The Poisonous Seed Read Online Free

look less likely it could have been used in error.’
    ‘What an unpleasant man,’ said Frances.
    ‘Miss Doughty, I want you to know that I have the most perfect belief in your father!’ exclaimed Herbert. ‘He is the kindest and cleverest of men!’
    ‘Thank you Mr Munson. I value your support, and if, as you say, you observed the mixture being made, then that settles any question I might have of an error occurring here. We must wait to hear the public analyst’s report, and hope that it reaches some firm conclusions. The constable informed me that most of the medicine was spilled, which is very troubling. If the inquest was to leave the matter open, it might never be resolved in the public mind.’
    ‘What if Mrs Garton poisoned him?’ suggested Herbert. ‘Have the police thought of that? Perhaps she put poison in his medicine and then blamed it on your father! Wives do murder their husbands, you know.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Frances dryly, casting Herbert a pointed look, ‘I am sure they do.’ She paused, thoughtfully. ‘But if the Inspector is determined to find my father at fault then he will not be looking for other explanations of Mr Garton’s death. It is easy for us to form theories, of course, but we know almost nothing of the Gartons, their household and their circle, and only a very little of what happened on the night he died.’
    ‘That is true,’ admitted Herbert, ‘But there is nothing to be done about that. It’s not as if you can turn detective.’
    ‘I think,’ said Frances, with a sudden resolve, ‘that is exactly what I may have to do.’

C HAPTER T WO
     
    H aving decided to become a detective, Frances soon realised that she had no idea of how to go about it. She was naturally anxious that detective work might lead her into areas inappropriate for both her sex and class, but with the reputation of the business at stake, decided that considerations of propriety might have to be cast aside. She knew that there were private detectives who advertised their services in the newspapers, but recoiled from the idea of entrusting family business to a stranger. Even had she been able to find a reliable, recommended man, her father, parsimonious to a fault, would never have sanctioned the considerable expense involved.
    At the breakfast table next morning she sat deep in thought, reviewing all that she knew about Percival Garton, mainly what had been learned from the local gossips, who had flooded into the shop on the previous after noon with rumours eagerly transmitted over their teacups. A wealthy man of independent means, and in his late forties, Garton had lived in Bayswater for more than nine years. Seized with violent convulsions at about midnight on Monday 12th January, he had expired an hour afterwards, in great agony. Garton had been born in Italy where his parents and sisters still resided, but his younger brother Cedric had been visiting Paris and was travelling to London to represent the family at the funeral. Frances took out her notebook and jotted down all the facts she knew. So engrossed was she that she quite forgot to take breakfast. A looming shadow at her side was Sarah, with a disapproving look, and Frances, feeling suddenly shrunk to the size of a nine year old, hastily helped herself to a boiled egg and bread and butter.
    Frances then turned to her father’s collection of books, relying principally on the British Pharmacopoeia, Squire’s Companion to the Pharmacopoeia and Taylor’s Manual of Medical Jurisprudence . She did not believe for one moment that her father could confuse the concentrated extract of nux vomica with the more liquid tincture, and the fact that Herbert had observed the making of the mixture put any error of that kind beyond possibility. Despite Inspector Sharrock’s insinuations, the extract had always been kept in the back stockroom, and to use this instead of the tincture would have been a deliberate act, not a moment of inattention to detail. Even