We had no difficulty obtaining the permission to attend the postmortem of Mr. Peter Fenwick. Indeed, the mere mention of our names to the coroner, Dr. Sallet, more than sufficed to procure not only his assent, but the invitation to assist him as well. I knew better than to delude myself that this special dispensation had been granted on the strength of my credentials as a physician. The fame of the name, Sherlock Holmes, was as synonymous to clinical pathology as it was to criminal analysis. I comforted myself in the knowledge that his fame owed itself, in part, to these written accounts of his exploits, however much he might reprove me for my departure from the prosaic for the sensational.

Girding ourselves in leather aprons, we pulled on heavy rubber gauntlets, as Dr. Sallet led the way into the operating-theatre. There lay the corpse of Peter Fenwick upon a cold stone mortuary table. Frozen in a grotesque posture by the throes of his death; only his buttocks and shoulders rested on the table’s surface. His back was swayed like an archer’s bow. His limbs conformed rigidly to the angle of the armchair in which he’d been found; his knees and hands jutting upwards, while his lower legs held themselves at a stiff right-angle.

“You are acquainted with the classic symptoms of tetanus?” asked Dr. Sallet.

“I have seen and treated a number of cases in my practice,” said I.

“I’ve witnessed a few,” replied Holmes, “but I’m more intimately acquainted with the disease’s bacillus, observed through the lens of a microscope.”

“Nevertheless, Mr. Holmes,” assured Dr. Sallet, “I understand that you are a man who has a profound interest in the recherche’. Mr. Fenwick’s symptoms were neither classically symptomatic of tetanus, nor could they have been brought on by the standard induction of the Clostridium tetani bacillus. The onset of the disease was so sudden and dramatic, that Mr. Fenwick even had the opportunity to soil himself whilst suffering the violent last spasms leading to his death. That’s almost unheard of at that stage of tetanus, as there is so great a general constriction of every muscle and organ in the body of the patient, that excretions are held tightly in place.”

We assisted the doctor in turning the body onto its side, and engaged in a minute search for any suggestive traces of ligature or cutting. None could be found, save for the puncture wound in the right wrist at the base of the palm. As we had earlier observed on the skin of his face and hands, his whole body was of a sickish yellow tinge.

“What do you make of the colouration?” Dr. Sallet asked.

“Jaundice,” I observed. “No doubt of that.”

“The coroner nodded. “Mr. Fenwick had suffered with a chronic bilious complaint for years. Of late, it was a question of which would kill him first, his liver or his heart. As it turned out, something, or someone acted on him instead.”

“Then you believe that Mr. Fenwick may have been murdered,” stated Holmes.

Dr, Sallet smiled, shaking his head. “No more and no less than you do. No, I tell a lie, Mr. Holmes. Perhaps I am labouring under a more prejudicial frame of mind than you. I have lived and practiced in Croxley for thirty- five years. Under the sanctity of doctor-patient confidentiality, I’ve been father-confessor to virtually every man, woman and child in these parts. I can tell you , that there is not one soul among them who doesn’t wish ill to the residents of Garlands-Hagswell.”

“’Garlands’!” I repeated with a start.

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Sallet. “Garlands-Hagswell were once two neighbouring estates. Old Mr. Fenwick purchased them both and combined them into one. At his death, Garlands was left to his older son Edgar, and Hagswell went to Peter.”

“Both heirs to their father’s business, as well, I presume,” added Holmes.

“Only by title,” replied Dr. Sallet, “Mr. Hyl runs the mills in Chepstow. The Fenwicks have run quite another sort of business at Garlands. I have had occasion to examine their clients over the past several years. But come! Time and decay wait for no man, and you’ve yet to tell me one other thing about Mr. Peter Fenwick, here, that I find most remarkable.”

“There is no evidence of any purplishness anywhere on his body, to mark the settling of his blood,” noted Holmes.

“Capital, Mr. Holmes!” cried the coroner. “You should expect to see it somewhere at the place where he was rested, directly his circulation had ceased, wouldn’t you? In this case, assuming that he remained seated overnight, after death; gravity should have gathered his blood into his elbows, buttocks, and most particularly, his lowermost extremities. Even postmortem, the tetanic constrictions retain the blood in his veins. Now, if you would be kind enough to turn him onto his back again, we’ll cut this sorry beggar open.”

