Page 91 of A Devilish Element
Bereft of an explanation, Eliza simply raised her shoulders.
“Glowing? Like a lantern?”
“What she says is true.” Bell straightened the set of his wig, then gave a shudder as if to cast off his unease. “There’s a spectral cast to his organs, an incandescence. Good Lord, I’ve lost count of the number of corpses I’ve examined. Young, old, rich, poor, bodies that had decades in the ground and those fresh from the gallows. I’ve dissected them all, but never once have I witnessed such as this, nor heard mention of such lambent light as part of the process of decomposition. It’s eerie. It sends a shiver down the spine.”
Such a reaction gripped him at that very moment.
To Eliza, the fact that Bell was shaken made the occurrence more disturbing. Panic was not part of his usual demeanour, nor any hint of fragility. He continued making staccato bursts of movement, clasping and unclasping his hands, and taking long-legged strides that took him nowhere in particular, but left his cheeks increasingly ruddy, while Jem scratched his chin.
“Eliza?”
“It’s like pixy-light,” she began uncertainly, quite as baffled by it as Bell. “I don’t think the cause supernatural, though. It’s probably caused by a chemical reaction related to decomposition.”
“Nonsense.” Bell slashed a hand through the air. “Have I not just said it is not that? This is not a normal occurrence. It is true, that there are spurious reports of bones glimmering in the dark, but not the soft tissues. Never the tissues. Man does not glow. He is neither firefly nor fungi. The bowels do not create light.”
“Fungi glow in the dark?” Jem muttered.
Eliza levelled him with a look. Perhaps he was unfamiliar with foxfire. In any case, there’d been no mushrooms served at dinner.
Bell continued his agitated rambling. It recalled to Eliza Jane’s back and forth march before the dining room fireplace earlier. Could she be entirely certain about her friend? They’d agreed to trust one another, but what if Jane were behind this? She was not without knowledge of toxins. They had nurtured the same kitchen garden during their stay at Miss Hardacre’s School, learned its plants names and uses by rote, but naught among them glowed like Linfield’s bowels were doing.
“Ludlow, I think you might agree that this is not a typical situation,” Jem began, attempting to engage the physician in some reasoned discourse. “If Linfield has been poisoned by a substance it would usually be inadvisable to eat, then might that not cause the phenomenon you’ve just witnessed?”
They both waited while Bell thoughtfully scratched his clean-shaven jaw. “It is possible, one supposes. I guess it is the hypothesis we have. Pray, give me a moment, and I will resume my examination. But I do not anticipate finding mushrooms in his bowels.” He idled by the skeletal remains of Jem’s chemistry apparatus.
“There are other poisons besides toadstools,” Eliza said. “Might we consider them?”
Jem nodded. “Bell?”
“What?”
“Other toxins?”
“Yes.”
Eliza wasn’t certain he was taking the words in.
Jem reached for a clean vessel and poured brandy into it. He then pressed the flat-bottomed flask on the doctor. “Drink.” The two men shared a moment of mutual grim humour, before Bell downed the spirit in one. Fortified, he wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve and returned to his workspace. They both followed, but Eliza stayed Jem at the door. “Don’t if you’ll regret it.”
“I’ll stay on the threshold. I can’t sit idle while the two of you investigate. Something or someone has killed him, and I mean to determine who and bring them to justice. He was a bastard, Eliza, a scoundrel, but he didn’t deserve this.”
She nodded, then returned to her former position on the opposite side of the operating table to Bell, whose face remained grimly shadowed and drawn. Linfield’s inners still glowed with that same eerie light. She watched studiously as Bell cracked his lordship’s ribs, then removed his innards, placing them on a tray and removing them to a clear surface on which to examine them.
Eliza relit the candles he’d snuffed and moved them closer to the organs.
“There’s evidence of tissue damage consistent with chemical burns, but otherwise he seems entirely healthy. No obvious liver cirrhosis. No ulcers. No fungi. I can examine the brain, once I’m done with the intestines—”
“Is that entirely necessary?” Jem asked. “Surely the answer is staring you in the face. He was poisoned by whatever is causing that ghastly gleam.”
“It’s dimming slightly, I think,” Eliza wafted the air before her up towards her nose. “The smell is dispersing too. Not the offal smell, I mean the other one. The garlic scent.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” the doctor replied. “But, aye, you may be right about the glow.”
“That would be consistent with something reacting with the air,” Jem said. “I mightn’t be the most competent chemist, but I know that. Oxidation of some sorts.”
“Aye, perhaps,” Bell muttered as he sliced open his lordship’s heart. “Though don’t ask me what manner of poison could do this.” He continued with his neat cuts and even smeared some samples onto slides to view beneath his microscope.
Vexed by the matter, Eliza rubbed her temple. Most of the poisons she was familiar with were plant extracts. “Hemlock, nightshade, aconite, foxgloves… They all caused nausea and vomiting, some, arrhythmia, but—”
