Murder at Mansfield Park

well,’ he said at last. ‘Follow me.’
    Had Maddox known no better, he might have presumed that it was Mrs Baddeley Mr Phillips had been summoned to attend. She it was, at first sight, who appeared to be most in need of medicinal
assistance; her face was pale, and she had sunk breathless into a chair, one hand at her side, and her aromatic vinegar in the other. Miss Crawford, he could see, was divided between her desire to
alleviate the housekeeper’s immediate distress, and a more painful concern for Julia Bertram, who seemed to be in a state of profound stupor. More alarming still, the young girl’s
countenance was dark with suffused blood, and her features utterly still and seemingly lifeless.
    ‘How long has this present condition persisted?’ asked Phillips, forestalling Maddox’s own enquiry.
    ‘An hour—perhaps two,’ replied Miss Crawford. ‘Immediately prior to that she became suddenly agitated and distressed—she began to talk for the first time in days.
But,’ she faltered, her cheeks flushed, ‘there was no sense in the words. Since that time I have watched her sink into the pitiful state in which you now see her. I have given her two
further doses of the cordial Mr Gilbert prescribed, but it seems only to make her worse.’
    Maddox noted her countenance as she spoke these words, just as he had noted her start back with a frown at his approach; he wondered at it, but he had not then the time to ponder its meaning. To
his eyes, it was evident, only too evident, what afflicted the patient, and he watched Phillips commence a prolonged physical examination with increasing impatience, succeeding in checking his
anger only by reminding himself that the symptoms were, indeed, easily mistaken for those of common fever, and the alternative was hardly likely to have formed part of the experience of a country
apothecary.
    ‘She has been poisoned, man,’ he cried at last. ‘Can you not see that? She shews all the signs of having ingested an excessive—indeed fatal—dose of laudanum. The
initial excitement under the effects of the stimulant, and then the slow lethargy—the strident breathing—the dreadful colour of the face.’
    ‘I beg your pardon, Mr Maddox,’ said Phillips. ‘I did not know you included a medical proficiency among your many other accomplishments.’
    ‘I do not, sir. But I have had considerable experience of unnatural death, and the means by which it may be brought about. I have, alas, seen cases like this before. If I am right, we will
soon see her succumb to an even deeper lassitude, and her breath and pulse will slow to the point of absolute torpor. If we do not act at once, this deadly listlessness will become irreversible;
she will sink lower and lower, and we will not be able to bring her back.’
    All the time he was speaking he had kept his eyes fixed on Mary Crawford’s face, and had seen the grief and horror his words occasioned; he saw, too, that if she did not like him, she did,
at least, believe him, and her first action, when he had concluded, was to turn at once to Phillips, and beg him with passionate ardour to comply with whatever he suggested. Mr Phillips, however,
was extremely reluctant to cede the right to determine the correct mode of treatment to someone completely unqualified to pronounce in such cases. Nor, it seemed, did he agree with the
diagnosis.
    ‘I cannot concur with you, sir,’ he said, coldly. ‘I attended the young lady some days ago, at the onset of her present indisposition. I am of the decided opinion that this is
merely a particularly virulent case of putrid fever. I propose to bleed her, in order to suppress the fever in its forming state, and relieve the vascular congestion. I have complete confidence in
the efficacy of this method of proceeding, as I do of Mr Gilbert’s agreement with what I propose.’
    ‘It seems to me, sir,’ retorted Maddox, ‘that you are more afraid of deviating from Mr Gilbert’s opinion, than you are of losing your patient. Bleeding will not help her
now—indeed, it is very like to kill her, in the weakened state to which she is now reduced. We must apply a purge, and hope to expel the poison from the gut before it can be absorbed into the
body. There is no time to lose—we do not even know when the fatal dose was administered. It may already be too late.’
    He had hoped to shock the man out of his timid complacency, and his words had their effect—though not, at first, on