I shall call it, with levity, the bifocals syndrome. And yet, I am deeply disturbed. Why should my professional life be cast into chaos by a simple case of presbyopia, adequately safeguarded? I might by now have finished my paper on Frederickson’s Hyperbetalipoproteinaemia; I might be a rheumatism research fellow at Leeds Public Dispensary; I might at least be part-time Medical Officer at Holloway Prison.
Why instead am I lying under this palm tree, watching a banana bird?
Because of a killing, you might correctly reply. A killing, and an individual with the classification (creeping, aquatic) of Johnson Johnson.
That was a joke. As a medical student at Edinburgh University I considered such lapses beneath me. I did not attend Union dances or Christmas balls. I noticed that those who did so were the same as those who vanished for coffee during whole-body dissection, leaving me to do the work of three on each side of a male Blumer’s shelf. They were the same who turned over in their sleep when the bell rang from the delivery-room, where I alone walked barefoot through the tunnel and stood in my pyjamas, rapt and shivering, while the consultant discoursed on the unhurried arrival of triplets.
None of this, I must truthfully say, sprang from any feeling whatever of service to ailing humanity. I did not become B. Douglas MacRannoch, M.B., from any love of my fellow men, all of whom I held in well-founded disdain. I achieved it as a means to a research fellowship which would enable me to get shut of my father.
My mother died at my birth, a woman of limited impact, leaving me the only offspring and heir of a madman.
That to others this man appeared sane was not the least of my undeserved burdens. Christened James Ulric MacRannoch, he is known simply as The MacRannoch: a title indicating that, in the eyes of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, he is forty-fifth Chief of Clan Rannoch and Keeper of Rannoch Castle, Argyll, Scotland.
In youth short and dark, like myself. The MacRannoch is now white-haired, volatile, and subject to nasal polyps and asthma in winter, during the Perth bull sales, and when the stock-market wavers. Until recently, he has assuaged his martyrdom happily by going abroad every autumn and letting the castle to foreigners.
The day came, however, when I received a cable at the British Research Council, Cambridge, where, fully qualified, I was peacefully investigating the habits of a Coxsackie-B virus. My father’s condition had become strikingly poorer. A Scottish summer was out of the question. He must leave the country. He must remove, perhaps for good, to a warm, even climate, such as the British West Indies.
Neither he nor his specialist quacks would be shaken. I gave up my job with the B.R.C., packed my cases and those of my father, and in a short space of time was installed, irrespective of my personal feelings, as Medical Officer in the United Commonwealth Hospital, Nassau, in the self-governing British island group off the Florida coast called the Bahamas.
As a literate member of society you are not, I take it, familiar with skin diving, rum punches, calypso night-clubs, surfing, dancing, gambling and lying oiled in the sun. That some people do so indulge, many of them failed medical students, is fortunate for the Bahamians, who have no taxes, a warm climate and small scope or aptitude for intensive cultivation and industry. Sunshine, palm trees and hibiscus flowers naturally improve the exterior appearance of any hospital, and made soothing the drive to my work, in the 1961 Ford Anglia I purchased for twenty pounds from an outgoing houseman. To a trained mind, however, a hospital is a hospital wherever it may be; the work was routine; my C.M.O. and fellow doctors were not unduly conversational, and I was able to play an excellent game of golf almost every day. My father’s health improved, and he began to talk about bridges.
My father’s paranoia, to which I have made slight reference before, takes the form of an absolute and unreasoning obsession to do with the building of bridges. Its focal point is the family seat, a small but finely preserved twelfth-century castle on a sea rock off the west coast of Scotland. My father’s object in life, apart from corresponding with and dispensing hospitality to the world population of exiled MacRannochs, has been to form a permanent bridge from the castle across to the shore.
It is not only that he is a martyr to an abysmal and incurable seasickness. There is a family legend that the thirteenth MacRannoch of MacRannoch on building the castle, did indeed achieve such a bridge, with the help of the fairies. And what the thirteenth MacRannoch could do, the forty-fifth is determined to surpass.
It has brought him nothing but trouble. The seabed is deep; the currents strong and irregular. Every bridge my father has built so far has been a failure: and indeed his personal involvement on the day the fifth bridge fell down resulted in tragedy. Two days later, the melancholy news was broken to my father in hospital that I, then a child at school, was and must remain for ever the sole heir of the MacRannochs.
