by Issy Brooke
In his position, seeing what he had seen, knowing what he knew of Felicia, she would have suggested the very same.
But bile rose in her throat. Perhaps it was the very plausibility of the suggestion that made her revolt against it so thoroughly.
Felicia was unwell. And that sickness seemed to be in her mind as much as in her body.
And someone who was unwell in their mind, alone in a castle, surrounded by foul miasmas – well, who knew what they could do?
Adelia hated the thought. She strode on towards the gatehouse and glanced back when she neared the front door. Oscar was watching her from the same spot, unmoving, his head hanging and his shoulders hunched. He looked thoroughly miserable and she knew he regretted speaking out.
Well, let him regret it, she thought uncharitably, and turned from him to knock on the door of the gatehouse.
ADELIA HAD MET LADY Katharine multiple times over the past few years as their families were now linked. Each time the lady had made absolutely no impression on Adelia. It was rather like speaking to fog. Lady Katharine was thin, pale, insipid, and appeared to have no interests and no topics of conversation. Adelia sought in vain for some common ground.
They sat in a comfortable and rather over-done sitting room, still decked out in the old style from the earlier part of the century when people were inclined to fill their rooms with as much clutter as possible, and preferably in dark, oppressive colours. There was a clock with an unnecessarily loud tick which only served to emphasise the long, drawn-out silences. Lady Katharine had at least one servant; an old lady with shaking hands brought them both a tray of tea, and inched away backwards like an obsequious medieval courtier.
“Are you quite well?” Adelia had asked at the start of her visit.
“Yes, thank you. And yourself?”
“In good health but goodness, we’re all at sixes and sevens with this death!”
“I should imagine so.” Lady Katharine said it blandly and sipped at her tea. She showed as much emotion as if Adelia had mentioned a new hat. Adelia thought the tea would be too hot to drink as it had only just been poured, but when she took up her own cup she found that it was already lukewarm at best.
“Did you know Hartley Knight?” Adelia asked.
“No. He was the house steward.”
“Yes, but I was wondering if you knew anything about him? He’d been in the family’s service for many years, after all.”
Lady Katharine’s pale eyes were watery and bulged slightly. “But he was the house steward,” she repeated, as if Adelia was missing a very important point. “So of course I knew nothing about him.”
Her lack of information made Adelia push back harder. “You didn’t hear any gossip about what he might have been keeping in the ice house?”
“I do not hear any gossip. And the ice house contains lapis lazuli that the family used to sell as expensive pigments but now it moulders away.”
“Yet they could sell it as gems and jewels...”
“I suppose that they could.”
Each sentence that Lady Katharine uttered was like the stone door of a tomb slamming shut, preventing any further ingress into that part of the conversation.
Adelia drank her tea quickly. It was being made very clear to her that Lady Katharine did not want to talk. If her obstructive manner was out of character, Adelia would have assumed she was ill but Lady Katharine had been like this every single time Adelia had met her. She tried again to talk about the day of Knight’s death. “And did you happen to see anything on that Sunday morning? Were you here or at chapel perhaps...?”
“I was here. I saw nothing.”
“And your son, Oscar...?”
Lady Katharine replaced the cup carefully on her saucer, setting it down almost silently on the tray. “He was also here.”
“All morning?”
“Of course.”
There was another pause that grew uncomfortable. Adelia gave up, asked if Lady Katharine was in need of anything – “Peace and quiet” was the reply – and Adelia left in a hurry, feeling as if she was stepping out of a gloomy cave as she came back into the sunlight again.
Her respite was short-lived.
When she reached Tavy Castle again, she was given a very long letter that had just arrived from Mrs Carstairs. It was a list of questions, queries, hints, orders and instructions all pertaining to the Floating Ball. She was insisting on an immediate reply – and right at the bottom was a final scribbled command. “I am At Home again tomorrow and if you come around three, I shall endeavour to have Captain Everard present – that is – if you are totally sure about Lady A?”
Adelia took the missive up to her room to write her reply.
She looked again at Mrs Carstairs’ final sentence. Was she totally sure about Lady Agnes?
She was not totally sure about anything.
Nine
Theodore could barely wait to get back from Plymouth to Tavy Castle. He had spent the morning enclosed in the morgue at the police station, and had soon allied the force’s doctor to his cause. He made sure to stay out of the way of Inspector Wilbred, and swore the doctor to secrecy as to his endeavours. The doctor was more than happy to oblige. He could see perfectly well that there was more to the dead man than a mere blow to the back of the head, and he was relieved that his doubts were being taken seriously.
“If this had been some fine gentleman, the case would not be closed so quickly and so dismissively,” the doctor had grumbled, and Theodore agreed, although the closure was at least to his own advantage. He was now free to investigate as long as he kept things unobtrusive.
And his investigations that day had proved to be illuminating. The corpse had been lying for too long in the cold mortuary to yield up much new information, but a few choice and almost chance discoveries had presented themselves and had brought Theodore to a fever-pitch of excitement. He carried his bundle of objects back to the castle and ran up to the rooms in the Norman tower where Percy had the room which served as his study and library in one. The room above the library-study was more haphazard and cluttered with a random selection of things that did not really fit anywhere else, including a long and battered table, various glass jars, and in a corner cupboard there was a veritable apothecary’s shop of retorts, flasks, tubing and tongs.
