Chapter 15 #2
I did as he bade me, swearing fluently under my breath the entire time.
William IV was a substantial lad, and it took all of my strength to wrestle him off of the chair and into a more comfortable position on the floor.
By the time I reached Brisbane in the chapel he was already finishing his examination.
The crimson dressing gown was pooled at his feet, the leather case open beside it.
I could just make out an assortment of lethal-looking instruments and small, smoked-glass vials tucked inside.
He glanced up at me, his eyes boring into mine. “They have not been drugged,” he said, rising to his feet. “They have been poisoned. We must get them moving and we must dose them with stimulants. Fetch Aquinas and have him bring tea, pots of it, as hot and sweet as he can manage.”
I nodded and moved swiftly to the door. I paused the barest moment, glancing back at him.
He was on his knees, draping Emma’s arm over his good shoulder, levering her to her feet.
Her head lolled back against him, her features peaceful and immovable.
There was an expression of grim determination on his face and I could hear him talking softly to her, demanding she open her eyes and respond to him.
I blinked back sudden tears and left them.
It was in God’s hands now, God’s and Brisbane’s.
I rapped lightly at Aquinas’ door. He roused at once and answered the door wearing a dapper dressing gown of striped China silk over his trousers.
“My lady?” he inquired, as brightly awake as if I had rung for him at teatime.
“Brisbane needs you. He is in the chapel. Someone has poisoned Miss Emma and Miss Lucy with laudanum. He said to bring tea, masses of it, as hot as you can.”
“And sweet,” Aquinas said knowingly. “The sugar will help with the shock.”
I blinked at him. “How do you—never mind. I do not wish to know. Bring enough for William IV. He has been dosed as well, but Brisbane says he is not as unwell as the ladies. Mind you are quiet. Brisbane does not wish to rouse the household.”
I scurried back to the chapel, and in a remarkably short time, Aquinas appeared, bearing quantities of hot coffee and tea, both liberally sweetened.
The three of us took turns for the next few hours walking the girls, slapping lightly at their faces and ladling hot drinks down them.
They vomited often, but Brisbane merely commented that this was good and encouraged it.
William IV slept on, rousing only to take a few cups of tea before resuming his slumbers.
Aquinas hefted him onto his back and carried him to his own room, reasoning that the boy would have more privacy in the butler’s room than the footmen’s dormitory.
Some hours before dawn something turned, and both Emma and Lucy seemed suddenly stronger.
Their pulses were even now, and stronger, and Brisbane let Emma slide gently to the floor.
“They are sleeping,” he told me. He stretched then, like a bear rousing itself from winter sleep.
“This cannot have been good for your shoulder,” I said softly. “You must be in pain.”
He shrugged.
“I have methods,” he said blandly. “The ladies ought not stay here,” he observed. “It is too cold, and they will be vulnerable to a chill. Aquinas, you take Miss Lucy and I will carry Miss Emma. They will do well enough in their own room.”
Aquinas moved quickly to take up Lucy as Brisbane hefted Emma up once more.
I remained behind to clear up the traces of the unpleasantness, bone tired and moving as slowly as an old woman.
It would be dawn in a few hours and the household would begin to stir.
I washed the basin in the butler’s pantry and realised I must return it to Brisbane’s room before the gentlemen rose.
Once more I traversed the dormitory, scratching lightly at Brisbane’s door. After a long moment he answered, still wearing his dressing gown and trousers.
“I have brought your basin.”
He took it, but to my surprise, stepped aside. I moved wearily into the room and sank down into one of the armchairs by the fire. “So we may presume they were drugged intentionally. To what purpose?”
Brisbane took the chair opposite me. “Perhaps because they wished to escape the inevitable.”
I stared at him. “I do not think I comprehend you. I am stupid with tiredness. Do you mean to suggest they took the laudanum on purpose?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. But unlikely. I could believe it except for the footman. If Emma had brought the drugged brandy into the chapel for the purpose of destroying herself and her sister, how did the boy come to drink it?”
I said nothing, but merely nibbled at my lip.
It was a dreadful but alarmingly possible theory.
Emma was just devoted enough to take Lucy’s life to save her from the horror of a state execution.
Naturally she would take her own life as well.
I hated to admit it, but Brisbane might well have deduced it.
He passed a hand over his brow. I looked at him sharply.
“Headache?”
He smiled, a thin, wry twist of the lips. “Not yet. I have managed to keep them at bay for some time.”