His asthma dates from that day.
I was giving some thought to his condition as I stood on the upgoing escalator in Kennedy Airport, after some months’ residence in Nassau with my father. Visits to New York from the United Commonwealth Hospital are not frequent, but an interesting renal case due for specialist care had clashed with a diver flown in with the bends. One of my fellow doctors, working extremely hard, managed to clear his own schedule in order to fly with the diver to Miami, while I was asked to take the renal by air to New York. It was winter.
The social structure of America is not one of which I approve. True, in season Fifth Avenue rings with the cries and the bells of charity-seeking Father Christmases, each with his chimney, and the Salvation Army sings and plays lustily at each corner where the traffic controls command so succinctly: Walk. Don’t Walk.
There is little sign of poverty elsewhere. After a sufficient meal of creamed chipped beef on corn bread, two dollars, I walked through the city, jostled by Chinamen, Germans, South Americans, Swedes and ladies in Fortissimo Garterless Panty Girdles with blue wigs. The Tishman building had red stars blinking in and out all the way up its multiple storeys, and Korvette’s still had a four-storey Christmas tree in green lights. The Plaza fountain was outlined in white stars, and there was a line of expensive, lit fir trees down Park. The Steuben display was three storeys high, of spinning snow crystals three feet in diameter. In the window they had a crystal cheese wedge with a gold mouse, eighteen-carat, price six hundred dollars. In Lord and Taylor’s, a snow leopard lay in a gilt cage with a diamond bracelet clasped round its white neck. I will not mention Tiffany’s.
All the way to Kennedy Airport, I thought of my father, who has squandered the MacRannoch fortune all his life on St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and bridges. I was still thinking of him with, no doubt, a severe cast of expression when the door of the B.O.A.C. Monarch Lounge at the head of the escalator was flung crashing open. A distraught woman in blue darted out, stopped dead with her eyes on the small medical grip in my hand and said, ‘Oh, Nurse. Could you come quickly? Something terrible’s happened.’
I am a person of well-balanced psyche, with a large spectrum of complete psychological control. I need it all when I am summoned as ‘Nurse’. I said, ‘My name is Dr MacRannoch. I am prepared to help. You have, however, an exceedingly capable medical staff of your own. I suggest you summon them.’
My tone braced her sufficiently. ‘I have,’ she said. ‘They’re coming. But he’s collapsed in there. He may be dying.’
‘Show me,’ I said.
The patient was in the men’s lavatory: a well-nourished, large-featured man in his fifties with longish, wavy grey hair, a mohair suit of good cut and an English Guards tie. His face was vaguely familiar, although I could not at once place it, and he was in no state to communicate with me, at the moment being engaged in getting rid of the entire contents of his stomach in no uncertain fashion.
There was a strong smell of brandy, which seemed to remove some of the urgency from the situation. Kneeling beside the unlucky man, I caught the hostess’s attention and lifted my eyebrows.
A younger man, who had been supporting the patient by the head, said, ‘He isn’t drunk. He tried to tell me. He thinks it’s crab sandwiches.’
‘Oh,’ I said. A different matter. Gastro-intestinal infection is a tricky thing, and no good doctor would treat it lightly. I said, ‘When did this happen?’ His pulse was quick and irregular and his fingers were cold: he resisted any efforts to lay hands on his abdomen, which puzzled me slightly.
‘He had a brandy out there,’ said a Cockney voice, surprisingly, behind me. ‘And a cup of tea. Then he said he felt faint and I brought him in here. He was complaining of this hellish pain in his stomach.’
‘And the crab sandwiches,’ I said rather sharply. ‘Did he have these in the Monarch Lounge too?’
My patient raised his head from the washbasin and looked at me with unfocused eyes. ‘Denise made them. My wife,’ he said. ‘I ate one and put the rest down the loo.’ He stared at me and said, ‘My stomach hurts. Over here.’
I did what I could until the doctor and then the ambulance came, helped by the senior hostess, who was more competent than I had feared. She was worried, naturally. ‘He only helped himself to a brandy,’ she kept saying. ‘And a cup of tea with a biscuit. He couldn’t have got anything wrong out of that. I mean, other passengers have been eating and drinking all day.’
