Jemdanee lowered her cap, as she’d been instructed to do, and walked past a man bearing a wooden baton whilst wearing a domed blue hat that, in her opinion, made him look like an idiot.
No wonder criminals didn’t take any of these constables seriously.
Ridley removed his top hat, smoothing the sides of his hair, and stalked onward, signaling they were done.
Her stomach squeezed as she tightened her trembling hold on the carpet bag in her gloved hand. The idea of seeing more than one dead body was unnerving.
She followed Ridley past elegant, round alcoves displaying a series of bronze and white stone busts of dignified men propped on Roman-like columns.
Her eyes followed the wood railing that trailed the wall toward an oversized landing that led to various doors upstairs. The theatre boxes.
“Widen that stride,” Ridley tossed back at her as he mounted the stairs. “Remember everything I earlier told you. Breathe through your mouth the moment you enter that box.”
Trying not to lose the cap on her head, she sprinted up after him, the coat weighing too heavily to her liking. It was tangling with her legs.
Ridley strode past the landing down a wide corridor and disappeared.
Low, male voices drifted toward her.
Jemdanee drew her brows together and followed him through a large rounded entryway leading into side doors, its arched ceilings bearing elegant ribbon plasterwork and a long row of windows on one side.
She veered into one of the boxes draped with heavy, brocaded curtains.
The cadaverine, putrid smell of rotting flesh mingling with citrus and foul garlic-like odor and vomit made her gag. She almost heaved as tears overwhelmed her. She gagged again, acid running up to her throat as she frantically set her sleeve to her nose, Ridley’s deep voice crawling into her head.
Breathe through your mouth.
One breath. Two breaths. Three. She couldn’t smell it half as much but she could still taste its acrid scent on her lips.
How did Ridley do this?
How did he…disconnect himself from a reality that went beyond horror?
The glow of candles in sconces set on gilded mirrors refracted an eerie gloom in the box. Several linen sheets soaked with vomit covered the expanse of the floor that had been cleared of its cushioned chairs that were supposed to overlook the balcony of the auditorium. Two bodies that were outlined beneath those vomit-soaked sheets, appeared to be contorted into demonic positions. The expensive satin heels, belonging to a woman whose face lay buried sideways beneath, peered out of one end of the sheet, spread apart as if the woman had attempted to run from her own symptoms.
It could have been anyone’s mother.
It could have been her mother.
Her eyes burned and she almost sobbed. To give herself strength, she lifted her gaze to Ridley who stood on the farthest side of the box.
A gentleman with piercing black eyes whose skin was heavily scarred with pockmarks whispering of a childhood illness, finished his conversation with Ridley, his voice fading. With the flip of a collar from his evening coat, which he set against each side of his jaw, he angled around the covered bodies and stalked past her and out the door of the box, disappearing.
There was no doubt who that had been.
Finkle! She scrambled out into the corridor and called out, “May the gods bless you!”
He paused, his broad back to her, but didn’t turn. “You have Ridley to thank, Miss Watkins. Not me. Find something so I can point this at the Barlows.” He raised a black-gloved hand, acknowledging her and with the shrug of his coat, kept walking.
Two men were putting faith into her talent and in doing so, saving her life.
She had a chance to not only save herself, but unravel this horror to bring it peace.
You survived many nights beneath a manure cart, watching the feet of others pass by, hoping they didn’t see or grab you. The terror is the same but the outcome is different.
Turning, she chanted to herself to remain calm and entered the box again. She kept breathing through her mouth to ensure she held onto her stomach and didn’t retch.
Ridley pointed. “We only have two hours. He’ll be downstairs waiting for anything that will enable him to take this case from me.” He removed his great coat from his broad frame and tossed it out into the corridor behind her, yanking on a pair of leather gloves. He wagged his fingers toward her. “Give me your coat. You don’t want it touching anything. Especially given the poison.”
