Death at the Bar

‘Well – with prussic acid, I imagine.’

‘You imagine! You imagine!’

‘He said that was what it was. He said it was acid or something. I wouldn’t know. He warned me in sixteen different positions to be careful. Suggested Abel wore a half-crown gas mask, so I bought it in case Abel hadn’t got one. Abel’s using gloves and everything.’

‘It’s absolutely monstrous!’

‘I had to sign for it, old boy,’ said Parish. ‘Very solemn we were. God, he was a stupid man! Bone from the eyes up, but so, so kind.’

Watchman said angrily, ‘I should damn well think he was stupid. Do you know that twenty-five drops of Scheele’s acid will kill a man in a few minutes? Why, good Lord, in Rex v. Bull, if I’m not mistaken, it was alleged that accused gave only seven drops. I myself defended a medical student who gave twenty minims in error. Charge of manslaughter. I got him off but – how’s Abel using it?’

‘What’s all this?’ inquired Cubitt. ‘There’s your beer.’

‘Abel said he was going to put it in a pot and shove it in a rathole,’ explained Parish. ‘I think he’s filled with due respect for its deadliness, Luke, really. He’s going to block the hole up and everything.’

‘The chemist had no business to give you Scheele’s, much less this infernal brew. He ought to be struck off the books. The pharmacopœial preparation would have been quite strong enough. He could have diluted even that to advantage.’

‘Well, God bless us,’ said Cubitt hastily, and took a pull at his beer.

‘What happens, actually, when someone’s poisoned by prussic acid?’ asked Parish.

‘Convulsion, clammy sweat, and death.’

‘Shut up!’ said Cubitt. ‘What a filthy conversation!’

‘Well – cheers, dear,’ said Parish, raising his tankard.

‘You do get hold of the most repellent idioms, Seb,’ said his cousin. ‘Te saluto.’

‘But not moriturus, I trust,’ added Parish. ‘With all this chat about prussic acid! What’s it look like?’

‘You bought it.’

‘I didn’t notice. It’s a blue bottle.’

‘Hydrocyanic acid,’ said Watchman with his barrister’s precision, ‘is, in appearance, exactly like water. It is a liquid miscible with water and this stuff is a dilution of hydrocyanic acid.’

‘The chemist,’ said Parish, ‘put a terrific notice on it. I remember I once had to play a man who’d taken cyanide. “Fool’s Errand,” the piece was; a revival with whiskers on it, but not a bad old drama. I died in a few seconds.’

‘For once the dramatist was right,’ said Watchman. ‘It’s one of the sudden poisons. Horrible stuff! I’ve got cause to know it. I was once briefed in a case where a woman took –’

‘For God’s sake,’ interrupted Norman Cubitt violently, ‘Shut up, both of you, I’ve got a poison phobia.’

‘Have you really, Norman?’ asked Parish. ‘That’s very interesting. Can you trace it?’

‘I think so.’ Cubitt rubbed his hair and then looked absentmindedly at his paint-grimed hand. ‘As a matter of fact, my dear Seb,’ he said, with his air of secretly mocking at himself, ‘you have named the root and cause of my affection. You have perpetrated a coincidence, Sebastian. The very play you mentioned just now, started me off on my Freudian road to the jim-jams. “Fool’s Errand,” and well named. It is, as you say, a remarkably naîve play. At the age of seven, however, I did not think so. I found it terrifying.’

‘At the age of seven?’

‘Yes. My eldest brother, poor fool, fancied himself as an amateur and essayed the principal part. I was bullied into enacting the small boy who, as I remember, perpetually bleated: “Papa, why is mamma so pale” and later on: “Papa, why is mamma so quiet? Where has she gone, papa?”’

‘We cut all that in the revival,’ said Parish. ‘It was terrible stuff.’

‘I agree with you. As you remember, papa had poisoned mamma. For years afterwards I had the horrors at the very word. I remember that I used to wipe all the schoolroom china for fear our Miss Tobin was a Borgian governess. I invented all sorts of curious devices in order that Miss Tobin should drink my morning cocoa and I hers. Odd, wasn’t it? I grew out of it but I still dislike the sound of the word and I detest taking medicine labelled in accordance with the Pure Food Act.’

‘Labelled what?’ asked Parish with a wink at Watchman.

‘Labelled poison, damn you,’ said Cubitt.

Watchman looked curiously at him.

‘I suppose there’s something in this psycho-stuff,’ he said. ‘But I always rather boggle at it.’

‘I don’t see why you should,’ said Parish. ‘You yourself get a fit of the staggers if you scratch your finger. You told me once, you fainted when you had a blood test. That’s a phobia, same as Norman’s.’

‘Not quite,’ said Watchman. ‘Lots of people can’t stand the sight of their own blood. This poison scare’s much more unusual. But you don’t mean to tell me, do you, Norman, that because at an early age you helped your brother in a play about cyanide you’d feel definitely uncomfortable if I finished my story?’

Cubitt drained his tankard and set it down on the table.

‘If you’re hell-bent on your beastly story –’ he said.

‘It was only that I was present at the autopsy on this woman who died of cyanide poisoning. When they opened her up, I fainted. Not from emotion but from the fumes. The pathologist said I had a pronounced idiosyncrasy for the stuff. I was damned ill after it. It nearly did for me.’

Cubitt wandered over to the door and lifted his pack.

‘I’ll clean up,’ he said, ‘and join you for the dart game.’

‘Splendid, old boy,’ said Parish. ‘We’ll beat them tonight.’

‘Do our damnedst anyway,’ said Cubitt. At the doorway he turned and looked mournfully at Parish.

‘She’s asking about perspective,’ he said.

‘Give her rat-poison,’ said Parish.

‘Shut up,’ said Cubitt and went out.

‘What was he talking about?’ demanded Watchman.

Parish smiled. ‘He’s got a girl-friend. Wait till you see. Funny chap! He went quite green over your story. Sensitive old beggar, isn’t he?’

‘Oh yes,’ agreed Watchman lightly. ‘I must say I’m sensitive in a rather different key where cyanide’s concerned, having been nearly killed by it.’

‘I don’t know you could have a – what did you call it?’

‘An idiosyncrasy?’

‘It means you’d go under to a very small amount?’