by Elsa Hart
“And after that, you merely had me followed by another of your acquaintances,” said Cecily. “But I doubt you would have hesitated to renew your efforts to remove me, had I threatened you.”
Inwood looked at her sadly. “Unfortunately, you are correct, Lady Kay. And as I cannot trust you to cooperate—” He started to turn to his companion, then stopped. “No,” he said quietly. “I believe I will do this myself.”
Cecily stepped backward as Inwood advanced slowly toward her. She heard Meacan’s sharp intake of breath. She met Inwood’s eyes and held them. “You are mistaken.”
Inwood continued his approach. “In what way, Lady Kay?”
“You will never find the treasure.” Cecily took another step and felt the rustle of maps on the wall at her back.
Inwood smiled. “You doubt my intellect? I assure you, I am adept at solving puzzles.”
“So am I.”
For the first time, she saw Inwood’s confidence waver. “What is your meaning?”
“There are no maps to hidden treasure in those boxes. There are no codes, and there are no clues. John Rose tricked you. The visions of shipwrecks he painted before your eyes were illusions.”
Inwood’s face changed. The charm drained from it like the color of sunset turning to cold twilight. “I am disappointed, Lady Kay. This attempt to confuse me in order to save your—”
Cecily cut him off. “It wasn’t until you told him of your fascination with shipwrecks that he claimed to share your interest, was it?”
Inwood’s voice was a snarl. “None of this is of any relevance.”
Cecily’s spoke softly, but her words struck Inwood like glass shards. “And it wasn’t until after you had told him that you were to inherit the Mayne collection that he began to speak to you of hidden maps, was it?”
Inwood was silent. Cecily continued. “Did you know that Rose told Sir Barnaby a story as well? That his collection contained the secret to harnessing the power of the spirit realm?”
“You are lying.”
“No, Mr. Inwood. I am telling you the truth. John Rose wished to exist beyond the end of his life. It was himself he hid in these objects, not spells or maps to sunken treasure.” She pointed to the boxes on the floor. “Sir Barnaby’s obsession was with occult power, so Rose told him that he would find it here. Rose knew that as long as Sir Barnaby believed him, the objects would be preserved precisely as he arranged them. When he learned that you were to inherit the Mayne collection, he saw a chance to protect his cabinet beyond Sir Barnaby’s death. Rose was grateful to you, but it was not only for the laudanum. It was for your gullibility. You presented him with another obsession he could use, and you gave him a final game to play.”
Inwood stared at her. His face was waxy. “That cannot be.”
Cecily drew from her pocket the letter that had been tucked into Sir Barnaby’s journal. She held it out to Inwood, who took it and read it as if in a trance. The page fluttered in his trembling hand. “No,” he whispered. “No, I have already begun to examine the objects. I have seen the symbols. The coordinates. The shapes of islands.”
“Or are they shapes of occult sigils and talismans?” asked Cecily. “The obsessed see what they wish to see, especially when led by a guide who makes deliberate use of their fascinations.”
Suddenly, Meacan laughed. Inwood swung to face her. “What amuses you?”
“You,” she said. “You, who have speculated and stolen and murdered. And all for the sake of fairy fires kindled to keep you stumbling in the dark forever.”
Inwood looked down at the tiny skull still in his hand. Cupping it as if it was a living baby bird, he stumbled backward until he hit the cluttered bookshelf behind him. He slid slowly to the floor. “No,” he said. “No, it cannot be as you say.”
The brute in the corner looked with some uncertainty at his cowed employer. Though he had little understanding of what had passed between the three, he had enough wisdom to suspect that the man who was going to pay him might not be intending to do so after all. His attention turned to Cecily, and she saw in his expression that he had decided to be his own master. His face hardened as he moved toward her. Inwood remained where he was, staring sightlessly before him.
“Stop.” It was Meacan who broke the silence. She stood. The bindings that Cecily had succeeded in untying just before Inwood stepped into the room were on the floor. The gun that Cecily had slipped into her hands was leveled at the man. “I’ve shot you once, and it would be my pleasure to do so again. I will give you a moment to decide whether to lose your life, or to turn around, leave this house, and keep it.”
