidence against me? He's quite capable of bribing Gardiner's clerk to put poison in Cook's remains and so getting me hanged. No, Sammy! All I ask, all I beg of you on my knees, is that you'll steam open Professor Taylor's letter, and if he says he's found poison, tip me the wink, and I'll give them the slip. I'll ride off to Liverpool and board a vessel for America. You know I could never kill a man, don't you, Sammy ?'
Cheshire weakly consented; and on December 5th, three days later, intercepted and read Professor Taylor's letter to Mr Gardiner, afterwards reporting its gist to the Doctor, whom he found in bed, seriously ill of a liver complaint brought on by his excessive consumption of brandy.
The letter ran:
Guy's Hospital, Tuesday, Dec. 4th, 1855
My dear Sir,
Dr Rees and I have compared the analysis today. We have sketched a report, which will be ready tomorrow or the next day. As I am going to Durham on the part of the Crown in the case of
I am, Sir,
Yours very truly,
Alfred S. Taylor
Dr Palmer gleefully told Cheshire: 'Of course, they found no poison! And of course, almost every man's stomach has some traces of antimony in it. I'm as innocent as a babe.'
The news afforded him great relief because, in addition to those three grains of strychnine given him by Newton at about eleven o'clock on the Monday night, he had bought six more grains from Messrs Hawkins, another Rugeley chemist, between eleven and twelve on Tuesday morning—also two drachms of Batley's solution of opium, and two drachms of prussic acid. He knew that Mr Stevens had obtained evidence of his purchases from Hawkins' Poison Book. All these drugs, by the way, were found in the Doctor's surgery after his arrest—all, that is, except the strychnine.
While visiting London on December ist, Dr Palmer had taken the precaution of sending a gift-hamper to Mr William Webb Ward, the Stafford Coroner. This contained a 20-lb. turkey, a brace of pheasants, a fine cod, and a barrel of oysrers, and was sent by railway to Mr Ward's private residence at Stoke-on-Trent, without a sender's name. It is understood that Dr Palmer wrote to Mr Ward by the post, but that Mr Ward destroyed the letter in disgust and very correctly sent the hamper to the Stafford Infirmary for the benefit of pauper patients. Whether the patients, rather than the medical staff, enjoyed them, is, however, highly doubtful.
Dr Palmer could never leave well alone. The news of Professor Taylor's findings so elated him that, the next morning, he sent two letters to Stafford by the hand of George Bate. The first was sealed, and addressed to Mr Webb Ward; the second, an open note, ordered Mr France, the poulterer,' to supply the bearer with some nice pheasants and a good hare'.
Bate found a boy who for threepence would take the hamper of game to Mr Ward's house, and delivered the