Dr. Sallet made a long incision into the corpse, and cracked the sternum apart, while Holmes and I retracted the opening, revealing the secrets of the dead. Each organ was lifted, examined and weighed, serums drawn and vialed. The heart, we observed, was enlarged, and its pulmonary and tricuspid valves much deteriorated. The liver was swollen and discoloured, and behind it, the gall bladder was nearly the size of a pear.

“Now,” uttered the coroner, carefully transecting the stomach, “the pi`ece de re’sistance.”

“With a long forceps, he began picking apart the deceased’s last supper: veal, new potatoes, heavy cream (just the sort of thing for a man with a gall bladder that was about to burst, Dr. Sallet remarked). Gingerly, he gathered samples of a crystalline substance from the undigested food, and placed it in a dish.

“Strychnine,” said Holmes.

“Strychnine,” affirmed the coroner. “You see, it’s all throughout the contents of his stomach, but no more than the prescribed dosage for his heart, I should think. Take that pipette, and draw off that liquid, there.”

Holmes drew off a quantity of the liquid, and deposited it in a vial held out to him by Dr. Sallet. The doctor added a small amount of water, and held the vial at arm’s length, shaking it slightly. A strata of light amber rose to the top of the water, while a sediment of crystals precipitated to the bottom. Dr. Sallet held the vial under his nose, taking a delicate whiff. He smile with satisfaction, and nodded his head.

“Mr. Fenwick always kept a store of excellent brandy,” he explained, pointing to the amber liquor in the vial. High alcohol content, always rises to the top of water. Strychnine, on the other hand, is a heavy crystal, you see, and must be agitated in liquid. Someone tried to administer a lethal dose, I’m bound to say, by secreting it into Mr. Fenwick’s decanter of brandy, from which only one glass was poured and drunk. Hardly enough to do him any harm. The lion’s share of the killing dose would have been in the bottom of the decanter, from which he never drank.”

“So, the cause of death would have been…”

“Tetanus, Mr. Holmes,” Dr. Sallet concluded decisively. “Only, I found no trace of tetani bacillus in him at all, but the toxin, tetanospasmin, is very clearly present. That’s unnatural. It means that the bacillus had had to breed the toxin elsewhere, outside of the body, and the toxin was administered directly into Mr. Fenwick. That explains the sudden onset of the disease, and the consequent hurried progress of his death. That’s murder, Mr. Holmes. Four agencies vied for Mr. Fenwick’s life: a wonky ticker, a dysfunctional liver, a fourth rate poisoner, and a first rate biologist. The garland goes to the biologist, with kudos for a job well done.”

I could not help remarking at the offhanded manner of his pronouncement, to which Dr. Sallet responded lamentingly:

“I’m a veritable well-spring of compassion, Dr. Watson, but I’m tapped too dry by their victims, to have one drop left over for the members of the Fenwick household. I mentioned their clients earlier. All pretty, young women from working class families, and green as grass. They would be brought in by Iona, or India Fenwick, directly they arrived in Croxley by the train, for a physical examination. The Fenwick women always remained with them, ostensibly for propriety’s sake. The first visit to my surgery, they were all brimming with excitement at the prospect of being tutored in the courtly manners of a lady fit to be presented before the Queen. Many were still clutching the advertisement they’d clipped from a magazine or newspaper, of the Garlands School for Young Ladies, that bore the appealing rhyme:

“’The garland. The garland.
‘A very pretty garland.
‘As ever you wish to see.
‘All fit for Queen Victoria’s court,
‘Our girls are trained to be.’

“On their second visit, some weeks or months later, the young women seemed to have matured – no – aged. Gone was their girlish innocence, and in its place the worldly comportment of a woman. Not of a lady of courtly manners for the court of a monarch, but of a courtesan, slated to cater to the lurid appetites of continental nobility, or as an addition to an eastern potentate’s harem. I was powerless to do anything for them; straitened by the ambiguous letter of the law, and by the redoubtable presence of Iona and India Fenwick, who ensured that their young charges kept their mouths shut. I never saw the young women after their second visit, though every one of their faces haunts me to this day. After all these years, there is only one of those young sad faces that I can yet associate with her name. Perhaps because she was their first victim, when I little expected to see all those that should follow.”

“What was the first young woman’s name?” enquired Holmes.

“She was the sister of the Fenwick’s butler, John,” replied Dr. Sallet. “Molly, that was her name. Molly Wiggins.”

Proceed to Part Eight