The Perfect Poison Read online

  “Ma will like that,” Kit declared, gleeful.

  “More likely she’ll think you’ve taken up a life of crime,” Caleb said. “Which might not be all that far from the truth.”

  Spellar loomed out of the shadows. He nodded toward Gabe.

  “Thought I’d better warn you that the rumors are already on the streets, sir,” he said. “The gentlemen of the press will be arriving at any moment. This tale is going to be a sensation in the papers in a day or so. I know you don’t want the Society or the Jones name involved if it can be avoided.”

  This was the modern age, Caleb thought, but there were still sound reasons for cautious dealings with the press.

  “Thank you, Inspector,” Gabe said. “It is obviously past time for the agents of the Jones agency to take their leave.” He looked at Kit and Edmund. “You two will come with us. We’ll convey you to your lodgings. I expect Kit’s mother is more than a little concerned about him.”

  Kit looked at Hatcher. “What will happen to him? Will he go to prison?”

  Hatcher chose that moment to start babbling to Spellar.

  “Charun came to save me,” he said. “He produced a great storm of fire. But a ghost from the Other Side dared to stop him.” He stared at Caleb, eyes wide and feverishly bright with rage. “Tremble in terror, phantom. You will soon feel the wrath of the Demon.”

  Spellar looked at Kit. “I think it’s far more likely that this gentleman will soon find himself in an asylum.”

  Some of the heady energy that had been resonating through Caleb faded. An icy chill took its place.

  “A fate worse than death,” he said quietly.

  SEVEN

  CALEB LET HIMSELF INTO THE FRONT HALL OF THE darkened house and went upstairs. When he reached the landing he walked down the hall and unlocked the door to his library-laboratory. Inside, he turned up the gas lamps and surveyed the vast room that was either his refuge or his private hell, depending on circumstances and his mood. Lately the resemblance to the netherworld had been growing stronger.

  The majority of the Society’s collection of paranormal relics and artifacts were kept in Arcane House, a remote mansion in the country. But many of the ancient records of the organization, some dating back to the late 1600s when the Society was founded, were housed here. His branch of the family had been responsible for them for generations.

  The most valuable items in his collection, including several of the private journals of Sylvester Jones, were secured in the large vault built into the stone wall of the old house.

  The laboratory that adjoined the library featured the very latest apparatus. He was not a psychically gifted scientist; his true talents lay in another direction, but he was fully capable of carrying out a large number of experiments. He knew his way around the various instruments and devices arrayed on the workbench.

  He had always been drawn to the mysteries of the paranormal. Lately, however, what had once been a keen intellectual interest had become what he knew his closest relatives and friends considered an unhealthy obsession.

  They whispered that it was in the blood; that in this generation of Joneses, he was the true heir to the brilliant but darkly eccentric Sylvester. They worried that the founder’s lust for forbidden knowledge had passed down through Caleb’s branch of the family tree, a dark seed waiting to take root in fertile ground.

  The dangerous plant did not flower in every generation, they said. According to family legend, it had appeared only once after Sylvester, in Caleb’s great-grandfather Erasmus Jones. Erasmus had been born with a talent like the one Caleb possessed. Less than two years after marrying and fathering a son, however, he suddenly started to exhibit increasingly odd eccentricities. He sank swiftly into madness and finally took his own life.

  Caleb knew that everyone in the Jones clan believed that the changes they were witnessing in him had begun with the discovery of Sylvester’s tomb and the journals of alchemical secrets it had contained. Only he and his father knew the truth, however. Even within the extensive and psychically powerful Jones family, it was still possible to keep a secret if one grasped it tightly enough.

  He walked through the maze of shelving that held the old leather-bound volumes and came to a halt in front of the cold fireplace. There was a cot and two chairs near the hearth. He usually slept here and took his meals here. This was where he received the occasional visitor. He rarely used the other rooms. Most of the furniture in the household was shrouded in dust covers.

  A small table held a decanter and two glasses. He poured himself a measure of brandy and went to stand at the window, looking out at the darkest hour of the night.

  His thoughts took him back to another very dark night and what everyone had believed was his father’s deathbed. Fergus Jones had dismissed those keeping the vigil around him—the nurse, an assortment of relatives, the servants—all except Caleb.

  “COME CLOSER, SON,” Fergus said, his voice weak and hoarse.

  Caleb moved from the foot of the bed to stand at his father’s side. He was still stunned by the suddenness of the crisis. Until three days ago his father had been a fit and healthy man of sixty-six years, showing no signs of anything more debilitating than some mild discomfort in his joints, which he treated with salicin. A hunter, like so many males in the Jones line, he had always enjoyed a hearty constitution and seemed destined to live to a ripe old age as had his father before him.

  Caleb had been assisting Gabe in an inquiry into the theft of the founder’s formula when he received the urgent summons informing him that his parent had succumbed to a sudden infection of the lungs. He left his cousin to pursue the investigation on his own and hurried to the family estate.

  Although he had been anxious, in truth he had expected that his father would recover. It was not until he walked into the solemn, heavily draped household and listened to the doctor’s grim prognosis that he understood just how dire the situation had become.

