The Perfect Poison

by Quick, Amanda

  “Or a business associate. In my brief career as an investigator, I have discovered that either can prove treacherous.”

  Keeping his senses open, he searched the room swiftly and methodically. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lucinda move to a side table and pick up a framed photograph.

  “This must be her son,” she said. “The one she mentioned the day she visited me. There is something familiar about him.”

  Caleb straightened and studied the picture. The subject was a young man in his early twenties. He was stiffly posed in a dark suit. His hairline was already starting to recede. He gazed out at the viewer with a fixed intensity typical of photographic portraits.

  “Do you recognize him?” Caleb asked.

  “No. It was just that, for an instant, when I first saw the picture I had a fleeting notion that he reminded me of someone I have met.” She shook her head and put the photograph on the table. “It is probably his resemblance to his mother that I noticed.”

  He glanced at Daykin. “He doesn’t look much like her but I suppose there must be something of her in his looks.”

  “Yes.” She watched him open the drawers of a small desk. “Anything of interest there?”

  “Bills, letters to firms that supplied her with herbs and chemicals.” He shuffled through another stack of papers. “Nothing of a personal nature.” He started to close the desk but stopped when he saw the tiny scrap of paper tucked into the back of a cubbyhole. He withdrew it.

  “What is it?” Lucinda asked.

  “A series of numbers. It looks like the combination to a safe.”

  “I do not see one,” Lucinda said.

  A rush of certainty swept through him. “It is here, somewhere.”

  He found it moments later, hidden behind the headboard of the small bed. The combination written on the slip of paper opened it immediately. Inside was a notebook and three small packets.

  He sensed energy flaring again and recognized it intuitively. Lucinda.

  She reached down to stay his arm. “Be careful. Those packets contain poison, the same kind that killed Lord Fairburn.”

  He did not question her conclusion. Satisfaction flashed through him.

  “I told you that Mrs. Daykin was no innocent bystander,” he said. He removed the notebook and thumbed through it quickly.

  “What is it?” Lucinda asked, peering over his shoulder. “The writing looks like nonsense.”

  “It’s a code.” He studied the cryptic notes for a few seconds and then smiled a little when the pattern appeared almost immediately. “A very simple one. I believe we have found Mrs. Daykin’s record of the transactions concerning the sales of poison. Spellar will be delighted. This notebook may well provide him with the information he needs to close the Fairburn case as well as a number of others.”

  “Why on earth would Mrs. Daykin have kept an account of such transactions? It is damning evidence.”

  Another whisper of certainty stirred his senses. “She must have concluded that the risk outweighed the business advantages.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He held up the notebook. “This journal makes excellent blackmail material.”

  “Good grief. Mrs. Daykin profited coming and going. First she sold the poison and then she extorted money from those who used it.”

  “A businesswoman through and through.”

  SIXTEEN

  THREE DAYS LATER, AT ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, Lucinda sat with Victoria on a velvet cushioned bench. The bench was situated on a balcony overlooking a glittering ballroom.

  Together they surveyed the brilliant scene. The reception for the recently engaged Mr. Thaddeus Ware and his fiancée, Leona Hewitt, was at its height. It was not the guests of honor Lucinda and Victoria were watching, however.

  “They make a very attractive couple,” Victoria said, peering through her opera glasses. “But I’m afraid a match is out of the question. Young Mr. Sutton won’t do at all.”

  “What a shame,” Lucinda said. “He seems a very pleasant gentleman.”

  “He is.” Victoria lowered the opera glasses and fortified herself with a sip of champagne from her glass. “He’s just not right for your cousin.”

  “You can tell that much from up here?”

  “At this distance I can only get a vague sense of the resonating currents between them, but that is enough to assure me that he will not do for her.” She made a small mark in a little notebook and raised the glasses to her eyes again with military precision.

