“The coroner is called in, and, as his physician, I must advise him. The family physician has pronounced it due to natural causes, the uremic coma of latent kidney trouble. Some of the newspapers, I think the Star among them, have hinted at suicide. And then there are others, who have flatly asserted it was murder.”
The coroner’s physician paused to see if we were following him. Needless to say Kennedy was ahead of him.
“Have you any facts in your possession which have not been given to the public yet?” asked Craig.
“I’m coming to that in a moment,” replied Dr. Hanson. “Let me sketch the case first. Henry Vandam had become—well, very eccentric in his old age, we will say. Among his eccentricities none seems to have impressed the newspapers more than his devotion to a medium and her manager, Mrs. May Popper and Mr. Howard Farrington. Now, of course, the case does not go into the truth or falsity of spiritualism, you understand. You have your opinion, and I have mine. What this aspect of the case involves is merely the character of the medium and her manager. You know, of course, that Henry Vandam is completely under their control.”
He paused again, to emphasise the point.
“You asked me if I was in possession of any facts which have not been given to the press. Yes, I am. And just there lies the trouble. They are so very conflicting as to be almost worse than useless, as far as I can see. We found near the unfortunate woman a small pillbox with three capsules still in it. It was labelled ‘One before retiring’ and bore the name of a certain druggist and the initials ‘Dr. C. W. H.’ Now, I am convinced that the initials are merely a blind and do not give any clue. The druggist says that a maid from the Vandam house brought in the prescription, which of course he filled. It is a harmless enough prescription—contains, among other things, four and a half grains of quinine and one-sixth of a grain of morphine. Six capsules were prepared altogether.
“Now, of course my first thought was that she might have taken several capsules at once and that it was a case of accidental morphine poisoning, or it might even be suicide. But it cannot be either, to my mind, for only three of the six capsules are gone. No doubt, also, you are acquainted with the fact that the one invariable symptom of morphine poisoning is the contraction of the pupils of the eyes to a pinpoint—often so that they are unrecognisable. Moreover, the pupils are symmetrically contracted, and this symptom is the one invariably present in coma from morphine poisoning and distinguishes it from all other forms of death.
“On the other hand, in the coma of kidney disease one pupil is dilated and the other contracted—they are unsymmetrical. But in this case both the pupils are normal, or only a very little dilated, and they are symmetrical. So far we have been able to find no other poison than the slight traces of morphine remaining in the stomach after so many hours. I think you are enough of a chemist to know that no doctor would dare go on the stand and swear to death from morphine poisoning in the face of such evidence against him. The veriest tyro of an expert toxicologist could too easily confute him.”
Kennedy nodded. “Have you the pillbox and the prescription?”
“I have,” replied Dr. Hanson, placing them on the table.
Kennedy scrutinised them sharply. “I shall need these,” he said. “Of course you understand I will take very good care of them. Is there anything else of importance?”
“Really, I don’t know,” said the physician dubiously. “It’s rather out of my province, but perhaps you would think it important. It’s mighty uncanny anyhow. Henry Vandam, as you doubtless know, was much more deeply interested in the work of this medium than was his wife. Perhaps Mrs. Vandam was a bit jealous—I don’t know. But she, too, had an interest in spiritualism, though he was much more deeply influenced by Mrs. Popper than she.
“Here’s the strange part of it. The old man believes so thoroughly in rappings and materialisations that he constantly keeps a notebook in his pocket in which he records all the materialisations he thinks he sees and the rappings he hears, along with the time and place. Now it so happened that on the night Mrs. Vandam was taken ill, he had retired—I believe in another part of the house, where he has a regular séance-room. According to his story, he was awakened from a profound sleep by a series of rappings. As was his custom, he noted the time at which they occurred. Something made him uneasy, and he said to his ‘control’—at least this is his story:
“ ‘John, is it about Mary?’
“Three raps answered ‘yes,’ the usual code.
“ ‘What is the matter? Is she ill?’
“The three answering raps were so vigorous that he sprang out of bed and called for his wife’s maid. The maid replied that Mrs. Vandam had not gone to bed yet, but that there was a light in the library and she would go to her mistress immediately. The next moment the house was awakened by the screams of the maid calling for help, that Mrs. Vandam was dying.
“That was three nights ago. On each of the two succeeding nights Henry Vandam says he has been awakened at precisely the same hour
