Page 52 of A Fearless Heart
Gabe didn’t like how much pain he was causing her now. But she had insisted on the truth.
“Listen, Parrish was actually investigating a few other murders, where the victims were also poisoned with clephobine. Maybe he realized that this estate is the only place where the plant it comes from is growing.”
She nodded slowly, uncertainly. “It’s a New World species. Mine was sent to me by a colleague in Boston. But I’m sure other botanists in England have their own contacts. Did you check with the royal gardens? Theymusthave a specimen. Wait, I remember. They did get a few several years ago, but they died. Anyway, it’s a leap from growing baneberry to committing murder.” Then she blinked and asked, “Lord, do you think I’m the killer?”
“No…not anymore,” he admitted. “Actually, I never thought it was likely, not once I saw you and learned how you’ve not left your estate for months. But I still think that the poison must have come from here.”
“Let’s just take a few steps back,” Cady said, holding up her hands. “I need to understand what you’re saying. What happened to Mr Parrish? I mean, what were the specific symptoms? How did you, or the doctor or whoever, conclude that clephobine was involved?”
Gabe had to be very careful here, so he told the truth but left out everything about the Zodiac. “Well, I have a connection with a certain—let’s say—department of the government. They have ways of finding things out. On the surface, it wasn’t even considered murder. It just looked like Parrish died in his sleep.”
“That makes sense,” Cady said, nodding. “Clephobine works by slowing down all the body’s processes: breathing, blood, heartbeat. A little acts as a calming agent. Too much sends the victim into a coma and then death.”
“Well, some doctor in London has developed some sort of test that shows whether clephobine is present in the body, even after death,” Gabe said. “When he tested the suspected victims, he found traces of the chemical in their organs. Don’t ask me for more details on the process—I don’t know them.”
“Interesting. I’d like to speak to him at some point. I wonder how he devised the test.”
“You’re handling this news very well,” Gabe said suddenly.
“That’s the mushroom tea. I suspected that I’d be rather distressed when I heard the truth about you, so it was wise to drink something soothing first.”
“Wait, if your mushroom tea does that, why make the clephobine at all?”
“The mushroom tea is quite mild. I’d hoped that the clephobine, and then the solution I made from the Iranian salvia, would be more effective. Unfortunately, they both turned out to be far stronger and more dangerous than I’m comfortable with. Hence, the mushroom tea.”
“Will it wear off?”
“Undoubtably, and I hope that I’ll either be asleep or have some answers from you by that point. I don’t look forward to another attack.”
“And I don’t want to be the cause of one. So if you can prove to me that the clephobine wasn’t made here, I can leave tomorrow.”Don’t tell me to leave tomorrow, he thought. For some reason, he wasn’t at all ready to leave Calderwood.
“One can’t prove a negative,” Cady told him with a frown. “That’s one of the most basic rules of logic.”
“I may have skipped out of my lessons that day. Is there anything you can show me that might help?”
“I could show you the scarlet baneberry,” she said. “When you broke in the other night, you actually invaded the wrong glasshouse. Follow me and I’ll take you to the correct one.”
Not long after that, Gabe was standing in yet another glasshouse, a smaller one that was tucked away in a corner, shielded from most people’s attention by a wing of the house and a walled garden on the other side. He never would have found it on his own.
The air here was also humid and warm, and the plants grew with vigor, reaching for the sunlight just past the glass roof. Vines clambered up wooden poles. Deep green, glossy leaves folded like fans in the flickering light of the lantern. And the air was honeyed, with a thickness to it, as if breathing too much might fill up your lungs until you drowned. Part of Gabe was afraid of this place, this slice of the tropics in cold England. A tiny world invading the larger, as out of place as a dagger in a body.
“Now listen closely,” Cady said, looking quite collected, those big brown eyes solemn. “Everythingin here is poisonous. Don’t pick anything, don’t touch anything, don’t eat anything. You may look and ask questions, that’s all.”
“How do you keep these plants alive if you can’t even touch them?”
She gave him a tiny smirk. “Because I know what I’m doing. Now, look here. This one is scarlet baneberry.”
He bent over to get eye to eye with the plant. And that’s exactly how it felt, because at the end of the long, nodding stalk, a cluster of berries grew. The berries were oval and pure white, with a little nub of deep red at the tip, like a bloody pupil.
It was like staring at some monstrous creature with twenty or thirty eyes staring back at him. Unconsciously, he shivered. “Well. That’s…striking.”
Cady nodded happily. “It’s a fascinating plant, isn’t it? The common name among the early settlers was baneberry, because sometimes cattle ate the berries and died. But the natives use other parts of the plant in medicines. The leaves can treat anything from headaches to difficult childbirth. But only in tiny amounts. And the berries are highly poisonous. I’d never even touch a whole berry without gloves, let alone a broken one with the juice exposed. Far too dangerous.”
“What would happen if someone did touch the juice?”
“Depends on the person, but mostly likely they’d show signs of lethargy or confusion, a weakened state, and possibly death due their heart simply failing to beat. Clephobine has been suggested to be a potential medicine for those who have too-rapid heartbeats, or those who might suffer from other heart conditions. But only in minuscule amounts. When the juice and sap is purified and rendered into pure clephobine, even one part in ten thousand could have a lethal effect.”
“You’re very well versed in the details.”
