Chapter 21
Elizabeth Hale, Detective Inspector Green was told, had telephoned five times in the past hour and several times the hour before that.
He was told she was threatening to come down to the police station at midnight to “raise hell” for all those police officers who were “too good to be bothered about a woman who had helped them far more than they deserved.” The inspector, who had just finished assisting in a large-scale arrest and was trying to complete his paperwork before going home, sighed heavily when the telephone interrupted the relative peace of his office.
He agreed to take the call without enthusiasm. “This is Miss Hale? Saffron Everleigh’s flatmate, I understand,” he said into the receiver.
“Yes, this is Saffron Everleigh’s flatmate. This is the twelfth time I’ve called—”
Her shrill voice sounded especially loud. Stifling a groan, he rubbed a hand over his tired eyes and said, “I apologize for the holdup, Miss Hale, but there is more than one set of criminals to contend with in the city. What can I do for you?”
And so began a lengthy rant about public servants not serving the public unless convenient to them, which then slipped into a one-sided argument about men not taking the concerns of women seriously, during which the inspector completed three forms and said nothing until she paused to draw breath.
“Yes, Miss Hale, your concerns are quite valid. What did you need to speak with me about?”
“What I’ve been telling your useless minions, Inspector, is that Saffron hasn’t returned from work. She left quite early this morning and was supposed to come to tell me about a meeting she was having with—”
The inspector withheld a sigh. “Isn’t it possible that she is out with a friend or colleague and lost track of the time? Have you tried telephoning her friends and acquaintances? Perhaps she and Mr. Ashton—”
“Saffron said that she would come right after her meeting, and that’s what she would do.
She knew I was waiting for her”—here the inspector was sure he heard a sob, but Miss Hale quickly recovered—“and she would have telephoned me to say if her plans changed. You know she has been investigating this poisoning business on her own because you lot—” Rather than a sob, Miss Hale apparently was refraining from embarking on another rant.
Her voice returned with a tone of forced calm.
“Now, if you insist again that she is safe and just merely forgetful, I will come down to that police station in my nightgown and wreak utter havoc until someone goes to look for her.”
The inspector, sure by now that this woman was a different kind of touched from Saffron Everleigh, thought she might just do that. “If she’s only been absent a couple of hours, I’m afraid we can’t allocate resources to finding someone who may not be missing.”
“She is missing,” snapped Miss Hale. “She told me she would come straight home after her meeting with that wretched Dr. Berking—”
The familiar rush of instinct pulled the inspector from his exasperated exhaustion. “What time was the meeting? And where?”
“Six o’clock this evening, and I’d assume it was at the university in Dr. Berking’s office.”
“We will send someone to the university and surrounding haunts. What was she wearing when she left?”
Miss Hale told him and then demanded that she be called back, no matter what the hour, if and when they found her friend. The inspector, wary of her showing up in a nightgown, agreed reluctantly.
“Simpson,” Inspector Green called into the next room, where Simpson stood next to a ruffian in handcuffs. “We need to get a couple men over to the university.”
“Why, sir?” Simpson asked.
Irritated at Simpson’s time-wasting question, he barked, “What do you mean, ‘why,’ Simpson? Just get someone over there. Saffron Everleigh is missing. She had a meeting with Dr. Berking and didn’t return home.”
His eyes widened in understanding. “Berking, sir?”
“Yes, Simpson, get on it! You go, since you have so many damn questions!”
The sergeant immediately took off down the corridor, tripping over his own feet. Inspector Green pinched the sharp ache between his brows. The boy had as much coordination as a newborn foal, but he’d been following him around long enough to know how not to mess this up. Hopefully.
Saffron stirred. She was unaware of anything except the extraordinary pain shooting through her spine into the base of her back, and a rising nausea with which she was too familiar.
There was a singular thought in her mind: that she not be sick all over herself.
It was coming, if the watering in her mouth was any indication.
Her eyes fluttered open to see a ceiling lined with shadows.
