by H. Y. Hanna
I watched them trundle off, then realised I was starting to attract strange looks. I probably looked like some kind of lingerie kleptomaniac, standing there in the middle of Oxford city centre with a black lace thong in my hands. Hastily, I stuffed the G-string into my pocket and started on the way to North Oxford and home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was surprised to find Seth sitting in the living room when I got home. He was perched on the edge of the sofa with a teacup in his hands, a plate of my mother’s coffee and walnut cake in front of him, and a slightly desperate expression on his face. He looked up with relief when I walked in.
“Darling! We were just wondering where you’d got to,” said my mother. She gestured to my friend. “I saw Seth walking up St Giles as I was driving home and I offered him a lift. Naturally, I simply had to ask him to come back for some tea!”
From Seth’s expression, I guessed the truth was that my mother had probably forcibly bundled him into the car and brought him back like some kind of trophy.
“Where were you off to?” I asked Seth as I dropped down on the sofa next to him and helped myself to a walnut from the coffee icing on top of the cake.
“Gemma!” My mother frowned and slapped my hand. She quickly cut a piece with a silver cake slice and transferred it to a delicate bone china plate, which she handed to me with a dessert fork and a linen napkin.
“I was on my way to Doncaster College to see my old Organic Chemistry tutor,” said Seth. “I’m looking for a first edition of Stereochemistry of Carbon Compounds and I thought he might have a copy. Thought I might drop in to see him in person, rather than just ring him up.”
“You’re such a clever boy, Seth,” my mother said, beaming. “You must come round for dinner again soon. I’ll be sure to make your favourite gooseberry pie. And when are we going to see you with a nice girl?”
Seth went bright red. “I… ah…”
The phone rang out in the hall and my mother sprang up. “Oh, excuse me—I have to take this. It must be Helen with the pumpkin soup recipe…”
She left the room and Seth breathed a sigh of relief. I gave him a sympathetic look.
“Sorry about my mother.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, Gemma—I’m well used to it by now. I can still remember that first time I met her when your parents visited you in college; I think that day is forever etched in my memory.”
We both laughed, then Seth sobered.
“I heard about what happened at the party on Saturday night,” he said quietly. “Was Cassie all right?”
“Yes, she was fine, just worried for Jon…” I trailed off as I saw Seth compress his lips. “She was a bit upset that you didn’t come, though,” I added.
Seth looked embarrassed. “Er… something came up that I couldn’t get out of. So the police think it’s murder?” he said, quickly changing the subject.
“Yes, the girl was poisoned.”
Seth raised his eyebrows. “With what?”
“Devlin is still waiting for the toxicology results. It might be cyanide.” I told him about the almond scent I had picked up on the victim.
“Do you know, you ought to come and see my old prof with me,” said Seth suddenly. “Professor Christophe. He’s an expert on poisons—it’s always been one of his hobbies and it fits in nicely with his field of organic chemistry, of course.” He laughed. “The younger students called him Professor Snape behind his back; he’s quite a character, a bit eccentric, and you could really imagine him as a potions master. But seriously, you couldn’t find a more knowledgeable person in Oxford about poisons.”
“He sounds fascinating,” I said eagerly. “But are you sure he’d want to see me?”
“Oh, he’d love it. Any chance for him to talk about his favourite subject. C’mon, come with me and we’ll go see him now.”
Doncaster College was one of the larger colleges on the outskirts of the city centre and one I was not so familiar with. I think I might have only been there once when I was an undergraduate. It had a distinctive red brick exterior, with the white patterned banding and tall lancet windows of the 19th-century Gothic Revival style, and was quite different from most of the other Oxford Colleges. Seth led the way through the main quad and into a building in the south-east corner. We walked down a long corridor and finally arrived at an arched wood door. Seth knocked and waited.
A deep male voice said, “Enter!”
Seth turned the heavy brass handle on the door and we stepped into the gloomy interior. For a moment, I wondered if I had stepped onto the set of a Harry Potter movie. Eccentric was an understatement. The place was like a cross between a Renaissance museum, filled with stuffed animals and plaster cast statues, and Frankenstein’s laboratory, with ancient-looking contraptions of test tubes and vials in one corner, and gigantic brass scales in another.
The man in the black scholar’s gown coming forwards to greet us looked himself to be someone from the last century. He had a deeply lined face and bushy white eyebrows that seemed to move independently of each other, although the image of Father Time was belied by the bright blue eyes which regarded us shrewdly from beneath those impressive eyebrows.
“Seth, my dear boy! How nice to see you…” he said heartily, shaking Seth’s hand. He turned to me. “And who is this lovely young lady?”
“This is Gemma, Professor,” said Seth. “She’s got a special interest in poisons and I’ve been telling her all about you. She was desperate to meet you so I brought her to say hello.”
“Delighted! Delighted, of course!” said Professor Christophe, taking my hand and pumping it enthusiastically. “Would you like a sherry, my dear?”
Well, at least he had the traditional Oxford professor’s line down pat. I smiled and accepted a glass, wondering if I should be worried about what he might have put in it. His twinkling eyes told me that he had read my thoughts. I blushed slightly.
