Chapter 7 - Charles Feared His Own Medicine
Charles had severe heart disease.
He took several medications.
After his death, no autopsy was performed because his physician
considered the cardiac arrest medically unsurprising.
Robert had never questioned it.
Neither had Margaret publicly.
Anna did.
She had received Charles’s final letter after his funeral.
But when she contacted Margaret, Margaret told her the blue bottle had
been discarded.
Anna believed Charles might have been confused.
Years passed.
Then David found an old photograph Charles had mailed him.
On a bathroom shelf sat the blue bottle.
The label belonged to a pharmacy that still maintained archived
dispensing records.
Charles’s prescription had been changed two weeks before his death.
The prescribing physician was Dr. Leonard Shaw.
Robert knew the name.
Shaw had been Margaret’s cousin.
He died four years ago.
The medication itself was legitimate.
But the dose in the pharmacy record was unusually high.
That did not prove murder.
It did justify questions.
Robert asked Margaret whether she had known about the dosage change.
“Yes.”
“Did you give Dad his medicine?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you change his dose?”
“No.”
David watched her.
Margaret snapped, “Stop looking at me like that.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.”
Investigators reopened the circumstances around Charles’s death where
legally appropriate.
Medical experts reviewed records.
Their conclusion was uncomfortable but limited.
The dose could have increased Charles’s risk of dangerous low blood
pressure and cardiac complications.
There was no evidence Margaret intentionally caused his death.
There was also no proof Charles’s death resulted from the medication
rather than his underlying disease.
Robert refused to turn uncertainty into accusation.
Margaret cried when he said that.
“Thank you.”
He shook his head.
“I’m not defending you. I’m refusing to invent what we don’t know.”
Then investigators found Charles’s own notes.
He had requested the higher dose.
Dr. Shaw had warned him against it.
Charles insisted because his symptoms were worsening.
The darkest suspicion collapsed.
Margaret had not killed him.
Anna looked relieved.
David did too.
But Robert noticed one remaining question.
Why had Charles written that ominous warning about the blue bottle?
The answer appeared in another notebook.
Charles suspected someone had been replacing his pills.
Not Margaret.
May you like
A business partner.
And that partner’s name connected directly to the Anna Mercer trust.
