‘Yes, Mr Beresford. You can see where I am tending. Death has resulted from an overdose of morphine.’
‘Good Lord!’ Tommy stared and the ejaculation escaped him.
‘Yes. It seemed quite incredible, but there was no getting away from the analysis. The question was: How was that morphia administered? She was not on morphia. She was not a patient who suffered pain. There were three possibilities, of course. She might have taken it by accident. Unlikely. She might have got hold of some other patient’s medicine by mistake but that again is not particularly likely. Patients are not entrusted with supplies of morphia, and we do not accept drug addicts who might have a supply of such things in their possession. It could have been deliberate suicide but I should be very slow to accept that. Mrs Moody, though a worrier, was of a perfectly cheerful disposition and I am quite sure had never thought of ending her life. The third possibility is that a fatal overdose was deliberately administered to her. But by whom, and why? Naturally, there are supplies of morphia and other drugs which Miss Packard as a registered hospital nurse and matron, is perfectly entitled to have in her possession and which she keeps in a locked cupboard. In such cases as sdatica or rheumatoid arthritis there can be such severe and desperate pain that morphia is occasionally administered. We have hoped that we may come across some circumstance in which Mrs Moody had a dangerous amount of morphia administered to her by mistake or which she herself took under the delusion that it was a cure for indigestion or insomnia. We have not been able to fred any such circumstances possible. The next thing we have done, at Miss Packard’s suggestion and I agreed with her, is to look carefully into the records of such deaths as have taken place at Sunny Ridge in the last two years. There have not been many of them, I am glad to say. I think seven in all, which is a pretty fair average for people of that age group. Two deaths of bronchitis, perfectly straightforward, two of ‘flu, always a possible killer during the winter months owing to the slight resistance offered by frail, elderly women. And three others.’ He paused and said, ‘Mr Beresford, I am not satisfied about those three Others, certainly not about two of them. They were perfectly probable, they were not unexpected, but I will go as far as saying that they were unlikely. They are not cases that on reflection and research I am entirely satisfied about. One has to accept the Imssibility that, unlikely as it seems, there is someone at Sunny Ridge who is, possibly for mental reasons, a killer. An entirely unsuspected killer.’ There was silence for some moments. Tommy gave a sigh.
‘I don’t doubt what you’ve told me,’ he said, ‘but all the same, frankly, it seems unbelievable. These things – surely, they can’t haplen, Oh yes, saicl Dr Murray grimly, ‘they happen all right. You go over some of the pathological cases. A woman who took on domestic service. She worked as a cook in various households.
She was a nice, kind, pleasant-seeming woman, gave her employers faithful service, cooked well, enjoyed being with them. Yet, sooner or later, things happened. Usually a plate of sandwiches. Stmefimes picnic food. For no apparent motive arsenic was adcted. Two or three poisoned sandwiches among the rest. ApPaeently sheer chance dictated who took and ate them. There e, eemed no personal venom. Sometimes no tragedy happened. The same woman was three or four months in a situation atd there was no trace of illness. Nothing. Then she left to go ta another job, and in that next job, within three weeks, two of the family died after eating bacon for breakfast.
The fact that these things happened in different parts of England and at irregular intervals made it some time before the police got on her track. She used a different name, of course, each time. But: there are so many pleasant, capable middle-aged women.who cook, it was hard to fred out which particular woman It Was.
‘Why did sh do it?’ ‘I don’t thir anybody has ever really known. There have be.en several diffferent theories, especially of course by psychologxsts.