“Fear not, young lady—I merely study poisons, I do not administer them.”
“And even if he did, you couldn’t have come to a better person for an antidote,” said Seth with a laugh as he took a sip of his sherry.
“Do sit down… if you can find a place to sit,” Professor Christophe chuckled, gesturing around the room.
Seth started to pick his way across to the professor’s desk and I followed him, marvelling at the things on display. I paused in front of a miniature statue of a woman reclining, propped up on one arm against a cushion. She was dressed in the typical flowing garment that classical statues often wore, with one shoulder and breast exposed and a snake clutched in her other hand. Her head was tilted back, her eyes gazing upwards, and her face contorted in an expression of ecstatic pain.
“That is Cleopatra dying,” said Professor Christophe, coming to join me. “The original is in the Louvre, a marble sculpture by Barois—this is a reproduction. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Beautiful wasn’t exactly the word I had in mind, although there was a certain riveting sensuousness to the figure, languishing in her last death throes.
“You know, they say that Cleopatra chose an asp because she could not find the perfect poison to kill herself with?” said Professor Christophe. “She experimented with various types, poisoning several of her prisoners and slaves to see what effect each poison had on them. Henbane, belladonna, Stychos nux-vomica, a primitive form of strychnine… but she rejected them all. Henbane and belladonna caused too much pain and strychnine caused convulsions, which would have left her facial features distorted.” He chuckled. “One gathers that she was quite a vain woman. In the end, she decided on the asp, a kind of small African cobra, which supposedly delivers a quick and serene death.”
“I never realised that the story about Cleopatra and the snake was true,” I said.
“Ah, well, as to the truth… Who knows? But it certainly makes for a good story, does it not?” The professor’s eyes twinkled at me. “Of course, there have been many queens in history who have used poison—it is perha
ps a weapon that is particularly useful for the ‘weaker sex’.”
He pointed to a framed painting of a woman in Elizabethan garb, with the high ruffled collar and elaborate beadwork in her hair. She was not a particularly beautiful woman—there was something cold and cruel in her expression—but you could sense the power in her, even through the portrait.
“Catherine de Medici,” said Professor Christophe, looking at her with something almost like affection. “An Italian princess who married into French royalty. People were terrified of her because from the moment she arrived in France, mysterious illnesses and deaths began to happen everywhere. Her favourite poison was arsenic and, in fact, among the French, the word Italien soon became synonymous with ‘poisoner’.”
“Why didn’t people stop her if they knew that she was poisoning them?”
“Ah, but she was clever. She brought her retinue with her to the French court and that included parfumers and astrologers, both popular attendants for aristocracy at the time, but of course both occupations which could easily hide the use of poison. Catherine’s first victim was her husband’s older brother—he was poisoned by a cup of water brought to him after a thirsty game of tennis—and his death cleared the way for her husband’s ascension to the throne. She also dispatched various other enemies and rivals, using everything from gloves laced with arsenic to money tainted with poison that penetrated the victim’s skin after he’d handled it.”
I shuddered. “She sounds horrible.”
Professor Christophe laughed. “Yes, you wouldn’t have wanted to get on her wrong side! But those were the times that people lived in then—poisonings were a fact of life.”
“Is that why the wealthy employed tasters for their food?” asked Seth.
“Oh, certainly,” said Professor Christophe. “After all, the food during that era was so heavily spiced, it was often impossible to taste a bitter flavour.”
I frowned. “If there were so many poisons being used, wouldn’t they have found antidotes for them?”
“Yes, indeed—there was a great belief in a universal antidote: something that could cure all poisons. Of course, that’s a myth. There is no such thing; poisons are highly specialised and each requires its own specific antidote. But that didn’t stop people searching for it for centuries. For example, they used to think that milk could be a universal antidote and a lot of the royals drank it in the gallons. Probably all that did was give them lactose intolerance!” He laughed heartily.
It was slightly disturbing how much humour he seemed to find in the grisly subject. Seth caught my eye and grinned, then he said:
“We were particularly interested in picking your brains, Professor, because of the recent murder—”
“Ah, the girl at the art gallery last Saturday?” Professor Christophe said. “Yes, I heard about that on the news. They reckon it was a poisoning, do they? The news didn’t say which kind.”
“They’re still waiting for the results of the toxicology analysis,” I explained. “But there’s a strong suspicion it might be cyanide.”
“Ah, cyanide…” The old professor smiled. “One of the great classic poisons—you know it was one of Agatha Christie’s favourites. She used it in ten of her novels, in all sorts of inventive ways, such as by injection, in drinks, smelling salts, and even in a cigarette.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I thought those kinds of thing in Christie novels were all made up. They seem too fantastical to be real.”
“Oh no, my dear!” said Professor Christophe. “Christie based many of her stories on real-life cases. It is true that life can sometimes be much stranger than art, and it is amazing how ingenious people can be. There was a famous case in France in 1977 when a man plotted to kill a woman whom he thought was responsible for his mother’s death. He used atropine—that’s the toxin found in belladonna, which is now used in small beneficial quantities in eye drops. Well, he put some into a bottle of wine which he left for the woman to find. And there was another case in the 1940s of a woman here in England who mixed nicotine into her husband’s aftershave lotion. And with cyanide itself, there was a terrible case of multiple poisonings in 1983—it was known as the Chicago Tylenol Murders—when capsules of the painkillers were tampered with and laced with potassium cyanide. The poor victims just bought the Tylenol bottles from various supermarkets and chemists. It was after that incident that manufacturers stopped making capsules, you know.”