With trembling hands, she set down her carpet bag near the door of the corridor, as far from the feet of those unmoving satin slippers as space allowed. Removing the oversized male gloves from her hands, she shoved them into the pocket of the coat and removed that, as well.
She held them out, her hands trembling despite trying to steady them.
Leaning toward her, he grabbed the coat and tossed it onto his own in the corridor. “Do you need a few more moments to adjust?”
As if any amount of moments or breaths taken through her mouth was going to change what was beneath those sheets. She shook her head, still breathing through her mouth and set her cane against the wall behind her, trying to steady the trembling in her hand.
Ridley gestured toward an ornate sideboard against the wall. A decanter of wine and still-full glasses were set onto it beside an ornate silver tray laid out with a display of segmented oranges, both peeled and others still in its round entirely with its peels intact. “If one follows the pattern of the display, fourteen pieces are missing from the arrangement. Which means, however many they ate between themselves, still resulted in a bizarrely quick death that suffocated them before they could make it to the door. According to witnesses, about a half hour after the lights had dimmed and halfway through the theatrical, the sounds of their shouts and angst occurred as fast as the death itself. They didn’t make it out of this box, which is unheard of even for arsenic. It’s something far more lethal.”
And rare.
Jemdanee veered toward the display, trying to focus in the same way he was, despite the bodies lying behind them at their feet. She kept breathing and breathing through her mouth, scanning the segmented oranges. Countless flies that had attempted to partake in the display were on it dead.
It affected the flies that usually avoided the bitterness of any toxic alkaloids.
There was no visible film or discoloring.
Think. Think, think, think. What could be that elusive and that powerful?
She turned. Kneeling near the door, she unstrapped her bag filled with instruments she usually used to dissect leaves and rising, turned back toward the bodies. Walking toward them, she gestured toward the sheet nearest her to signal that she was ready for the first body.
She swallowed, still breathing through her mouth.
Ridley adjusted the leather gloves he was wearing, then angled in and leaned down. Carefully folding over the linen sheet, he pulled it away from the contorted and bloated, bluing face of an elderly woman wearing a carmine-colored velvet gown. The rigidness of her body and the twisting positioning of that outstretched neck whispered of far more than the effects of a body rotting.
It whispered of an unimaginable suffering brought on by poison. Too many poisons contorted and stiffened the muscles of the body with the pain it brought.
It didn’t help with her assessment.
She gestured toward the other sheet, attempting to remain calm.
Ridley unfolded the other and also pulled away the linen sheet, setting it aside to reveal a gentleman as equally contorted as the woman.
Jemdanee stepped back toward her carpet bag and reached in, yanking on tighter fitting leather gloves, fitting each one over her fingers before repositioning the instrument in her right hand. Turning back, she squatted beside the body. “Some poisons can remain on the skin after it is ingested. Have you or anyone else touched them?”
Ridley squatted beside her. “No. I never do. I usually use a yardstick. Though mo
st of these morons don’t even do that.”
Contact. “Has anyone fallen ill after touching them?”
He paused. “One. He was retching the very first day we came in.”
“How long after?”
“Less than hour.”
“Did he live?”
“Yes. He likened it to heavy nausea and eating something he shouldn’t have.”
They were in England. In London, of all things. Anything could have been imported and brought in through the docks. England itself had countless poisonous plants.
Too many. Aconitum was but a single genus in England of over two hundred species of flowering plants alone. What if she couldn’t help? What if she found nothing?
Panic seized her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t—
“It’s all right,” Ridley whispered. “Hold onto your mind knowing it’s still yours. Think of nothing but what you know and love. Greenhouses. Fresh air. Plants. India.”
It was as if he knew.
She half-nodded, mentally sweeping herself back to a calm knowing what was waiting for her when this was done. Home. India.
Taking a copper scraper, she used her gloved fingers to carefully wedge open the mouth of the elderly woman. It easily slackened. She squinted and noting the woman had dentures, lifted them up and away from her gums to see if the remnants of anything from the orange was visible.