I said, ‘He believes it was one of his own sandwiches. It might even have been something wrong with his breakfast. In any case, he’s now out of danger, I fancy. Although it was a nasty attack and the sooner the hospital has him, the better.’
The American said, ‘It wasn’t his breakfast. We had that together, and I ate everything he ate. At the Bull and Bear, as a matter of fact.’ He was a tall, underweight man in his early thirties. Wallace Brady by name. I could feel the air hostess’s surprise as I bent over my patient. She said, ‘Do you know him? I thought you and Sergeant Trotter had come in together.’
The Cockney voice (first-class? Cockney?) said, ‘No, I was just sitting near when the old chap began to act dizzy.’
‘I knew him,’ said the American, Brady. ‘He’s a neighbour of mine. We met this morning by chance. We were going back on the same plane to Nassau - he was only here for twenty-four hours. And there wasn’t a thing wrong this morning.’ He looked at the television screen by the door and added. ‘Damn. We’ve lost the last plane.’
I only half heard him because the airport doctor had arrived with two nurses and I was busy. We got the man on the stretcher and watched him being carried away. The doctor, effusive in his thanks, shook his head at last and said, ‘Why the hell should he eat a crab sandwich?’ and the American, who was still standing beside us, said, ‘His wife made them and he forgot to have them last night. He didn’t want to disappoint Lady Edgecombe.’
Edgecombe. I began dimly to remember. A former minor ambassador, I rather fancied. Retired and living on one of the Bahamian out-islands. Living on a generous pension, perhaps, and devoted to gracious living, Lady Edgecombe and crab.
It was nothing to do with me, and I was pleased that it wasn’t my case.
On the other hand, public health is a doctor’s concern, and the man would be returning to Nassau. I laid in my bag, before I left, a small specimen bottle marked Edgecombe, Kennedy Airport, and the date.
It was a minor precaution. I saw no reason to mention the fact. I was more concerned, as I remember, with the nuisance of having lost the last plane back to Nassau that day.
It did not occur to me, as I left the airport and made my way to the hotel in which B.O.A.C., with their customary propriety, were paying my expenses overnight, that I had just taken the most significant step of my life.
Since I am not what a patient of mine once seriously referred to as a ‘night person’, and had no desire to see a homosexual play, a rave musical or a small intimate niterie, I watched the news headlines on television, and retired at 9.30.
At 10.15 p.m. the airport doctor rang, a courtesy call, to inform me that Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe had received the necessary treatment, was quite out of danger, and was now resting comfortably in hospital. I thanked him, and went back to sleep.
At 11 p.m. the telephone rang again, and an unknown American voice said, ‘Is this Dr MacRannoch?’
‘It is,” I said. Night interruptions are part of a doctor’s life, which is why I go to bed early. ‘Who is speaking?’
‘Dr Douglas MacRannoch?’ The voice was muted and over-familiar in manner, reminding me of a chocolate commercial to which I am not at all partial.
‘Speaking. Who is calling?’
‘Dr MacRannoch,’ the voice said again lovingly. I can use no other word. ‘Today you saved a man’s life. Just don’t do it again, will you? Just don’t do it again.’ And there was a tap followed by the pneumatic-drill noise of a broken connection, which I believe to be a serious insult to the inner ear. I therefore quickly put the phone down.
At that moment, someone banged on my door.
I sat still. The Trueman is a respectable business hotel just off Times Square with perhaps twenty-five storeys of bedrooms, mostly occupied by travellers who mind their own business and seldom stay more than one night. The staff are adequate but quite uninvolved, their main concern being to make the beds if possible by 8 a.m. each morning. At night, the guest may do as he pleases.
One of the guests, it seemed, was pleased to knock on my door in a city where I knew no one. On the other hand, the telephone was by my side, and I had put the chain on the door, receiving my customary electric shock as I did so. Since both the ringing of my telephone and my voice had undoubtedly also been heard, I filled my lungs and said, ‘Yes? Who is it?’ just as the knock was repeated. At the same time I lifted and opened my medical bag, which stood on the chair by my bed, and began to locate and fill a standard plastic syringe with 10 c.c. of a seven-per-cent solution of pentothal sodium.
