“I had my suspicions, you know. One does not discover vile things on one’s carpets without realizing something is amiss.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her butler upon learning of her housekeeper’s fondness for gin.
Crouching beside his deceased housekeeper, Phineas did the only thing a rational man could do with unfathomable blackness eating him from inside.
He ignored it.
What had begun as a coal had bloomed into something vast and volatile. Nothing would be solved by giving in. But, if he applied logic to more tangible problems—finding the devil who had murdered his housekeeper and three other women, for instance—perhaps that blackness would diminish of its own accord.
Thus, he turned his attention to Mrs. Varney, who lay sprawled on the gold carpet of the dining room, her pupils unusually wide. Her lips were wrinkled and parched. One of her hands still clutched the leg of a chair.
“Anybody unfamiliar about?” Drayton’s question was directed to Holstoke House’s butler, Sackford. “New servants?”
“No, sir,” Sackford replied, his voice somber. “In preparing for his lordship’s departure, Mrs. Varney and I had begun reducing the household staff.”
“What about visitors? Deliverymen and the like?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I shall make inquiries.” Sackford’s voice grew thin. “She often took her tea whilst gathering his lordship’s herbs each morning. She loved the garden, did Mrs. Varney.”
Beside Phineas, Dunston knelt with an elbow propped on his knee. The other lord pointed to the woman’s eyes. “See that?”
“Yes,” Phineas replied. “Atropa belladonna, most likely.”
“Nightshade. Your mother never used it, as I recall.”
“No. For her purposes, the appearance of a natural death was paramount.”
“Yet, this blighter seems determined to be caught.”
“Not caught, perhaps.” Phineas eyed the woman’s hand, still curled around fluted mahogany. “But acknowledged.”
Dunston nodded. “He has managed to capture your attention.”
Yes, he had. And that had been an error. The blackness Phineas struggled to contain wanted many things, but nothing more fervently than to eliminate the abhorrent creature who had done this. He held his breath as the blackness expanded and threatened to take hold.
A hand clapped him on the shoulder. “Try not to cast up your accounts, old chap. The stench is rather pungent, but think of the mess. You are without a housekeeper at present.”
He blew out his breath and rubbed at his brow. “Bloody hell, you are perverse.”
“Occasionally. Maureen rarely complains, however. I am a fortunate man.”
Phineas supposed the comment was meant as a taunt, but it didn’t land. He frowned and examined the other man. Relaxed yet focused, Dunston scanned the room methodically, first the body then two overturned chairs.
This was the man who had hunted Phineas’s mother for a decade, chasing a woman who had fooled everyone—including her husband and son. By using accomplices and intermediaries, she’d managed to elude capture for many years. But no one had come closer than the Earl of Dunston, and no one had been more dogged in his pursuit. Later, one of her accomplices confessed Lady Holstoke had long been terrified of him. She’d thought him a phantom haunting her every move.
Phineas must protect Eugenia and Hannah. Thus, he required help from a man like Dunston. He turned and met eyes like sharpened steel, gratified to see his own resolve reflected there. “I need men,” he muttered. “Enough to keep her safe.”
A faint smile appeared. “To which ‘her’ are you referring, Holstoke?”
Blinking, Phineas paused. He hadn’t meant to speak aloud. The blackness had spoken for him.
Dunston chuckled. “Never mind. You shall have five by tonight.”
“Seven.”
“Very well. Seven. Though, I should warn you, there will never be enough men to ease that vise round your chest.”
Bloody hell. That was it precisely. He was being crushed. Suffocated.
Phineas shoved to his feet and rubbed his neck. Strode past Dunston and paced the room. Searched for something. Anything to ease the pressure.
Yet, he saw only Mrs. Varney, vacant and cold.
The vise tightened until he wanted to tear something apart.
Hawthorn entered just as Drayton finished questioning the maid who had discovered Mrs. Varney’s body. As usual, the Bow Street runner looked as though he’d fallen from his bed into a vagabond’s clothes.
