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ence of a doctor, Percy died. She told reporter MacLean they'd Madame Cleo's prediction had come been married 21 years. She later extrue, but fate had been given a helping plained to'him that wasn't quite corhanfl: When pathologists analyzed the rect -- it was 28 years -- but Roscoe contents of Percy's stomach they was present at the time she said 21. found he had died of strychnine poi- MacLean, who was seen around town soning. · drunk, was now an occasional supper What followed was one of the most guest at the Bell home, and photograsensational murder trials in Ontario pher Madison Sale would sit down and this century, and one of its most incon- ' watch TV and leaf through the family c!u|ive: We'll probably never know photo albums. wh|t really happened to Percy Bell. When he admired a picture of her, As Chief Justice J. C. McRuer ex- Mary Bell said with a smile, "I'm a pressed it so neatly in his charge to the pretty fair chunk of meat." She was jur j: "There are only three people in always interested to see how her pic- Principals: Poison victim Percy tha$ house -- only three hands to tures had turned out in the papers, aladminister that strychnine. It was ei- though her, dark-rimmed glasses did turbing degree. MacLean, unknown to ther administered by Jenners or Bell her pleasant features less than credit. Mrs. Bell, had also been reporting or Ifcrs. Bell." At one point she told MacLean that everything she said to Inspector Kelly, might have taken a heart tablet and Chief Justice McRuer was to dehrough Percy Bell's dramatic Percy containing Then, when the scribe the use police made of reportdemise, the Canadian public news brokestrychnine. that strychnine had been ers as "loathsome and disgusting." was also introduced to Mary Mrs. Bell was in curlers when Kelly in Percy's stomach, she blithely )eth Bell, 48 -- an intriguing, found and other police arrived at the door. A told him she had indeed purchased unforgettable, attractive s chatty, strychnine a couple of months ago · couple of hours later, when she walked sonjetimes vain woman whose idle from a local druggist, Archie Boyd, to to a police car through a crowd of talte got her into Ms of trouble, rats who were eating apples in the photographers and reporters, there · "pie was a victim of vicious gossip," kill wasn't a hair out of place. "Would you cellar. say! Fred McClement, an author who By the time police finally arrived on like a good picture of me?" she asked, covered the Bell case for The Star and Mrs. Bell's doorstep two weeks after posing in front of the police car. wh<} witnessed the frightful rumor- the exhumation, At the preliminary hearing and Mary Elizabeth Bell mojfgering that went on in this United had been tried by headline to a dis- subsequent, trial, a chastened Dr. Empire Loyalist town at the time. But it must be added that Mrs. Bell contriljuted no small part to the gossip. Although Bell's symptoms were a littfe confusing, the attending physician, Dr. Reg Anderson noted down "cerebral hemorrhage" as cause of death and signed the death certificate. Mary Bell, to use her own words, burled Percy "like a prince." She picked out a plot at the Riverside Cemetery at Napanee overlooking the wafer, bought a handsome marble stofie and paid close to $1,000 to put him away in style. Bjit the day of the funeral, without her knowing, her sister and brotherin-law, the Cairds, had informed police there was something suspicious about Percy's death. Moving in utmost secrecy, the Ontario Provincial Police got an order frota the attorney-general to exhume Bel| without even his wife knowing. Thejr investigation would have gone ahead quietly and perhaps with different'results if it hadn't been for a bit of badluck. Oft his way to Napanee for the exhumation, OPP Inspector Frank Kelly dropped in at a Scarborough police stafion, where a reporter from the novl defunct Toronto Telegram, John MapLean, overheard him discussing the«ease. ^jfithih hours Mrs. Bell answered I heiffront door in the handsome Victoriaft section .of Belleville, to find the boyish, engaging MaeLean oh her fdoorstep. J V M iuoc c v ci y uiiiig. seen in earlier times with wife Mary; boarder Roscoe Jenners. Anderson, who had never treated Percy Bell before the night of his death, admitted he had since gone back to the medical textbooks and found the symptoms were those of a classical case of strychnine poisoning. When, he arrived at the house that night, Mrs. Bell had told him she had been trying to get a doctor since midnight without avail. He found Percy in dire condition, with scratch marks on his chest as if he had been ripping himself with his nails, and a few minutes later he went into convulsions. Significantly, Dr. Anderson noticed the breakfast table downstairs had been laid for three -- suggesting Percy was expected down to breakfast when the table was set. Roscoe Jenners, asked if he had given strychnine to Percy Bell, replied, "No, I certainly did not." But as a procession of friends and relatives testified, it became clear Mrs. Bell had been at least mildly infatuated with her lodger. A guitar instructor and friend, Don "Danny Boy" Smith, quoted Percy as saying one night of Mary and Roscoe: "Them two have got my nanny and I am going to do something about it." The court heard that when Percy went away on holiday on his own in September, 12 bottles of liquor had been purchased in a period of a week by Mrs. Bell. She had told her sister, Mrs. Caird, that she and Roscoe had drunk five of them in three days. manager David R. Duffy, related that when he called on Mrs. Bell Jan. 5, just after the funeral, she'd told him Percy had complained of back pains the night of his death and she'd given him a drink of hot chocolate. He'd thought it odd when he'd read later that Percy had not had anything to eat or drink after returning home. But again police had found no sign of cocoa in the Bell home. A scientist's evidence thft he had smelled cocoa or chocolate when examining Percy's remains became meaningless when others testified Bell had been