A Toast to Prussic Acid

by Angela Williams and Ian Dunford

Ian:

The tragic story of Miss Eugenia Ronder

Is the woeful tale of a lion-taming wife

Whose innocent heart was made to wander

By a husband who caused her much strife.

Angela:

Now I’m sure that some ladies here tonight will agree

Sometimes our husbands can act quite appalling

And into the arms of a strongman we all wish to flee

After giving our spouse a good mauling.

This was just the case with our fey heroine

Her husband so cruel, she married the wrong man. 

Day after day she wished to only to end up in

The scrumptious arms of Leonardo, the strongman!

Ian:

So Leonardo worked out a most horrific scene.

With a five-clawed club the strongman took aim.

Mr. Ronder’s skull crushed, in a manner most obscene.

And Sahara King, the lion, would take the blame!

All went as planned, but for the beast’s base desire.

Out of its cage he flew, and into the night.

So near to fresh blood, Eugenia in the line of fire,

The lion took her beauty away with his bite.

Angela:

Eugenia’s strongman shrieks like a baby

He runs in fear and cries.

This reminds me that I’m a lucky lady

Because my Ian would never leave me to die.

(Oh.  Thank you, sweetie.)

Ian:

The two men who inhabit Eugenia’s tale

Prove cowardly and villainous

And she hides her dark secrets behind a veil

Until she calls on a man quite chivalrous

Angela:

She knows that Sherlock Holmes will listen

To her ill deeds and not begrudge.

For she cannot bear a police inquisition

And the subsequent trip to the judge.

Ian:

It is certain that Eugenia hardly knew

That Sherlock’s power to be so wise and forgiving

Could make a poison, so deadly and blue

Bring a woman back to into the world of the living……

Angela:

So here’s to her poison in its bottle blue and small

The means of suicide for a murderous wife

And how Sherlock’s forgiveness taught her and us all

That a bottle of poison can be the gift of life

Wow……..Irony, right?

Toast to Curare

By Bill Dorn, BSI

Now the la-dy was frantic and wild,

For her step-son had pois-ened her child,

So she took a small bite,

From babe’s neck out of sight,

And the fath-er he did be-come riled.

Poi-son ar-rows is what Sher-lock saw,

And from them this con-clu-sion did draw.

“It’s cu-rar-e,” he said,

“And the child is not dead,

Blood was sucked from a wound “neath his jaw.

Now cu-rar-e’s more dead-ly than most

Oth-er poi-sons, and that is no boast,

So it’s pro-per to say,

A big hip-hip-hoo-ray,

As cu-rar-e we proud-ly do toast.

Toast to Strychnine

By Anne Cotton

Strychnine is an elegant poison.

Every mystery reader has heard of it,

as it is extremely popular among the

ore villainous types.  It’s said that poison

is a woman’s weapon, but the only users

of strychnine in “The Sign of Four” are men.

Actually, it’s a perfect poison for anyone

who really hates the intended victim, as

strychnine poisoning is a thoroughly nasty

way to go.  It’s acts by inhibiting the chemical

that allows us to control our muscles; victims

undergo increasingly violent and painful spasms,

until finally they are exhausted from the spasms

or the poison stops their ability to breathe.

Many victims suffer a condition called “risus

sardonicus”, a horrible masklike grim resulting

from the facial contractions.  I am informed (by

such unimpeachable sources as the U. S.

Centers for Disease Control and Wikipedia) that it usually takes two or three increasingly agonizing hours for death to occur.  A very small amount of strychnine will do the job.  It is distilled from a plant found mainly in India, Sri Lanka, and the East Indies.  Today, it is used principally as a pesticide – to kill rats (though its illicit users might also say their victims fall into that category). 

We have few mentions of this deadly substance in “The Sign of Four”.  The first reference is a comic one:  Watson, already smitten with love for Mary Morstan, has just found out that she is likely an incredibly wealthy heiress; and gentleman that he is, he cannot declare his feelings for fear of looking like a fortune-hunter.  While Watson was trying to reassure their client Thaddeus Sholto that Shotto was not on the verge of death from a heart attack, Watson babbled out some highly unusual medical advice.  As Watson noted in his written version of that night, “Holmes declares that he overheard me caution himn against the great danger of taking more than two drops of castor-oil, while I recommended strychnine in large doses as a sedative”.  Sedative indeed; a permanent one; though in Victorian times it was given in very small doses as a stimulant.

