ThePerfectPoison
TWENTY-TWO
IRA ELLERBECK OPENED THE DELICATELY HINGED LID OF the tiny gold-and-emerald snuffbox. With a practiced motion, he took a pinch of the yellowish powder, raised it to his nose and inhaled.
Snuff was no longer a fashionable way of taking tobacco, having been replaced by cigarettes and cigars. Personally, he found Nicotiana tabacum repulsive in any form. It was not the powdered form of that particular herb, however, that he carried in the tiny container. The drug in the snuffbox was far more potent and infinitely more dangerous.
He felt the frisson of heightened awareness immediately and opened himself to the seething currents that swirled in the vast conservatory. An array of vision-inducing cacti, psilocybin mushrooms, belladonna lilies, Turkestan mint, henbane, opium poppies and so much more—all carefully cultivated and hybridized with the aid of his unique talent to enhance their toxic and intoxicating powers— whispered their dark energies into the atmosphere. At once his nerves steadied and his confidence trickled back.
He looked at his son. Allister lounged against the edge of a workbench with an elegantly languid air.
“What went wrong?” Ellerbeck asked, fully in control again, at least for a while.
“The pair of thieves that I hired failed.” Allister’s mouth twisted, his disdain obvious. “According to the rumors in Guppy Lane, Miss Bromley distracted them with some sort of noxious substance that burned their eyes and made it hard for them to breathe. In the confusion Bromley was able to summon assistance.”
Rage surged. With great effort, Ellerbeck willed the distracting sensation back under control. The formula had some tedious side effects, one of which was that, in addition to temporarily enhancing his eroding psychical senses, it stirred certain violent emotions. Unfortunately, he had not discovered that particular problem until after he had started Allister on the drug. Now it was too late for both of them. Hope was fading fast. He had only a few months left, at best. If Hulsey did not come up with an improved version of the formula soon, all was lost.
“You must get rid of both of those men,” he said. “If Jones tracks them down—”
“Do not concern yourself.” Allister smiled, flushed with the prospect of two more kills. “I will take care of Sharpy and Perrett tonight. Meanwhile, they are hardly likely to go to the police. It would be tantamount to admitting that they took part in a kidnapping attempt. Even if they did talk to Jones, there is no danger to us. They have no way of knowing who I am. As far as they are concerned, they were employed to abduct Miss Bromley for the purpose of selling her into a life of prostitution. There really is no problem, I assure you.”
“Damnation, don’t you see? The problem is that Caleb Jones is now aware that someone attempted to abduct Bromley. He has gone so far as to install a bodyguard in the household.”
He had been so certain that getting rid of the apothecary would put an end to the thing; so sure that once Daykin’s sideline in poison had been exposed, Jones would consider the investigation closed.
Instead, Jones appeared to be continuing his inquiries. In desperation the decision had been made to get rid of Lucinda Bromley. Now that plan, too, had failed.
Thaxter had sent word to him an hour ago. According to the rumors swirling in the clubs this morning, Caleb Jones was intimately involved with Lucinda Bromley. There could be only one logical explanation and it was highly unlikely that explanation was of a romantic nature. Jones was hunting.
“What makes you think Edmund Fletcher is a bodyguard?” Allister asked. “According to the maid I talked to in Landreth Square this afternoon, he is a friend of the family who will be staying with Miss Bromley and her cousin for a time.”
Ellerbeck resisted the urge to throw a heavy watering can through the glass wall of the conservatory. He picked up a glass jar instead and walked a short distance along a path to his collection of carnivorous plants. He noted that one of the large, pitcher-shaped traps of his Nepenthes rajah was still digesting its last meal, a tiny mouse.
He stopped in front of an intensely green Dionaea.
“That would be too much of a coincidence by half,” he said. “This is Caleb Jones we are talking about. He will have sensed what really happened last night. There can be no doubt but that Fletcher is a bodyguard.”
“I could easily get rid of Fletcher for you.”
Ellerbeck sighed. “Jones would simply install yet more guards around the Bromley household.”
“I can take care of Jones, as well.”
“Do not be so certain of that.”
Allister tensed with anger as he always did when Ellerbeck implied that there were limitations to his talent.
“You told me that Jones is merely some sort of intuitive talent,” Allister said. “He may be very good at chess but that ability will not protect him from what I can do.”
Exasperation flooded through Ellerbeck, a hot acid that made him want to scream. He tried but he could not keep all of the emotion out of his voice. “Damn it to hell, don’t you see? If you managed to kill Caleb Jones, we would be left with an even greater problem than we now face.”
“What do you mean?”
Ellerbeck fought his frustration. To think that he had once believed that the drug might save his son. Allister had always been dangerous. The streak of madness had shown itself early in life. But for a few weeks after he had begun taking the formula, he seemed to become more stable. Within days, however, the side effects had appeared.
“Consider what you are suggesting,” Ellerbeck said. “The murder of Caleb Jones would draw the attention of the Master, the Council and the entire Jones family. That is the very last thing we want.”
“But no one would realize that Jones had been killed,” Allister insisted. “You know how I work. It will appear that he died of a heart attack, just like Daykin.”
“It is not common for a man in his prime to drop dead of a heart attack.”
