Chapter Twelve #3
Kehinde, seeing Silas for the first time, stepped toward him. Elswyth thought he would receive a lecture for entering an unmarried woman’s home uninvited. Instead, Kehinde embraced him. “Dear boy. It is good to see you.”
Silas smiled, a more genuine expression than she had ever seen on him. “You too, old friend,” he said.
Elswyth looked between them, uncertain of what she was witnessing. “You two know each other?”
Kehinde turned toward her, grinning. “Of course. I knew Silas when he was barely up to my knee. And before he got so serious.”
Silas looked almost sheepish. “Your uncle and Kehinde were instrumental in my coming to London. I owe them a great debt. They also sponsored my application to the Explorer’s Club, for which I am eternally grateful.”
Elswyth tried to hide her shock. She’d seen Percival speak to Silas at society events, but Percival spoke to everyone as though they were old friends. How had she not known?
Silas gestured to the closed door, where Kehinde’s friends waited. “Where was my invitation?” he asked playfully. “Don’t tell me Madame Okoye has made jollof rice? She knows it’s my favorite.”
Kehinde smiled. “No, no, tonight I cooked. Come, have some bean cakes.” He began to pull Silas toward the door, but the expression on Silas’s face stopped him.
He looked between Silas and Elswyth, and something curious passed behind his eyes.
“Ah. It seems you had more interesting matters to attend to this evening.”
“I would say so,” Elswyth said. She quickly recounted the events at Syon House, watching Kehinde’s eyes go wide.
“I see,” he said. “Perhaps I shall end my little party early tonight. Silas, can you get home safely?”
He nodded, and Kehinde clapped him on the shoulder before returning to the drawing room. Silas then turned to her, his smile vanishing. He bowed quickly, wet curls of black hair sticking to his forehead. “Good night, Miss Elderwood.”
“Good night, Sir Silas.” Silas turned away and moved to the door. Elswyth, suddenly uncomfortable, added: “And thank you.”
Silas paused in the doorway, his back to her. He said nothing. Then he was gone, vanishing into the rain.
Elswyth waited, sitting by the fire in her soaking gown, while Kehinde escorted his friends to their carriages.
In a moment, Kehinde returned, clicking the door shut behind him.
“Apologies, Miss Elderwood. I try to schedule my dinner parties for when I have the house to myself. Would you like to try some food?”
Elswyth shook her head. “Perhaps another time. I’m afraid the sight of Captain Burr has turned my stomach. Is there tea?”
He sighed. “It may be an occasion for beer, instead. Light or dark?”
“Dark,” Elswyth said. Kehinde went to a small barrel near the bar and pulled a draft.
He handed it to her, and she sipped, down past the creamy head, even as her hands shook around the glass.
The coolness of it soothed her dry throat, but something about the flavor nagged at her.
She looked at Kehinde and tested the beer with her floromantic sense.
Then she spat her beer back into her glass and scowled at him.
“Really, Kehinde? Even now? I’ve just seen a man murdered. ”
Kehinde leaned back in his chair, a strange smile on his face.
“A man poisoned, Miss Elderwood. I would think that my lessons are more important now than ever. It may seem callous, but it is necessary. And it’s nothing you can’t handle.
” He brought out his silver pocket watch and tapped it. “Tick tock,” he said.
Elswyth frowned and closed her eyes, focusing on the poison in her blood.
Several plant essences appeared in her mind’s eye.
Deadly nightshade, Atropa belladonna, was the most obvious.
Beneath that was yellow jasmine, Gelsemium sempervirens, a paralytic when concentrated into alkaloid form.
The trickiest was strychnine, a chemical poison derived from the seeds of Strychnos nux-vomica that was remarkably difficult to create floromantically.
It killed by muscle contraction, which complicated her antidote for the paralytic effects of the yellow jasmine.
Her body reacted almost instinctually now, beginning to fabricate the antidotes.
Yet she still struggled to untangle that particular knot of poisons.
She concentrated, fighting the toxins as they spread.
When she had settled the worst of it, she set her glass back down on the table. “These lessons may not prove useful after all. I know of no poison that can kill a man with flowers from the inside. Do you?”
Kehinde considered. “There are stranger things in this world than you or I will ever know. But I agree, it is not a poison I have ever seen. Twisted floromancy, to be sure.”
“I have been trying to puzzle out what could have possibly caused it. His drink? His dinner? But I was not able to inspect Captain Burr’s body. They herded all the women away like sheep.”
“Perhaps that was for the best.”
“What do you mean?” Elswyth asked.
Kehinde shrugged and sipped his beer. “From what you said, people knew you were no friend of Captain Burr.”
“You don’t mean to imply that they think I poisoned him?”
“You were seen arguing with a man right before he was murdered, Elswyth.”
“Yes, but…” She sputtered. Of course she wouldn’t have poisoned him, even if she had found him repugnant.
Kehinde raised a hand. “Your uncle and I will handle it. But it would be helpful if the identity of the real killer was discovered.”
“Is it not obvious?” Elswyth asked.
“You believe that this is the work of the Reaper.”
“Asphodel, Kehinde. The same that grows in place of the stolen organs of all his victims.”
“My regrets follow you to the grave,” Kehinde said thoughtfully. “If this is indeed the Reaper, perhaps he is sending a message.”
“What, that he regrets the murders?” Elswyth said.
Kehinde stood, getting closer to the fire and warming his hands. He looked up at the walls around him, into the glassy eyes of the taxidermied animals there. “There are other reasons to take a life than mere malice, Elswyth.”
Elswyth frowned. The thought troubled her.
Kehinde continued to think, tapping his fingers on the mantel. “And yet it seems that Captain Burr has nothing to do with Hazel Fairburn and the other dead women.”
“Nothing we can see. But he had a connection to Persephone,” Elswyth said, growing excited.
“If this truly was the work of the Reaper, then Captain Burr is the victim with the most in common with my sister. Hyacinth Thatcher said that he had fancied her, and Venus implied that Persephone had rejected him. At first, I thought that made him a suspect—”
“And now he is a victim,” Kehinde said. “But the question remains: Why would the Reaper want this man dead?”
“I do not know yet. But he did. Perhaps for the same reason he wanted Persephone dead, whatever that may be. This lends credence to our theory that the Reaper is a nobleman. He could have very well been there tonight.”
“Perhaps. But, Elswyth, if this is so, then the Reaper is closer than we thought. If he can sneak poison into Captain Burr’s drink, then he can do the same to anyone. Even you.”
Elswyth chilled. She closed her eyes, but the image of Captain Burr’s corpse was there waiting for her.
She took one last look into the cup of poisoned beer on the table. Then she lifted it to her lips and drank.