The man made his choice quickly. As soon as she heard his footsteps descending the staircase, Meacan turned the gun to the unresponsive Inwood. “You were right to tell me to wait,” she said to Cecily. “I didn’t know how you were going to turn two threats into one, but I trusted you’d manage it.”
Below their feet, the house suddenly shuddered with renewed activity. There were running footsteps on the stairs. Meacan and Cecily had barely exchanged looks before Covo appeared at the door, breathing heavily, a trace of blood on his sleeve.
“My apologies for leaving you alone so long,” he said as he took in the scene before him. “I’m afraid his men had the upper hand for some time. I am most embarrassed. But the situation is righted now, and it seems you did not require my assistance.” His eyes fell appreciatively on Meacan, who was still pointing the gun at Inwood, her expression only slightly softened by Covo’s arrival.
Inwood was staring at the Rose boxes as a child might stare at a stage when the curtains open and the puppets that were there before have all inexplicably disappeared.
Covo addressed Cecily. “I take it you’ve acquainted him with all you told me?”
“He knows,” said Cecily.
“Poor fool,” said Covo. “What, then, shall we do with him? I thought we might leave the matter to the men he hired. They do not appear to be the type who take kindly to employers who don’t pay.”
The words seemed to penetrate Inwood’s mind. His lifted wild eyes. “No, no, you don’t understand. I will have the money. I will have it.”
“That cannot be, Signore Covo,” said Cecily.
Covo turned to her. “Are you sure? The justice of the courts is far less certain.”
Meacan was glaring at Inwood. “As much as I am tempted,” she said, “Cecily is right. We’ll need him. It seems Walter Dinley is to live a happy life of sorting shelves after all.”
CHAPTER 35
A sunny June day was a busy time in the physic garden of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London. Gardeners tended the beds under the curious scrutiny of glossy starlings while robins wrestled worms from fresh-turned earth. Bright blossoms drooped with the weight of bees and sprang back up as the bees hummed away, pollen-powdered, to visit other blooms. Flitting butterflies filled the spaces between leaves, and squirrels spiraled up tree trunks in skittering flashes of auburn fur.
In the dappled shade of an elm, a group of apprentices formed a dense cluster around the Demonstrator of Plants, who was giving a stern lecture on the subtle differences between deadly hemlock and wild carrot. Most of the apothecaries-in-training had discarded their coats and left them flung over bushes or hooked on branches. Their sleeves were rolled up and their shirts had come untucked from their breeches after hours of leaning forward to examine the tops and bottoms of leaves and inhale deeply with eyes closed to test their memory of scents.
At the edge of a densely planted bed near the center of the garden, Walter Dinley balanced on his knees and one hand as he reached forward to cup a purple flower. His pallor had improved in the ten days since his harrowing incarceration had come to an end. At the recommendation of Peter and Anne Ashton, who had returned from their botanizing expedition to the tale of their son’s brush with misadventure, Dinley had been offered accommodation at the garden while he rested and recovered. In exchange, he was happily contributing his skills t
o its somewhat disordered library.
Dinley sat back on his heels and turned to Cecily, who was crouched nearby, indifferent to the grass and dirt pressing patterns into the beige silk of her skirt. “The little flower you described,” said Dinley. “Could it be Thymbra spicata? I recall the seed was sent from Crete, and I believe the empalements—” He paused and leaned forward once more into the dense foliage. “Yes, the empalements are five-pointed.”
Cecily consulted her notebook. “And the tube of the petal is longer than the cup?” she asked.
Dinley’s eager reply was muffled by greenery. “Yes, yes, without a doubt.”
Cecily shifted until she was beside him, leaning into the purple blossoms. She reached out, pinched a leaf, and rubbed it between her fingers, gently bruising its silken surface. She raised her fingers to her nose. The scent of pepper and mint carried her as on wings to the parched ruins of a temple a day’s journey from Smyrna. “This is the one,” she said triumphantly. She wrote the name neatly in her book. “Thymbra spicata,” she murmured, and tapped the page with her pencil. “And that’s the last.”