Nothing. She lowered the dentures back into place and scraped at the teeth, removing the thick film on it. She held it up to observe it. She had once found leaves between the teeth of a dog who had chewed through vegetation he shouldn’t have. There had been enough of that vegetation for her to decipher it then. Maybe…
Ridley searched her face, leaning in. “What are you looking for?”
“Fibers from any other form of vegetation outside of those of an orange.”
He squinted. “Would you be able to determine anything from it?”
She lowered the instrument and eyed him. “Only if the strand is large enough. I have to scrape each crevice in their mouths in the hopes of finding something.” Anything. Two hours wasn’t going to be enough.
Removing the dentures, she tried not to cringe as thickening liquid from the woman’s mouth followed the dentures out. Jemdanee resumed scraping each and every darkened crevice between each human tooth and moved over to the gentleman and did the same with his mouth and yellowing teeth.
An hour passed.
Her neck and back and arms ached from stooping. Her eyes burned knowing she might as well be looking a single droplet of water in an ocean.
She rose and tightening her hold on the copper instrument, she quickly stepped around the bodies and returned to the oranges, determined to find something. “I require the scalpel from my bag. Might you fetch it?”
Ridley veered toward the corridor, removed it and angling around the bodies, extended the scalpel.
Still breathing through her mouth to the point of her lips being dry, she positioned the oranges and sliced through one. She sliced through the unfolding, pulping flesh of each segment, looking for an anomaly. Any slight discoloring. Any thickening.
After dissecting all fifty-two small segments and still finding nothing, she started grabbing what little was left of the display. Whole oranges. The ones still in peels.
Five.
Rotating each one carefully and slowly, to see if it had been punctured, but finding nothing, she used her scalpel to slice into the first one, dismantling it down, down, down to the inner peel, until nothing but shredded pulp and skin remained.
Nothing.
The second.
Nothing.
The third had a small break in the peel. A hole.
Odd. It didn’t appear to have been done by an insect. Her scalpel sliced into it. Something stopped the blade, pushing back the metal.
She paused and frantically removed the scalpel and manually opened the flesh finding…a broken tip of a quill. Her pulse roared. “Ridley,” she rasped in disbelief. “I found something.”
He angled in close. Using his gloved finger, he nudged it free from the pulp and lifted it toward the candlelight above their heads, angling it. “Son of a bitch. It’s hollow.”
“What does that mean?” She peered at it, trying to understand. “None of the other oranges had it. Why does this one?”
He lowered it and set it back into the pulp. “Because it wasn’t supposed to break off. They were stabbing quills dipped with poison into the oranges. Much like an ink well to paper delivering a missive.” He slowly set the orange onto the tray and picked up the remaining two whole oranges, his brows coming together. “Were any of the other ones you dismantled punctured? Did you make a note of it?”
It was a good thing she had. “All of them were pristine, save this one. Only this one had a small hole burrowed into its peel.”
“Huh.” Inspecting the remaining two whole oranges closely, while running his gloved fingers over them, he set each one before her on the sideboard. “Dismantle these two, as well. Slowly. See if you can decipher any tunneling that we might be missing.”
She nodded and slowly, slowly used the scalpel to break down each orange, carefully wedging apart the flesh more carefully than she had the rest. She followed each vein and the whitening edges and the pulp itself for each one. “Nothing. They are pristine, like the others were.”
Ridley squinted. “Only specific ones were poisoned. Which means…” He shifted his jaw. “The server knew which ones to lay out. Gibbons knew. That son of a bitch was instructed, because he usually boards with James Barlow at Cambridge. It means we might have an actual witness we can break. One who could identify what I know to be true: Emily and James Barlow decided to end Emily’s engagement to Mr. Rubenhold through force, given their parents refused to desist, eliminating not only Mr. Rubenhold and his family, but their own parents who had life insurance policies put in their childrens’ names. Voilà.”