“It happens on occasion.”
“Not in the Jones family. They are a healthy lot. Your methods might satisfy the members of the Council, but trust me when I tell you that without a very creditable explanation, no one in the Jones clan would believe that the death of Caleb Jones was due to natural causes. Not for a moment. The Master and everyone else on that damned family tree would turn over every stone in London until they found answers.”
“They wouldn’t find any.”
“Do not be so sure of that. I doubt that either of us would survive the investigation that would be launched. Even if the Joneses did not succeed in discovering us, the First Circle would be furious. The leaders would see to it that our supply of the drug was cut off entirely.”
“We have Hulsey. He can continue to brew the formula.”
“The First Circle would take him from us in a heartbeat.”
Allister began to prowl along one of the pathways. “So we come up with a creditable explanation. Bloody hell, where did you come by this unnatural fear of the Jones family?”
“There is a reason why every Master of the Arcane Society since the founding of the organization has been a Jones.”
“Certainly there’s a reason. The founder himself was a Jones. It is no mystery why his offspring have always wielded so much influence within the Society. It is simply the weight of tradition.”
Tradition played a part, Ellerbeck thought. But so did power and talent. There was no denying that the bloodlines of the Jones family carried a great deal of both. Hunters, in particular, abounded within the clan. As it happened, Caleb Jones was not endowed with that signature talent, but many of those who would come looking for his killer would most certainly possess such preternatural predatory abilities.
If even a fraction of the legends that swirled around the family were true, it was a certainty that they would pursue their quarry to the gates of hell and beyond.
But there was no point trying to explain that to Allister. In addition to the whisper of insanity, he was imbued with the natural arrogance that was the hallmark of all young males in their early twenties. Nothing a father could say would shake that. The only hope that remained for either of them was that Hulsey would concoct an improved version of the drug.
I must buy us some time.
He thought about what Allister had just said. So we come up with a creditable explanation.
He contemplated the spider in the bottom of the jar. The insect stared back at him with its chillingly inhuman eyes. The members of the First Circle would exhibit a similar lack of pity if they discovered that things were going so badly wrong.
A creditable explanation. It would require a great risk but it just might work. And there was nothing left to lose. He was dying and his son was plunging back into madness.
“You may be right,” Ellerbeck said finally. “Perhaps we should remove Caleb Jones.”
“I know that you would prefer that we avoid any contact with the Society and with the Joneses,” Allister said, sensing an opening. “But we no longer have a choice. Like it or not, thanks to Lucinda Bromley, Caleb Jones has been drawn into this affair. You claim that he is dangerous.”
“He is a Jones,” Ellerbeck said simply.
“Very well, unless you can think of a way to convince him to abandon the case, we have no choice but to get rid of him before he discovers any links that will lead him back to Hulsey. The doctor would not last five minutes under questioning.”
“He has been the weak point in this business all along. But we need him, Allister. He is the only man of talent I know who might be able to reduce the side effects of the formula.”
“The drug works very well as far as I am concerned.”
That is because you are already insane, Ellerbeck thought. A great depression threatened to drown him. His only son was a madman with a talent for murder.
He set the jar on a workbench, took out the snuffbox and inhaled another pinch of the drug.
Immediately the crushing weight of his morbid thoughts lifted. Given time, Hulsey would perfect the formula and Allister would be saved. And so will I.
The key was time.
“You have given me an idea.” A flicker of anticipation pulsed through him. “Perhaps we have been too timid in our approach. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Allister was momentarily taken aback by the concession but he recovered swiftly. “Don’t worry, I won’t have any trouble getting rid of Caleb Jones for you.”
“I believe you. But you will have to carry out the project in a manner that will satisfy the Jones family. They must be given the firm impression that there is no mystery to pursue. A death that appears to be a heart attack or stroke will not work.”
Allister scowled. “You have a plan?”
“It occurs to me that if Caleb Jones is found dead, there is one thing that might keep his family from tearing London apart in the search for the killer.”
“What?”
“The death of the murderer.”
Allister’s brow furrowed. “You intend to cast suspicion on someone else?”
“Yes.” A very similar scheme had worked in the past, Ellerbeck thought. There was no reason it would not work again.
Allister looked skeptical. “I like the notion but if it is to be convincing, the evidence would have to point to someone who possesses a very strong motive.”
“Not only a motive, but a history of having committed murder with poison. In other words, the perfect suspect.”
Allister went quite blank for a few seconds. Then understanding dawned.
“Lucinda Bromley?” he said, voice rising a little in amazement.
“By all accounts Jones is involved in an intimate liaison with her. Miss Bromley poisoned her last lover. Why not another?”
Allister smiled his slow, cold smile. “That is bloody brilliant. It will be no problem to stage the scene so that Jones appears to have died of poison.”
“I know you think that he will be an easy target but the thing must be planned carefully. We cannot afford any more mistakes.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.”
Ellerbeck picked up the jar again, removed the lid and turned the container upside down. The spider tumbled into the bloodred mouth of the Venus flytrap. The spiny-leafed jaws snapped shut faster than the eye could follow, sealing the insect’s doom.
Ellerbeck watched the spider’s useless struggles for a moment. The plan would work. It had to work.
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