  His relationship with his father had always been close; even more so following the untimely death of his mother, Alice, who had died in a horseback riding accident when he was twenty-one. Fergus had never remarried. Caleb was the sole offspring of the union.

  A fire blazed on the hearth, heating the sickroom to an uncomfortable temperature because, although his entire body was hot to the touch, Fergus had complained of the chill. The unnatural sensation of cold, the nurse had explained with an air of morbid satisfaction, was one of the sure indications of the approach of death.

  Fergus looked up at him from the stack of pillows. Although he had been sliding in and out of a delirium for most of the day, his eyes now held a feverish clarity. He grasped Caleb’s hand.

  “There is something I must tell you,” he whispered.

  “What is it?” Caleb said. He tightened his grip on his father’s hot hand.

  “I am dying, Caleb.”

  “No.”

  “I confess that I had planned to leave this world a coward. I did not think that I could bring myself to tell you the truth. But I find that I cannot, after all, leave you in ignorance, especially when there may be some small chance—”

  He broke off on a racking cough. When the fit was over he lay quietly, gasping for air.

  “Please, sir, do not exert yourself,” Caleb pleaded. “You must conserve your strength.”

  “Damn it to hell. This is my deathbed and I will spend what energy I have left as I wish.”

  Caleb smiled slightly in spite of his devastated spirits. It was oddly reassuring to hear the familiar, gruff determination in his father’s voice. The men and women of the Jones family were all fighters.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Fergus narrowed his eyes. “You and Alice were the two great blessings bestowed on me over the course of my life. I want you to know that I have always been grateful that the good Lord saw fit to let me have time with both of you.”

  “I am the most fortunate of sons to have you for a father, sir.”

  “I regre
t to say that you will not thank me for siring you after I tell you the truth about yourself.” Fergus closed his eyes in pain. “I never did tell your mother, you know. It was my gift to her. Alice died without ever realizing the danger you will confront.”

  “What are you talking about, sir?” Perhaps Fergus was hallucinating again.

  “I still hesitate to tell you of the truth,” Fergus whispered. “But you are my son and I know you well. You would curse me to your own dying day if I held back knowledge of such a vital nature. Given what I am about to say, you will doubtless abominate me anyway.”

  “Whatever it is you feel you must confide, sir, I assure you, it could never drive me to hate you.”

  “Wait until you hear what I am about to tell you before you judge.” Another violent cough interrupted Fergus. He gasped a few times and finally recovered his breath. “It concerns your great-grandfather, Erasmus Jones.”

  “What about him?” But a cold trickle of knowing slithered down Caleb’s spine.

  “You possess a talent very similar to his.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “You also know that he went mad, set fire to his library and laboratory and jumped to his death.”

  “You think I face the same fate, sir,” he said quietly. “Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

  “Your great-grandfather was convinced that it was his talent that drove him mad. He wrote about it in his last journal.”

  “I have never heard that Erasmus Jones kept any journals.”

  “That is because he destroyed all but one of them in the fire. He was convinced that the vast amount of research he had done with the aid of his talent was meaningless. But he held back one journal because, in the end, he was still Erasmus Jones. He could not bear to destroy his own secrets.”

  “Where is this journal?”

  Fergus turned his head to look across the room. “You will find it in the hidden compartment of my safe along with another little volume, a notebook that he preserved with the journal. His son, your grandfather, gave them to me on his deathbed, and now I bequeath them to you.”

  “Have you read them?”

  “No. Neither did your grandfather. We couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Fergus managed a snort. “Erasmus was Sylvester’s heir to the core. Like the old bastard, he invented his own private code for use in his journals. The notebook is also written in code. Neither your grandfather nor I dared show either book to anyone else in the family who might have been able to decipher it because we feared the secrets it might contain.”

  “Why did you and Grandfather keep the journal and the notebook?”

  Fergus looked up at him, his feverish eyes remarkably steady. “Because the first page of the journal is written in plain English. Erasmus addressed a message to his son and his future descendants. The note instructed them to preserve both volumes until such time in the future when another male with Sylvester’s talent appeared.”

  “Someone like me.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Erasmus believed that the notebook contained the secret to recovering his sanity. He failed to discover that secret in time to save himself. He was convinced that sometime in the future one of his line would face the same crisis. He hoped that his descendant would be able to alter his own fate by solving the mysteries in that damned volume.”

  “What is the second volume?” Caleb asked.

  “According to Erasmus, it is Sylvester’s last notebook.”

  HE REMAINED BY his father’s bedside until dawn. Fergus opened his eyes just as the first light of day appeared.

  “Why the devil is it so damned hot in here?” he growled. He glared at the blaze on the hearth. “What are you trying to do? Burn down the house?”

  Stunned, Caleb pushed himself up out of the uncomfortable chair in which he had spent the night. He looked down into his father’s eyes and saw at once that they were no longer bright with fever. The crisis had passed. His father lived. A relief unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life cascaded through him.

  “Good morning, sir,” he said. “You gave us a bit of a scare during the past few days. How are you feeling?”

  “Tired.” Fergus rubbed the gray stubble on his chin with one hand. “But I do believe I’m going to live after all.”

