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Strong Poison is a 1930 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers, her fifth featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and the first in which Harriet Vane appears.
Following the separation, the former couple had met occasionally, and the evidence at trial pointed to Boyes suffering from repeated bouts of gastric illness at around the time that Harriet was buying poisons under assumed names, ostensibly as part of her research for a novel in progress.
Returning from a holiday in North Wales in better health, Boyes had dined with his cousin, the solicitor Norman Urquhart, before going to Harriet's flat to discuss reconciliation, where he had accepted a cup of coffee. That night he was taken fatally ill, apparently with gastritis. Foul play was eventually suspected, and a post-mortem revealed that Boyes had died from acute arsenic poisoning. Apart from Harriet's coffee and the evening meal with his cousin in which every item had been shared by two or more people, the victim appeared to have consumed nothing else that evening.
The trial results in a hung jury. As a unanimous verdict is required, the judge orders a re-trial. Lord Peter Wimsey visits Harriet in prison, declares his conviction of her innocence and promises to catch the real murderer. Wimsey also announces that he wishes to marry her, a suggestion that Harriet politely but firmly declines.
Working against time before the new trial, Wimsey first explores the possibility that Boyes killed himself. Evidence in favour of that theory emerges when a witness reports seeing Boyes ingest a white powder shortly before he was taken ill; but Wimsey's friend, Detective Inspector Charles Parker, discovers that the powder was merely bicarbonate of soda.
The rich great-aunt of the cousins Urquhart and Boyes, Rosanna Wrayburn, is now quite old and close to death. Urquhart is acting as her family solicitor. He shows Wimsey a draft of Wrayburn’s will, which bequeaths most of her fortune to Urquhart himself, and nothing at all to Boyes. Wimsey suspects that the document is a forgery, and sends his enquiry agent Miss Climpson to get hold of Wrayburn's original will. She does so by passing herself off as a Mediumship and holding a seance in which she convinces Wrayburn’s nurse that the will must be found. The actual will names Boyes as principal beneficiary.
A spy planted by Wimsey in Urquhart’s office, Miss Joan Murchison, finds evidence that Urquhart abused his position as Wrayburn's solicitor, embezzlement her investments, then lost the money on the stock market; she also finds within the office a packet of arsenic hidden in a safe. Wimsey infers Urquhart’s motive for killing Boyes: he knew that his embezzlement would be exposed should Wrayburn die and Boyes claim his inheritance. However, if Boyes were to die first, nobody could challenge Urquhart as sole remaining beneficiary, and his fraud would not be revealed.
After perusing A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad, in which the poet likens the reading of serious poetry to King Mithridates' mithridatism against poisons, Wimsey suddenly understands what happened. Urquhart had administered the arsenic in an omelette which Boyes himself had cooked. Although Boyes and Urquhart had shared the dish, the latter was unaffected as he had carefully built up his own immunity beforehand by taking small doses of the poison over a long period. Wimsey tricks Urquhart into a confession by convincing him that he has ingested arsenic and noting that he does not behave like someone who believes he has been poisoned.
At Harriet's retrial, the prosecution presents no case and she is freed. Exhausted by her ordeal, she again rejects Wimsey's proposal of marriage, and he asks her friends to inform her that he will wait until she feels comfortable approaching him. Meanwhile, Wimsey persuades Parker to propose to his sister, Lady Mary, whom he has long admired. Freddy Arbuthnot, Wimsey's friend and stock market contact, marries Rachel Levy, the daughter of the murder victim in Whose Body?
The effect of arsenic as described in the novel was accepted by the science of the time, but it is now believed that long-term consumption would in fact have caused many health problems.
It has been adapted for radio three times:
| Felix Felton |
| Chris Miller |
| Michael Bakewell |
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