Sweat broke out on her brow. She tried to lift her arms, to roll over to her side, but found that her arms were too heavy, like they’d been filled with cool sand.
It was bad enough, memory flooding back to her, that she’d gotten herself in this stupid mess, but dying choking on her own vomit would be a particularly gruesome way to die.
Just as the wave of nausea overtook her, she threw all her strength into moving her body, and she rolled just enough.
She panted and moved her head away from her vomit.
The office was quiet but for her panting and illuminated only by the hazy orange-gold glow of the lamps in the Quad.
She was alone. Hopefully that meant that Berking and Blake thought the job was done and had fled.
Relief made her body feel even heavier, like her limbs were sinking into the floor.
She squinted down at her arms and saw streaks on her hands. The paralysis had already begun, which explained why she was flopping around. With grunts of effort, she tried to roll to her other side, which proved too much for her equilibrium. She sputtered and spat, acid burning her throat and nose.
When she finally managed to reposition herself, she saw Alexander lying faceup on the floor a few feet away. She gasped.
“Alexander,” she croaked. “Alexander, wake up!”
He didn’t move. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing.
Saffron put her face toward the ceiling again, taking gulping breaths against the new wave of feeling coming over her, not of nausea, but of fear and guilt.
Maybe Berking and Blake had forced him to drink a lethal dose of xolotl.
Or maybe they’d used the solution they’d mentioned on him after all, and he’d fallen into a coma like Mrs. Henry.
“Alexander!” she cried, louder. “Alexander, please wake up!”
She forced herself to concentrate on movement. If she could move, she could see if he was alive, maybe somehow crawl her way to help.
She gave herself a great internal push and moved forward just a few inches. Alexander was about an arm’s length away, but her own arms were now underneath her, and her legs were useless below her knees. And she was exhausted. Cursing, she tried to inch her way over to him, but barely moved.
One particularly bad attempt left her in a fit of panicked giggles.
Tears streamed down her face as the stress of the situation overtook her, and she let herself cry until she had only determination left over.
It was no use lying where she was. Any moment Alexander would wake up, she assured herself.
It took her long minutes of concerted effort, each movement making her muscles in her torso, back, and neck burn.
She had even less control over her arms or legs, but she managed to inch her way to Alexander.
She pressed her head against his chest. The sound of her own labored breathing and thundering heart was loud in her ears, making it impossible to hear his heartbeat, if it was there.
Her breath froze in her lungs when her eyes moved from his chest to his neck.
Threading blue lines reached toward his face from his collar.
His entire body was paralyzed? What if the blue lines didn’t recede or there was lasting damage?
“Alexander,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t tried to—”
Alexander’s eye, still closed, twitched. Saffron gasped and called louder in his ear, “Alexander, if you can hear me, I’m here. Please wake up!”
Hoping she hadn’t imagined it, she leaned against his chest, waiting for him to move. Her eyelids, heavy from all her exertions and illness, closed.
With every step across the wet green, Simpson begrudged the inspector sending him off to tap on dark, locked doors at the university.
To be honest, he hadn’t wanted to hang around the station either; it was currently overrun with criminals from the mass arrest earlier, and endless sleep-deprived officers ready to snap at a lesser officer without call.
Even Inspector Green had lost his temper at him.
Simpson and the officer he’d snagged to come with him, Giles, stepped up to the center entry of the North Wing.
If Saffron Everleigh was on campus, this is where she would likely be.
Perhaps they’d find her in the arms of Mr. Ashton, as the inspector seemed to think they were a couple.
Simpson would be terribly embarrassed if that was the case.
One didn’t just walk in on things like that, even if one was a policeman.
They waited only a moment for the university caretaker with the keys to meet them, and once the door had been unlocked, Simpson and his deputy climbed up the dark stairs, using their torches for illumination.
They made their way toward the only office with a light on within.
From his scrawled notes, Simpson saw it belonged to Alexander Ashton.
Dread filled him; he really was about to interrupt something, wasn’t he?
Giles glanced at him with a raised brow. Simpson straightened up, recalling how the inspector was never embarrassed, even when he had to ask questions that made Simpson’s toes curl in his boots.