The knocking stopped. ‘Dr MacRannoch? I beg your pardon,” said another American voice through the door: a voice I had recently heard. ‘I do beg your pardon if you were asleep, but this is Wallace Brady, remember? I’ve just been to the hospital and seen Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe. I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘I know,’ I said. I finished filling the syringe, wiped it, repacked my bag and reached across for my dressing-gown. ‘I’ve just had a call from Dr Radinski. I hear he has made a good recovery. Thank you for coming to tell me.’
‘He has, but it isn’t that. Dr MacRannoch’ - it was an educated voice, in so far as such a thing may be said of a transatlantic inflection: and socially fluent - ‘Dr MacRannoch, I know it’s late and our acquaintanceship is of very short standing, but I have a message for you from Sir Bartholomew which I promised to give you tonight. I’ll tell you through the door if you wish, or I’ll telephone you, but I’d appreciate it if you felt able to see me?’
‘Just now?’ I said. I tied the dressing-gown, put the syringe in one pocket, and rang the bell for room service.
‘Two minutes?’ he said, instilling appeal into his voice. All the same, it was not quite sufficiently flexible, I judged, to be the murmuring voice on the telephone.
‘Very well,’ I said, and unhooking the chain, drew open the door. ‘I’ve just rung for some coffee. Perhaps you will join me.’
Mr Wallace Brady entered, fully dressed I was happy to see, crossed the room and sat in a distant armchair. He made no attempt whatever to molest me. In fact he seemed, if anything, to find the situation amusing. I put my hands in my dressing-gown pockets and remained standing. ‘Yes?’
‘Do sit down,’ he said. ‘You must be tired, and I’ve interrupted your sleep. And the coffee’s on me. Unless you’d prefer something stronger?’
‘The refreshment, so far as I know,’ I said, ‘is on British Overseas Airways; but please order whatever you wish. I do not take alcohol.’
‘Now that,’ he said regretfully, ‘I should have guessed.’
‘And the message?’ I said. The floor waiter appeared at the open door: I gave him the order and he disappeared.
‘It’s an appeal, really, from patient to doctor,’ Wallace Brady said. He had light brown hair and the type of thick skin which browns without burning: his eyes were light grey, almost white, the lids well opened. He was in my view too thin, but not otherwise ill formed. When I refrained from speaking his hand moved for the first time to his jacket pocket and then he removed it. ‘You don’t like smoke in your bedroom, I guess.’
‘The air conditioning will remove it,’ I said, ‘if you cannot endure a conversation without it.’
He looked at me thoughtfully, then smiling, leaned to one side and took a cigarette-case from his pocket. ‘You’re a woman who knows her own mind,’ he said. ‘Bart Edgecombe was right.’
I waited.
‘The problem is,’ said Brady, ‘that Bart wants to get back to Nassau. His wife’s there, Denise. I gather he doesn’t like to leave her for long. But the hospital aren’t keen.’
‘I should think not,’ I said. I could see what was coming. I said. ‘I thought he lived in one of the out-islands.’
‘He does. Great Harbour Cay. I’m working there myself at the moment - that’s how I know him. He came to New York for a couple of days and Denise took off for some shopping in Nassau and expected him back there tonight. The point is, he wants to get the 11.30 flight tomorrow morning, and if he does, would you look after him? He’ll go straight into the United Commonwealth if need be the moment he arrives.’
The coffee came. I allowed Mr Brady to tip the waiter, since its presence was entirely his responsibility, and poured. Since I had hopes of being allowed to sleep at least part of the night, I made my own mostly hot milk. I said, ‘The hospital is perfectly right in not wishing Sir Bartholomew to travel. My advice would be to send for Lady Edgecombe instead.’
The man Brady sipped his coffee and then sat and looked into it. ‘She’s highly strung,’ he said. ‘He’s dead set on getting back with no fuss, and he has a great opinion of your abilities. When he heard what you did at the airport -’ He broke off. ‘He’s met you, you know. Don’t you remember?’
‘I have no clear recollection,’ I said.
‘He came to the hospital in connection with the New Year parade, and you dealt with him then most efficiently, he says. That’s why he thought you might help him. Of course,’ Mr Brady said quickly. ‘I shall be on the plane, and Sergeant Trotter, who lent us a hand. But it would really set his mind at rest to have you, I can see that. And . . . I hope it won’t embarrass you, but I have to say that of course he will make up any difference between your fare and his own. I don’t suppose the hospital let you travel in luxury.’
