DR. TRACE TO THE CORONER

I cannot tell you, Coroner, the cause

Of death of Elenor Murray, not until

My chemical analysis is finished.

Here is the woman's heart sealed in this jar,

I weighed it, weight nine ounces, if she had

A hemolysis, cannot tell you now

What caused the hemolysis. Since you say

She took no castor oil, that you can learn

From Irma Leese, or any witness, still

A chemical analysis may show

The presence of ricin,— and that she took

A dose of oil not pure. Her throat betrayed

Slight inflammation; but in brief, I wait

My chemical analysis.

Let's exclude

The things we know and narrow down the facts.

She lay there by the river, death had come

Some twenty hours before. No stick or stone,

No weapon near her, bottle, poison box,

No bruise upon her, in her mouth no dust,

No foreign bodies in her nostrils, neck

Without a mark, no punctures, cuts or scars

Upon her anywhere, no water in lungs,

No mud, sand, straws or weeds in hands, the nails

Clean, as if freshly manicured.

Again

No evidence of rape. I first examined

The genitals in situ, found them sound.

The girl had lived, was not a virgin, still

Had temperately indulged, and not at all

In recent months, no evidence at all

Of conjugation willingly or not,

The day of death. But still I lifted out

The ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus,

The vagina and vulvae. Opened up

The mammals, found no milk. No pregnancy

Existed, sealed these organs up to test

For poison later, as we doctors know

Sometimes a poison's introduced per vaginam.

I sealed the brain up too, shall make a test

Of blood and serum for urea; death

Comes suddenly from that, you find no lesion,

Must take a piece of brain and cut it up,

Pour boiling water on it, break the brain

To finer pieces, pour the water off,

Digest the piece of brain in other water,

Repeat four times, the solutions mix together,

Dry in an oven, treat with ether, at last

The residue put on a slide of glass

With nitric acid, let it stand awhile,

Then take your microscope — if there's urea

You'll see the crystals — very beautiful!

A cobra's beautiful, but scarce can kill

As quick as these.

Likewise I have sealed up

The stomach, liver, kidneys, spleen, intestines,

So many poisons have no microscopic

Appearance that convinces, opium,

Hyoscyamus, belladonna fool us;

But as the stomach had no inflammation,

It was not chloral, ether took her off,

Which we can smell, to boot. But I can find

Strychnia, if it killed her; though you know

That case in England sixty years ago,

Where the analysis did not disclose

Strychnia, though they hung a man for giving

That poison to a fellow.

To recur

I'm down to this: Perhaps a hemolysis —

But what produced it? If I find no ricin

I turn to streptococcus, deadly snake,

Or shall I call him tiger? For I think

The microscopic world of living things

Is just a little jungle, filled with tigers,

Snakes, lions, what you will, with teeth and claws,

The perfect miniatures of these monstrous foes.

Sweet words come from the lips and tender hands

Like Elenor Murray's, minister, nor know

The jungle has been roused in throat or lungs;

And shapes venene begin to crawl and eat

The ruddy apples of the blood, eject

Their triple venomous excreta in

The channels of the body.

There's the heart,

Which may be weakened by a streptococcus.

But if she had a syncope and fell

She must have bruised her body or her head.

And if she had a syncope, was held up,

Who held her up? That might have cost her life:

To be held up in syncope. You know

You lay a person down in syncope,

And oftentimes the heart resumes its beat.

Perhaps she was held up until she died,

Then laid there by the river, so no bruise.

So many theories come to me. But again,

I say to you, look for a man. Run down

All clues of Gregory Wenner. He is dead —

Loss of a building drives to suicide —

The papers say, but still it may be true

He was with Elenor Murray when she died,

Pushed her, we'll say, or struck her in a way

To leave no mark, a tap upon the heart

That shocked the muscles more or less obscure

That bind the auricles and ventricles,

And killed her. Then he flies away in fear,

Aghast at what he does, and kills himself.

Look for a man, I say. It must be true,

She went so secretly to walk that morning

To meet a man — why would she walk alone?

So while you hunt the man, I'll look for ricin,

And with my chemicals end up the search.

I never saw a heart more beautiful,

Just look at it. We doctors all agreed

This Elenor Murray might have lived to ninety

Except for jungles, poison, sudden shock.

I take my bottle with the heart of Elenor

And go about my way. It beat in France,

It beat for France and for America,

But what is truer, somewhere was a man

For whom it beat!

When Irma Leese, the Aunt of Elenor Murray,

Appeared before the coroner she told

Of Elenor Murray's visit, of the morning

She left to walk, was never seen again.

And brought the coroner some letters sent

By Elenor from France. What follows now

Is what the coroner, or the jury heard

From Irma Leese, from letters drawn — beside

The riffle that the death of Elenor Murray

Sent round the life of Irma Leese, which spread

To Tokio and touched a man, the son

Of Irma Leese's sister, dead Corinne,

The mother of this man in Tokio.