When Holmes and Watson found Sholto’s body, they noted at once his stiff muscles.  Holmes says, “they are in a state of extreme contraction, far exceeding the usual rigor mortis.  Coupled with this distortion of the face, this Hippocratic smile, or “risus sardonicus, as the old writers called it, what conclusion would it suggest to your mind”?

“Death from some powerful vegetable alkaloid”, I answered, “some strychnine-like substance which would produce tetanus?”  The finding of a small thorn, obviously a blow-dart to Holmes’ quick eye, confirmed the diagnosis.

Later, Jonathan Small, by then under arrest, claimed his own innocence on the grounds that Tonga had climbed into the room some minutes ahead of him and killed Sholto on his own with no instruction from Small to do so.  Holmes replied, “I think I can prove that the poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached the room”.  …  Oops.  Dying, perhaps; beyond saving, definitely.  But if it really took Small two to three hours to climb up to Sholto’s window after Tonga, even with his peg-leg, he must have stopped for several pipes of tobacco and a tot of rum or two along the way.

In any case, it’s a poison that clearly does its job.  So tonight we toast that marvelous classic poison, every handy in any household.  (And if anyone’s dinner tastes a bit off, you will let us know, won’t you?)

Here’s to that queen of poisons, Strychnine!!!

Toast to Cyanea Capillata

By Jim Hawkins

A Toast to Cyanea capillata…for the Gaslight Gala…2010

To Cyanea capillata, that wickedly beautiful jellyfish

that cared not whether she inflicted her painful poison on

men or dogs, obviously finding little difference between the

two.. Living in cold water, she wrapped her exquisite

tentacles around warm flesh in hopes of first dissolving

then devouring.

Homes encountered her near Susses, after finding a

colleague scourged in a savage, inhuman fashion.  She

was the jellyfish of who Holmes said, “I could not look

upon her perfection, with all the soft freshness of the ocean

in her delicate colouring, without realizing that no young

man would cross her path unscathed.”  She was the siren

about whom Holmes sang:

(Cyanea Song to the tune of Dulcinea, from the musical, The Man of La Mancha.

Cyanea, Cyanea, never turned my back on thee, my Cyanea.

There is trouble waiting near where you are floating, Cyanea, Cyanea.

Cyanea, Cyanea, I have sought thee, sung thee, dreamed thee, Cyanea.

Now I’ve found thee and I’ve crushed Thee now forever, Cyanea, Cyanea.

Confronted by Cyanea’s willowy beauty, he crushed her with a rock.  Alas, there were millions more behind her waiting for their tide to come in.

Pick your poison, Gentleman and Ladies:  Lift your glass and toast The Lion’s Main!

Toast to Belladonna

By Elaine Coppola, ASH

Our Sherlock knew his poisons

Of that we have no doubt

Thanks to Watson’s enumerations

His flair with them gets tout

The Canon gives us details

Of one so clever use

Where Holmes again prevails

And puts a killer in a noose

To trap the evil Culverton

Holmes conjured up a plot

So cunning that not a one           

Deception did they spot

So as to appear dying

Of the coolie disease

He had to hide from eyes too prying

And dear Mrs. Hudson’s pleas

Weak from fasting and using

Cheats like rouge and beeswax       

He fools Watson’s perusing

And obscures the real facts

But more is needed to draw

Our doctor in the game

To alter what he saw

Is Holmes’ true aim

While thinking of a lever

Sherlock’s mind did stray

To a woman who was so clever

The one who got away

To mimic a bad fever

He chose a toxic herb

With eyes now so much brighter

Watson he did disturb

What substance aided this crucial trick?

I’ve given you the clue

You must know that it’s the chick

Who bid Sherlock adieu

To Italian, translate as you can

With eagerness and glee

The words beautiful woman

Are the finishing key

So let us toast to Irene Adler

And the substance with her name

By that I mean that baffler

Belladonna or nightshade