Chapter 16
The dark house across the street was large and well-appointed, sitting comfortably in the center of a rectangular property at a respectable address.
In the wee hours of a windswept Wednesday morning, curtains were drawn across dark windows up and down the street.
Saffron and Alexander leaned casually on a stone wall, their eyes on the gate.
Glancing to the left and right, Alexander muttered, “Are you sure you want to do this? This is completely different from the university. We have absolutely no business showing up here at this time of night.”
The honest answer was no, Saffron wasn’t sure. But she couldn’t think of another way to determine if the formula was a fluke. Saffron took a deep breath, her face set. “Yes. Now, you go over first and unlatch the gate. Then, we search. Do you remember what aconite looks like?”
He nodded, slipped his jacket from his shoulders, then jogged across the street.
When she gave him a quick wave, indicating that no one was coming, Alexander set his jacket onto the top of the wall, grabbed the top of the tall stony ledge and pulled himself up.
He disappeared onto the other side. Saffron was impressed by his physical acumen, but quickly reprimanded herself for being distracted.
She looked up and down the street, shivering slightly in the wind.
Saffron rushed across the street toward the gate when it opened.
It was nearly pitch black in the garden.
The moon had not yet risen, and the high stone wall and voluminous foliage blocked most of the orange glow of the streetlights.
They crept nearer to the house to ensure it was silent and still.
Then, as agreed, Alexander remained in the front to keep watch while she circled the house in search of the conservatory.
It was well known that Dr. Berking had amassed a personal collection of plants that rivaled that of the university, but his collection was restricted to plants of Southeast Asia, where Dr. Berking focused his studies.
Another reason Berking’s interest in the expedition was suspicious, since he had never worked on plants from South America.
Aconite was not a plant native to that region, but Saffron couldn’t imagine that, if Berking required plant for a nefarious purpose, he wouldn’t grow it himself.
A botanist was still a botanist, even if they did want to poison someone with the fruits of their labors.
It was likely he’d cultivated it in a place he could tend it and harvest it without notice rather than at the university.
Camouflaged among his other plants seemed the most logical place.
Before approaching the fogged windows of the glassed conservatory, she took a quick look around the garden and the barely visible houses beyond.
A sweeping breeze rushed through, making all the trees and bushes shake and sway.
It was as if the world was undulating around her.
Closing her eyes to the vision of blackness, she visualized aconite’s hooded blooms and deeply lobed leaves.
It should be easy enough to identify if Berking had it inside.
Saffron crept toward the clouded glass door, wondering where Berking’s servants were, for a grand house like this certainly warranted multiple servants.
Not even the lights from the kitchen were on.
Perhaps it was their night off, if Berking was also absent as the calendar on Pierce’s desk had indicated he would be.
Holding her breath, Saffron tested the wrought iron door handle to the conservatory. It squeaked slightly, but gave. She carefully stepped inside the warmth of the greenhouse.
A faint glow from an interior lamp provided meager light, and Saffron didn’t need more to know that Berking was right to be proud of his conservatory collection.
The large room was crowded with verdure.
Heady floral scents made her lightheaded, both with the smell and excitement.
She could detect the scent of a blooming member of the Hedychium genus nearby, and followed her nose to an enormous potted plant emanating a heavenly smell like honeysuckle.
She glanced about the dark room. She couldn’t very well follow her nose to aconite.
Saffron determined the most likely location for Berking to grow it would be under cover of a larger plant, as aconite would grow without full light, and that would reduce the chance of any fellow botany enthusiasts seeing it and asking questions.
Outdoors, it ran the risk of being noticed by a gardener who might spill Berking’s secret.
She considered how easy it would be for Berking to have poisoned Mrs. Henry with several of the plants in the room.
But surely, if Berking were a suspect, the police would have searched his home and logged all the poisonous plants he had, like she had done for the university.
Did the police force have a botanical expert to do such things?