eating chocolates all day at the home of the mother" of their border, Rusty Jenners. · in the back of her family bible. After a private talk with McRuer during the trial, Hall had decided to keep quiet about it, sajd McClement, in case it damaged Mrs. Bell's chances with the jury. Finally, after four hours and three minutes, the jury returned. Their verdict: Not guilty. "Thank you," the freed woman told the jury, then cried as she embraced her daughter. Officials close to the jury said later what swayed the jurors was that they were unwilling to send a woman to the gallows on that amount of circumstantial evidence. And, indeed, juries traditionally had been reluctant to have women hung when capital punishment was still in force in Canada. rs. Bell left soon afterwards for western Canada and · remarried. She subsequently returned with a new husband and a new name, and her daughter, Mrs. Treverton, says^she lives somewhere 'in Ontario and has recently celebrated a very happy 25th wedding anniversary. " . The house on Albert St. was torn down several years ago, and an apartment block stands there now. But locals still remember when the street was full of reporters, photographers and police cars. Around the corner, druggist Archie Boyd is in happy retirement. "I don't even want to remember it," he said. "I'll tell you why. Afterwards she tried ; to sell me her house. I said, 'No way.'" Across town, recently retired deputy police chief Harold Reid .paused f r o m cutting his lawn. · "I helped search that house from top to bottom," he said. "We didn't find a thing. Terrible job it was, climbing under the eaves. But she kept that house neat as a pin." In his law office, Ronald Cass, who hasn't done criminal work for years, remembered the case he defended as perhaps his greatest, "It was quite a mystery. It still is. Percy clearly died of strychnine, but there was no motive - for anyone to do it." During the two-week trial, Hurricane Hazel lashed the Belleville area, bringing down trees and powerlines. Now, as I drove towards Napanee, east of Belleville, it was just such a day again, with hurricane-force winds lashing the province, and sudden storms causing floods. I M M acLean, who was a bit of a rascal, was soon nodding sympathetically as Mrs. Bell unburdened her anger with the police for'going behind her back to dig up Percy's body. There wouldn't even have been a ody to dig up if she'd followed Percy's wishes that he be cremated, she said., "But that's inhumane. I wouldn't do that to a dog." So she buried him "because it's more dignified. I buried him respectably." Meanwhile at Riverside Cemetery, s the shabby courtroom filled every day with large crowds, many of them women of. Mrs. Bell's generation who sometimes knitted as they listened, every incriminating piece of evidence somehow led down a blind alley. In the audience there was a cynical assumption of Mary Bell's guilt, and laughter broke out when druggist Archie Boyd related that he had sold her the strychnine to kill rats. He sold her "enough to kill all the rats in Belleville." And there were more smiles when reporter MacLean testified that when he offered her a drink, Mrs. Bell said "she hated men who drank and her eporter- MacLean (who admit- husband would turn over in his grave ted in the witness box he had if he thought she had taken a drink.'* The crown had called more than 70 embroidered some of Mary Bell's words in his stories) related that witnesses, including 19 doctors who ·at supper one night she'd said, "You said they hadn't received any call kno\v Rusty (Jenners) had another from Mary Bell the night of Percy's widow woman, don't you? She lives in death, refuting her claim that she had Trenton and is much older than me. called "every doctor in town." Now the defence attorney, Ronald There was never anything between Qass, whom Chief Justice McRuer still | Rusty and me." t the Riverside Cemetery a She had told photographer Madison remembers for his tough, no-nonsense keeper consulted a plot map in Sale thar if Percy was poisoned he undermining of the crown case, had a his truck, then leaped out and hard choice to make: Should he put took it himself, "for spite." dashed down the slope through the Mrs. Bell's daughter, Mrs. Earl Mary Bell on the stand? Realizing per- torrential rain. la a second we were Treverton, a farmer's wife, said that a haps that the all-male jury, after hear- both soaked to the skin as I jumped few weeks before Percy died her ing the many contradictory state- puddles in pursuit, but he'd found it. mother told her Percy was in bad ments she'd made, "would be unlikely and stood pointing for a second before health, "and might die at any time like to believe,her, he took a gamble and dashing back to his truck. the snap of a finger." But she'd urged called no evidence. The rain streamed down my face, Crown attorney Alex Hall seemed to Mrs. Treverton to keep the fact quiet. but I could just make out the lettering Insurance company evidence have lost faith in his own case, and his on the stone set there by Mary Elizashowed the Bells had taken out a poli- summing up was weak and unconvinc- beth Bell 26 years ago: cy on Percy's life for less than §5,000 ing. Cass, in contrast, hammered "Bell," it said at the top. "Percy W. in 1953, but it was to cover the mort- away at the fact that the crown had. -- 1902-1954. Mary E. -- 1906 .gage on their home. Police testified establishd no motive for murder -- if "Abide With Me." · that when they searched the spotless Mrs. Bell was having an affair with Bell home they had found no trace of Roscoe Jenners, there was no evidence the container of strychnine -- nor of that Percy, whose sexual abilities had Next week: Lust, greed and any rats. How Percy had come by the been affected in an earlier accident, murder in one of Canada's most was doing anything about it, said Cass. Druggist Archie Boyd, who testified he'd sold Mrs. Bell "enough strychnine was a mystery. "You must not be ill-disposed to- powerful families.. Then a surprise witness, finance strychnine to kill all the rats in Belleville." A R