They don’t. I only travel in luxury when I am travelling with my father, who used this method among many to promote me into a wealthy and suitable marriage. Since I broke the news to him that I do not intend to marry at all, he has travelled in luxury still more frequently, in an insane ambition to spend all the family wealth before it falls into the hands of his successor, the forty-sixth titular chieftain, one T. K. MacRannoch, a native of Tokyo.
I felt that my broken night’s sleep entitled me at least to a first-class flight to the Bahamas. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘If you will kindly arrange to transfer my ticket. Tell Sir Bartholomew I shall call at the hospital at 10.15 a.m. The airport should be warned that he is a sick man, and they must waive all formalities.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Mr Brady. He looked a trifle unsettled. ‘I should say,’ he said, ‘that I don’t know Bart Edgecombe all that well myself. You know, we play golf occasionally. But I didn’t even know he was in New York until we ran into each other this morning.’
The world is full of people who regard medicine as a public charity. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And is Sergeant Trotter a friend?’
Instead of looking irritated, his expression became merely rueful. ‘Sergeant Trotter,’ he said, ‘is everyone’s friend, as you will find out. He’s regular army and going to Nassau on business, that’s all I know. But he was the only other man to jump to it when Bart honked out and fell, and he stayed with me till you came. In fact, he’s in the next room to mine now, waiting to hear what you say. Just one of Nature’s Samaritans.’
I know that type too. I almost changed my mind; but it was a two-hour flight, that was all, and a first-class passenger lunch would save me buying a supper. I stood up and said, ‘Since we have an early start, perhaps we should have some sleep then. Good-night, Mr Brady.’
He put down his coffee-cup and got up. For a moment I thought he was going to reduce the conversation to personalities; then he shut his mouth and held out his hand. ‘Good-night, Doctor,’ he said.
I put the chain back on the lock and emptied the syringe before getting into bed. It was 11.40 p.m. I do not like unorthodox days.
There is nothing to sap the moral fibre quite like a first-class flight on a Super VC 10, from the nuts and taped music to the champagne and hot cologne-scented towels which quickly succeed them.
The journey to the airport with Sir Bartholomew, who was quite sensible, although unsteady on his feet, had passed off without incident, and after installing him in comfort on a double seat on the other side of the gangway, I was able to put my walking-shoes on the scarlet plush foot-rest and receive the menu with pleasure. Hot prawns in batter were passed round. ‘Looks a bit better than he did yesterday, doesn’t he?’ said a London voice in my ear, and I perceived that I was sitting next to Mr Brady’s helper of the airport lounge, and that Mr Brady himself was nodding good morning from the seat just behind. ‘Rodney Trotter,’ the Cockney voice further volunteered, with accents of boundless goodwill. ‘Sergeant Trotter of the Royal Scots. Your part of the world, eh, Miss MacRannoch?’
I smiled, slightly, without I trust showing my irritation. Behind, the man Brady’s voice said, ‘Doctor MacRannoch, Trotter. Name, rank and number, you know?’
The Sergeant was a small muscular man, aged perhaps forty- seven, with the lined face of one much given to bawling commands. His voice was rich and unexpectedly carrying. He took Brady’s intervention in good humour. ‘I thought she was travelling in civvies like myself,’ he said. ‘Don’t want all the world to know you’re a doctor, eh, Doctor? The arguments I’ve got into about the Army, so soon as I mentioned me rank. Besides, a girl wants to be chatted up as a girl, not a bloody meat-butcher, don’t she?’
I am aware that I lose colour when angry, but I am perfectly capable of keeping my temper under provocation. ‘If you address me as “Doctor”,’ I said, ‘I shall be perfectly satisfied.’
His eyes became round, and for a moment I thought he was going to add to his impertinence. However, he merely said, after a moment, ‘Well, my name’s Rodney, and you can call me that any time you like, Doctor. You did a great job on that chap, anyhow. You can quote me for reference.’ Then the drinks trolley came round, followed by lunch, and he was snoring before the brandy was finished.
