Fool's Gold (A Lord Ambrose Mystery)

by Jane Jakeman

  “Why, sir, here is a strange mark on the inside…almost like the remains of a blister, is it not?”

  It was indeed, and there appeared, though in the dim light of the shop I could not be certain, to be a few tiny bright splinters embedded in it.

  I gave the jeweler a generous tip for the crystal bottle and his services. Then, seizing a kerchief which the surprised Dr. Twiddie had happened to produce from his pocket, and wrapping the halves of the flask in it, I accompanied the scholar back to Carfax and thence to his rooms in Pembroke College.

  Professor Daubeny arrived that evening to dine with us. My feelings toward Oxford were softened by its bright beauty in this gentle weather, especially as I had taken Zaraband out for a gallop in the afternoon. Our course, lying as it did along the riverbank to Wolvercote and Port Meadow, was dappled with the moving silvery lights of willow, and a thousand purple-blue dragonflies skimmed over the surface of the water. Here and there on the banks were little parties of young bloods, almost released from their studies, for this was the final term of the year and the dreamy sleep of the long vacation would begin ere long. Once or twice I saw a solitary student reading under a tree, with the enchanted deep absorption that almost makes one desire the scholar’s life.

  Yet I was not so sunk in love with Oxford, neither, that I forgot to make inquiry as to kitchen provisions, intimating that if Twiddie desired to order a special dinner in his rooms, I would meet any monetary deficiencies. I was reassured by Dr. Twiddie’s description of our menu. “I have inquired out what delicacies may be provided and we are to have cod in caper sauce, roast beef, and pigeons with asparagus,” he reported. “With a jelly pyramid to follow.”

  Admittedly, the good doctor then added with irrepressible excitement, “Oh, and what do you think? Trotter pie!” Well, I had to allow him some indulgence. At least it was a better menu than those damned cold collops at Jesmond Place.

  Professor Daubeny proved a brisk fellow, and I came quickly to the point, after the dishes had been cleared away. We sat with a decanter of port, but my two companions showed no signs of the vast imbibing that I recalled was universal in the days of my youth. I fancy moral reform is spreading its gray little tentacles into every peaceful crevice and strangling the natural debaucheries of youth.

  At any rate, when I placed the two halves of the silver hip-flask upon the table, both chemists were quite clearheaded and, as we had not lit tobacco pipes, it was quite noticeable that there was still a whiff of the smell upon which the jeweler had commented. “It seems to be emanating chiefly from this,” commented Daubeny.

  He tapped the curious adhesion upon the inside of the flask—an uneven ring, oval in shape, about half an inch across, and of a thick jellyish substance.

  I did not prompt him. “And I would say,” he continued, “though it is a strange thing in a gentleman’s hip-flask, yet once one has experienced this odor one can never mistake it—I would say it is the smell of prussic acid!”

  “But that is a deadly poison!”

  “Yes, Lord Ambrose. But there are tests one can perform that would make absolutely certain that prussic acid had been present.”

  “Could you undertake those tests, Professor Daubeny? Upon the liquid in this small bottle and also upon this mark here on the inside of the hip-flask?”

  “Yes, certainly. Come to my laboratory tomorrow, if you will.”

  Dr. Twiddie, who had been staring at the two shining halves of what must be undoubtedly a curious instrument of death, now looked at us across the table in horror, as he took in the implications of what he saw.

  “So somebody must have put prussic acid in here, in order to commit murder! Imagine, the owner of this flask takes but a swallow—and death is instantaneous, as if he were felled by an axe!”

  “No, as a matter of fact, Twiddie, that is not always the case. There is sometimes a slight interval between taking the poison and the onset of the symptoms.”

  “What do you mean, exactly, Professor?” I leaned forward in my anxiety to hear what he replied.

  “Well, there have been cases where the deceased was able to behave quite normally for a few minutes after swallowing prussic acid. It is generally believed, even among the medical profession, that the acid immediately takes effect as soon as it has been swallowed, yet that does not always happen. Indeed, there was a young man falsely accused of murder on that account.”

  “Pray tell us the circumstances!”