Ugh. This stuff is going to give me nightmares.
I frowned. “But how would anyone get hold of something as dangerous as cyanide?”
“Ah, my dear, you do not necessarily need to find cyanide in its pure form,” said the professor. “In fact, it is more commonly found as potassium cyanide and sodium cyanide, which are both white solids that can be ground into a powder. Cyanide compounds have several industrial uses, and of course, it is also found in the compound ferric ferricyanide, also known as Prussian Blue, which is where it gets its name.”
“I remember you mentioning this in one of your lectures,” said Seth suddenly. “It always stuck in my head as being ironic—that everyone thinks cyanide is blue because of its name and yet, actually, it’s not blue at all.”
Professor Christophe chuckled. “Yes, that’s a common misunderstanding. Cyanide was actually named in reverse—because it was originally isolated from Prussian Blue, an intense blue pigment often used by artists. So they named it cyanide, after the Greek word ‘kyanos’, which means ‘dark blue’.” He looked at me. “Ferric ferricyanide is also used by photography enthusiasts as well. They use it to alter the tones of a print and to produce cyanotypes or ‘blueprints’. Of course, these compounds in themselves are not particularly toxic, but you can extract cyanide from them—anyone with some knowledge of chemistry could do it easily.”
And in a place like Oxford, I thought, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone with that kind of knowledge. A fellow student in the University, a helpful tutor, an academic colleague… I found myself wondering if Fiona Stanley had any friends who were chemistry students. As an artist, she would certainly have easy access to Prussian Blue… And what about Jon Kelsey? I thought suddenly of his darkroom above his gallery—a quiet, private place where he would have access to cyanide compounds and peace and privacy to extract the poison at will…
I roused myself as I realised that the professor was talking again, answering Seth’s question about a book. I remembered the original reason my friend had wanted to come see his old tutor and decided to leave them to their discussion.
I smiled at the professor. “Thank you so much, Professor Christophe, for a really fascinating talk.”
“Oh, any time, my dear, any time. My door is always open.” He took my hand again and patted it in an avuncular manner. “And I hope they solve this case quickly. Of course, with modern forensic science, it is usually much easier to determine the toxins used and to identify them—it is one reason why poisoning has fallen so out of favour as a choice of murder weapon. Plus, with the medical advances and improved care these days, it is difficult to guarantee death even with the most lethal of poisons. But still, it can take time for the toxicology results to confirm things and by then…”
His blue eyes turned serious. “It takes a particularly cold-blooded murderer to choose poison. I do hope the police catch him soon because he could be very dangerous indeed…”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The talk with Professor Christophe left me vaguely disturbed and preoccupied all through the evening. I hardly took in anything my mother said at dinner as she rattled on about some “marvellous addition” to the tearoom and a pair of wellingtons for my father that she had ordered online.
After supper, I helped myself to some chocolate mints from the pantry and went up to my bedroom, intending to curl up in bed with a mindless thriller novel for a few hours. Muesli greeted me with a happy chirrup and hopped eagerly onto the bed with me. She climbed into my lap, padded about in a circle, and settled herself in such a way s
o that her furry bum blocked my view of the page.
I sighed. Great. Remind me again why I adopted a cat?
When I first brought Muesli home, I had optimistically thought that I could keep her off my bed and in her own section of the bedroom—I guess that showed how little I knew about felines. Muesli had taken one look at the expensive, luxurious cat bed I had bought from the pet store and turned her little pink nose up in disdain. Then she had jumped on my bed with alacrity and claimed her spot next to my pillow.
To be honest, I didn’t mind her sleeping with me that much—my bed was wide enough to accommodate both of us—but the problem was that Muesli liked to snooze at the bottom of the bed, with her body draped across my ankles. It was like sleeping pinned down by a hot, furry leg shackle and I found myself struggling to turn over in the night. It drove me crazy. Did all cat owners live in this kind of perpetual helpless frustration?
I shifted now so that I could see the book around the side of Muesli’s furry bum and tried to focus my mind on the story. But I found it hard to concentrate. Bits of the conversation with Professor Christophe kept drifting through my mind. Finally, I yawned and gave up. I closed the book and got ready for bed. My tearoom would be re-opening for the new week tomorrow and I had to be there bright and early, ready to tackle the new day.
I was in a maze, trying to find Cassie. I could hear her screaming for help but I didn’t know how to reach her. Everywhere I turned there were dead ends and blind alleys, and the floor of the maze was littered with bottles marked “Poison”. I rounded a corner and came across my mother having afternoon tea with Jon Kelsey.
“Where’s Cassie? Have you seen Cassie?” I demanded.
They shook their heads and smiled at me. My mother cut a slice of cake and put it on a plate in front of Jon, who offered me a cup of tea.