“A new medicine?” I asked hopefully.
“Of a sort.”
I had discovered during our last investigation that Brisbane was prey to violent headaches, migraines of the most virulent type. After employing traditional medicines to no avail, he had been driven to more exotic methods.
He rose and rummaged in the wardrobe for a moment, returning with a peculiar piece of apparatus he placed on the floor in front of him.
It was a tall, slender glass vessel, reaching as high as his knee and divided into a few chambers.
Into one he poured some water. Then he fiddled with a live coal and a bit of silver paper and a small greenish-brown brick of some substance I did not recognise.
There was a tube attached to the vessel ending in a carved mouthpiece.
Brisbane put his mouth to it and drew in a breath.
He did this a few more times, and after a moment I could detect a heavy, sweetish smell, very unlike his usual tobacco.
“I know what that is!” I cried suddenly. “It is a hookah!”
“And you know this from your many nights spent in opium dens?” he inquired blandly.
“Alice in Wonderland, actually,” I admitted. “The caterpillar. ‘You are old, Father William.’”
Brisbane said nothing but drew in a deep, languid breath. He held it in rather a long time, then exhaled slowly, letting a thin, sinuous plume of smoke curl over his head.
“That is not your usual tobacco,” I pointed out.
He took another slow, sensual draw off the pipe. “It is called hashish. It is widely used in the East. In small doses it relieves pain and acts as a mild intoxicant.”
“And in large doses?”
Brisbane shrugged. “Hallucinations, if one is stupid enough to take too much.”
I was silent a moment, thinking of the one time I had seen Brisbane in the throes of a sick headache. Absinthe had been his drug of choice then, leaving him prey to hallucinatory stupors. The experience had been disturbing.
But as he smoked, I realised the hashish seemed to have no effect beyond a mellowing of his temper.
He smoked slowly, and as I watched, his pupils dilated and he relaxed visibly.
His posture eased, and his eyes, always expressive, seemed to take on a Byzantine slant.
It was oddly fascinating. He might have been a sultan at his ease in a harim, and I his trembling concubine.
The thought was a diverting one, but this was no time to pursue it.
He said nothing for a long while, then he removed the mouthpiece and held it out to me.
I swallowed hard, then reached out and took it.
His eyes never left mine as I pulled in a modest breath of sweet, heavy smoke.
I coughed and my eyes watered, but by the second draw I was comfortable and by the third I held it, then blew the smoke out slowly between my lips.
He pulled the pipe out of my hands. “That is enough. I shall not be responsible for your corruption.”
I opened my mouth to remonstrate, but he waved me to silence.
“Now,” he began, more briskly than I had expected, “let us theorise for a moment on why anyone else would wish to harm Lucy and Emma.”
“Because they saw or know something they oughtn’t,” I said promptly.
“And who would wish to do that?”
I shrugged. “Poisoning is a woman’s method. We must look to the ladies of the house.”
“Not necessarily,” he began to argue.
I persisted. “I think it was a woman. Moreover, I think she masquerades as a ghost.” I paused, then took a deep breath.
“I saw a phantom last night, at the end of the ladies’ wing in the dorter.
It was at least a head shorter than six feet, and the draperies were filmy stuff, wispy, like fingers of fog. ”
To his credit, Brisbane did not doubt me.
“What did it do?”
“It did nothing. It seemed to look at me, then it vanished.”
He looked at me severely. “I would thank you to save the nursery stories for Charlotte. What did it do?”
“I simply mean it was there one moment, and not the next. It slipped behind a tapestry concealing a hidden passage. That particular passage leads to the lumber rooms in the scriptoria, and from there, one might go anywhere in the Abbey. The ghost might have been about some nefarious business. We have, after all, had a murder and two attempted murders since it appeared.”
Brisbane shook his head slowly. “It is too early to theorise. We must know more. When the ladies have awakened tomorrow, they must be questioned, and the footman as well. And there is still a corpse to examine and the Reverend Twickham to call upon with the news of his curate’s murder.”
I gave him a smug smile. “That ghost is somehow connected to this ghastly business. And you will have to admit that I am right.”
Brisbane said nothing, but resumed his pipe. The smoke curled around his head, thick and sweet. I felt suddenly light as a feather.
“Brisbane, honestly. I do not see how you can stand the smell of it. It makes me feel quite queer.”
He gave me an enigmatic smile and regarded me through half-lidded eyes.
“‘You’ll get used to it in time.’”