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By each of their deaths, said the prosecutor, Adams stood to profit financially, though he had specifically said otherwise in requesting permission to cremate Mr. Hullett. Shortly before Mrs. Hullett's death, the Crown contended, Adams had banked a check she had made out to him for £1,000 and asked to have it cleared in a hurry. Why had he done this? "We say," said the prosecution, "that it was because Dr. Adams knew quite well that Mrs. Hullett was going to die that weekend." Furthermore, the doctor had requested a post-mortem on his patient even before she died. The postmortem, when it was made, established the fact that Mrs. Hullett died of an overdose of barbiturates, but even though a coroner's inquest called it suicide, the Crown insisted last week that "the circumstances amount to murder by Dr. Adams, whether [Mrs. Hullett] administered the fatal dose herself or whether she did not."
In the case of Mrs. Morrell, the question was not of who administered the drugs, but of whether they were necessary at all. "From the dosage which she received during the last five days," said the prosecution, "there^ seems to be little doubt that large doses were given to a woman, already unconscious in a coma, who had no need of these drugs at all."
As the court pondered the evidence, calling up specialist after specialist to give his expert opinion, Dr. Adams smiled blandly, took his notes and occasionally chuckled at the mispronunciation of some difficult medical terms. In the palm-strewn lobbies of Eastbourne's hotels, aged widows gossiped and fingered their heavily insured necklaces, and retired colonels humphed over the bad news from Egypt. But topic No. i was something none of their newspapers could say under Britain's strict libel and contempt laws: that the doctor may also have quickened the deaths of a dozen or more other Eastbourne patients.