[From T. McCausland's reporter's notebook, continuing the 1926-27 volume. This section in a looser hand than the earlier working notes — written quickly, the same evening, at the Clarion desk.]
Café Solange, Thursday the 20th of January, 1927. 7:30 p.m.
Ostermann arrived before me. He was at the corner table Mrs. Solange keeps for people who prefer not to be seen from the door. He had a tin box on the chair beside him and a glass of something he did not touch. He looked smaller than I remembered. He said: you look exactly like your father, which is what everyone says to me, and then we got to work.
He opened the box on the table between us. I did not touch anything; I took notes while he described each item.
Item 1. A folded sheet in his own hand, dated 14 September 1919. His notes of his conversation with the nurse Pytel, taken the same evening. She had come to the station asking for a detective who was fair. She described the symptoms she had observed at Mr. Thorpe's deathbed — bradycardia, nausea, the visual disturbance before he stopped speaking — and said plainly that they were not consistent with a coronary infarction and were consistent with cardiac glycoside poisoning. She had seen it once before, in Kraków, with her father.
Item 2. A photographic copy of the relevant page from Pemberton's Drugs dispensing ledger, August-September 1919. Three purchases of tincture of foxglove in eleven days, each listed cash, two under the notation J.T. — private. A note at the foot of the page, in the druggist's own hand, recording that he had discontinued cash sales of cardiac glycosides after the 16th of September. The last name on the page before the notation is Mr. J. Thorpe.
Item 3. A half-page of notes in his hand, dated 15 September 1919. His record of his conversation with Dr. Linden, conducted on the pretext of a knee complaint. He had asked Linden directly whether he was satisfied with his finding. Linden had said yes quickly and not met his eye.
Item 4. A single sentence, dated 27 September 1919, recording that Chief Royland had called him in and told him there was no case. Ostermann had asked where the instruction came from. Royland had said: from where such instructions come from. The sentence is followed by a blank line, then: I should have kept going. I did not.
I asked him what he wanted me to do with this.
He said: whatever a reporter does with evidence. He said: I kept it because I could not destroy it and could not use it. He said: I am giving it to you because I am going to die before you will and I would rather it was in print than in the ground with me.
We sat a little while. Mrs. Solange brought him his second glass without being asked. He said: your father was the best first mate on the lake. I said I know. He said: the captain knew it too. I think that is why he said what he said at the end.
I took the box home in my coat.
T.McC., 20 January 1927.