“What the devil took you so long, Hawthorn?” Phineas snapped.
The runner busied himself digging his notebook from his pocket. He gave Phineas a seemingly friendly grin before patting his chest and withdrawing a pencil. “Ah, here we are. Forever misplacing them, it seems.” He approached Mrs. Varney, taking in the overturned chairs and signs of poison. “Apologies for the delay, Holstoke. Lord Randall was a mite distraught. He was quite fond of one of the dogs that perished, you see.”
Phineas glared at the man, who bent forward to peer at Mrs. Varney’s face.
“Dicky, I believe the animal was called,” Hawthorn continued. “Randall mentioned an incident involving your hat.”
Rubbing his brow, Phineas bit down on the urge to strike Hawthorn and instead replied, “I did not bloody well murder a dog because it damaged my hat.”
Hawthorn used his pencil to pry open Mrs. Varney’s mouth, cringing at the stench. “Haven’t claimed you did.” He opened his notebook and began writing. “Still,” he said absently before grinning up at Phineas. “Would be interesting if the dog were the target of a vengeful plot, no?”
What was it about men like Dunston and Hawthorn and this perverse humor in the midst of horror? Phineas found nothing about this amusing. Not one damned thing.
Drayton approached from across the room, his limp worsening with the passing hours. “Accordin’ to the maid, Mrs. Varney was actin’ most strange when she came in from the garden. Quarrelsome and laughin’ by turns. Then she began stumbling about and complaining of needing to lie down. The kitchen maids assumed she’d been at his lordship’s brandy. She made it far as the dining room when the girl heard the clatter. Must have been the chairs toppling. She says when she entered, Mrs. Varney was lyin’ where you see her, clutching the chair tight as can be.” Drayton glanced down at his notes and scratched his head. “Curious thing, m’lord. Though she was several feet away at the time, the girl says she could hear the woman’s heart beatin’ and that it sounded like horses at a gallop.”
Tendrils of unease began at the back of Phineas’s mind. It was a familiar sensation, one he often felt when he was conducting experiments or working through a new theory and a part of the pattern failed to align properly.
He glanced again at Mrs. Varney’s hand. It lay curled around the chair, even in death.
“Did Mrs. Varney say anything?” Phineas asked. “At the end.”
Again, Drayton examined his notes. “Just nonsense. Flyin’ apart, she said. Mrs. Varney complained she was flyin’ apart.”
There it was. The piece that hadn’t fit.
“So she grasped the nearest thing,” Phineas murmured. “It was not Atropa belladonna. Or, at least, not merely Atropa belladonna. The poisoner also used Hyoscyamus niger.”
All three men turned to him with similar hard focus.
“Speak English, Holstoke,” said Dunston.
“Henbane. Same family as belladonna—solanaceae. Similar effects when ingested, except that henbane gives one the illusion of flying or, in some, of flying apart.” He frowned and glanced again at Mrs. Varney. “The dose had to have been quite high for her to die so rapidly. Odd.”
“What’s odd about it?” asked Hawthorn.
“The first taste would have been bitter and, indeed, malodorous. Henbane is rather unpleasant, as plants go. Tea would not have disguised it.”
Hawthorn straightened, dispensing with his earlier affability. “Would gin?”
Phineas considered it. “Possibly. Though the required concentrations still preclude the use of the plants themselves, in my estimation. The poisons must have come from medicinal grains one finds at—”
“An apothecary,” Dunston said, dark and silken. “Like the one your mother employed.”
Drayton shuffled forward, rubbing his thigh as though it pained him. “That one’s dead. Watched him suffocate from the inside, I did.” The Bow Street runner shuddered and ran a hand down his haggard face. “Still have nightmares sometimes.”
“Lady Randall had a fondness for gin,” Hawthorn commented. “She drank it in lieu of her morning tea. And, incidentally, shared it with her dogs.”
