Medical Detectives by Robin Odell Page A

wheels turned very quickly indeed. Scotland Yard detectives were called in and Spilsbury was alerted. On 9 November, the pathologist was at the graveside of Mrs Fox, supervising the exhumation of her body. A post-mortem examination followed and, thus, the die was cast for another medico-legal controversy.
    The circumstances of Mrs Fox’s death, coupled with the behaviour of her son, and his established reputation as a fraudster, had provoked suspicion of murder. The initial focus of attention had been the room in which the victim was found and, in particular, the chair which appeared to have been the centre of the fire. The carpet had been burnt underneath the chair and the burning upholstery of the furniture seemed to have been the source of the dense smoke which filled the room. It was strange, therefore, that Spilsbury found no trace of carbon monoxide in the blood nor in the sooty deposits usually found in the air passages when a person breathes in smoke. Absence of such evidence suggested that the victim was already dead and that a cause other than the fire should be sought. It was Spilsbury’s task to search for that cause and he established it, at least to his satisfaction, when he discovered a bruise at the back of Mrs Fox’s throat. His conclusion was that she had been strangled.
    Sidney Fox was eventually trapped by the thoroughness of two persons – the undertaker, who hermetically sealed the coffin with putty, and Spilsbury, whose eagle eye spotted a bruise on tissues which would rapidly decompose when exposed to the air. When the case came to trial, the pathologist was confronted by familiar adversaries, J.D. Cassels, who defended Fox on the charge of murder, and, of course, Dr Bronte. For the first time too, he also faced a fellow pathologist of considerable eminence and reputation, in the presence of Professor Sydney Smith who supported the defence.
    The prosecution, led by the Attorney-General, Sir William Jowitt, with the aid of Margate Fire Brigade, proved fairly convincingly that a fire had been deliberately started in Mrs Fox’s hotel room. There was a bottle of petrol in the room which Fox claimed he used to clean his clothes. It was known that Mrs Fox had been drinking port bought by her son and the alcohol found in her body suggested that she may well have been asleep when her demise occurred. But how did she die?
    Spilsbury was convinced that she had not died of suffocation – the lack of sooty deposits in the air passages effectively ruled that out. His contention that Mrs Fox had been strangled was based on his discovery of a large, recent bruise at the back of the larynx. He demonstrated its position to the court by means of an anatomical model of the human mouth and throat. The bruise was the result of mechanical violence which tore open some of the small blood vessels, indicating, as he said, ‘the conclusions to which I finally came, that death was due to strangulation.’ Questioned about the condition of the hyoid bone which is situated in the larynx and becomes brittle in elderly people, the pathologist confirmed that it had not been broken in this instance. He acknowledged that the hyoid frequently was broken in cases of manual strangulation but, equally, he knew of many cases where this was not so.
    The trouble with the bruise on the larynx was its somewhat ephemeral existence. After the organ had been removed from the body which had lain in its airtight coffin, the tissues rapidly putrefied when exposed to the atmosphere, obscuring the bruise and making its existence impossible to demonstrate. Thus, by the time Bronte came to examine the larynx, there was no bruise to be seen. The absence of such an injury that could be shown as a physical entity, made it easier for the defence to argue that Mrs Fox had died of heart failure. But, Spilsbury’s word that he had seen it was sufficient to make it a matter of contention.
    Short of accusing his opponent of fabricating evidence, all that