Simpson knocked smartly, but there was no reply. He tried the door and found that the tidy office was deserted. He didn’t let Giles see the relief on his face.
He and Giles turned and strode down the hall toward the other office, Dr. Maxwell’s.
He knocked, and at no reply, tried opening the door to the unlit office.
It was locked. Simpson screwed up his face and cursed his inspector.
He was about to break down a door and no doubt find Mr. Ashton entangled with Miss Everleigh and be in all sorts of trouble.
Sighing, he motioned for his man to move aside.
He should have told the caretaker to stick around.
Using the technique he’d mastered after being caught out without a key one too many times, he kicked the door open, keeping the frosted glass panel intact.
Inside, Simpson did indeed find Mr. Ashton and Miss Everleigh entangled on the floor, but in a very different way than expected. Giles flipped the light switch, and Simpson rushed to Mr. Ashton, whose eyes were narrowed against the sudden glare of the lights.
“What happened?” Simpson gasped, noting Saffron Everleigh next to him, eyes closed and motionless.
Alexander Ashton’s brow was damp with sweat and his breathing labored, but he managed to say “Bin.”
“What? Bin?” Simpson was confused and looked up at the other officer, whose mouth was agape as he scanned the wrecked office.
“Get me a bin, man!” Ashton groaned. The young deputy snatched up the waste bin and put it under him just in time. Simpson helped him up and held him in place for several minutes while he retched. He was heavy and seemed not to be able to hold himself up.
As Mr. Ashton was ill, Simpson told his deputy to call for the inspector and a doctor from University College Hospital across the street.
“Mr. Ashton, what happened here? What’s wrong with Miss Everleigh?” Simpson demanded weakly, lowering the oddly slack man back down onto the floor.
“We’ve been poisoned by Berking and Blake,” he managed, gulping breaths. “I’ll be all right for a moment. Get Miss Everleigh off the floor.”
Simpson blinked at Mr. Ashton’s pronouncement, then dashed into the hall and shouted to Giles to include that information in his message to the inspector. He returned to the room and, his nose wrinkling as he stepped between the pools of sick to pick her up, brought Miss Everleigh to the couch.
As he set her down, noting proudly that he’d managed to carry her without too much effort, he caught sight of her hands. “What the blazes is this about?”
“From the poison,” Mr. Ashton replied. “Can’t move when they’re present. Paralyzed.”
Simpson looked from Miss Everleigh, whose arms were covered in blue marks, to Mr. Ashton. He rushed to his side, gaping at his neck. “Y-your neck—”
Mr. Ashton frowned. “Yes, I can’t move. Tell the inspector that Berking and Blake were making a run for it with the money. They’re probably going out of the country. And Blake’s real name is Harper.”
Simpson, alarmed at the cool way Mr. Ashton declared he couldn’t move and provided all this new information, said, “The money? Blake is Harper? You can’t move?”
Simpson, avoiding the vomit on the floor, began to pace around the room, then thought better of it.
He’d probably trip and wind up with vomit splattered on his uniform.
A paper on the desk caught his eye. He picked up the paper and saw a signature at the bottom: Alexander Ashton. “Mr. Ashton, did you write a note?”
His eyes were closed in a grimace. “No.”
Simpson scanned the note, which explained that Dr. Maxwell, crazed, had forced them to drink a xolotl infusion, whatever that meant, at gunpoint and that Mr. Ashton was sorry he couldn’t have done more to stop the professor.
Despite himself, Simpson snorted. “Not exactly masterminds, are they? We cleared Dr. Maxwell ages ago. He’s not even in London. And considering you’re just paralyzed and not in a coma, I guess it really wasn’t that xolt—xlot—er, that foreign plant after all.”
Simpson looked up from the note to see that Mr. Ashton was still, his eyes closed. Alarmed, he hopped across the room and checked his pulse. It was steady and strong. Poor bloke must be exhausted, Simpson mused. Must be tiring, being poisoned and all.