“How quickly did she perish?” Phineas asked.
“Not as quickly as Dicky.” Hawthorn grinned. Again, the runner’s dark humor made Phineas frown, though Dunston appeared amused. “But within a quarter-hour of finishing her morning ‘tea’ she collapsed. We’ve examined the cup. It smelled of gin and orgeat.”
“Orgeat.” Phineas’s neck prickled. “You mean almonds.”
Hawthorn nodded.
Mrs. Varney’s cup had been washed by one of the scullery maids before anyone had realized something was wrong. But Phineas would wager every one of his Suffolk properties that her cup would have mirrored Lady Randall’s. The scent of almonds had been a common description in the murders his mother had engineered.
Dunston appeared to follow his thoughts. “Multiple poisons, then. Similar to—”
“My mother’s methods. Yes.”
“We are back to apothecaries.”
Phineas shook his head. “Not necessarily. It could be anybody with enough coin to purchase the medicines and enough time to perfect his formula, though he would need subjects for experimentation. Animals, perhaps.”
“Or patients,” countered Drayton, once again rubbing his thigh. “Who would question a surgeon’s stock?”
“There are no reports of surgeons visiting any of the victims prior to their deaths,” Hawthorn interjected.
“Who’d they have in common, then?” Drayton asked.
Hawthorn looked pointedly at Phineas.
Phineas glared back at him.
“Well, let’s see,” said Dunston casually. “Miss Froom and Lady Theodosia both attended Lady Randall’s soiree. That’s three of your victims right there. And Miss Froom was, in fact, poisoned at that very event. Suggests it was someone present in Lord Randall’s home that evening.”
Drayton grunted. “Scores of guests that night, m’lord.”
“Indeed. Myself included. And Lord Randall, who apparently had more love for the late, lamented Dicky than his wife. Alas, much as I should enjoy seeing Holstoke hauled away to the gallows, he departed fully two hours before Miss Froom’s collapse.” He waved toward Mrs. Varney. “As we’ve seen, the effects appear within a quarter-hour.”
Hawthorn turned to Phineas again. “Lady Holstoke sold her formulas to her victims’ complicit relatives. She was miles away when the poison did its work. Is that not so, my lord?”
Phineas’s patience evaporated. “Your suspicions of me waste time we do not have,” he snapped. “This blackguard has managed to kill four women inside a bloody month without leaving a hint as to his identity. He could be anyone. And, for some ungodly reason, he has trained his sights upon me.” His voice lowered until the blackness turned it rough and gritted. “I will not countenance the threat to my wife and sister, Hawthorn. With or without your assistance, that threat will be found and eliminated. I suggest you do not stand in my way.”
The other man cocked his head. He glanced at Dunston then Drayton then back to Phineas. “How do you intend to protect them, Holstoke? As you say, the murderer could be anyone.”
“We are leaving London tonight.”
“For Dorsetshire.”
“Yes.”
Hawthorn nodded. “Miss Gray, too?”
“I would hardly leave my sister behind.”
“You have men?”
Phineas blinked. Frowned. “Dunston is providing some.”
Another nod. “How many?”
“I offered five,” Dunston answered. “He insisted on seven.”
For a moment, Hawthorn’s mask disappeared, and Phineas had a glimpse of the true man.
His original instincts had been correct. Hawthorn was a wolf.
“Watch for new faces,” the runner warned, voice hard and jaw harder. “Anybody comes near her that you haven’t known longer than six months, get rid of him. Servants. Visitors. Physicians or bloody parsons. Trust no one, Holstoke.”
Phineas weighed the need to have a wolf’s aid against the need to warn him away from Hannah. The divide was roughly fifty percent. But the warning could wait. For now, a wolf was willing to join the hunt, and Phineas was not fool enough to turn him down.
“I will keep my family safe,” he vowed. “Have no doubt.”
The wolf grinned. “Then go to Dorsetshire, my lord. And leave London to me.”
*~*~*