He jerked toward her, leaned in and down and set his forehead against hers. Hard.
She stilled, her forehead and nose set against his heat and cologne.
“This is me digging into everything you are.” He swung away, stripping his gloves and jumped over the bodies, tossing the gloves into the farthest corner. He stalked out into the corridor and disappeared.
Jemdanee lingered in the eerie silence of the box, her own heartbeat making her all too painfully aware that hers was the only heart left beating in that room.
The two bodies with their mouths open, stared blankly.
She swallowed hard and quickly took the soiled sheets and covered them to give them whatever dignity they had left. “May your souls be reincarnated into better paths full of promise and happiness,” she whispered.
The flapping of wings swooped in, startling her.
Chaucer casually alighted onto the sideboard and started scooping at the oranges, eating.
Her heart popped. “Chaucer!” she boomed, running at him, waving her arms at him in the hopes he hadn’t swallowed the poison or the evidence. “Chaucer, nahin!”
Chaucer darted past her into the vast open space of the auditorium and disappeared with a swoop below. He clicked.
She frantically skid toward the sideboard and eyed the oranges, noting the broken quill tip was still there, but…several of the oranges were missing. “Kali save him.”
No. No, no, no. No!
Grabbing the velvet curtain of the box, she gritted her teeth and using whatever strength she could, she ripped it down with her weight, popping the rings from the pole until it fell. She covered the sideboard completely with its weight, to ensure Chaucer couldn’t get to anymore. Stripping her gloves, she whipped them into the corner and jumped over the bodies, sprinting into the corridor.
“Ridley!” She couldn’t breathe knowing what was about to happen. “Ridley!” she sprinted, feeling the beeswax on her upper lip unfastening against the moisture beading her lips as tears blinded her. His bird. She sobbed knowing what was abou
t to happen. “Ridleeeeeeeeeey!”
His muscled figure jumped over the railing of the open stairwell above where he’d been talking to Finkle and thudded onto the landing several feet before her. Rising to his full height with the wide stance of boots, he removed both pistols and stalking around her, aimed each behind her, waiting.
She almost slapped him in between her sobbing as she shoved his arms away. “There is no one! No one! ‘Tis Chaucer! Chaucer. He...” She gulped breaths. “He swallowed…some of the…oranges.”
The heated crisp scent of his peppery cologne surrounded her, momentarily erasing the smells she wanted scrubbed from her nose and mind.
Ridley swung toward her, lowering his pistols which he shoved into his holsters. His rugged features wavered. Turning, he sprinted past her and back toward the box, disappearing inside.
She covered her mouth with a trembling hand, the stench of death still overwhelming her as she sobbed and sobbed. Citrus. Garlic. Vomit. Blood. Skin. Blue. Feces.
Chaucer.
She fainted, her body and head hitting the nearest wall.
Chapter 10
Women.
They overreacted to everything.
No matter how old or young they were.
Chaucer circled him in curiosity as he carried Kumar’s limp body into the carriage, ensuring her cap was pulled over her nose. Angling her carefully into the carriage, he draped her onto the seat and then signaled to Finkle over his shoulder. “Even if Gibbons offers testimony, she can’t stay. She has to go. I’ll sign off on any and all witness papers. Any idea on what could be happening with the governor and the logs?”
Finkle muttered something. “I have no doubt I already know. He could be lining up certain female prisoners for sexual favors in return for plea bargains and God knows what else.”
Ridley jerked toward him. “Jesus. Prosecute the son of a bitch.”
“I plan to. It’s the third governor we’ve had to resign due to criminal endeavors. Are you interested in running for governor?” Finkle chided.
“That isn’t even funny.” Ridley pointed. “Keep my name off the ballot and get on Gibbons. We need that confession.”
Mr. Ridley: A Whipping Society Novel Page 20
