Classic Scottish Murder Stories (36 page)

‘What do you think is wrong with Margaret?' she asked now cautiously as Mrs Warden walked her politely to her trap, but the widow ‘didna ken'.

‘I wish she binna wi' bairn,' Mrs Smith said threateningly.

‘That is best known to herself' – the mother was discreet.

Mrs Smith was annoyed: ‘If Margaret is in that condition, it will bring disgrace both upon you and me.'

And so she departed with her cheeses, saying that she was going to see the doctor in Dundee, to get something for herself, and something for Margaret, too. She must have put on a kind and helpful face, because, that night, Margaret returned to Denside and never set foot outside its boundaries again. She was under strict orders to keep her now finished relationship with George a secret from Mr Smith, whose wrath would have been terrible. By this time, the suspected pregnancy must have become a reality, because the girl allowed her mistress to dose her with potions which she believed were abortifacient. She was a passive, fatalistic victim, entirely dominated by an older woman who was fierce, and wheedling. Unwanted at her mother's home, she clung to the commanding presence of her employer, seeing no alternative. She ‘often' confided in Jean
Norrie that she was getting ‘things' from Mrs Smith.

Certain timings do indicate that murder, not abortion, was the plan,
ab initio.
As we have said, Mrs Smith first discovered the liaison at the end of July. Margaret was permanently back at the farm some three weeks later. And on Monday, August 21st, Mrs Smith first took measures to obtain poison for rats. Dr William Dick, surgeon of Dundee, had been on friendly terms with the Smith family for many years. He had known Mrs Smith for 40 years (she was now 42) and considered her to be of ‘humane character', liberal to her poor neighbours. (Another Mary McKinnon!) In the past, not recently, he had observed that she was prone to ‘hysteria'.

On the 21st, two of his daughters visited Mrs Smith at Denside, and she told one of them to ask her father to make up some rat poison for her, saying that she would call for it herself the following Friday. Miss Dick forgot to deliver the message, and for some rather intriguing reason, Mrs Smith waited until September 1st before calling on Dr Dick. The interview, well remembered by the doctor, took place in his kitchen at noon. Quite openly, she accosted him: ‘You have forgotten my poison for rats – the poison I sent the message about – I was so annoyed with rats.' Did she not have any cats? Yes, but she was no better for them. If it would oblige her, he would get the poison from an apothecary's shop, since he had nothing suitable to hand, and he also needed some articles for his own use.

Out at David Russell's shop, he asked the shopman, Andrew Russell, to put up some arsenic for a friend. One ounce of oxide of arsenic (i.e. the white powder, ‘white arsenic') was packaged and tied in double wrapping, both papers marked
arsenic
on one side and
poison
on the other. Back at his house, Dr Dick made it very clear to Mrs Smith that the powder was arsenic and instructed her how to mix it up with a little oatmeal with her own hands, or see it done, in case of accident. He bestowed on her, at her additional request, a ‘small dose' of a
laxative medicine, made up of 20 grains jalap and five grains calomel. Jalap, obtained from the dried tubercles of the climbing plant,
ipomoea purga,
was a favourite, if drastic purgative. Side effects were violent griping, nausea and vomiting. The dose varied from 10 to 60 grains. Calomel, a dull, white powder, was to offset the discomforts.

Mrs Smith drove back to her farmstead with her spoil. She was now fully equipped for murder, although there is always a bridge to cross between the means, and the using of it. The purgative may be a red herring. She had not obtained a sufficient quantity for an heroic attempt at inducing abortion by that agent. Her personal need for the stuff could have been genuine. Poisoners have, of course, been known to mask their acquisition with an innocent purchase, and some time later Mrs Smith did go to Mrs Jolly, druggist of Dundee, for one ounce of castor-oil, which might have had some white mustard with it. One ounce of castor-oil might constitute two doses, so that it is not a massive prescription. It was to be suggested that purgatives were employed as the vehicle for the arsenic. The victim would recognise the familiar, reassuring taste of jalap or castor-oil.

If, theoretically, Mrs Smith, at least at the beginning, intended only to induce abortion, brewing up remedies like a witch and drawing upon her countrywoman's lore, it is only fair to state that arsenic has been used as an abortifacient. Taylor's
Medical Jurisprudence
has, for example, a fatal case of a 22-year-old girl, over five months' pregnant, who had been advised by someone to take a large dose of arsenic, which did not even have the desired effect.

