The Wychford Poisoning Case
The Wychford Poisoning Case is a 1926 crime detective novel by Anthony Berkeley, published by W. Collins Sons & Co. It is the second published novel to feature the amateur detective Roger Sheringham, by profession a successful novelist. Like the first Roger Sheringham novel, The Layton Court Mystery, it was published anonymously. The Wychford Poisoning Case was dedicated to fellow crime writer E. M. Delafield.
Plot summary
Sheringham is interested in the much-publicized upcoming trial of Mrs. Jacqueline Bentley, who is charged with the murder of her husband John by poisoning with arsenic. The evidence against Mrs. Bentley seems overwhelming: she bought two dozen arsenical fly-papers from the chemist in Wychford, which two household servants later see soaking in saucers in her bedroom; the residue in a thermos of food prepared by her for her husband is found to contain arsenic; she is seen surreptitiously removing and returning a bottle of Bovril to and from her husband's bedroom that is found to contain arsenic; a trunk belonging to her is found to contain items laced with arsenic; and in a locked drawer in her bedroom is found a packet containing two ounces of arsenic, “enough to kill more than a couple of hundred people.”Sheringham is suspicious and posits that Mrs. Bentley may be innocent because the amount of arsenic suggested by the evidence is greatly in excess of that which would be needed to fatally poison one person. There are a number of other potential suspects who had access to John Bentley's sickroom just prior to his death: his brothers, William and Alfred, the Bentleys’ friends, Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Saunderson, the housemaid Mary Blower, and the nurse. Five of these seven appear to have a possible motive for killing John Bentley: William, to obtain control of the family business; Alfred, who John recently made the primary beneficiary of his will, cutting out his wife and William; Mr. Allen, to get rid of John because Allen and Mrs. Bentley were romantically involved; Mrs. Allen, to revenge herself on Mrs. Bentley for her affair with her husband by framing her for her husband's murder; and Mary Blower, who was having a dalliance with John Bentley, and who was given notice by Mrs. Bentley, with John refusing to intervene.
Mrs. Bentley's explanation is that the arsenic in the fly-papers was extracted to be used by her for cosmetic purposes. She claims that her husband gave her the packet of arsenic, which he told her was a beneficial drug which the doctor would prevent him from taking, asking her to put a pinch or two of this drug into his food occasionally. She claims she cannot account for the arsenic being in the thermos residue and in some medicine bottles and suggests that Bentley himself was responsible for adding it in these cases.
Sheringham eventually formulates a hypothesis that Bentley had become mentally unbalanced after learning of his wife's affair with Mr. Allen, and that Bentley's death was a suicide that was also aimed at implicating his wife for his murder. This hypothesis proves to be wrong: upon making inquiries about John Bentley's earlier life in Paris, Sheringham discovers that he was an “arsenic eater,” a person who regularly ingests and develops a tolerance for normally fatal doses of arsenic in the belief that it improves one's physical stamina. Sheringham concludes: “Bentley died from natural gastroenteritis set up either by the chill he had caught at the picnic or by impure food, and possibly aggravated by the arsenic with which he at once proceeded to treat himself.”