Classic Scottish Murder Stories by Molly Whittington-Egan Read Free Book Online Page B

not take any cheese, it was Alexis who cut it for his parents. William took or got a smaller piece.
    Father put his cheese on his bread and began to eat. He felt a burning sensation in his throat, and remarked that it was a funny bit of cheese that his wife had got that week. Piqued, perhaps, by the matrimonial slight, Mother had a second helping of the maligned cheese, together with the second half of Father’s slice of bread; his appetite appeared to have diminished. Supper was over, and Mr King sat smoking by the fire. His wife and William sat beside him. Alexis tuned in on his wireless set. It was indeed a scene of domestic unity.
    After a quarter of an hour, Mr King realised that he felt sick. He went up to bed, closely followed by Mrs King. Both vomited, and again, and again. There was bad pain in the stomach. Alexis was all right. William was sick three times (he said): downstairs, upstairs in the bathroom, and outside in the street. Alexis heard him vomiting downstairs in the pantry (where there was a sink).
    Mr King asked for the doctor to be called. William reported that he had telephoned, but had been told that the doctor was out on a case, and it was not known when he would be back. Dr William Fraser Macdonald, of 42 Polwarth Terrace, later statedthat he had been out on a confinement and when he arrived home at nearly midnight, there was no message for him on the slate, and he went to bed. This was taken to indicate that William had lied, but he was certainly right about the doctor’s movements. He should have left a message.
    In the absence of medical comfort, Mr King thought of the old stand-by, warming brandy, but had none in the house. William rang up the previously mentioned chemist, David Peebles, of 20 West Maitland Street to ask for a bottle, and left the house to fetch it. This was when he was sick for the third time, but unfortunately the chemist, who met him half-way, was not asked if he had noticed a pool of vomit in the gutter, or other signs. A dose of brandy sent Mr King to sleep, in the spare bedroom to which he had moved. At 12.30am he woke to vomit again. He looked into the main bedroom and asked the boys how their mother was. They said that she seemed to be much better (after the brandy) and he went back to bed.
    Although Mr King did not seem to be aware of a second telephone call to the doctor (if there actually had been a first one) in fact, shortly after he had gone to bed, Dr Macdonald was telephoned by William and told about his parents’ illness. He gathered that his attendance was not urgently required, and told William to let him know if the situation worsened. William’s position at this stage is defensible. While they were in the bedroom with their mother, she cried out, ‘Oh, Loch Maree, Loch Maree!’ These strange, in fact sinking, words were a reference to a recent occasion when several guests at a Highland hotel had died from botulism after eating sandwiches filled with wild duck paste or pâté. The general apprehension, of course, in the stricken household was that the cheese had caused food-poisoning. Even stranger, Mother complained of seeing ‘lights’ in William’s eyes, but not in Alexis’s eyes. They switched off the electric light, thinking that she was bothered by reflection, but she still saw the lights in William’s eyes in the darkness. This is a really uncomfortable image.
    The boys went to bed. Alexis slept, and William said that he did, too. At 2 am, Mr King woke up and was sick again. He staggered in to see his wife, and found that she was dead. She had slipped away, all on her own. He called the boys and told them to telephone his brother, Dr Robert King and David Peebles. Then he lay down in the library, where he spent the remainder of the night. He recovered. At 2.15am on his own initiative, William rang for Dr Macdonald.
    The chill, dim house was suddenly ablaze with lights and thronged with people anxious to help