A Mystery Writer Investigates– The Balham Mystery

You’ve seen why they might have wanted him dead. This week, the question is which of them could actually have done it.

Motive, as you saw, was everywhere in that house. But motive isn’t enough to commit murder. Plenty of people wish a person dead and never lift a finger. What convicts is means and opportunity. So before we accuse anyone, let’s take a look at the poison.

What killed him. Charles Bravo had swallowed thirty to forty grains of tartar emetic, a compound of antimony, and one of the most common medicines of the age. In small doses it made you vomit, but the dose he was given was agonizing and lethal.

Where it came from. When Detective Chief Inspector Clarke searched the house and grounds, he found no traces of antimony, recovering only some laudanum and chloroform that Charles took for neuralgia. There was no tartar emetic in the household. The only known supply had been bought the summer before by Griffiths, the coachman. He’d purchased a quantity of tartar emetic powder from a Streatham chemist, to treat the horses for worms. He kept it in the stables, within reach of anyone on the property, but claimed to have got rid of it when he was dismissed (before the marriage).

How it reached him. It almost certainly wasn’t dinner. Antimony works fast, and three people sat down to that meal — Charles, Florence, and Mrs. Cox. Whatever they shared, the two women ate it too, and neither fell ill. Investigators considered the Burgundy that Charles alone had drunk, but suspicion settled instead on the one thing Charles consumed later, while he was alone: the water in the carafe beside his bed, from which he claimed he took a drink before sleep. It couldn’t be proven. The water and the carafe were found empty, and neither was ever tested, but it remains the likeliest answer to how the poison reached him. No other explanation fit as well.

Florence may have known that tartar emetic had previously been kept in the stables, and her adjoining bedroom gave her opportunity. Whether she still had access to the poison was debatable. But it needs to be considered that she could have had both means and opportunity.

Mrs. Cox was first to attend him once he fell ill, and she was alone with him before anyone else reached the room. Charles supposedly confessed, only to her, that he had taken poison — a statement no one else heard, and one she waited hours to report. And, under questioning, her account of the incident changed more than once.

Dr. Gully understood antimony better than any of them. But he had been shut out of Florence’s life and her house. To have poisoned that carafe, he needed help from the inside.

George Griffiths had previously purchased the tartar emetic, and had cursed Charles in a public bar. But by April he had taken a post in Kent and was nowhere near Balham. Means and motive to spare, but little opportunity.

Which leaves one last possibility that we haven’t considered yet. Florence herself had been mysteriously ill for months. Could the poison have been meant for her? Hold the thought. We will come back to it before the end.

So, who had both means and opportunity? Tell me your thoughts in the comments. Next week we follow them out of the house, into the wreck the case made of every life it touched, including the suspect it simply let walk away.