The harvest of 1826 had been early, and much of the corn had already been cut, but there was one field of oats, immediately in front of the farmhouse on its sheltering eminence, which had been slower than the rest to ripen. This was the arena chosen by Mrs Smith as a physical ordeal for Margaret Warden, which certainly made the girl think that
Mistress was helping her to get rid of the baby. Together with Ann and Agnes Gruar, she was set to shearing the field, and she was seen forking the corn with a will, like Ruth, gleaning in the fields of barley. Mrs Smith had told her that a régime of fasting and hard work, in conjunction with what she would be giving her, would do the trick. Nothing is heard of the young swain, George, who must have witnessed the activities, unless his mother had found an excuse to banish him.

On Monday, September 4th, however, her strength failed and she sat down by the ungathered sheaves and confided her miseries to her two companions. She said that ‘She was not able for her work, must leave Denside, and did not know where to go because she would rather take her own life than endure the cruelty of her relatives.' She threatened to ‘put an ill end to herself'. ‘God keep me!' said Ann Gruar, and went away in fear. There is a legend, apparently a mere tale, although it would have been in character, that at this moment, the Wife o' Denside glided over from the house and offered the wilting girl a flagon of tea, which revived her.

On the Tuesday, she toiled all day without complaint, and, in the evening, fell asleep in a chair by the fire while Jean Norrie was working around the kitchen. When it was the girls' usual bedtime, at 10 o'clock, and they were sitting by the ingle, Mrs Smith came in from the parlour with a glass of liquid, which she kept stirring with a spoon. It was a pretty large dram-glass, about full. Saying that she had already taken her share, she administered one spoonful to Jean – straight into her mouth – and gave the rest, in the glass, to Margaret and the girl drank it in one go. Then she presented Margaret with a lump of sugar.

Jean said that the liquid was ‘white-like'. It did not taste of castor-oil, which her mistress had given her once before. She had seen cream of tartar in the past, and that was what it really looked like. The girls clambered into their bed in the cupboard and slept. The next morning, when Jean woke up, she found
Margaret, nauseous, weakly trying to light the fire. She was cold and shivering. Jean helped her back to bed and then had to leave her, to work outside. At dinner-time, she was still in bed and sorry for herself. In the evening, she was prostrate, with a ‘sore side' and internal pains.

‘Oh!' she said, taking hold of her friend's hands. ‘What I ha'e bidden [suffered] this day!'

‘Have the Smiths been owning [looking after] you?'

‘Rather too weel.'

Jean mentioned the Grim Reaper, and Margaret said, ‘Some fowk wad be glad o' that.'

That night, the two girls shared the bed again, uncomfortably, and Jean found Margaret wide-awake in the early morning. All day long she vomited and purged and begged for water, which she could not retain. All day long she cried for her mother, but Mrs Smith told her, ‘Wheesht and haud your tongue till your physic operate,' and brought her yet more ‘castor-oil'. Would whisky help poor Margaret? (she asked Jean Norrie.)

‘She has got enough of that, or something else,' the servant replied, ‘for such purging and vomiting I never saw.'

Mrs Smith went away, vexed. ‘Say nothing to her about it,' Margaret begged. She whispered to Jean that Mistress had burned her inside with whisky. Jean urged her to take no more of the drinks. ‘Mistress says they're good for the “wheezle” in my breath.' ‘Dinna tell me it's your breath. I ken better!' said Jean, and Margaret murmured then, ‘I ken ither things, too.'

On Friday, Margaret was drowsy and ‘queer-like'. Jean Norrie, in close proximity, was only too well-placed to witness her inexorable decline. Faintly, the dying girl said, ‘You ken, Jean, wha has been the occasion o'me lyin' here?'

‘No,' said Jean.

‘Dinna say naething.'

‘Dinna
you
say naething,' said Jean, ‘for I dinna ken.'

‘They'll get their rewards.'

‘If it's onybody you're blamin', you'll surely forgi'e them,' and Margaret agreed that she would.

‘I've told you before no to tak ony mair o'thae drinks the mistress gi'ed you.'

