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Emporia 38 account) and sent it down with mary moss. But Newman’s either couldn’t or wouldn’t fill the order and sent back a note saying so with their young messenger boy, Johnnie samuel.¹² By Thursday, August 20, Walkup was much improved. He felt like eating some “cove” (canned) oysters and sent mary moss down to Davis and Hughes’s grocery to get them.¹³ The preferred method of eating cove oysters was to pour vinegar on them, which mary did, but not without tasting some first. She confessed to taking two or three but may have been reluctant to admit to more. The vinegar they had in the house wasn’t strong enough, so mary left the oysters on the counter—unattended—while she left to borrow a stronger version from a neighbor. When the new vinegar was added, minnie took the oysters to her husband. Willie Willis had told them all to stay away from canned oysters, as he knew of some cases of poisoning, but his warning fell on deaf ears: Walkup wanted his oysters, and when he finished them, he wanted some soft drinks (“pop”). it was a hot day and mary moss refused to go back downtown for the pop, so minnie said she’d go herself. in fact, minnie was glad to have an excuse to go downtown. she got the pop, all right, but she also stopped by yet another drugstore, that of thirtyyear -old Ben Wheldon. she bought a glass of soda water and then said she wanted some arsenic. “Do i have to tell you what it’s for?” she asked him. When Wheldon said she did, she said it was for her complexion, but that she didn’t want to state that. He told her she had to. Wheldon sold her four ounces of very poisonous commercial-grade arsenic for twenty-five cents. He told her that ladies did not buy this kind for their complexion, but instead used the less dangerous Fowler’s solution , which was highly diluted. As had Kelly, Wheldon carefully wrapped the arsenic in labeled paper. He put the package on the counter and went to get the poison register for minnie to sign. But when he came back, she had taken the arsenic and left. since she had stated the purpose, however, he signed it for her. Afterward, Ben Wheldon remembered his wife’s saying that James Walkup had been sick off and on with some mysterious illness, and the druggist thought minnie’s arsenic purchase, under those circumstances, was odd. He went down to see Walkup’s partner, Dwight Bill, and told him about it. Bill said he would talk to Dr. Jacobs. meanwhile, minnie had returned back home with the pop, and Walkup drank two bottles. shortly after that, he vomited the oysters and proceeded Minnie Goes Downtown 39 to become ill again with many of the same symptoms he had before. Willie felt that his warning about the oysters should have been heeded: “minnie and the old man should have listened to me,” he told neighbors. But mary moss, who had sampled at least two (and probably more) of the oysters, had suffered no ill effects. Dr. Jacobs was beginning to suspect arsenic poisoning and had already consulted with a medical colleague about it. He was reluctant to act without being sure of his diagnosis, and had even surreptitiously carried away some of the liquid that came up from the patient when he tried to vomit. (He had tried to get a urine sample, but by then Walkup’s kidneys had ceased functioning.) However, an analysis of the vomit did not show any arsenic (because it had already passed out of his stomach), so Dr. Jacobs said nothing. But when Dwight Bill contacted him with Ben Wheldon’s information, he knew he had been right. That night, sick again, Walkup told Dr. Jacobs that he did not want any more medicinal powders but preferred to take liquid solutions instead. Did he suspect the powders his wife was giving him? minnie was refusing to let anyone else give him his medicine or take him his food. Although Walkup did not say why he did not want powdered prescriptions, minnie told Dr. Jacobs that her husband was complaining of a scratchy feeling in his throat. Jacobs knew that the reliable squibb’s product he was using—subnitrate of bismuth—could never cause scratchiness but that arsenic could. By now, Libbie had returned from...

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