Things Half in Shadow

by Alan Finn

  I stared at the gun in my hands, amazed at how light and tiny it was. Something so small seemed incapable of causing harm, yet it could. I knew that very well.

  “I don’t want you carrying this around,” I said.

  “You’re in no position to tell me what I may or may not carry.”

  “I’ve seen up close what a pistol can do to a man,” I said. “I don’t want any part of it. Neither should you.”

  “I promise I shall only use it if the situation warrants it.”

  Lucy held out her hand again. Reluctantly, I gave her the pistol, which she once more hid in the ever-resourceful folds of her skirt. After that, we rode in silence, bouncing around inside the coach until we were in front of the University of Pennsylvania.

  The university was composed of twin buildings that sat, wide and imposing, on Ninth Street. One was for medical education, the other for general learning. Between them was a narrow grass lawn filled with studious young men rushing to and fro, all weighed down by books the size of butchers’ blocks.

  “What’s this professor’s name?” I asked Lucy once we were out of the coach. “And where is he located?”

  “Sherman Abernathy. His office is on the third floor of the College Building.”

  We followed a stream of undergraduates into the building, which was as crowded and musty as I expected a hall of higher learning to be. Women, apparently, were an uncommon sight at the university, because the undergraduates present treated Lucy as if she were a rare peacock that had wandered inside. Some youths tipped their hats grandly as she passed. Others simply stopped to gawk.

  The reactions of the students created a small flame of possessiveness that smoldered in my chest. From their well-polished shoes to the hats tilted jauntily on their heads, I didn’t like the looks of them. I especially didn’t like their wide smiles, which brought to mind a pack of wolves licking their chops. To discourage their stares, I put an arm around Lucy’s waist and guided her to a grand staircase just beyond the entrance.

  “Now who’s the jealous one?” she commented as we began our climb to the third floor.

  “It’s not jealousy. It’s protection.”

  “You of all people know I don’t need protecting,” Lucy replied. “Or have you forgotten that there’s now a gun hidden in my dress?”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “And I’m not afraid to use it.”

  I nodded. “I know. Which is why I’m protecting all these young men from you.”

  This, I’m pleased to say, delighted Lucy. She let out a hearty laugh that began when we reached the third floor and continued as we traversed the long hallway to Professor Abernathy’s door.

  When I rapped on it, a voice on the other side called out, “You may enter!”

  The first thing I noticed about Professor Abernathy’s office was the décor. The walls were either obscured by bookcases or covered with specimens encased in glass and framed like portraits. Every insect imaginable was held within those frames, from beetles with turquoise shells to butterflies boasting foot-long wingspans. And bees, of course. So many varieties of bees it took three separate frames to display them.

  Surrounded by all of those bugs was Professor Abernathy himself, a thin man with crinkled skin and a tuft of white hair. He wore a pair of spectacles that contained not two lenses, but several, all attached to tiny hinges that allowed them to be pushed into or out of place as needed. At that moment, the professor had one lens over his left eye and two covering his right. When he looked up at us, they distorted the size of his eyes, making them appear huge and, quite appropriately, buglike.

  “How may I assist you?” he said.

  Lucy did the introductions, prompting the professor to say, “Of course. I’ve been expecting you. How may I be of assistance?”

  “We were told you could answer a few questions for us,” Lucy said.

  “If it’s about the insect world, then I most likely can. And if it’s about the Goliath birdeater, then this is quite a fortuitous occasion, because I just received the most fascinating specimen.”

  The desk at which the professor sat had been positioned to catch the direct light from the room’s lone window. On top of the desk, basking in the sun, was a spider the size of my hand.

  “Good God!” I shouted, practically leaping to the door and dragging Lucy with me.

  Professor Abernathy gave a good-natured laugh. “Fear not, Mr. Clark. This specimen will cause you no harm. It is most definitely dead.”

  That didn’t make me feel a whit better. Dead or not, I wasn’t keen on being in the same room with such a creature.

  “Could you shove it in a drawer or something?” I asked. “Just until we’re gone?”

  “Skittish around spiders, are you, Mr. Clark?” the professor said as he opened the top drawer of his desk and gently plopped the spider inside.

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  It was silly, I suppose, for a grown man to still be afraid of spiders, but certain fears run deep. For me, that was arachnids, which manifested itself after I tumbled into a nest of wood spiders when I was at the impressionable age of four. Thrown into a frenzy by my sudden presence, they had crawled all over me. Arms, face, hair. Some clung to me even after I had fled the nest, forcing me to shake them off as I screamed and cried my way home. The memory haunts me still, almost as much as the horrible sights I witnessed during the war. To this day, out of all of God’s creatures, spiders are the ones I detest the most.

  The professor chuckled again. “Most are quite harmless.”

  “We’re here to discuss bees,” Lucy said. “Honeybees, to be precise.”

  “Apis mellifera,” the professor said. “Fascinating creatures. What about them would you like to know?”

  “Their venom,” I answered.

  “Ah, yes,” Abernathy said. “Apitoxin.”

  “Can you kill someone with it?”

