They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves Page B

persuaded them to demand an autopsy, despite the inconvenience that the delay must cause us all; and Dr Masfen from the Infirmary duly performed his disagreeable and thankless task. But the vomit in the stable had meanwhile been swabbed up, and Abley's stomach was empty, except for some cordial draught which he had been given by his wife when at the point of death; thus it was too late to secure a sample of the fatal draught for analysis. Moreover, the stomach showed signs of chronic inflammation; and Dr Masfen pronounced that death seemed due to natural causes. This was accordingly our verdict, though I didn't like it, by no means.
    A fortnight later—not so soon as to make it seem that the warning had any connexion with the inquest, but soon enough— Palmer was privately advised to leave the Infirmary. In my own opinion, the medical officers feared that if they took disciplinary action, Palmer would charge them with defamation of character; and their own negligence in the matter of allowing pupils to dispense dangerous drugs might come to light. It may even be that if some medical gentleman unconnected with the Infirmary had performed the autopsy, h e would have found more than Dr Masfen troubled to find. For if the state of Abley's stomach had betrayed the action of poison, would the Infirmary staff have escaped censure? Tell me that!
    Idle talk, I say, idle talk! All I know for sure is that Palmer let his acquaintance with Mrs Abley lapse. He suspected, I have no doubt, that its renewal would be dangerous.
    Chapter VI
    AT BART'S
    T HE following account was furnished by a young surgeon, late of St Bartholomew's Hospital, now settled in Harley Street, and a decided luminary of his profession. He does not, however, wish his name to be mentioned in connexion with the Palmer case—not, at least, until his friend's character (as he hopes and trusts) shall have been vindicated in all respects. Disclosures would embarrass him professionally.
    'a surgeon'
    One can judge a man only as one knows him. History has made the name of Nero odious, yet it is admitted by the historian Suetonius that, after his suicide, loyal friends still laid flowers on the imperial tomb, and continued to play certain musical pieces which he had composed, though no longer forcibly obliged to applaud them—indeed, quite the reverse! Tears of sincere sorrow were likewise, we read elsewhere, shed at the tombs of such monsters as Ge nghis Khan, King William Rufus of England, and Lucrezia Borgia the Italian poisoner. Not that I should have shed any myself; but allow me to depose—and I would sign my name to this but for the delicacy of my present situation as a consulting surgeon to Royalty—that I found William Palmer a thundering good fellow and a deuced good friend.
    He came to London in the latter part of the year 1845 and, like myself, engaged the knowledgeable Dr Stegall as his 'grinder' to help him pass the medical examination and secure his diploma. He offered Dr Stegall a fee of fifty guineas should he succeed, to which, I understand, his w idowed mother promised to add th e sum often guineas; and his friend, Mr Jeremiah Smith, a solicitor of Rugeley, a further ten.
    For some days after his arrival in London, Will Palmer lodged at Dr Stegall's house; but the course of behaviour expected of him , there did not suit his book at all. It was 'early to bed, early to rise', constant study and no distractive pleasures—unless he counted it a pleasure, of an evening, to participate in a family game of cards at a halfpenny a hundred points, or in a dramatic reading of Mr Dickens s Barn aby Rudge, each person representing one character in the novel, while Dr Stegall undertook the narrative. Will Palmer had just come into a fortune—of some seven thousand pounds, I believe—and greatly enjoyed the sense of liberty that being flush gave him.
    Once Dr Stegall gentl y rebuked Will for having bought, in the space of four days, a gold-headed malacca cane, a