  Caleb smiled. “So it appears, sir. Are you hungry? I’ll send downstairs for some tea and toast.”

  “And perhaps some eggs and bacon, as well,” Fergus said.

  “Yes, sir.” Caleb reached for the velvet bellpull hanging beside the bed. “Although you may have to do some persuasive talking to convince the nurse that you are ready for a proper breakfast. Between you and me, she looks a bit tyrannical.”

  Fergus grimaced. “She’ll be disappointed that I failed to meet her expectations. She was sure I’d cock up my toes by dawn. Pay the woman and send her off to the next poor, dying bastard.”

  “I’ll do that,” Caleb said.

  EIGHT

  CALEB FOUND THE SLEEK LITTLE BLACK-AND-MAROON carriage precisely where Mrs. Shute had told him it would be in Guppy Lane. In the morning light the neighborhood displayed an air of proud, hardworking respectability. It was only a short distance from Landreth Square but it was many leagues away in terms of social status. What in blazes was Lucinda doing here?

  A thin man dressed in a coachman’s hat and multi-caped coat lounged against the iron railing that guarded the front area of a small house. Caleb got out of the hansom, wincing a little when his bruised ribs protested the small jolt. He paid the driver and then walked toward the man on the railing.

  “Mr. Shute?”

  “Aye, sir.” Shute watched him with slightly squinted eyes. “I’m Shute.”

  “Mrs. Shute gave me this address,” Caleb said. “I am looking for Miss Bromley.”

  Shute angled his head toward the doorway to the house. “She’s inside.” He took out his pocket watch and examined the time. “Been there for an hour. Might be a while longer.”

  Caleb studied the door. “A social call?” he asked neutrally.

  “Not exactly. She’s got business inside that house.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You came here this morning because you were curious about what would bring a lady like Miss Bromley to this part of town.”

  “You are a very astute man, Mr. Shute.”

  “Thought she might be in some danger, did ye?”

  “Crossed my mind.” The other possibility, of course, was that she was having an affair. For some obscure reason that had bothered him just as much.

  “Mrs. Shute and I were raised in this neighborhood.” Shute looked at the row of narrow houses across the street. “Mrs. Shute’s aunts live in number five over there. Retired after nearly forty years of service in a wealthy household. When their employer died, the heirs let them go without a pension. Miss Bromley pays their rent.”

  “I see,” Caleb said.

  “I’ve got a couple of cousins at the end of the lane. Miss Bromley employs the girls as maids in her household. Mrs. Shute and I have a son. He and his wife and their two little ones live in the next street. My son works for a printer. Miss Bromley’s father got him the job a few years ago.”

  “I think I’m beginning to understand, Mr. Shute.”

  “My grandchildren attend school. Miss Bromley helps out with the fees. She says an education is the only sure way to get ahead in the modern age.”

  “Obviously a lady of advanced notions.”

  “Aye.” Shute aimed a thumb over his wide shoulder, pointing toward the door to the house behind him. “My sister’s daughter and her family live here.”

  “You’ve made your point, Mr. Shute. My concerns for Miss Bromley’s safety were groundless. She is in no danger here.”

  “There’s folks in this neighborhood and the nearby streets who would slice the liver out of anyone who tried to hurt a hair on Miss Bromley’s head with nary a moment’s hesitation and then toss the body int
o the river.” Shute’s eyes tightened a little more. “Been in a fight, have ye?”

  “I was involved in a small altercation last night,” Caleb said. He had done his best to conceal his bruised eye by pulling up the high collar of his long coat and angling the brim of his hat but there were limits to such a disguise.

  Shute nodded, unperturbed. “You got the better of your opponent, I take it.”

  “I would say so. He is headed for an insane asylum.”

  “Not the usual ending for a fistfight.”

  “It was not the usual sort of fistfight.”

  Shute gave him a speculative look. “I reckon not.”

  The door to the little house opened. Lucinda appeared in the doorway. She carried a large black leather satchel in her ungloved hand. She had her back turned toward Caleb as she spoke to a woman in a worn dress and apron.

  “Do not worry about trying to get food into him,” Lucinda said. “The important thing is to make sure that he takes a few sips of the tisane several times an hour.”

  “I’ll see to it,” the woman vowed.

  “The little ones lose all of their fluids so quickly when they are struck by this sort of stomach ailment. But I’m sure Tommy will recover in a day or two, provided he continues to take the tisane.”

  “I do not know how to thank you, Miss Bromley.” The woman’s face registered both exhaustion and relief. “I didn’t know what else to do except call you. The doctor would likely have refused to come to this neighborhood.” Her mouth twisted. “You know how it is. He would have assumed we could not afford his fees. In any event, it wasn’t as if Tommy had broken a bone. I suspected that it was something he ate that made him ill. Everyone around here knows that when it comes to that kind of thing, you are far more knowledgeable than any doctor.”

  “Tommy will be fine. I’m sure of it. Just keep giving him the tisane.”

  “I will, Miss Bromley. Never fear.” The woman leaned out of the doorway and waved at Shute. “Good morning, Uncle Jed. Tell Aunt Bess I said hello.”