  Professor Abernathy adjusted the lenses of his spectacles, moving them around until he was looking through only regular glass. The other, magnifying lenses surrounded his eyes, making them resemble the petals of a glass flower.

  “It’s possible,” he said. “Apitoxin is potent enough, I suppose. But it’s rare for someone to die from it unless they have an allergy of some sort.”

  “This woman wasn’t allergic,” I replied. “She was injected with it. In her neck.”

  “And another girl might have received an injection in her arm,” Lucy added.

  “Fascinating,” the professor said. “I suppose you’re wondering how much bee venom was needed to complete such a heinous act.”

  I gave him a nod. “We are.”

  “Honeybees are quite interesting, because even though a single colony might contain thousands of them, they work as a single entity with a single purpose—to ensure that the colony survives.”

  The professor crossed the room and removed a frame of bee specimens from the wall. He brought it to me and Lucy, letting us see how the bees behind the glass had been pinned to a square of white silk. The professor pointed out three in the center of the display.

  “There are three types of honeybee in each colony—a queen, worker bees, and drones.”

  He pointed to the insect in the middle. The longest of the three, it had a narrow body and a lengthy, tapered hind section.

  “That is the queen. She’s the ruler of the colony and the reason all the other bees do what they do.”

  “There’s only one queen?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s correct,” Professor Abernathy said. “But there are thousands of drones.”

  He pointed to the shortest of the three, which was thicker and heartier than the others.

  “Drones are the males of the colony. They do all the hard work and serve the queen.”

  “Are those the ones that sting?” I asked.

  The professor tapped the glass above the third bee, which sat meekly beside the queen, nothing but stubby wings and black and yellow stripes.

 
“Those would be the worker bees. These are the ones you see flitting from flower to flower.” He tilted the frame so we could get a better view of the specimens. “See that thin rod on the back of the worker bee? That’s the ovipositor.”

  “A what?” I said, brow creasing.

  “Ovipositor. The stinger. It’s attached to a small venom sac that can inject apitoxin into its prey.”

  “How much apitoxin?” Lucy asked.

  “Oh, just a drop or two.”

  “Is it possible for someone to collect bee venom?”

  “Quite possible,” Abernathy replied. “One could find a worker bee, remove the ovipositor and squeeze a small amount of fluid from the venom sac. Another way is to get the bees to sting something flat and impermeable, such as the glass in this frame. When the bee flies away, the drop of venom remains. Once dry, bee venom becomes a yellowish powder that can easily be scraped up. I suppose one could collect it, dissolve it, and use it like arsenic or any other poison.”

  In the case of Lenora Grimes Pastor and, most likely, Sophie Kruger, someone had combined the bee venom with a liquid and injected it into their bodies. Yet one question remained, which I posed to Professor Abernathy.

  “Can you estimate how much bee venom it would take to kill someone?”

  The professor mulled it over while hanging the framed specimens back on the wall. “That depends on the person’s size, weight, and, of course, tolerance for bee stings. But I’d say the venom from several hundred, perhaps even a thousand, bees would be necessary.”

  “But where can one find that many bees?” Lucy asked.

  “Well,” the professor said, “it’s easy to find that amount in nature, if one knows the location of a rather large colony. But harvesting venom would be difficult in an outdoor setting. The bees could easily escape, even start a new hive elsewhere if the queen chose to do so.”

  “So the best way for a person to collect enough bee venom is from an indoor colony?” Lucy said.

  “Quite right,” Professor Abernathy replied. “Where the bees can be contained. Do you know of such a place?”

  Unfortunately, I did. I had stumbled upon it only days earlier—and promptly forgotten about it. But standing in Professor Abernathy’s office, surrounded by a thousand dead insects, I was reminded of it once more.

  “I do,” I said. “I know exactly such a place.”

  VIII

  Less than a half hour later, Lucy and I were on Broad Street, standing in front of the former home of the Willoughby family. The place looked exactly the same as the last time I had been there—silent, empty, abandoned.

  “This is where you and Miss Willoughby intend to settle down?” Lucy asked.

  “Once we marry, yes.”

  “It’s quite big.”

  “Indeed it is.”

  Lucy tilted her head, examining the house from a slightly different angle. “I don’t think it suits you.”

  “How would you know what suits me?” I asked, irritated that she presumed to know me so well.

  “Because I’ve been inside your home,” Lucy said. “And it’s clear to me that place suits you.”

  “Well,” I replied, shrugging, “perhaps this will, too.”

  “And you say there are bees inside?”

  I set off up the flagstone walk. “An entire legion of them.”

  Once we reached the front porch, as creaky as ever, I moved to the shutter where Violet had shown me the hidden key. When I pulled it away from the wall, however, all I saw was a single nail where the key should have been hanging. Lucy, meanwhile, had gone straight for the door, which opened with no effort.

  “It isn’t locked,” she said.

  “Winslow must be here.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The Willoughby coachman,” I said. “He checks in on the house from time to time.”

  It occurred to me that it wasn’t the best idea to enter Willoughby property with a beautiful young woman who was not Violet. Winslow was practically a stranger to me, after all, and I had no idea how discreet he would be. Judging from the way my former butler spoke when he thought I wasn’t around, I assumed Winslow was the same way. In other words, no discretion in the least.