  Twiddie now was as eager as I. Evidently, the phenomenon of which Daubeny was about to speak was not well-known, even among leading men of science.

  “Oh yes, there was an inquest a few years ago upon a young woman by the name of Buswell—Judith Buswell, if my memory serves me. A young man called Foster was charged with her murder; for it appeared at first that she could not have committed suicide. She was found lying in bed with the bedclothes smoothly pulled up to her breast, her arms neatly crossed. At her side, under the sheet, lay the bottle which had contained the acid—with the cork firmly replaced in the neck. It was assumed that she could not have performed those acts herself—and yet, gentlemen, consider how little time really is required to perform them. Time is so illusory, is it not? We take the significance of actions to be somehow a measure of the time they take to carry out—but reflect upon how many things may be performed in a few seconds, and yet how important may be the consequences of those actions, of those brief moments. Even as I have been speaking, there has been time to kill a man, has there not?”

  It was true. Life is so quick, so easy, to extinguish. A man can have a dagger run through his back and gasp out his bloody lungs in a few seconds. I had killed a man in the time it took old Twiddie now to stretch across and reach for his pipe.

  Sitting in that Oxford room, surrounded by the darkness of a summer’s night, the leavings of an affable meal scattered companionably upon the table, I knew that death, however terrible, however devilish, may be accomplished by a cool hand in less time than it takes to crack a nut.

  But it was not murder that Daubeny had in mind in his present considerations. He continued with his explanation.

  “It was demonstrated at the trial of Foster that five to eight seconds would have sufficed for the unfortunate woman to have placed the stopper in the neck of the bottle after she had swallowed the contents, and for her to assume the position in bed in which she was found. And persons may certainly continue to move about for a brief time after taking the poison—that is now known beyond a doubt. There was an instance in which the symptoms did not come on for a full quarter of an hour. I’m afraid that the notion that the moment prussic acid is taken, death is instantaneous, is a fallacy.”

  “What happened to Foster?” I inquired.

  “Oh, he was acquitted. And there have been other cases—there was a young man in Germany who was found in bed with two empty vials of the acid, one on each side of the bed, and no other container in sight. So he evidently was able to take one vial and then the other and to place both neatly beside him before he was overcome.”

  This discussion should have been reassuring with regard to the recent tragedies at Jesmond Place: if young Dr. Kelsoe had indeed taken his own life, then we could assume that a murderer was not on the loose in that ill-assorted household.

  But then how must we suppose that Cyriack Jesmond met his death?

  “Professor Daubeny, I should be greatly in your debt if you will carry out the tests for detecting the presence of prussic acid. I will call on you at your laboratory tomorrow, if I may.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I breakfasted in Christ Church, taking it in the guest-room which had been allotted to me rather than at the Fellows’ table. I could not forget the sight of that magnificent hall, adorned with portraits and gilt plate, and at the end of the high table a disgusting open dish of bones and scraps into which the nasty old creatures threw their leavings. It had repelled me as a student, and, peering into the hall as I descended the great staircase, I saw that the custom
had not changed.

  I went for a short walk to get a burst of morning air in my lungs, turning toward the river; some of the landmarks of this place I had quite forgotten, and some now came back to me. There was Folly Bridge, for instance, with the grog shops clustered beyond it, and this decayed tower on the riverbank—why, that was something to do with old Twiddle’s conversation, surely… What was it?

  The great clock of Tom Tower broke into my thoughts as it sounded the hour. Time to walk back for my meeting with Daubeny.

  My long legs took me briskly up the steps in front of the Ashmolean Museum, and I made my way down into the basement, where science held its sway. The long wooden benches of Professor Daubeny’s laboratory were much cleaner than the college dining-tables, stained though they were with burns and deposits from various chemicals. Neatly arrayed were the glistening glass and metal vessels of his mysteries: the sirens, the Magdeburg Hemisphere, the ghostly glass cylinder of the Guinea-and-Feather, by means of which, as I recalled, I had seen demonstrated the resistance of air to falling bodies. A pungent, sulfurous whiff filled the air as I struggled to recall some of the terms I had learned. Was that green glass contrivance not a retort, and surely that was a dropping bottle, for measuring minute quantities of poison?

