At the small town of Cotfold he discussed the death of Raymond Shearsby with the local police. The police doctor repeated the evidence he had given at the inquest. The body having lain all night in the waters of the Cat Ditch, it might have got there at any time between 7.15, when the writer was last seen alive, and midnight. His last meal had been a light one, probably a meat tea. Before death he had sustained a very severe blow on the side of the head, but this could have been caused by a stumble and violent fall against the brickwork of the bridge beneath which he was found. After a week’s heavy rain the stream itself was very full.
Inspector Vance then drove to the village of-Dry Stocking, near the Cambridgeshire border, the scene of the tragedy; but preliminary inquiries there added nothing of value. Mortimer Shearsby, in his account to Harvey Tuke, seemed in fact to have covered all that was known about his cousin’s end. Mr. Vance left a local sergeant, Oake by name, to carry on inquiries in the district, and with his assistant returned to London by a late train, to be met there by the news, just passed on to the Assistant Commissioner by Mr. Tuke, of the resurrection of Martin Dresser.
Leaving this to be dealt with by routine, the inspector and his aide travelled next day, the 22nd, to Guildford. Here there was more to bite on; for the circumstances of Mrs. Porteous’s death were, to say the least, peculiar.
Blanche Porteous had lived in a small bungalow on the Leatherhead road, two miles from the centre of Guildford. She had come to this home with her husband, fifteen years before, and here Cyril Porteous had died. Afterward his widow occasionally took in paying guests, but at the time of her own death she was living alone. By the time of the weekend in question, the August Bank Holiday weekend, school holidays had already begun. On the Saturday morning, the 5th of August, she was seen shopping in Guildford, and it was understood by the woman who cleaned the bungalow and cooked certain meals there that her employer was going to London on the Sunday for the whole day. This woman, a Mrs. Steptoe, did not come on Sundays, and she also had the Monday off; and, accordingly, it was not until the morning of Tuesday, the 8th, that the death of Mrs. Porteous became known. Mrs. Steptoe found her lying on the floor of her little kitchen. On the draining-board of the sink were the dirty plates and cutlery from her last meal—cold meat, potatoes, late rhubarb and cheese. The police surgeon, who carried out the autopsy, gave the approximate time of death as Sunday evening, and the cause poisoning by one of the nitrous salts. A Home Office pathologist later identified this as sodium nitrite, and stated that the acid in the rhubarb would quickly decompose the nitrite and form nitrous oxide, a recognized toxic gas. There were traces of sodium nitrite in some potatoes remaining on a plate, and these had turned a blackish colour. Sodium nitrite in appearance closely resembled common salt, but was less strong in taste, and consequently if mistaken for the latter might be used in greater quantity.
In the kitchen were found a metal salt-caster three parts full of sodium nitrite, and there were several ounces of this in a large tin labelled cooking salt. In a small room said to have been used by the late Cyril Porteous as a laboratory for simple chemical experiments in connection with his work as a science master, a glass container, unlabelled, was found to be half full of sodium nitrite.
Mrs. Steptoe was quite unable to account for the presence of this salt in the kitchen utensils. She had last used the caster while preparing a meal for Mrs. Porteous on the previous Friday evening, the 4th. Mrs. Porteous was perfectly well the following morning, a statement confirmed by acquaintances who later met the school teacher shopping in the town. The caster had been refilled from the tin labelled cooking salt several days before. Mrs. Steptoe could not remember the exact date. She had not been in the little laboratory for some weeks. Mrs. Porteous seldom used the room, and it was only cleaned out occasionally. So far as Mrs. Steptoe knew, the chemicals there had neither been added to nor replenished since Mr. Porteous’s death in 1938.
From the report of the inquest, which was held two days later, it was apparent to Inspector Vance that everybody concerned started with the preconceived idea that they were dealing with a case of accidental death. This was, perhaps, only to be expected. Blanche Porteous had been well known and well liked in Guildford for fifteen years. There was no mystery about her. It was common knowledge that her nearest living relatives were a brother and some cousins, a fact confirmed by the former, Mortimer Shearsby, at the inquiry. The chemist did not add to this known domestic background any mention of the considerable fortune involved, presumably because he’ accepted the prevailing theory of misadventure. There was nothing in the evidence to suggest an alternative to this theory, which was indeed fortified by the dead woman’s connection with chemicals and the presence of sodium nitrite in her late husband’s laboratory. Even the coroner’s assumption that this was the first fatality of its kind helped to support the preconceived idea that someone had blundered. The coroner was, of course, mistaken; and Mortimer Shearsby, though still present, did not draw his attention to the similar case at Bedford a year
