The Bottle

Twice in recent years. Harry Grice, an ailing 42-year-old electroplater of Birmingham, had tried to take his own life. Each time his wife Catherine dissuaded him. Last week, on his way home from work, death overtook Harry Grice. The neighbors who carried Harry's body home from the nearby lane in which they found it. and the doctor and the policemen who were called in to take charge, all agreed that Harry had been the victim of a heart attack. Nobody thought to put any blame on the innocent-looking bottle of ginger beer that was found in Harry's pocket. Mrs. Grice. mother of six and once again heavy with child, put the bottle on the kitchen table and set herself to comforting her children.

In the midst of the turmoil, talk and tragedy filling the Grice kitchen, twelve-year-old Beryl decided that she wanted a drink. Her mother uncorked the ginger-beer bottle, poured some of its contents into a cup and gave it to Beryl. Twenty minutes later Beryl was dead. The doctor, the neighbors and the policemen agreed that the child must have died of shock and grief. Beryl's body, like her father's, was taken away in an ambulance. The neighbors left. But that night two-year-old Pamela could not sleep. Mrs. Grice carried her to the kitchen and gave her a soothing teaspoonful of ginger beer-out of the bottle on the kitchen table. Twenty minutes later Pamela Grice was dead. At long last, someone thought to blame the bottle of ginger beer. It proved to be well spiked with cyanide, for with it, Harry Grice had achieved his wish for suicide.

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