  Daubeny himself was holding up a small beaker, the sides of which were coated with white.

  “Ah, Malfine! Yes, this is the result of the test I have performed with nitrate of silver—by washing the sides of the hip-flask with a little water and then adding the water to a beaker containing the nitrate. You see the white film formed thereby? That is a sure indication of the presence of prussic acid, even in a dilute solution. And I have obtained the same result from the liquid in the little bottle which you gave me—though there, it was more marked. There is another test which I wish to carry out—do take a seat and observe.”

  Like any student, I took a seat upon the bench and watched Daubeny’s hands as he scraped off the small patch of odd blisterlike matter from the surface of the inside of the flask. He placed it briefly under a microscope. He was a contradiction in terms, a fierce little man, square-jawed and forceful-looking, yet with a Cupid’s bow of a mouth and the delicate hands of a watchmaker.

  “Yes, now I can see—there are tiny sherds of fine glass in this, Malfine. As if an ampoule has been broken. Look down this microscope.”

  I peered down the tiny channels of brass and saw for myself: glittering fragments of sharp light, stuck in some thick grayish substance.

  Then he carefully placed the scrapings in a beaker, poured in a little water and swirled it around, and then carefully poured off the liquid. He then allowed a few drops to fall into another glass, which he told me contained the nitrate, and I saw for myself the white deposit forming within.

  “Again—prussic acid,” he observed. “Though I cannot be certain: there may be some contamination from the waxy substance which I scraped from the side of the flask. Nor, of course, do I know the nature of the dregs of brown liquid in your small vial—though it has the odor of some kind of brandy.”

  “Yes, that will very probably have been the case. But tell me, Professor Daubeny, could you not hazard a guess as to the nature of the curious blister, or ampoule, or whatever it was, that might have been in the flask?”

  Daubeny evidently did not care for hazard. But he responded, though slowly, tucking his black cravat into his waistcoat as he considered.

  “Well now, if I were forced to make a guess, I should say that this was wax—ordinary household candle wax, in which there has been embedded, for some extraordinary reason, a glass capsule of the kind that medical men sometimes use to contain…”

  He stopped, and looked at me, and then continued.

  “To contain a small quantity of a very strong drug. Such as a poison.”

  The web of the Jesmond Place entanglement drew tighter. What could be the reason for the deaths, by poison, of two apparently healthy young men? They had not even been resident at the same time—Cyriack had not returned to Jesmond Place till the body of young Kelsoe was about to be interred in its last resting-place. They could have been only briefly acquainted, before Cyriack’s departure for the start of the summer term, so that they would have known each other for a matter of weeks. If Cyriack had been murdered—and so it would seem, from the extraordinary evidence that poison had been inserted into his hip-flask—then should I suppose that was the fate that had also befallen Kelsoe? Although, recalling Daubeny’s stories of the unfortunates who had ended their own lives by means of prussic acid, we now had the testimony of no less than the Professor of Chemistry at Oxford that Kelsoe’s death could have been suicide.

  Yes, thought I, but the fact that Kelsoe could have died by his own hand, that Dr. Sandys might have been wrong in his conclusion that it was murder—this did not mean that Kelsoe was proved a suicide beyond all doubt. The possibility, not the certainty, was there.

  And how had the poison operated, in the case of Cyriack?

  I decided to acquaint Professor Daubeny with the full facts of Cyriack Jesmond’s horrifying decease, witnessed by a small crowd of onlookers.

  “Dear me, such a tragedy! But he was a student at my college, you know—I recognize the name. I’m afraid he was not a very brilliant pupil, to say the least—though his father dabbled in science, so I was told by those who remembered him, from his student days thirty years ago. Yes, there are still a few gray-beards around who taught Jesmond senior. I never taught young Cyriack myself, but I recall that his tutor told me he paid no attention to his studies. Rather a violent disposition, too, I fancy. He has—or had, I should say—a reputation for brawling.”

  Brawling and perhaps worse. I thought of Cyriack as I had glimpsed him at Jesmond Place, his fist raised above the terrified face of Lady Jesmond.