Dinley leaned back again. Smiling, he wiped the sweat from his brow with a sleeve. “John would suggest making a salad of it,” he said.
They stood up together and dusted off their knees. Together they had identified from life the few remaining plants she had been unable to name using dried specimens alone. “I owe you a great deal of thanks,” she said. “I would never have arrived at Helianthemum Ledi folio.”
“I’m certain you would have in time,” said Dinley. “And you should not be thanking me, Lady Kay. Without you I would be facing the gallows.”
They started toward the boathouse that connected the garden to the glitter and glint of the sunlit Thames. The beds on either side of them were planted as neatly as possible under the circumstances. Many of the seeds had been brought in crates by ships’ doctors and travelers who had given them to the garden with no sure knowledge of what plants would grow from them. The gardeners and apothecaries had to wait and watch and wonder what would appear, and what properties it would have.
In the shade of the boathouse, Meacan and Alice sat together on a stone bench watching the river slide past. Though they had succeeded in communicating to Alice that Dinley was safe and the true murderer found, this was the first day she had managed to claim away from home. Days of solitary grief had exhausted her, but with each answered question and ray of summer sun she appeared to recover a little more of herself.
As they drew nearer to the pair, Cecily reflected on the preceding days. Upon his release from prison, Dinley had received a warm welcome from the collecting community, through which news of Inwood’s guilt had spread quickly. Dinley, despite the deprivations and fears that had left his cheeks hollow and his eyes anxious, had dedicated himself to guiding as much of the Mayne collection to safety as he could. By now, though, what remained of it had begun to drift apart like the cargo of a wrecked ship over the sea, likely never to be joined again. Cecily had been gratified to learn that the contents of the Plant Room had been purchased in their entirety by an established giant of the collecting world renowned for his meticulous labels and catalogues. She herself had purchased a number of herbals and floras she did not have in her own library.
In addition, she had quietly and successfully bid on the golden ring, the pendant, and the three small gemstones that had so nearly become part of Martin Carlyle’s private hoard. She had wrapped them carefully and sent them to Martha and John with a letter suggesting they use at least one of the small treasures to ornament a greenhouse. She had been inspired to add that, should they wish to reenter the collecting world, she would be happy to recommend Martha’s skills to Humphrey Warbulton, whom she suspected had no notion of how to keep mildew off feathers or clean soot from coral, and would be deeply appreciative of Martha’s expertise. Cecily and Meacan had paid a call on Warbulton not long after Dinley’s release, and found him much improved. After learning the truth of Sir Barnaby’s death, he had politely ended his association with the Philosophers of Night and declared an intention to concentrate his collecting efforts on safer subjects.
Alice was speaking slowly to Meacan, her forehead furrowed in concentration. “So the letter Giles Inwood used to lure Sir Barnaby downstairs was the one with the bloody handprint on it. But how did it come to be among the specimen jars?”
Meacan began to nod authoritatively before Alice had finished asking the question. “Inwood wanted to minimize the chances of the murder being connected to the Russian. That’s why he took the message from Sir Barnaby’s desk. The trouble was that he had nowhere to put it. Do you remember he was wearing a pale gray suit? The letter was wet with blood, and he couldn’t risk a visible stain. There was no fire lit to destroy it. He decided he should at least remove it from the room, so he took it out with him and hid it in the first place he saw—among the specimen jars in the hall. He came back for it later, but not before it had been seen by Otto Helm and Martin Carlyle.”
“But it seems to me,” said Alice, “that if he was so concerned about bloodstains, he would not have worn a pale suit when he knew he intended murder.”
“Ah,” said Meacan. “But he didn’t expect there to be blood. The murder did not go as he intended.”
Cecily made herself comfortable on a sunny boulder. Dinley remained standing. She watched his gentle eyes fix for a moment on Alice. Her blue ones looked to him just after he’d looked away. Cecily turned her attention to the row of turtles sunning themselves on a discarded beam from the boathouse.
