Case of the Weed Eradication

Whitehall 1212. For the first time in its history, Scotland Yard opens its official files to bring you the true stories of some of its most baffling cases.

Research for Whitehall 1212 is provided by Percy Hoskins, Chief Crime Reporter for the London Daily Express. The stories for radio are written and directed by Willis Cooper. The voice you will now hear is that of Chief Superintendent John Davidson, custodian of the famous Black Museum of Scotland Yard.

Good afternoon. This curious object, curious, unless you happen to belong to the fraternity of the Green Thumb, is not on the strictest sense of lethal weapon, but like most implements of husbandry, is quite simple to make it lethal.

This thing, if I may be permitted the somewhat cetified form of nomenclature, is used in the eradication of weeds, weeds in a garden or elsewhere. It operates something like this, I'm given to understand. A certain substance, a powder, is placed in here.

The nozzle, observe the nozzle, is then placed in juxtaposition with the aforesaid weed. The handle here is pushed vigorously, like this. And a cloud of the substance is ejected onto the weed, which thereupon perishes miserably.

Such a device could be and sometimes is indeed equally faithful to human beings, for the powder it dispenses is arsenic. Inasmuch as the former owner is no longer extant, having been hanged by the neck until dead, I shall ask Superintendent Frederick George Abbott to relate the essential facts of case number 87-300.

In Zucrant, the CID for many years will hear his voice as it must have sounded at the time of this case some thirty years ago. Go to Hay, I was told, and I thought he was swearing at me.