  It would not have been surprising to discover that someone had plotted the decease of Cyriack Jesmond. But who should have done so in the case of young Kelsoe?

  “Professor Daubeny, from the curious circumstances here, from the splinters of glass and the waxy substance and so on—can you suggest what might have happened to Cyriack Jesmond?”

  “This is purely conjecture, mind…but yes, this is what might—I say might—have happened. If a few drops of prussic acid—a very small quantity is enough to kill—were inserted in an ampoule of thin glass, and the opening of that ampoule temporarily stoppered with a waxy seal, or even one of crystalized sugar, then the sugar or wax would dissolve eventually—how long, of course, would depend on many factors, such as its thickness, the strength of the acid, and whether there was another liquid present on the outside. If the ampoule had been placed in a flask and brandy then poured in, then the spirit would act as a dissolving agent upon the seal. There would be perhaps a short respite—very brief, but, as in the cases I described to you, it might be enough to perform a few actions. Then, the death agony.”

  The memory came into my mind: Cyriack, leaping on the horse, taking a long pull from his flask…a few more seconds while the animal careered down the drive—and then Cyriack rearing up in the saddle, his body bent in a horrible unnatural bow as if he performed some grotesque circus trick.

  I tried to picture what might have happened. A tiny glass capsule of poison, its mouth stoppered with a soluble adhesion. The murderer places this in Cyriack’s own hipflask, quietly awaiting its owner’s return from Oxford. Cyriack calls for the flask to be filled…

  “Would not the ampoule, as soon as brandy was poured into the flask, would it not float up—even perhaps bob up into the mouth of the flask, and the drinker would straight away detect something?”

  For answer, Daubeny strode into his study adjacent to the laboratory and returned with a decanter about a third full which he placed upon the sulfurous laboratory bench.

  I removed the stopper of the decanter and took a sniff.

  “Good God, Daubeny, what are you thinking of? Conducting your experiments with the finest French cognac?”

  Daub
eny seemed rather put out. “I keep the brandy only for emergencies, you understand. To stimulate the heart in case of medical need.”

  “Too good to waste on keeping fools alive. Damned fine stuff, by the smell of it.”

  But Daubeny proceeded with his experiment. He took a candle, cut off a little wax which he melted in a spoon over a flame, and then from a drawer in a little brass and mahogany cabinet where it was set in a velvet trough like a ghostly fruit on a thin stem, he removed a gleaming bead of thin hollow glass.

  Through the stem he poured a few drops of water, and then pressed the molten wax in the thin bore of the mouth so that it was sealed.

  Then he dropped the ampoule into the cognac. We watched as it floated merrily on the golden surface. He tilted the decanter to pour a little into a glass and it instantly floated toward the opening, bobbing like a fisherman’s buoy.

  “Indeed, you were right, Malfine. It would be a very lucky chance that it should go unobserved—even if the potential victim were to take a deep gulp straight from the mouth of his hip-flask,” observed the professor.

  “That curious oval mark upon the side of the flask, which looks like the remains of a blister upon the skin,” said I. “Can we account for that?”

  For answer, the professor rang a bell, and a young boy appeared, with tousled hair and a leather apron.

  “This is Simon,” observed Daubeny. “He cleans out the laboratory—washes vessels and so forth. Simon, be so kind as to fetch me the silver jug from the pantry.”

  Simon ran off, Daubeny murmuring after him, “Wants to be a student—but a poor boy, yes, a poor boy. Oxford is not kind to poverty, as you will know, having studied here yourself.”

  I was ashamed to say that I did not know. I had taken no account of the servitors, poor students who slept in the attics and waited on the other students, struggling to study when they might. However, this was not the moment to dwell on the subject.

  When Simon brought in the silver jug, Daubeny took it, held a piece of wax inside it with a pair of tongs so that it was against the side, and then applied the flame of a candle to the outside in that place, The wax readily stuck to the inside of the jug, and Daubeny then inserted the ampoule and embedded it in the warm wax. There was a black smoky stain on the outside of the jug, where the flame of the candle had discolored it, but that was swiftly cleaned off with a piece of cloth.