The Christmas Cake By Charles Roberts

 


          The local coroner carried out the post mortems on all the family and found the same cause of death.  At first he thought that Ground glass had been ingested which caused the stomach and intestines to rupture which in turn caused a massive internal bleeding, a very painful and slow death to the whole family except the mother who wasn’t showing any symptoms of internal bleeding.  However because so many people had died at the same time the Home Office coroner was called in and on further examination and investigation, plus a thorough search of the home; it was found that Brodifacoum, (trade name Havoc) a rat poison must have been ingested somehow, and this over the Christmas festivities.

          The question was, how did the rat poison get into the families food chain?  Was it something they had eaten whilst out for a meal on Christmas Eve, or something they had eaten on Christmas day, the Turkey perhaps, in that case it would throw suspicion upon the grower, the slaughter house, and the butcher or supermarket where the Turkey had been purchased?  But there was the question of why didn’t the mother die when the rest of the family had, surely she had eaten the same as the rest of the family.

          Tests were carried out on the rest of the Christmas fare, or what still remained of it, and it was found that the offending foodstuff was in fact the Christmas cake.  Upon questioning the mother, she stated that her mother had brought the cake, and indeed baked it.  The Police went to the house and conducted a thorough search of the property looking for the offending rat poison, but it turned out blank.

          They then returned to the mother’s house and conducted a thorough second search of her house to find out if the rat poison was added after the suspicious cake had entered that property.  The police couldn’t find any of the rat poison, but did find a small quantity of ground glass in a small glass container labelled ground nutmeg.  They questioned the mother who swore that she had bought the jar of nutmeg at the local supermarket a month before Christmas because she was making the Christmas pudding.

          On inspecting what was left of the said pudding they found that it did indeed contain a small quantity of ground glass, but as ground glass is quite harmless to the human body, and it was purchased a month before the festivities and the poison was in fact found in the left-over cake; the mother was written out of the list of possible suspects.  Instead her mother was thought to be the murderer, but as she was already dead the Police couldn’t interrogate her. 

The question remained, however that why didn’t the mother ingest the poison with the rest of the family.  That question was put to her and the answer she gave was because she was allergic to the alcohol in the cake. 

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