Chapter 19 #2
Aconite, monkshood, wolfsbane. Distilled in the cut-glass decanter, blooming in the Full Moon’s garden, circling the pages of Saint Ciwa’s story. On the pages of the family Bible and in the Blevins crest.
But Caroline did not have time to follow these thoughts to any conclusion. For footsteps—light, quick footsteps—fell in the hallway.
She shoved the book back into the stack by the bed, dropped to her hands and knees, and pulled the porcelain chamber pot from under the mattress.
It’s not Mr. Tythe, she told herself, frozen in this strange posture. It’s another guest on this floor, Mr. Bajwa, perhaps–
But the brass handle turned, and the door opened.
“Oh!” Mr. Tythe exclaimed, taking a step backward. Caroline looked up with an innocent smile.
The naturalist gathered himself. “Forgive me for shouting. You gave me quite a fright, Miss Huxley.” He placed a child-size hand on his heart, cocked his head to one side as though listening. “One hundred and fifty beats per minute, I’d guess.”
“I’m so sorry to have surprised you,” Caroline said smoothly, sliding the lidded pot beneath his bed and rising awkwardly to her feet. “I usually tidy the rooms earlier in the morning, but today there’s been so much to do—”
“Not to worry,” Mr. Tythe interrupted. His fingers were now at his throat; he’d drawn a silver watch from his breast pocket and was staring in concentration at the moving hands. “One-hundred forty-eight,” he said after a moment, with an air of satisfaction. “But dropping rapidly.”
He tucked the watch back into the pocket of his vest and turned his eyes, behind their absurdly thick lenses, on her.
Caroline had spent very little time with the naturalist. She thought him quaint but oddly charming in a pediatric sort of way. In any other social circle, she felt certain, he would have been relentlessly mocked. But the guests of the Full Moon treated him with a sort of parental affection.
“In fact,” he said, in his high, reedy voice, “I’m glad to have happened upon you, Miss Huxley. There’s something I’ve been meaning to give you—”
The little man crossed the room to the writing desk. Stacks of handwritten papers rose to his eyeline, and amid them sat a strange knobbed contraption with a long brass rod. A microscope, Caroline thought distantly.
“I picked it up a few weeks ago,” he said, rattling open the top desk drawer, “at an exhibition of non-marine mollusks at the Linnean Society. I thought it would be of especial interest to you.”
Caroline blinked. She could not imagine a collection of words she would have less interest in. But as the naturalist made a sound of discovery and turned, cradling something small in his hands, she forced her face into an expression of pleasant anticipation.
“Here you are,” Mr. Tythe said triumphantly, opening his hands.
On his palm, the size of a shilling, sat a shell.
“Cepaea hortensis,” he said proudly. “The white-lipped snail. And a particularly fine specimen, if I may say so myself.”
Caroline had no idea how to react. Mr. Tythe’s mouth had broken into an exultant smile, and he was gazing up at her expectantly.
“Oh,” she exclaimed, a bit flatly. “Oh, it’s beautiful!”
The naturalist nodded enthusiastically. “It is, isn’t it? The number of dark bands can vary, but entomologists have not yet found a specimen with more than five.” He laughed. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”
He lifted the snail shell, and Caroline dutifully cupped her hands to receive it.
The shell was light as a leaf, its inhabitant long dead.
But as she turned it this way and that, feigning admiration, Caroline found that the shell was beautiful.
It had been cleaned of garden dirt and oiled, perhaps; it was both red-brown and the color of cream, the bands spiraled together.
Mr. Tythe, watching her with the excitement of a child, said “I just knew, Miss Huxley, when I saw it at the exhibition. I knew it must belong to you.”
Caroline was not quite quick enough to hide the surprise that spasmed over her face.
Mr. Tythe seemed to catch it, for when he spoke again, it was in a professorial tone.
“Cepaea hortensis is found throughout the British Isles. But it’s particularly common in the Midlands.
” His unselfconscious smile widened. “I thought it might remind you of home.”
Caroline’s throat tightened. As politely as she could, she thanked Mr. Tythe and took her leave, claiming a preponderance of work left to do.
—
Upstairs, Caroline put Mr. Tythe’s snail shell on her desk and stared at it.
It did remind her of Audley House. Of Cook complaining about the sorry state of the lettuces, of black clouds of birds flocking to the garden on rainy mornings to pluck the poor things off the walls.
She had never noticed their color, their pattern; had not considered, even, that there were different kinds of snails.
But she had much more pressing concerns than nonmarine mollusks.
Aconitum. A poisonous flower that, when ingested, causes dizziness, headaches, death.
There were two doors in the Full Moon that Caroline had not opened. One was Rab’s door, which she would never unlock without the key he kept in his breast pocket. The other was the scarred door on the east wing of the second floor.
There was nothing left, no stone unturned, but whatever lay behind those two doors. She had to open them. Before the next full moon.
That night, after the supper dishes were washed and the floor swept, Caroline stretched her arms overhead and wrinkled her nose at the smell emanating from her underarms.
“I think I’ll have a bath,” she said casually, unhooking the biggest pot from over the stove and carrying it up the cellar stairs. “I smell like Senhor Perreira.”
Mrs. Easton, who was bent over tomorrow’s shopping list at the broad kitchen table, snorted. The Portuguese was the least hygienic of the Full Moon’s guests; Caroline breathed through her mouth whenever she had to change his sheets.
“I doubt I’m much better,” said the landlady. “I’ll go after you.”
Her key ring was, as always, hanging on her belt. Caroline had tried not to stare at it as she went about her tasks that afternoon.
It was a half-formed plan and relied so much on luck that Caroline’s stomach churned. But she must take the chance, however foolhardy.
Mrs. Easton stoked the embers while Caroline carried four pot loads of water from the garden spigot to the stove—spilling, she noted with distant pride, very little down the stairs—then dragged the tin tub from the corner by the larder.
As the water heated—God, did it always take this long?—Caroline sat at the table beside Mrs. Easton, nursing a finger of Armagnac and trying not to fidget.