Forensic obsessions

I don’t know if Dalrymple has any nephews, but if so, I doubt this (subscription required) is anything for him to be concerned about:
His wife, who loves him distractedly even though he is far from an ideal husband, discovers that his copy of A Handbook of Medical Jurisprudence falls open on a certain well thumbed page—that relating to poisoning by potassium cyanide. Having wondered about the strange disappearance of the nephew, she guesses the truth: her husband has murdered him.
….
Oddly enough there was a book titled A Handbook of Medical Jurisprudence current at the time that Forester wrote Payment Deferred. It was by William Alfred Brend (1873-1944), and went through at least 10 editions. Its description of the symptoms and signs of potassium cyanide poisoning was very similar to that found by Mrs Marble in her husband’s Handbook.
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By a very strange coincidence, my copy of his A Handbook of Medical Jurisprudence falls open on page 278, on which are described the symptoms and signs of poisoning by potassium cyanide.

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