Both of those contents of the stomachs were immediately tested for prussic acid. Because prussic acid — it being a volatile acid, it is necessary to make an immediate test for it as it would escape very shortly after its exposure to the air, and escape detection therefore. Therefore, those were both tested for prussic acid, with negative results. Afterwards they were analyzed in the regular way for the irritant poisons, with also a negative result.
I found no evidence of poison of any kind.
Both jars of milk were also tested in the same way, and without obtaining any evidence of poison in either the milk of August third or the milk of August fourth.
Assuming that the two persons whose stomachs I had under examination ate breakfast at the same table and time and partook of the same breakfast substantially, the difference in the time of their deaths — assuming the digestion to have gone on naturally in both cases — the difference would be somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour and a half, more or less.
Digestion stops at death. It stops so far as the expulsion of food from the stomach is concerned. There is a sort of digestion that goes on after death in which the stomach wall itself is partially digested. Taking all the facts as I’ve heard them and also the examinations that I made myself, taking all those circumstances that I regard as important — the difference in the period of digestion, both stomach and intestinal, the drying of the blood and the temperature of the body — I should think that one corroborated the other, that they all tended to the same conclusion as to the difference in time of death of the two people.
And that conclusion is an hour and a half, more or less.
11: Cannes — 1890
They left for the Riviera on August 26, a Wednesday, and although they arrived at the rail station a full hour before the scheduled departure of the express, there were nonetheless great crowds milling about, and the consequent confusion Alison claimed was to be expected at any French terminus.
“These people cannot bear to see any member of the family departing without arranging a bon voyage gathering of monstrous proportions,” she said as they waited in line to purchase their tickets. “One witnesses what appears to be a general exodus caused by a revolution or a plague, only to discover that but a sole member of the family is leaving, and the rest are here en masse only to wave the pilgrim tearfully on his way.”
They nonetheless managed to have their luggage weighed and tagged, and were walking leisurely toward their wagon-lit by a quarter of eleven, fifteen minutes before the scheduled departure. “During the season, of course, one can take a train direct from London,” Alison said, “but I assure you this is by far the best time of the year to enjoy the pleasures the Riviera has to offer.” The journey to Marseilles, she said, would occupy the better part of fifteen hours, and from thence to Cannes yet another four. If all went well, they should arrive at the villa sometime before lunch tomorrow, “A tiring enough trip, but imagine, dear Lizzie, what it was like for us before they put on sleeping cars only seven years ago!”
They entered the car at one end of it, stepping into an enclosed vestibule and then walking past the ladies’ dressing room, its door open to reveal a water closet and a lavatory over which was hanging a mirror that reflected yet another mirror on the wall opposite. There were four divided compartments opening off the corridor, two of them containing single berths, the remaining two fitted with seats that converted into double berths at night. Their own double compartment was at the far end of the corridor, near the gentlemen’s lavatory and water closet. It was not quite so commodious as Lizzie’s shipboard accommodations had been, but it was nonetheless carpeted and richly appointed, its plush-upholstered seats comfortably enclosed by wood-paneled walls, its large windows affording a splendid view of the French countryside.
Some three miles outside of Paris, they passed Charenton (“Where the loonies are kept,” Alison remarked drily) and did not stop for the first time — and then for only five minutes — until they reached Melun, some twenty-eight miles further on. The train rolled into the valley of the Seine, lushly verdant in the bright August sunshine. They took their lunch, and later their dinner, in the elaborately decorated restaurant car. Night had fallen upon the countryside. Outside there were only the lights in the farmhouses now, and then not even those. They were both ready to retire long before their train pulled into Tonnere.
An attendant miraculously transformed their seats into the bed upon which they would sleep that night, rotating the seats a full 180 degrees upon their axes so that they formed a berth at right angles to the route of travel, the bedclothes already upon it and enclosed in a stout oiled silk that prevented them from slipping to the floor. As the attendant made up their bed, first Alison and then Lizzie — both wearing their daytime garments, and reluctant to traipse down the corridor in nightdresses and robes — separately went to the ladies’ dressing room. When Lizzie returned to the compartment, Alison was lying naked on the bed.
She closed the door quickly behind her, realizing with a start that she had never seen her friend completely disrobed before this moment; in the Paris hotel, there had been the vast salle de bain, and Alison had always retreated there when performing her nighttime and morning toilettes. She was rather more beautiful nude than Lizzie could have guessed. The only light in the compartment came from an electrified lamp over the bed, diffused by a translucent rose-colored shade. Her blond hair was spread loose on the pillow under her head. Her eyes were closed, her exquisite face utterly serene. She lay in repose with her arms at her sides, her slender body softly illuminated, her breasts rather larger than she had demeaningly described them, the aureoles and nipples a pale pink softened by the rosy glow of the overhead lamp. The hair at the joining of her long legs seemed extravagantly lush, a wild golden garden — Lizzie looked away, and turned to lock the door behind her.
“Forgive me,” she said.
“Whatever on earth for?” Alison asked.
“I didn’t mean to... waken you.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
Lizzie had still not turned from the door.
“Are you having trouble with that dicey lock?” Alison asked.
“No, it seems to be secure now.”
“Then hurry to bed,” Alison said, “or we shall have precious little sleep before the thunder and bellow of Marseilles. You’ll find it a trifle stuffy in here, I don’t think you shall need a nightdress. We might do best, in fact, to sleep without a cover.”
Lizzie turned from the door. Without so much as glancing again at Alison, she clicked off the lamp over the bed, undressed in the dark, and then — despite Alison’s suggestion — pulled a nightdress over her head.
She felt quite warm and flushed lying beside Alison in the dark, the wheels of the train clattering beneath them, but she did not remove the nightdress. When the train roared into the Marseilles station sometime in the empty hours of the night, she was drenched in perspiration, and wondered if she might be suffering a relapse.