She made her way beneath an exorbitant monstera, was only momentarily sidetracked by a collection of small hanging flowers she was sure were Clematis repens, then managed to duck beneath the larger palms and potted bushes, only to see that her query was nowhere to be found.
She slowly crept around the perimeter of the room, dodging under vines and branches and leaves as she looked for gangly stems with heavy flowers, circling closer and closer to the center of the room.
A long, soft creak interrupted the humid silence.
Saffron crouched beneath an aggressively pointy palm and peered across the room to the door. She saw nothing but the faint waving of a disturbed frond. If Berking had entered the room, there was no way he’d only disturb just one palm frond.
A familiar figure stepped from behind a sheath of leaves, and Saffron let out a huff. “Do you have to be so stealthy?”
Alexander whispered, “Did you find it? You’ve been ages.”
“No luck in here.”
“Do you think it could be in the garden outside?”
Though the notion of searching through the bushes in the dark was not a pleasant one, Saffron agreed that it was possible, considering aconite seeds required cold treatment prior to germination.
She should have thought of that before, but it hadn’t occurred to her that Berking might be working with an immature plant.
Saffron didn’t speak again until they were well out and away from the conservatory, where they once again agreed to split up. Saffron took the back, Alexander the front.
She considered the organization of a typical English garden.
Surely Berking wouldn’t have planted something so dangerous close to the kitchen garden where his cook might accidentally pick it.
No, it would be far away. She started toward the darkest corner, furthest from the kitchen door.
Saffron squinted into the black of the dense foliage and began her search.
Half an hour passed, revealing nothing more than a few long-forgotten garden ornaments half-covered in natural debris and a handful of rather nice tulips that an overgrown boxwood obscured from view.
Her stockings were stained and torn from crawling about on her hands and knees, and her fingernails were doubtless similarly ruined.
The ceaseless wind smarted against her cold ears.
Saffron sat back on her heels with a huff and pushed aside a lock of loose hair.
Hopefully Alexander had discovered something in the front.
Just as Saffron resolved to find him, a ringing clang broke through the ambient rushing of the wind.
Saffron’s heart stuttered as the sound of the gate opening followed, then the rumble of an automobile and the crunch of gravel.
Headlights flashed along the far side of the hedge.
Saffron pushed through the bushes and dashed to the side of the house, pressing her back against the wall.
The engine cut out. Saffron searched the darkness for Alexander. She saw no sign of him, which was a mixed blessing. The driver wouldn’t see him, but neither could Saffron.
Gravel crunched as feet moved forward on the drive.
A long silence followed. Just as Saffron moved to make for the gate, lights flared suddenly from within the house, illuminating the small lawn Saffron had just set her foot onto.
She leapt back with a gasp, pressing her back to the cool stone of the building again.
Her eyes searched the garden. Her partner was still nowhere to be seen.
There were no good options. She could move along the back or front of the house and pray that Berking wasn’t looking out any windows. She could make a run for it, counting on that she likely could run fast enough to not be caught, but risk being exposed.
She took the last option and sped back into the garden beds, shoving past a bush into the line of cypress trees all the way to the wall.
Saffron picked her way through, suddenly grateful for the wind disguising her movements through the shrubs and trees.
She made it to the end of the length of the wall and crouched to hide beneath the low hanging branches of a weeping pea shrub, whose fringed leaves tickled her face.
No noise had come from the house, and with any luck she would make it to the gate and out without notice.
But what if she didn’t come across Alexander?
What if he’d gone to find her and was stuck in the bushes, too?
There was not a clear path along the wall.
Several cypress trees hugged it to the extent that Saffron could not maneuver behind them.
Just as she’d wiggled her way past the last in the line, her foot became tangled on something and she fell roughly on top of something that definitely wasn’t a shrub.
Before she could shriek out her dismay at suddenly being pulled to the ground, a hand smothered her mouth. Relief overtook her at the sight of Alexander’s dark eyes searching her face in the faint light seeping through the leaves.