July 2012
Simon had to travel for over an hour to get to the court and was now sitting outside the court patiently waiting. He appeared solemn and grim, his suit was slightly too large as though he had lost some weight, which indeed he had. Not a lot but enough for both his parents and his mother in law to notice, as they also arrived for the hearing. What they and indeed everyone saw sitting on that bench was a very sad and dejected young man, tired, dishevelled and looking totally grief stricken. All they, the entire family, wanted to do was to bury their wife, daughter or daughter in law. Hopefully today they would at last be given permission.
They tried to cheer Simon up but they soon realised that this was going to be too much of struggle, his mother tried to smooth down his hair which was sticking up all over the place. He backed away looking at her angrily, they all presumed to know how he felt and this made him all the more cross. All he wanted now was to be back on the small holding and finish off the project he had been working on for so long. Understanding was not something he needed or wanted.
Simon closed his eyes and took his mind off to when he had made his decision. He was not sure that there was a definite day or time, just a gradual growing awareness. When he had first met Jo he thought that she was a wonderful, kind person and so she had been. She was pretty, petite and very funny. It was really after her father had died that she had changed. He had left her a lot of property and the small holding that they then moved into. To call it a smallholding was really a joke as the cottage was sitting in the middle of eighty acres of prime Essex countryside and included its own small wood. It had been where her father had grown up and was therefore sacred to Jo.
She did not have to work now and her decision to give up her job was based on her plans to set up a small organic farm. Jo's plans included chickens, ducks etc and wild foraged plants and with some home grown vegetables. At the start she spent a lot of her time foraging in the woods and just pottering about. They had loved it there in the beginning, and then the changes slowly started to happen. The Soil Association would not accept the land as fit to be organic and a lot of work would have to be put in to change it. With this her nagging increased and the closeness decreased, he suspected her alcohol consumption had also intensified. Whilst she spent her time foraging for mushrooms etc she did not work on the ground preparation, nor did she get anyone in to advise her on what to do.
Simon could not wait to get away from her in the mornings and be off to work. Almost every evening he trudged back from the station through the woods with an increasing sense of dejection. The first time she hit him, he recoiled in horror and afterwards she was apologetic and contrite. He grew to despise her for it and he was not sure if he also had started to despised himself. But he knew he would not nor could he ever respond. He never told a soul and now thinking about it he realised that maybe that had been the start of his planning. He suddenly pondered why the killing had been so easy.
The court official appeared and called out for those present in the matter of Joanna Riley to please enter the court. Obediently they filed in, the police officers, the pathologist, family and friends, and an anonymous looking bespectacled small man. They all took their places and remained standing whilst the coroner was announced and entered the court. She told them to be seated and proceedings commenced. The police gave evidence as to how they had visited the premises following a call from Simon. He had been working away in Liverpool overnight and had been unable to get an answer from his wife. The police had entered the cottage and found Jo slumped at the kitchen table, her face had fallen sideways in a small pool of vomit. The police removed from the scene Jo's foraging trug in which there had been the remains of some mushrooms, and of course samples of the vomit. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The pathologist then followed with his evidence and gave the simple and straight forward medical facts. Jo was a young woman aged thirty who was slightly obese and whose liver showed the early onset of alcoholism. Simon heard her mother and his parents gasp and he put his head back in his hands. The pathologist continued stating that her stomach contents, a sample of vomit scrapped from the table and the remains from the foraging trug had been sent to an expert on the identification of mushrooms and fungi. He would present his own findings.
The coroner then called the expert witness and the anonymous little man was sworn in. He stated his qualifications and then presented his evidence. He testified to the court that the contents of Jo's stomach had been identified as containing the remains of a mushroom risotto and a large amount of alcohol. The conclusion was clear that she had died after mistakenly ingesting some poisonous mushrooms. Whilst he acknowledged that Jo appeared to have had some considerable self acquired knowledge in identifying mushrooms and fungi, he stated that this was a very specific field and that mistaken identity was not uncommon.
The expert witness identified both the 'Jack O' Lantern' and the Chantrelle, the former deadly poisonous, both looking very similar. Both were bright orange and fruit at the same time of the year. He was certain that Jo's death was a clear case of mistaken identification which was then compounded by the fact that Jo had also eaten the Inky Cap, the remains of which he had identified within her vomit and stomach contents.
The Inky Cap generally caused no harm unless one had alcohol in their system. The Inky Cap inhibits the absorption of any alcohol. Thus causing vomiting, headaches, dizziness, weakness, confusion, palpitations and sometimes trouble breathing. He was clear as to the cause of her death. Simon, family and friends followed the expert in giving their evidence on how happy the couple had been. And of course who could contradict this as obviously Jo told no one how she had continuously abused her husband.
The coroner summed up her conclusions on the evidence presented to the court , she was clear and decisive. Jo had mistakenly identified some mushrooms and had poisoned herself. She had contributed to her death by her large consumption of alcohol over the past year and these two factors had resulted in her fatality. A tragic loss of a loving wife and daughter and a verdict of death by misadventure was to be recorded. Jo's body could now be released to the family for her funeral.
They all left the court and Simon realised at last that his silence about his abuse had been his saving grace he was home free without Jo in his life. He also now had the added advantage of inheriting her wealth and property giving him the means to enjoy a lifestyle in the way he had been planning for such a long while. His hidden knowledge of fungi had stood him in good stead.