  “You should go back to your coach,” I told Lucy. “Tell Thomas to take it around the block.”

  I instantly thought better of that plan, considering that Bertram Johnson lived just around the corner. Since he had laid eyes on Lucy the night before, seeing me with her again—in his neighborhood, no less—could raise even more suspicion on his part.

  “On second thought, don’t do that,” I said. “Just have Thomas take you home.”

  Lucy, her patience wearing thin, tapped the toe of her boot against the porch floor. “Edward, you’re not making a lick of sense. You’re the one who suggested we come here.”

  “You can’t be seen with me,” I said. “At least not by Winslow.”

  “Then I shall wait in the coach,” Lucy replied. “But Thomas and I aren’t going anywhere until you finish whatever you intend to do here.”

  I waited to enter the house until she had crossed the lawn and climbed back into the coach. Once inside, I stood just beyond the door and called out, “Hello? Winslow?”

  There was no response. The house seemed as quiet and unoccupied as when Violet and I had first set foot into it. After a few more moments of waiting, I crept up the main staircase.

  My destination was the old nursery, and my goal was to gauge just how many bees had taken up residence there. If it was as many as I remembered, then it meant there were also enough to obtain a fatal dose of venom. And that, unfortunately, would confirm a new, heretofore unknown suspect in the death of Lenora Grimes Pastor.

  On the second floor, I listened again for signs of Winslow. Hearing nothing, I began to make my way down the hallway.

  Guilt burrowed into my conscience as I sneaked through the house that belonged to my future father-in-law. It felt wrong somehow, despite knowing the home would one day be mine. Careful of my pace and mindful of every creak and bump, I felt more like a common thief than the future master of the house. Still, I kept moving until I reached the end of the hall and the narrow set of steps that led to the third-floor nursery. Just beyond the staircase was the faint but distinct sound of buzzing.

  The bees were still there.

  The noise grew louder as I climbed first one step, then another. Just as I touched a third, the hum of bees was joined by another sound.

  Coming from behind me in the second-floor hall, it began as a few bumps before changing into the sound of glass bottles clattering together.

  A door flew open and someone burst into the hall. Soon all I heard were footsteps, frantic and fast on the floorboards. Someone was running, the noise so loud it drowned out the bees humming above me.

  Bursting back into the hallway, I caught sight of the stranger heading toward the staircase at the other end of the house. He wore a black cloak, the hood pulled over his head. I gave chase, flying down the hallway in a flash. I reached the top of the stairs just as the mystery man was nearing the bottom. He ran toward the front door.

  “Stop!” I called as I rushed down the stairs. “I know the police!”

  My threat, meager as it was, did nothing to slow the trespasser. He threw open the front door and ran outside. I followed once I reached the ground floor, although I feared he was too far ahead of me to catch. Especially now that he was outside, where there were any number of directions in which to run.

  Bursting onto the front porch, however, I saw the intruder had taken the flagstone walkway that led to the street and Lucy Collins’s coach. Thomas, I noticed, still sat at the reins, enjoying a bit of tobacco.

  “Thomas!” I yelled across the lawn. “Stop him!”

  Spitting out a splash of tobacco juice, Thomas leapt from the top of the coach directly onto the black-cloaked trespasser. Both of them dropped to the ground in a writhing, rolling mass. Soon the man was on his stomach, face mashed i
nto the grass. Thomas sat on top of him and uttered a stream of obscenities while pummeling the man’s head.

  Lucy had hopped out of the coach by the time I reached it, and stood over the man. She had fished the pistol from her skirt and now held it at arm’s length, aiming it at the intruder’s head. Running in front of her, I barked, “Put that away at once!”

  I then turned my attention to Thomas, who was still pounding on the stranger. I was forced to grab both of the boy’s arms to keep him from beating the man to a pulp. Then, while Lucy dragged her brother away, I crouched down and grasped the intruder by the shoulders.

  “Who are you, and what were you doing in the Willoughby home?” I demanded.

  The man, still facedown in the grass, gave a muffled reply. “I could ask the same of you.”

  He rolled over, the hood slipping from his head.

  And looking up at me, just as I feared, was the battered face of Jasper Willoughby.

  BOOK SIX

  In Which the Plot Thickens

  I

  Not wanting to create any more of a scene, I sent Lucy and Thomas home in their coach. I then hailed a hansom cab for Jasper and me, intent on escorting him back to West Philadelphia. Sitting side by side in the open carriage, it occurred to me that it was the first time we had ever been alone together. Knowing this fact made what I was about to say all the more awkward.

  “I want to apologize for what happened back there,” I began. “You must forgive young Mr. Collins. He only attacked you because we thought you were an intruder.”

  Jasper reclined in the seat, arms crossed. A small bruise marred the side of his face, made all the more noticeable by the paleness of his skin.

  “Clearly, I was not,” he said.

  “But you must admit, you have some explaining to do.”

  “Me?” Jasper replied. “What about you? You’re the one who broke into a house that isn’t yours.”