  Lucinda followed her gaze. Down below a vast number of elegantly dressed couples, including Patricia and the unsuitable Mr. Sutton, danced to the sensual strains of a waltz. Patricia looked at once innocent and ravishing in a pale pink satin gown trimmed with a cascade of pink tulle. Long pink gloves sheathed her arms. Delicate pink flower ornaments sparkled in her hair.

  Lucinda was well aware that she herself presented a decidedly different appearance. Innocent was not the word that sprang to mind. Victoria’s dressmaker had chosen cobalt blue silk for her. Perfect for les cheveux rouge and those blue eyes, Madam LaFontaine had declared in an excruciatingly bad French accent that had likely originated near the docks, not Paris.

  The gown was cut low to reveal what Lucinda considered a rather daring expanse of shoulder and bosom. Madam LaFontaine had refused to raise the neckline so much as half an inch. Victoria had agreed with her. The secret to carrying off a notorious reputation is to flaunt it, she had told Lucinda. You must be bold.

  Lucinda was not entirely certain the woman-of-the-world approach was the correct one but there was no denying that Victoria knew what she was about when it came to matchmaking. Patricia’s dance card was completely filled. She was going to be exhausted when the ball was over, Lucinda thought, smiling a little. Her dancing slippers would likely have holes in the soles. Each time she came off the floor Patricia barely had a chance to take a few sips of lemonade before the next young man appeared to claim his turn.

  “What do you see when you look at a room full of people, Lady Milden?” Lucinda asked.

  “A great many couples who should never have married and an equal number who are engaged in illicit liaisons.”

  “That must be rather depressing.”

  “It is.” Victoria set the opera glasses aside and took another sip of champagne. “But I find that my new career as a matchmaker does a great deal to elevate my spirits. A successful match is an antidote, you see.”

  “According to my count, Patricia has danced with nine different candidates,” Lucinda said. “How many more are there?”

  “Two from my files but I spotted several more gentlemen who are not my clients who managed to get their names on her card. That is fine with me. I always like to allow for the unexpected. Sometimes two people simply find each other with no help from a matchmaker. One would not want to rule out that possibility. That is, after all, how Thaddeus and Leona met.”

  “At a ball like this?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Victoria conceded. “A museum gallery, actually.”

  “Ah, they have artistic interests in common.”

  “No,” Victoria said. “It was the middle of the night and it wasn’t a mutual interest in art that brought them together. They were both there to steal a certain artifact from a very bad man. Nearly got themselves killed.”

  “Good heavens. How very . . .” She stopped because she could not find the appropriate word. “Unusual.”

  “They are an unusual couple. He has a talent for mesmerism. She reads crystals.”

  Lucinda looked down at Thaddeus and Leona. She was no matchmaker but even from this distance she could sense the bond of intimacy between them. It was there in the way Thaddeus stood close to his fiancée and in the way she smiled at him.

  “They are very fortunate to have found each other,” she said quietly.

  “Yes,” Victoria said. “As soon as I saw them together I knew they were a perfect match.”

  “What will you do
if none of the gentlemen here tonight proves to be right for Patricia?”

  “I have scheduled a number of teas, lectures, museum and gallery visits as well as another ball next week. Never fear, I will find someone for her.”

  “You take a very positive attitude toward your work.”

  “That is easy to do when one has a client as charming as your cousin,” Victoria said.

  “What happens when you are faced with a potential client who is not particularly charming?”

  Victoria gave her a sharp, searching look. “Why do you ask?”

  Lucinda flushed. “It was merely a hypothetical question.”

  Victoria picked up the glasses and turned her attention back to the dance floor. “If you are talking about Caleb Jones, the problem is unlikely to ever arise.”

  “Why not?”

  “Caleb Jones is a very complicated man and he gets more so by the day.”

  “Is that a polite way of saying that he will never find a good match?”

  “I understand that you have spent some time with him lately. Surely you have realized that he does not view the world in what most people would call a normal manner. Nor is he at all predictable when it comes to the proprieties.”

  Lucinda thought about Caleb’s habit of showing up at her front door every morning.

