The Deadly Prescription of Clifton House
A physician’s sinister plot to poison his young wife for her inheritance ends in a gruesome, ironic justice on the frontier.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Dr. Lockwood, a bachelor physician, is summoned late one stormy night by Mrs. Hurd, the nurse of the ailing Alice Spencer. She reveals a harrowing secret: Alice, the heiress wife of the local doctor James Spencer, is being slowly poisoned by her husband so he may seize her estate and marry her rival, Miss Melrose. Spencer, a cold and unsociable newcomer to Middlebury, had been in deep debt before marrying Alice at age seventeen.
Lockwood examines Alice and finds clear evidence of arsenic poisoning. He provides Mrs. Hurd with an antidote and warns her to watch closely. Soon after, Dr. Spencer returns with Miss Melrose from a trip. He prepares two glasses of 'cordial'—one for his wife and one for himself. Mrs. Hurd, seizing a moment while the doctor is distracted, swaps the glasses. Alice drinks her dose, but the doctor drinks the glass intended to poison his wife. He is found dead the next morning, having ingested a lethal quantity of arsenic. The scandal is hushed up to spare the family name, and the conspirator, Miss Melrose, descends into madness, obsessively decorating the doctor's grave. Dr. Lockwood eventually marries Alice, who only learns of her first husband's treachery long after his death.
“I argued like this: if it was a simple cordial... it would do him no harm. If it was poison his blood would be on his own sinful head.”
This story of a predatory physician manipulating a 'disposable' inheritance and vulnerable spouse echoes the extreme tensions of modern housing and health-equity disparities in Seattle, where the vulnerable are often at the mercy of those holding the keys to their stability.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.