Theodore decided to make this room into his laboratory.
He dumped the bundle on the table and began to empty the cupboard so that he could see everything that was available more clearly, spreading out the apparatus on the floor. He was just sniffing an unmarked bottle of some yellowish liquid when Felicia came in, and she looked confused.
“Papa, what are you doing?”
“I have made some discoveries about the death of Hartley Knight, and I intend to get to the bottom of it! He did not die from a blow to the head. He was poisoned!” Too late, he remembered that he had promised Adelia they would keep this information from Felicia, on account of her reactions. He bit his lip. “Sorry, my dear...”
“Poison? Who did it? And how? Arsenic? There is always arsenic around because of the rats – oh no!”
It was a common assumption. Arsenic, after all, had been the murder weapon of choice for many decades, especially by wives who wanted rid of their husbands. But he shook his head. “I do not believe it was arsenic. It is far more interesting than that.”
“Papa, no. Leave it all to the police, please, I beg of you.”
“The police have closed the case but I am allowed to continue. You must not worry about it. I have everything in hand. Ah! These rags will be useful. Marvellous. Oh! Test-tubes by the dozen, how interesting.”
“Test-tubes are never interesting and papa, you ought not to be doing this. Percy will be home soon...”
“Has there been word from him?”
“No, but he is sure to arrive soon, I feel it, and he could very well object to ... to ... all of this.”
“This is not his study; I would not dare to do this there. But this room
is barely used.” Theodore darted about as he spoke, laying out things that he thought were going to be useful. He had found a small stove that, when lit, would be essential to some of his planned experiments. “Excellent! Look at this!”
“But what can you possibly do here that will be of any use?”
He spoke in a rush as he continued to turn out the cupboard. “Knight had been hit on the head and fallen, but it had not killed him. In fact, he had been overcome by some noxious gas which was near to his face where he lay, and I believe it was something that was deliberately placed there. He must have struggled against it because he was lying on his front, trying to crawl away as he died. I have a suspicion as to what that gas was and I shall conduct some experiments to find out.” Theodore paused for a moment and looked up at his daughter. She was tense and distressed. “Would you like to assist?” he asked, hoping that being involved would help her anxiety. He remembered how upset Mary had been at her exclusion from day to day life. Perhaps Felicia felt the same way as her sister did.
But Felicia was backing towards the door. “Oh, papa, no! I cannot bear to think of any of this – oh! I beg your pardon!” She collided with Oscar Brodie, who was entering in a hurry.
He stammered out a few bland apologies that tumbled over one another without getting to the end of one single sentence, and brushed past her, focusing on Theodore, with a look of excitement and anticipation on his face. Theodore wondered if he ought to be treating him as a suspect; he resolved to do so, but not in a way that would alert the young man to Theodore’s suspicions.
“Sir, did I hear correctly? You’re making this room into a laboratory?” Brodie said breathlessly.
“Are you listening at doors?” Felicia snapped in a quite uncharacteristic way. “What are you doing in the castle, Oscar? Is your mother well?”
“As well as she usually is.” He spoke without even turning to look at her. His attention was fixed, instead, on the glassware on the table. “This reminds me of lessons in the natural sciences at school! Our master was the very devil but he taught us well.”
“Papa, Oscar, I am not comfortable with this.”
Brodie half-turned. “Of course not. This is not a place for ladies.”
“No, I mean...”
He turned his back on her fully and deliberately. She stifled a small squeal, put her hand over her mouth dramatically, and flounced out of the room. Theodore was annoyed. He didn’t feel right disciplining Brodie as if he were a mere lad or his own son, but he was not acting like a sensibly grown man. He said, “That was rude of you.”
“Was it? I am very sorry,” Brodie replied, sounding far more respectful in speaking to Theodore than he had done when talking to Felicia. “But surely I am right, am I not? A working laboratory is no place for a lady of her status. I meant no disrespect. I was concerned for her welfare and safety, and as she herself said, she was not comfortable being here.”
“I don’t think that’s what she meant,” Theodore said, now doubting his own interpretation of the conversation.
But Brodie had already moved on. He began to work his way down the table, looking at everything, and finally he came to the bundle that Theodore had brought with him from the mortuary. He prodded the cloth and the contents clinked. He began to unwrap it.
“No, wait! That is dangerous!” Theodore barked out and Brodie froze, his face full of alarm.
“Sorry, sir! Forgive me!”
There was something incredibly irritating in the way that Brodie reacted as if he were a badly beaten dog being threatened with a stick. He almost cowered to Theodore’s raised voice, and it made Theodore wonder if he had been too bullying in his manner. He didn’t like that feeling. So, by extension, he didn’t like the way that Brodie made him feel. He fought that discomfort down. “No, no, it’s for your own safety,” he said more calmly. “Those are some coins that I have taken from the pockets of the dead man and I will be able to tell a lot about the way he died from experiments I will perform on them.”
