Barrett is drugged through the Senna-pod brew she drinks each night, then discovered in a deep coma that prevents her from responding to anyone. Her incapacitation is more than a medical emergency: because Lady Tressilian would ordinarily have summoned her maid by the Gull’s Point bell-pull, the drugging removes a potential source of help at a crucial moment. Superintendent Battle recognizes that practical consequence and sees evidence that whoever arranged the drugging knew the household’s routines.

Discovery in the Household

Alice Bentham, the housemaid, approaches Mrs. Spicer, the cook, visibly troubled about Barrett. She explains that she had taken Barrett a cup of tea more than an hour earlier and found her asleep. When Barrett still had not come downstairs, Alice returned to her room five minutes before speaking to Mrs. Spicer. Lady Tressilian’s tea was already prepared and waiting to be taken in, so Barrett’s absence had prompted the second visit.

On that visit Alice could not wake Barrett. She had shaken her hard, but Barrett continued lying still and had an alarming colour. Alice could hear her breathing, which reassured her that Barrett was not dead, but the breathing sounded abnormal. The details establish both the urgency and the limits of Alice’s observation: Barrett is alive, yet unresponsive and visibly unwell. The scene begins not with a diagnosis or an accusation, but with a household routine interrupted by a servant who cannot decide what action is appropriate.

Mrs. Spicer takes charge of the immediate response. She tells Alice to take Lady Tressilian’s tea in and to make a fresh pot, while she goes upstairs to inspect Barrett herself. That instruction keeps Lady Tressilian’s ordinary service going even as the household confronts an unexplained crisis. The contrast matters: the routine continues on the surface, but the person expected to carry it out has become incapacitated.

Medical Finding and Method

Dr. Lazenby later identifies the condition as a coma caused by heavy dosing with a barbiturate. Barrett is in a serious state, but he expects her to recover. His assessment distinguishes the episode from a natural sleep or ordinary illness: the depth of her unresponsiveness has been deliberately produced by a drug. It also establishes that the immediate outcome is not death. Barrett is gravely incapacitated, but the doctor expects her to pull through.

The means of administration is tied to a familiar domestic habit. Barrett drank a Senna-pod brew every night, and Dr. Lazenby says the drug was in it. He is positive that she was not in the habit of taking sleeping draughts, and he found no sign of such a substance in her room. Those negative findings narrow the account of how she came to be comatose: the drug was not explained by a regular sleeping medicine, and the doctor identifies the nightly brew as the vehicle.

The method makes the household routine itself significant. Barrett’s established habit offers a way to administer the drug without relying on her taking a sleeping draught she did not normally use. The evidence identifies the means and the effect, but it does not identify who put the barbiturate into the brew. Superintendent Battle’s conclusion is more limited and more precise: the person responsible must have known the house well enough to exploit the routine.

The Bell-Pull and the Murder

The drugging’s importance becomes clearer when Superintendent Battle notices the Gull’s Point bell-pull. Its tassel rests on the pillow near the dead Lady Tressilian’s hand. Battle reasons that, if Lady Tressilian had felt alarm, the first thing she would have done was pull the bell to summon her maid. But Barrett, drugged into a coma, could not have heard it. The bell therefore connects the maid’s medical condition to Lady Tressilian’s isolation: the means of calling for help is present, but the person expected to answer has been silenced in advance.

Battle tests whether Barrett’s condition could instead be explained by her own habits. He asks whether she regularly took sleeping draughts and whether the drugging had been taken care of. Dr. Lazenby’s answer rules out that ordinary explanation: Barrett did not habitually take them, there is no sign of them in her room, and the drug was delivered in the Senna-pod brew. The doctor’s findings give the bell-pull inference a concrete basis. Lady Tressilian’s inability to summon her maid was not simply an accident of timing; the maid had been rendered incapable of responding.

The evidence does not establish precisely when Barrett drank the drugged brew, who prepared or altered it, or whether she knew what it contained. Nor does it prove from the medical facts alone that the drugging caused Lady Tressilian’s death. What it does establish is the mechanism by which Barrett was put into a coma, the household habit exploited, and the practical result Battle identifies: Lady Tressilian could have pulled the bell without reaching her maid.

Significance of the Episode

The episode turns a seemingly private illness into evidence about the murder’s preparation. Alice first encounters a sleeping woman who will not wake; the doctor supplies the explanation of barbiturate poisoning; and Battle then connects that finding to the bell-pull beside Lady Tressilian. Each stage changes the meaning of the preceding one. Barrett’s strange breathing is first a warning sign, then a medical symptom, and finally part of a pattern suggesting foreknowledge of how the household operated.

The sequence also gives the domestic setting an investigative function. Tea, a nightly brew, a maid’s room, and a bell intended to summon help are ordinary features of the house, but together they disclose how someone could exploit its routines. Battle’s observation that this is an odd murder follows from that mismatch between familiar household arrangements and the calculated use made of them. Barrett survives, according to Dr. Lazenby, but her coma leaves her unable to perform the role Lady Tressilian would have relied on. The drugging is thus both an assault on Barrett and a disabling of the household’s ordinary means of assistance.