“What did he intend?” asked Alice.
“It was the sponge that explained it,” said Meacan. “And the odor. When I entered the room, I smelled vinegar. By the time Cecily came in, it had gone, but as she has such a sensitive nose, she smelled camphor and roses. Put them together and you have Guy de Chauliac’s soporific sponge.” Meacan nodded toward Cecily. “She’d read about it, of course.”
“The recipe is not used as often as it was in the past,” Cecily explained. “But, as a physician, Inwood would have known it. A sponge soaked in a concentrated solution of poppy, henbane, mandrake, vinegar, rose water, and camphor. When applied to the lips and nostrils, it brings about drowsiness and numbs pain. Inwood had brought a sponge and a bottle of the solution to the house. His intention was to take Sir Barnaby by surprise, overpower him with the sponge, and complete the murder by suffocation. He hoped that this would make Sir Barnaby’s death appear to have been a natural one.”
Alice looked mystified. “Then why did he stab him instead?”
Meacan took up the story again. “Sir Barnaby showed more strength than Inwood anticipated, and he had a weapon available to him. As Warbulton told us, Sir Barnaby had recently acquired a knife that he believed to be of great significance to his personal interests. What would be more natural than to keep a new and intriguing acquisition, one so new it had yet to be labeled, on his desk?”
“Wrapped in a length of velvet,” added Cecily.
“Inwood didn’t expect it to be there,” said Meacan. “But Sir Barnaby took it up and fought to keep his life. Inwood found himself in a struggle he never intended to have, and during the course of it, the knife slipped into Sir Barnaby’s heart.”
“The death could not have been made to appear natural after that,” said Cecily.
“And Inwood would have found himself in a great deal more trouble,” Meacan continued, “were it not for the confession of our gallant Mr. Dinley.”
Both Alice and Dinley shifted uncomfortably, avoiding each other’s eyes. “And all this because of John Rose,” said Alice. “And what he told Sir Barnaby and Giles Inwood.”
“Dangerous to play with the obsessions of others,” said Meacan. “Rose’s words were like weeds in receptive soil.”
“I wonder,” said Alice, “that Inwood did not begin to suspect the deception when he learned that Sir Barnaby kept the Rose cabinets locked. Wouldn’t Sir Barnaby’s evident fasci
nation with the collection have made Inwood suspicious?”
“It seems you are more clever than Inwood was,” said Meacan in an admiring tone. “Though it was not perhaps quite so obvious as you think. Dinley?”
Dinley nodded. “I was permitted in the study frequently enough to know that Sir Barnaby did not keep the Rose cabinets locked. I believe he thought it sufficient simply to keep the room locked whenever he was not there.”
“It was Inwood who locked the cabinets,” said Cecily. “He didn’t want to risk their contents being inadvertently reorganized over the course of the inventory. He found the keys before we thought to look for them, locked the cabinets, and kept the keys himself.”
“And was surely glad he did,” said Meacan. “It must have been only hours later when the curious Lady Kay asked him where they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what made him decide to lure her to the dueler’s field and eliminate the threat.”
“Fortunately for me,” said Cecily, “I was protected.”
Alice looked out at the flowing river. “Anthony would have liked the story.” Her voice trembled, but her eyes were bright and clear. She stood. Dinley scrambled to his feet and offered her his arm. They strolled together into the flowers.
“Do you think they’ll marry?” asked Cecily, once they were out of hearing.
Meacan drew in a deep breath. “There’s a good deal of grief between them,” she said. “Could prove too heavy a weight on happiness. But who is to say when it comes to love? Often it’s good that rots to bad, but sometimes the bad can blossom to good.”
They were both silent, listening to the rushing water and the trills and twitters of birds. After a moment, Meacan spoke. “The auction ended today, you know.” She had been following the sales with interest, delighting in news of new feuds, new favors, and new alliances, most of which were brokered by Covo. “The Rose collection has been purchased in full for an extravagant price, and you will never guess by whom.”
