Stephanie G. Mathis Its career is shorter. It would be suspicious to have strychnine at home today, writes Kathryn Harkup. But it was not in 1920.
Dr Thomas Neill’s cream was the first to make strychnine famous. Cream was executed in 1892 for the serial-strychnine-murders of women in Canada and Britain. His final words are alleged to have been, “I am Jack, the …”
Inglethorp was no different than any of Cream’s victims. Christie writes:
The convulsions of the woman were a sight to behold. A final [one] lifted it from her bed until her body was twisted unusually, and she seemed to rest on her head and heels.
Christie learned about chemicals during her tenure as a nurse at the Torquay War Hospital at the end of World War I. She even formulated the fabled drug that caused Inglethorp to die.
A mixture of potassium chloride added to strychnine-sulfate caused a precipitate to form at the bottom. If the grains of crystallized strychnine are consumed without being shaken, they can cause cyanosis or asphyxiation.
Torquay War Hospital, Devon. BBC’s ‘The War in Agatha Christie’s Words’
Christie’s hero Hercule Poirot, in the novel, is said to have gotten the idea from the same pharmacy textbook. Did she get it from the British Empire’s “autonomous network of social communicators?”
Ruskin Bond is an Anglo-Indian writer who believes that she was inspired to write the story about a British Spiritualist murdered in India.
“S” is for Strychnine and Savoy
In the summer of 1911, two British women spiritualists arrived at Mussoorie, an Indian hill station that the British founded during the 1820s.
The Savoy Hotel was their home. Cecil D Lincoln, an Irish lawyer from Lucknow, built the hotel in 1902. The Savoy’s spires, lancet windows, and Gothic architecture were all his work. The dining room was varnished, and the flooring was made from oak trunks. Billiard tables and grand pianos were hauled along the mountain roads. Cider and wine barrels and crates of Champagne, as well as Edwardian fixtures, were also.
The other guest was Eva Mountstephen, her friend from Lucknow. Eva Mountstephen was her Lucknow friend. Garnett-Orme had been engaged to a British officer of the United Provinces who died just before their wedding. She later became a seance practitioner and crystal-gazer, seeking to communicate with the deceased.
Garnett-Orme’s body was discovered on her bed one day. Her room door was locked from the inside. Mount Stephen left for Lucknow the next morning, but her involvement in the case was obvious. Garnett-Orme’s autopsy showed traces of hydrogen cyanide (prussic) in her blood.
It was suspected that the poison had been administered via her bottle of bicarbonate sodium, possibly by someone who knew her well. Mount Stephen appeared before the Justices Rafiq & Tudball at the Allahabad High Court. A lack of evidence led to her dismissal. After the acquittal was announced, it wasn’t long before the strychnine poisoning of the doctor who performed the post-mortem on the deceased became apparent.
The Ghosts of Savoy
The hotel was reopened in 1996 as a heritage property. It is said to be haunted.
Kipling pitched the idea to Conan Doyle, who created the resident of 221B Baker Street Sherlock Holmes. According to Peter Costello, the scene took place in the Billards’ room at Doyle’s home in Windlesham, Surrey.
Costello’s sources are India Office documents and a Times article from October 1912. According to some interpretations, a lover/doctor may have injected the poison in the lady’s cough pill bottle.
Bond wrote In A Crystal Ball: a Mussoorie Mystery in 2007. Kipling is shown writing to Doyle in the story.
In India, there has been a murder… a murder by suggestion in Mussoorie… it is one of the strangest things that have ever happened in this line. This case is filled with everything that seems improbable or impossible.
Walter Benington, Portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle. Wikimedia Commons
In real life, Doyle took a great interest in India. The Sign of Four had a part set in the Andaman Islands. He refused to report on the case in Mussoorie because ” he ran the risk of libel.”
Here, a new theory is introduced.
Bond says that Christie used the case details to create The Mysterious Affair at Styles and changed the setting to Essex. If this is the case, it raises the question of whether Holmes or the man who would become Poirot had Doyle declined the case might have actually been Poirot.
Eden Philpotts was Christie’s neighbor and friend at the time. She offered to help Christie with her novel Snow Upon the Desert. He showed it to his literary agent. Christie was not successful then.
Philpotts, who was born at Mount Abu in Rajasthan, knew the India Kipling was familiar with. Philpotts, who was born in Mount Abu, Rajasthan, was also a close friend of Doyle. He may have been the intermediary for Christie to receive the case.
In the novel, Poirot informs Hastings that “a lady from England lost her own life after taking a mixture similar to what poisoned Inglethorp.” Poirot did not write these words, nor did Christie. These words were verbatim taken from Joseph Price Remington’s legendary treatise Practice of Pharmacy.
The book was in print for more than a decade and a half when Garnett Orme was killed. The way Garnett-Orme died is uncanny in comparison to Remington’s description. Christie created a death that was nearly identical for Inglethorp.