I had caviare, clear turtle soup with sherry, lamb noisettes with truffles, cherry meringue gateau with coffee, and two petits fours. Sir Bartholomew, to whom I had given a mild sedative slumbered peacefully through lunch, and had a little warm milk on awakening. Shortly after this, he expressed a wish to retire, and since both Brady and Trotter were slumbering, he was aided to do so by the steward, assisted by a Turkish youth sitting behind him. I thought when he returned he looked pallid; his pulse rate had risen and his breathing had become rapid and more shallow. He showed no wish to speak. I moved over beside him, and had just fastened his seat-belt for the descent when he became rigid and I saw that another attack was imminent, on at least the same scale as the one he had suffered the previous day. I pressed the button for the steward and opened my bag with one hand, supporting him with the other.
The details of what followed are not particularly attractive or even clinically abnormal, given the proper diagnosis, and I shall not dwell on them. Enough to say that the worst was over by the time the ambulance got us from the New Providence airport through Nassau and up the incline to the United Commonwealth Hospital, and that by the time he was settled in the private ward with the entire staff hanging about chattering, Bahamian-style outside his open door, he was conscious and weakly recovering. Indeed he smiled up at me as I bent over him, changed into my white coat. ‘What was it?’ he said.
‘Something you ate. Sir Bartholomew, did you have anything to eat or drink on the plane, apart from the warm milk?’
‘You know I didn’t,’ he said. He had a slow, mannered voice: a remnant perhaps of official days in Britain. I would guess at public school and Cambridge, perhaps. His face changed. ‘At least - I had an aspirin in the lavatory, from the pack in my pocket. Had a crashing headache.’
‘In water?’
‘Steward gave me a glass.’
‘Do you mind, Sir Bartholomew,’ I said, ‘if I remove the aspirins and subject them to some tests? If food poisoning is at the root of your trouble, we must for everyone’s sake discover the source of bacteria. Contaminated tablets, for example, might have caused both attacks. There is another thing I wish to ask you. Sir Bartholomew, do you know of anyone in New York with a personal grudge against you?’ And I informed him of the telephone call I had received at the Trueman.
‘A joke, perhaps,’ I said. ‘On the other hand, there was a degree of menace in the words. They implied, quite clearly, that the caller did not wish your life to be saved.’
He laughed. It was a laugh I had heard many times before when questioning patients. It is important to show no disbelief. He said. ‘When you said joke, I got it. It’s all right. I haven’t got an enemy, but I have a very funny brother-in-law called George. His idea of humour. I’m sorry, Doctor. Did it keep you awake?’
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I was hardly to know a second occasion would involve me so quickly. Your wife has been sent for. I shall be in to see you again, but I suggest you allow at least two days in bed before you attempt to go home to Great Harbour Cay. Is there anything further you wish done for you?’
‘No, thank you,’ he said slowly. ‘At least -’
‘Yes?’ I had a round of the wards to do in five minutes.
‘I have another favour to ask you,’ he said. ‘I’d ask my wife, but she’s. . . well, she gets easily upset. I’d rather Denise thought it was a bad case of air-sickness . . . something small, something like that. If I’m going to get bills from New York, and maybe inquiries and correspondence, I’d rather a family friend looked after it all. I still have some small business interests, and–’
‘You won’t feel like business for a day or two,’ I said. ‘You want me to telephone a friend? Where can I reach him?’ I opened my notebook.
He lay scanning my face, and I concealed my impatience. This meant, presumably, a mistress in another part of the island. However, no patient will recover unless his mind is at rest. I waited.
‘I want you to take a letter,’ he said. ‘To Coral Harbour. That’s where he is. Or so the papers all said three days ago. He’s Johnson Johnson, the portrait painter, maybe you know the name? And you’ll find him on his yacht, a biggish ketch called the Dolly.’
I said I would think about it, and left him to write his letter while I did a tour of my cases. My two stomachs were doing quite well, the perforation having dispensed with his Levine already. We had lost the cervical spine dislocation. An amoebic abscess had come in, and two new tubercular cases: I read the notes on my desk. After a thorough afternoon’s work I walked through the private wing and across the path into the laboratory. There I found a room to myself, and set to analysing four samples I had taken from my bag in the hospital. One was of warm milk and the other of aspirin. The remaining two were from the contents of Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe’s stomach after each of his attacks.
The warm milk was innocent, and so was the aspirin. But both the samples from Edgecombe confirmed my own clinical diagnosis.
Neither attack had been caused by B. botulinus, or B. enteritidis or anything resembling an infected crab sandwich.
Sir Bartholomew Edgecombe had been poisoned by arsenic.