chapter 15
Laura had seen it before. The less dramatic-sounding name was liquid mercury. And it was poisonous. Carefully picking up two pieces of the glass, she scooped up the blob and wrapped a small towel around it. She felt strangely removed from herself, her movements slow, as if she walked through water. Her mind, on the other hand, flashed about, dancing around the horror at the center of it.
Poison. There was poison in James’s medicine.
Laura closed the bedroom door and locked it, as if that could keep them safe from danger. She felt icy at the core. Turning the light brighter, she examined her find again. There was no mistaking that it was mercury. Her father had used it in some of his experiments.
Many years before, he had studied a case involving hatters suffering from mercury poisoning. Mercuric nitrate was used as a smoothing agent to treat the fur of small animals in order to make felt. The material, saturated with the chemical, continually released mercury vapor into the air as the workers made hats out of the felt. After years of breathing the toxic air, the hat makers often died. That was where the expression “mad as a hatter” came from; they acted strangely, said mad things. She thought of James telling her that her hair was on fire, the bizarre things she had heard him mumbling. He had said he’d seen his dead father beside his bed and another time a long-dead pet. His sudden and baffling inability to do common math sums.
There were some medicines that contained mercury, but she had never heard of it being used for lung inflammations. Frauds sold “cure-alls” that promised to take care of various illnesses and that had not only ineffective ingredients but even harmful ones. But James hardly seemed the sort to go to quacks or believe in fantastical remedies. Still, when one was dying, she supposed that even a cynic might fall prey to such things.
Perhaps that was it. Otherwise . . . it meant someone was trying to murder James. No, someone was murdering him by slow degrees. She began to pace, all weariness having fled.
James had started taking this medicine because he was already sick with headaches and coughing. The mercury in the steam he breathed couldn’t have given him the illness, only worsened it. Either he had suffered from an entirely different ailment, which the medicine had exacerbated, or he had already been exposed to mercury some other way, and the tonic had been used to continue or increase the exposure.
Laura looked over at James in his bed. She wished she had the aid of his cool, incisive mind now. He coughed, and somehow that made Laura cough, too. She stiffened. She had coughed a few times today, but had thought nothing of it. Her head ached. She had attributed it to the strain of her situation, the stiff neck from sleeping in the chair.
But what if those symptoms came from something else? She had been closed in this room with James for two days. She hadn’t handled the breathing treatment before now; Owen or Walter had helped James. So the treatment couldn’t have affected her. She could be only imagining that her mild symptoms were like James’s. But if she was not, it would mean that there was something in this room that caused it. Something that had originally made James ill. If she remembered correctly, simply breathing in the vapors was hazardous.
Laura glanced around the room. It wouldn’t be in plain sight. Otherwise James would have seen it, or certainly one of the servants would have noticed it when they were cleaning. She opened the wardrobe and each of the drawers in the dresser even though enclosed spaces didn’t seem the likeliest place for it. She lay flat on the floor and checked under the highboy and the nightstands. Last, she turned to the bed, aware of a curious reluctance to search under it even though the high bed would be the best place to hide something. She didn’t really want to find out.
Irritated by her cowardice, she lay down beside the bed. She could see nothing on the floor underneath the bed, but near the head of it, a shallow square object hung from the frame. The bed was so high off the ground that Laura had no problem sliding beneath it. The object she had seen turned out to be a cast-iron pan hanging from wires fastened to the bed.
Laura’s heart hammered. It was too dark to see the contents of the pan, and she had to slide out and set the lamp on the floor beside the bed, then crawl beneath the bed again. It took some contortions to not block the light as she lifted her head to peer into the container. The bottom of the pan was covered with silver liquid.
Laura shot back out as if she had seen a snake. She would have jumped to her feet except her legs were trembling too much. There could be no doubt. Someone had put the mercury there. He had carefully, intentionally fastened it beneath the upper part of James’s bed, where he would breathe it in all night long.
She shuddered with revulsion at the thought of James lying here ill the last few days, all the while breathing in the fatal poison. How could anyone be so cold-blooded?
Even worse, the would-be murderer must be here in the house. A stranger sneaking into James’s bedroom with a pan and a bottle of mercury would have been noticed. Of course, it could have been done by an earlier visitor to Grace Hill. One of Tessa’s admirers, for instance. Laura had several times seen Mr. Netherly pacing up and down the entire length of the hall, apparently lost in communion with his muse. He could easily have slipped in and out of James’s room. But why would he—or any of Tessa’s swains—want to kill James? It would hardly endear them to Tessa.
No, the obvious killer was someone in the family.
What was she to do? How could she fight this? Laura was alone. James was too ill to be of any help, and she had no idea whom she could turn to. However awful the idea was, any of the people around her could be the very person trying to kill James. Not his mother, of course, but Tessa would be of no help in a crisis. Graeme’s home was not far away, but Tessa had said that Graeme was still in London.
No, it was up to her to protect James. Laura shivered. The house seemed dark and cavernous, looming all around her. She had never felt so small and cold. So alone.
James stirred on the bed, muttering. She pushed herself to her feet and leaned over him. He moved his head restlessly on the pillow. His black hair was damp with sweat from his intermittent fevers, and it clung to his skull, making him appear even more gaunt. A saving anger rose up in her. She was not going to let James die.
“James.” When he didn’t respond, she shook his shoulder, saying his name again. Finally his eyes opened. He blinked at her uncomprehendingly.
“James. Listen to me.”
“Laura?” The word was a mere whisper.
“Yes, it’s me. This is very important. I don’t think you have a tumor or brain fever or any of those things.”
He frowned, watching her intently, but in a puzzled way.
“Someone is trying to kill you. You have to help me.” She took one of his hands between hers. “You understand? You have to hang on. Don’t give in, no matter how hard it is. Because I’m not going to let them have you.”
In the light of the lamp his eyes flashed with silver, and his hand tightened on hers.