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“What’d he say?”
“That any substance found in urine fell under the auspices of chemistry and therefore drinking it would be my job.”
I grin. “Touché. How old was he?”
“Far too young to be so clever. Then Annis found out we were teasing him and gave us a proper dressing-down. If Duncan wished to be a doctor and we did anything to discourage him, we’d be dealing with her, which was threat enough.” A fond smile lights her face, only to fall as she turns back to the experiment. “I miss that Annis.”
I say nothing, just wait and listen, and after a moment, the smile returns,wistful now. “I remember another time, when she’d taken Duncan and me to the park. A couple of boys taunted Duncan for his skin color. Annis cursed them.”
“She swore at them?”
“No.” Her lips twitch. “She cursed them. She said a bunch of nonsensical words and claimed they would suffer her curse for their cruelty.”
“What did she curse them with?”
“Oh, that was the best part. They asked, of course, and she only said that they would find out soon enough.”
I laugh.
“That was our Annis,” Isla says. “I catch glimpses of her now and then but…” She shrugs. “It is like glimpsing the sun between the clouds. Too fleeting by far.”
She turns her attention to the experiment. After a moment, when I am sure there isn’t more she wants to say, I return to her tutelage under Thomas Scattergood and she embraces the change of topic.
TWENTY-SEVEN
As expected, Isla can’t find any trace of poison in the few flakes of pastry that remain. It’s too small a sample, and it would make far more sense to put the poison in the jam filling. That is all gone, save for the smear, which is also too small to analyze.
We test a few other possible sources for the poisoned food, but we’re mostly just killing time waiting for Addington to be finished with his autopsy so Isla can get a tissue sample. This time, Addington doesn’t bother speculating on the type of poison. He concludes that it is poison and then decides he’s going to outsource the testing to the “capable Mrs. Ballantyne.” That would be far more gratifying if he didn’t add “who has far more time for such things.”
Whatever his excuse, we’re just happy he surrenders that task to an actual chemist who will perform the correct tests. Isla does that, and the results are the same as they’d been for Leslie. Yes to heavy metal poisoning. No to arsenic.
While I privately examine the pornography, Isla confers with Gray and McCreadie, who had returned. We now know that two victim’s corpses plus the gin and the pudding all contained a non-arsenic heavy metal. Gray and McCreadie will be taking this evidence to Detective Crichton to argue for access to the first two bodies. To do so, they’ll need to explain that we suspect it’s a rare poison, which means they need to fully understand that poison. Isla is coaching them. It would be far easier if she just went herselfto explain, but no one suggests that. I have a feeling they won’t even be saying who found these results, just that the tests were conducted by a trained chemist.
As for the porn, I’ve been given a good description of Mrs. Young, but it doesn’t match any of the women in the chapbooks. Even if it did, I’m not sure what kind of link that would give us, but I had to check.
After Gray and McCreadie leave, Isla and I do the same. We’ve taken on the task of searching Ware’s office for anything that could link him to the victims, most notably Lord Leslie.
My mother is a defense attorney, and as a kid, I’d pick up extra money working at her office, filing and copying mostly. It was enough to teach me that I didn’t want a career in law, but it also gave me a basic understanding of the paperwork side, which should come in handy here.
There are no file cabinets. No file folders either. A filing system is one of those things that I presumed had been around forever. It hasn’t. In this period, papers are either kept in pigeon holes or—in the case of someone like a lawyer, with lots of paperwork, they’re bound or stored in pouches.
We start by searching both for an obvious “Lord Gordon Leslie” pouch of client files. Not finding that, we each take a stack of pouches and set to work.
“Oh,” Isla says as we begin. “I have also sent a message to Annis, asking whether she knows Mr. Ware. Or, I should say, I have sent it to Sarah, which is wiser.”
“Ah, right. Probably better not to ask her directly, in case the message is read by the messenger.”
“No, no. I sent it with Simon, to be delivered after he is finished with Duncan and Hugh. My concern is simply that my sister may ignore it altogether. Sarah will ensure she does not.”
I open a pouch on the massive desk. “I understand they parted ways after Annis’s marriage.”
“That is one way of putting it.”
“Another being that Annis dumped Sarah because she objected to the marriage.”
“Hmm.” Isla starts riffling through papers. “If I were Sarah, I’d have never come back. But Sarah has always been a kind soul, quick to see the goodness in anyone.”
“Dr. Gray certainly seemed surprised to see her back in Annis’s life.”
