Mrs Oldfield

In the short story The Lernean Hydra, Mrs Oldfield was the wife of Dr Charles Oldfield. She died about a year before the events in the story. Her husband had concluded that she had died of a gastric ulcer as she had a history of gastric problems for some years before. The Oldfields had been married for some 15 years. Mrs Oldfield was well-off in her own right and left her husband of some thirty thousand pounds. Her husband described Mrs Oldfield as a difficult person, fretful and hard to please. Unfortunately the circumstances surrounding her death led to gossip and rumours in the village of Market Loughborough that her husband might have poisoned her.

Asked to investigate, Poirot asked for an autopsy and discovered that she had died of arsenic poisoning.