A succession of emotions passed over Brodie’s face. Theodore could not read them all. Shock, wonder, curiosity? Brodie stepped away from the table and put his hands behind his back in a deliberate gesture, then asked, “May I stay and watch the experiments?”
Theodore was hoping that he would. If Brodie was a suspect – if, indeed, he was the killer, for whatever reason – then perhaps his reactions would give him away. It was a shame Theodore had not installed Adelia in a cupboard somewhere, from where she could secretly peep out and observe proceedings. Her insight would be helpful.
But she was not around. So he’d have to be especially careful and report everything back to her with accuracy. He was a scientist, he reminded himself. Such things ought to be second nature to him.
He said, “Of course you can stay, if you are interested. Look at this.” He took up a pair of long-handled tongs and folded back the cloth bundle, revealing a pile of copper coins. “These were in Knight’s pockets. There is nothing unusual in the denominations nor the amounts. But look closely without touching them – what do you observe?”
“They are tarnished. Discoloured, in fact. What has caused it?”
“I have been thinking deeply about the contents of the ice house,” Theodore said, prodding at the coins but secretly watching Brodie as he spoke. “Lapis lazuli. It is an interesting mineral and its composition can vary depending on where it is found and the circumstances of its origins. Not all of the chemicals of which it is composed are benign. A very similar gem, commonly called the Armenian Stone, contains arsenic – in the past, foolish and ignorant folk used it to treat melancholia. And the compounds in lapis lazuli harbour similar secrets.” Felicia had not been too far off with her mention of arsenic, after all.
Brodie’s face showed nothing but genuine wonder.
Theodore dug into his own suit pocket and brought out a small bottle. He pulled out the cork and tapped out a pile of roughly ground blue pigment into a glass flask. He set it on the table, and went back to the cupboard.
“There is quite a collection of chemicals here. I had not pegged Lord Buckshaw as the man of science.”
“I think he has dabbled in most things, over the years. What are you looking for?”
“I have it. I am glad to see this one is well labelled.” Theodore brought the colourless liquid over to the table, carrying it gingerly. “Muriatic acid, or spirits of salt; a most fascinating mixture of hydrogen chloride and water. It occurs naturally in man’s own stomach yet can destroy living flesh.”
“Our professor called it hydrochloric acid. But he was very modern.”
“Indeed. Now watch!” Theodore extended his hand and very carefully tipped the bottle of acid so that two small, round drops fell onto the ground pigment in the flask. Nothing dramatic happened. But when he sniffed the air, he smiled. “It is as I had been led to understand: hydrogen sulphide is released. Can you smell it?”
“Yes – it’s like an egg gone bad, or like the sewers.”
“Sewer gas is much the same thing. And now watch this. Have you a copper coin?”
Brodie dug into his pocket and spun one across the table rather dramatically. Theodore stopped it with the flat of his hand. He used the long tongs to lift the coin and hold it above the neck of the flask.
“I see it! It is tarnishing!” said Brodie in delight.
“It is, indeed. I have heard of cases where men have died in sewers and one of the remarkable features that emerges from the horrible event is the discolouration of the copper in the coins in their pockets. Here, then, we can see that the body of Hartley Knight was exposed to the same thing.”
Brodie nodded. “The drains here are so very bad. So the death was not suspicious, was it? He slipped and fell, and was simply overcome with the fumes from the sewers. Well done, sir! You will set all our minds at rest. Lady Buckshaw in particular,” he added.
Theodore shook his head. “Yet when I went into the ice house, I could smell nothing out of the ordinary
beyond the usual pervasive smell of high summer which is cloaking this castle.”
“Perhaps it comes and goes? Might it not ebb and flow like a tide?” Brodie suggested. “It is carried on the waters, after all. Some days I notice it, and other days I do not.”
“I have considered that, yes.” Theodore had already decided to place copper coins around the ice house to monitor their tarnishing over time. He kept that information to himself. “But if it were strong enough to kill a fit man like Knight, it would be more than enough to kill us all. There must be another explanation.”
“What?” Brodie asked.
Theodore looked at the eager young man’s face and simply shook his head. “I have more research to conduct.”
“Let me help! I should love to be part of this. Maybe this is the direction my life ought to take?” His voice took on a fawning, pleading tone. “I have been thinking about what you have said to me. You are quite right, of course. I need to decide what to do and how to live a life of value and purpose. Using the science of chemicals to discover things about the world, this excites me! Perhaps this is the answer, this is my calling, and I owe the discovery of it all to you. Do let me help! You can hardly say no.”
Theodore had almost been swayed until Brodie’s final sentence which over-egged his manipulation and made Theodore recoil against him. However, he did not want to upset or antagonise the young man. So he smiled, and said, “When it comes time for me to conduct an experiment, I shall let you know.” He began to line things up on the table.
Brodie looked disappointed. “So you’re not about to do anything now?”
“Not immediately. There are more things I need to organise.”
“I can help!” The young man was bursting with energy. He was impulsive, he was bored, and – something more? Theodore was not sure.