  “He does not conform to the usual rules of etiquette,” she said. “I’ll give you that.”

  “Bah. He knows how to behave. He is a Jones, after all. But his manners are quite deplorable. He is impatient with others to the point of rudeness, and he avoids social gatherings whenever possible. I have it on good authority that when he is at home he spends every waking moment alone in his laboratory and library. How many women could be happy with a man like that?”

  “Well—”

  “He will marry, of course. He’s a Jones. It’s his duty. But I doubt that he will ask me to match him.” Victoria sniffed. “Thank heavens.”

  “You really don’t believe that you could find him a good match?”

  “Let’s just say that I think it highly unlikely that Caleb Jones and the woman he finally weds will ever know true marital happiness. Not that such a situation would make them unique in any way. Indeed, it is the norm in the polite world.”

  “I agree that Mr. Jones can be somewhat brusque but I think that what you perceive as his difficult personality is merely a by-product of his talent and the self-control he employs to master it.”

  “That may be true but when you get to be my age, my dear, you will realize that such an extreme degree of self-mastery is not particularly desirable in a man. It tends to make one rigid, unyielding and inflexible.”

  It was not as if she had not made a similar observation to Patricia, Lucinda reminded herself. Nevertheless, it was depressing to dwell on all the reasons why Caleb would never find happiness.

  “If you ask me, I doubt very much that Caleb will even notice his own lack of marital satisfaction,” Victoria continued, as if she had read Lucinda’s mind. “It is not in his nature to fall in love. He will put a ring on some woman’s finger, get her pregnant and then retreat to his laboratory and library.”

  “Are you saying that Mr. Jones is immune to strong passions?” Lucinda asked, shocked.

  “In a word, yes.”

  “No offense, madam, but you are quite wrong.”

  It was Victoria’s turn to be surprised. “Never say you believe that Caleb Jones is capable of experiencing the more delicate sensibilities?”

  “Delicate sensibilities may not be quite the right phrase but I assure you, he is capable of intense emotion and great depth of feeling.”

  Victoria’s eyes widened. “Why, Miss Bromley, I do not know what to say. You are the only person I have ever met who would make such a statement about Caleb Jones.”

  “I suspect that he is a very misunderstood man, even within the bosom of his family.”

  “Fascinating,” Victoria murmured. “Speaking of Caleb, I wonder where he is tonight. As I said, he avoids social affairs whenever possible but he does have a sense of responsibility toward the family. I did expect him to show up for a few minutes, at least. He and Thaddeus are cousins, after all.”

  “I believe Mr. Jones is very busy with his current investigation,” Lucinda said.

  Defending Caleb and explaining his actions was starting to become a habit, she thought, a bad one, no doubt. Entirely unnecessary, as well. If ever there was a man who could take care of himself, a man who could not have cared less about the opinions of others, it was Caleb Jones.

  The truth was, she had no idea where he was or what he was doing. She had not seen him since breakfast that morning. He had arrived promptly at eight-thirty, downed a large helping of eggs and toast, said something about conferring with Inspector Spellar and then dashed off in a hansom.

  Although he was obviously sleeping better, she was growing concerned because the faint, unwholesome tension was still there in his aura. She wondered if she should change the ingredients in the tisane. But her senses assured her that she had prepared the appropriate tonic.

  A sudden stirring of awareness brought her out of her reverie. She looked down into the ballroom and saw Caleb at once. He stood in a shadowy alcove, partially concealed by a decorative screen. He studied the dancers the way a lion at the watering hole might watch a herd of unwary antelope.

  “There is Mr. Jones,” she said.

  “Which one?” Victoria asked vaguely. “There are any number of them here tonight.”

  “Caleb.” Lucinda motioned with her fan. “Behind the palms.”

  “Yes, I see him.” Victoria leaned forward to peer more intently through the opera glasses. “So like him to sneak in through a side door rather than use the main entrance and have to deal with the formalities. I told you, the man detests this sort of social affair. If past history is any guide, he’ll stay for five minutes and then disappear.”

