‘Very well, sir,’ said Maisry. ‘It is always a good idea to take precautions. The only trouble is that in taking precautions we’re also taking up time. We don’t want another young woman to be murdered.’
‘Quite, quite. So you’d better get cracking, what?’
(4)
The doctor was not pleased.
‘But, my dear chap,’ he said to Maisry, ‘if there had been the least thought in my mind that there was anything suspicious in Schumann’s dying like that, I should have been on to you fellows at once.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Maisry. ‘Still, you would have had to be very certain before you came to us, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, one has to think of one’s other patients, you know. I mean, I myself am absolutely convinced, as I was at the time, that Schumann’s death was a perfectly natural one, given the circumstances of his illness, although I’ll admit I had not expected him to succumb to it like that, but, for the sake of argument, suppose I’d refused to issue a certificate and had called for an inquest, and then, when all the proceedings were over, nothing out of the ordinary had been found wrong with the poor chap, what do you suppose would have been the effect on my other patients and, particularly, on their relatives? Nobody is going to trust a doctor whose aim and object seems to be to suspect that the family corpses have been poisoned! If it will help to clarify the thing in your mind, I can lend you the case-notes, always remembering, if you’ll forgive my mentioning it, that they are highly confidential.’
‘I’d prefer a résumé of them, if you don’t mind, sir,’ said Maisry, taking out his notebook, ‘because, although I’ll bear in mind that they are of a confidential nature, I’ll need to discuss them with the Chief Constable and with Dame Beatrice, and there are things my own notes can tell me better than a verbatim report, which, as we have your permission, sir, is also being taken.’ He nodded towards the corner of the room where his shorthand-writing sergeant was busy.
‘I see. Oh, well, then, half a minute.’ The doctor rang the bell for his receptionist. ‘Hope you needn’t keep me too long. I’ve evening surgery at half-past six and a confinement lying in wait over at Burley. Oh, Miss Warner, will you look up Schumann, Heinrich Otto, and bring it in here?’
The case-notes were perfectly straightforward. Heinrich Schumann had suffered for two years from gastric trouble and had brought with him from his previous doctor, now retired from practice, a history of this illness which dated from 1939, the year, Dame Beatrice noted, in which Schumann had lost his job. So far, so good. It was not at all unlikely that the shock and, as he must have seen it, the unfairness of his dismissal from his school, would have brought on an anxiety neurosis with its physical complement of an ulcerated stomach.
‘I don’t see anything in this which would justify me in asking for an exhumation order,’ said Maisry unhappily. ‘The illness seems to have taken a normal course, doesn’t it?’
‘So far as was known, yes. Would you care to ask what use veterinary surgeons make of something they call butter of antimony?’ suggested Dame Beatrice.
‘Antimony? You still think Schumann was poisoned, then?’
‘There have been similar cases. Proof, admittedly, is difficult, but there is a remarkable similarity between the course of Schumann’s illness and that of a certain Mrs Ann Smith, who came to Liverpool from Devonshire and lived on Merseyside with various relatives and a man named Winslow who acted as manager of some rooms above the shop and restaurant. These rooms were let to members of the family and to other lodgers. To summarize the story, it is only necessary to say that, after a comparatively short time, Mrs Smith’s sister’s husband, a certain Mr Townsend, and two of his sons, died.
‘After this, the man Winslow seems to have acquired some sort of ascendency over Mrs Smith, so that, in the end, she was persuaded to leave the stock and goodwill of her business to him. Previously, when she first became ill, she had given him written authority to withdraw money from her Savings Bank. Other attempts on his part to possess himself of what she owned were disallowed, however. Now the similarity between her case and that of Heinrich Schumann is this: both were known to have been suffering from stomach ulcers. Neither, however, should have suffered such deterioration in health as to die of the illness so soon. In the case of Mrs Smith it was found that somebody – the evidence, although strongly presumptive against him, was not sufficient to convict Winslow – had been administering small doses of antimony to her over a period of time, and so had hastened, if he had not actually caused, her death.
‘Further, the poisoner Pritchard also used antimony to ensure the deaths of his wife and his mother-in-law, and Chapman, otherwise known as Klosowski, murdered three women by administering tartarised antimony, again over a period of time.
‘Now it is clear to me that Heinrich Schumann’s doctor did not expect him to die when he did. The treatment shown in these case-notes was the correct one for an ulcerated stomach such as the doctor describes, and it is clear that the patient responded satisfactorily to it until a few months before his death. All the same, the doctor had no suspicion that anything untoward was going on, but, bearing in mind the two cases I have cited, I think we will proceed with the exhumation. If nothing