At last, Margaret's mother was at her bedside. When Jean was out of the room, she asked her daughter, ‘Has onybody given you onything, or has onybody hurt you?' This seems a plain enough suspicion, and one would not put it past Mrs Smith to attempt abortion with an instrument.

‘My mistress ga'e me it,' was Margaret's reply. Her mother felt ‘so sorry' and ‘there was naething more said on the subject.' The girl was crying out in great pain and ‘burning'. Her mother felt her hands. They were cold as the coffin and Margaret said pitifully that they ‘wad be caulder yet.'

At last, a doctor was called. It was the mother, not Mrs Smith, who summoned Dr Taylor, of Broughty Ferry. He arrived at noon on that Friday. Mrs Smith was at the door, ‘knitting her stocking', a picture of nonchalance. She took him into her parlour and told him that her servant had been ill with vomiting and pain in her bowels, ever since Tuesday. Why had he not been sent for sooner? Because, said the spidery one, ‘She was not aware that her complaint was so serious, and she was a light-headed cutty
1
and they had not paid that attention to her that they might have done.' She had given her nothing but castor-oil during the course of the illness. Then Mrs Smith asked a curious question. It was reported that the girl was with child: would the doctor know so if he saw her? Very likely, he told her, with some irony. Was it not likely, she persisted, that the vomiting and purging would carry off the child, if there were one? She confided in him that a baby ‘would be a stain on the family'.

Why was she saying all this to the doctor? Was she still not
sure that there
was
a pregnancy? Was she trying to fpuSe his thoughts along the lines of an attempted abortion, howsoever effected, or by whom, in order to distract him from graver suspicions? Dr Taylor was beginning to dislike the direction of the discussion, anyway, and said shortly that he had come for the purpose of seeing the patient, and did not choose to indulge in such conversation.

He was taken to the kitchen, where he found Margaret Warden just coming out of a fit of vomiting. She looked very ghastly and fell over, almost insensible. The heartbeat was indistinct and rapid – 150 to 160 a minute. He could detect no pulse at the wrist or temples. The extremities were perfectly cold, and there was a cold perspiration all over the body. The arms had a dark appearance. He tried to rouse the girl, but the simplest question exhausted her, and he did not feel justified in continuing. He said later that, ‘I understood her to be with child for about three months. She said nothing from which I could infer that she had done herself ill.'

The doctor finished his examination, and Mrs Smith drew him back into her parlour. What did he think of Warden? The straight answer was that she would be dead in a few hours' time. He did not prescribe any medicine, because he made it a rule not to prescribe for a dying patient. Mrs Smith merely remarked that she had sent for a medical man to take the responsibility off her own shoulders. Was there a pregnancy, then? The doctor said that he had every reason to believe so. The vomiting and purging might displace it, or, on the other hand, might not. Mrs Smith commented that ‘she would take care, though, that it did, as the gudeman [her husband] would tear down the house about her'. I think that this should have been reported as ‘she would
not
care'. She would hardly have told the doctor that she was contemplating some positive action to encourage miscarriage. The doctor departed. Mrs Smith need not have worried, because he was under the impression that it was a fatal case of cholera.

After three days of unalleviated suffering, at 9 o'clock on the evening of Friday, September 8th, 1826, Margaret Warden expired. As the grieving mother and friends saw to her body, they marvelled at its dark colouration. Next day, Mrs Margaret Smith, the farmer's sister-in-law, called to enquire. She asked if it was the fever that Warden had died of, and Mrs Smith said that was right. The girl had been in the family way, she (our Mrs Mary Smith) had heard, but personally, she did not believe it. Why was the body blue? Oh! The doctor had advised her that all who died of the fever were blue. (Dr Taylor did not corroborate that exchange, and he was to repudiate a later assertion by Mrs Smith that he had intimated that the illness was ‘water in the chest' – i.e. probably left ventricular failure.)

Although the down-trodden, eleemosynary mother was too intimidated by Mrs Smith to make any noises of discontent, she did tell her other daughter, in confidence, when they were ‘coming to the coffining', what Margaret had said to her about her mistress. She did not tell her son, ‘because it could not bring her back, and would fetch disgrace upon the Denside family'. Afterwards, she attributed her silence to gratitude to Mrs Machan, who had taken pity on her widowed state.