  He might not be planning to stay long but he had taken the time to change into black-and-white evening attire, Lucinda noticed. The elegantly cut coat and trousers and the snow-white linen shirt underscored the invisible aura of power that always seemed to shimmer around him.

  He left the alcove and prowled around the outskirts of the crowd, inclining his head curtly once or twice at certain individuals he passed but managing to avoid conversation. He made his way to Thaddeus and Leona, spoke to them briefly and then looked up toward the balcony.

  He saw her at once. She caught her breath. It is as if he knew precisely where to find me, she thought.

  He said something else to Thaddeus, nodded quite civilly to Leona, and then he walked away, vanishing down what appeared to be a service hall. Lucinda sat back, firmly squashing the sharp twinge of disappointment. What had she expected? That he might actually seek her out for a moment or two of conversation?

  Victoria snapped her fingers. “Poof, gone already. Typical. Imagine trying to find a good match for a man who cannot be bothered to even ask a lady to dance.”

  “It would certainly be a challenge,” Lucinda agreed. But I would far rather he left than be obliged to watch him take the floor with one of the ladies down there, she thought. The realization was disturbing. She clenched the folded fan in her hand. She must not fall in love with Caleb Jones.

  “Ah, Mr. Riverton is approaching Patricia,” Victoria said. Enthusiasm laced her voice. “I have great hopes for him. A very scholarly type, young Riverton. And his notions on the rights of women are quite advanced.”

  Lucinda studied Riverton through the bars of the railing. “A nice-looking gentleman.”

  “Yes. Strong talent, as well.” Victoria studied the pair for a moment. “It appears that the energy between them is at least somewhat compatible.” She lowered the glasses and made a note in her little book. “Definitely worth a closer look.”

  Lucinda started to lean forward to get a better view of Riverton. She stopped when another shiver of awareness splashed through her. She turned and saw Caleb em
erge from the shadows of a dimly lit hall.

  “What the devil are you doing up here, Miss Bromley?” he said, not bothering with even a semblance of a polite greeting. “I thought you’d be downstairs.”

  “And a pleasant good evening to you, too, Mr. Jones,” Victoria said dryly.

  “Victoria,” Caleb said, looking as if he had just now realized she was present. He took her gloved hand and bowed over it with surprising grace. “My apologies. Didn’t see you there.”

  “Of course you did,” Victoria said. “It was just that you were concentrating entirely on Miss Bromley.”

  Caleb’s brows rose slightly. “I was looking for her, yes.”

  “Do you have some news?” Lucinda asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  He gripped the balcony railing and looked down as though suddenly fascinated by the patterns the dancers were weaving on the ballroom floor. When he turned back to her, the controlled energy in his eyes seemed to burn a little hotter.

  “If you will do me the honor of dancing with me, I will tell you what I have learned,” he said.

  Stunned, she could only stare at him, mouth open in what she suspected was a most unbecoming manner.

  “Uh,” she got out after an eternity.

  “Run along,” Victoria said. She rapped the back of Lucinda’s gloved hand sharply with her fan. “I’ll keep an eye on Patricia.”

  The sting of the fan broke Lucinda’s trance. She swallowed and recovered her senses.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Jones,” she said. “But it has been some time since I danced the waltz. I fear I am out of practice.”

  “So am I, but the pattern is a simple one. I’m sure we’ll both manage not to trip over our own feet.”

  He took her hand and hauled her up off the padded bench before she could think of any more arguments. She glanced back once over her shoulder, but there was no help from that quarter. Victoria was watching them with a most peculiar expression.

  The next thing she knew she was being led swiftly along a long, dim hall and down a narrow, cramped flight of servants’ stairs. When they reached the bottom of the staircase Caleb opened a door and drew her out into the dazzling ballroom. He forged a path through the crowd with characteristic single-minded determination.