Jewel of the Thames (A Portia Adams Adventure) (15 page)

I closed my eyes, feeling the burden on my shoulders driving me to speak against my better judgment. “There was one … small thing … that I have yet to fully explore—”

“Yes?” he demanded, dropping to his knees in front of my chair. “Anything, Miss Adams! Just give me some small drop of hope!”

I looked into his desperate eyes and could not deny him. “When your father’s meal was delivered, your sister, that is Miss Barclay, she had a small glass vial in her hands … and she was weeping.”

His eyes widened and he stood slowly as if in a trance.

“
I don’t know what is in the vial. I had planned to discover that the next time I gained access to her rooms. I believe it is locked up in the reticule in the anteroom,” I continued.

He was by now pacing with his back turned to me, so I stood as well.

“We need to get into that reticule, Mr. Barclay,” I said. “Do you have a key?”

“
You want to see what is in the vial because you think…” he whispered, back still turned, “you think my sister is poisoning our father with whatever is in that glass vial.”

I gulped. It was a leap without information, and exactly what I had been trying to avoid. “I do not know, Mr. Barclay. I actually suspected something quite different. Nonetheless, it is just one of many unexplained things in those rooms. I would not jump to any conclusions without more data.”

He turned finally, his eyes wide but determined. “But it all makes sense, Miss Adams, don’t you see? It is the guilt that has changed her, made her retreat into herself, made her bar all of us from his side! She wasn’t protecting him — she was covering up her crime!”

I quickly shook my head. “I know it is tempting to take a few pieces of evidence and construct a plausible scenario, but I beg you, Mr. Barclay, let us proceed with caution. We may discover that the glass vial contains something totally innocuous — like salt, for heaven’s sake!”

He closed his eyes again and made a visible effort to get his emotions under control — and that was when we were startled by a brisk knock at my door.

Brian Dawes poked his head in and looked taken aback by my guest.

“Miss Adams, I just ran back to get you, but I think you had better come with us, Mr. Barclay,” Dawes said, taking off his hat and opening the door wide for us to follow him out.

I picked up my coat as I said, “What is it Constable Dawes?”

He was halfway down the stairs when he turned with an apologetic glance at my companion. “The Right Honourable Judge Barclay was pronounced dead ten minutes ago by the coroner.”

Chapter Seven

T
he Barclay house was surrounded by police, press and curious Londoners, and even Constable Dawes struggled to get all three of us through the crowd.

James Barclay had said nothing during the ride over, and only when we had made it through his front doors did he seem to regain his tongue.

“Where is my father?” he demanded of the men in uniform gathered in his foyer.

A man I recognized well stepped forward. “You are James Barclay then, sir?” asked Sergeant Michaels.

Barclay nodded stiffly.

“
Take this man to the front room,” said the sergeant, directing one of his men. “Very sorry for your loss, sir, but your father is still being examined by the coroner.”

I stepped forward. “Still? Is there something suspicious then about the judge’s death, Sergeant?”

Sergeant Michaels looked taken aback by my presence, and then, seeing Constable Dawes, he barked, “This is not the circus, Dawes. You cannot bring friends and family to a crime scene to see the show! Most unseemly!”

Poor Brian had opened his mouth to protest but Barclay stepped in. “Apologies, Sergeant, Miss Adams is here at my behest. I had hired her to investigate something personal in my family, but in light of this,” he spread his hands sadly, “I see no need to keep it a secret any longer.”

“Miss Adams, you are no longer bound to secrecy,” he said, putting his hand on my arm, an action that made Constable Dawes frown. “Anything you can do to aid the police, I would appreciate.”

So saying, he followed the constable out of the foyer and toward his father’s body.

The rest of us stood there, watching his hunched shoulders until Sergeant Michaels cleared his throat. “Hired as an investigator, eh?” He whistled. “Seems like our services aren’t even required here, boys, not with Miss Adams on the case!”

I ignored his sarcasm and instead asked, “Where is Miss Barclay?”

“Locked up tight in her father’s rooms,” answered another officer, pointing up the stairs. “As soon as we carried Judge Barclay out of his room to the front rooms where he could be examined, she locked herself in.”

I started up the stairs. “Has aught been done to bring her out?”

“No, we thought we would leave a murderer to live out her days in the comfort of her apartments,” answered Sergeant Michaels, rolling his eyes. “We thought she was safe enough up there while we dealt with the body.”

I turned toward him with my hand on the railing. “You’ve already convicted her, then?”

Sergeant Michaels crossed his beefy arms over his chest. “The doctor smelled poison on the poor man’s breath as we were bringing him down the stairs. He’s running some tests to confirm it now. Miss Barclay is the only one with the means, motive and opportunity to do such a thing, and in my business, that is all you need.”

I looked up the stairs to where two policemen stood outside the bedroom. “Well, in my business, you also need hard evidence.”

Michaels snorted.

I headed the rest of the way up the stairs, and at the bedroom door, I knocked twice. “Miss Barclay? Miss Barclay, it’s Portia…”

There was silence from the other side of the door. I glanced at the officer to my left. “Is she in the bedroom or the outer room?”

He shrugged, so I turned the door handle and immediately discovered the answer to my question. For the first time since I had been in this house, the room was bathed in sunlight, the drapes spread wide, and, as I suspected, Elaine Barclay was nowhere to be seen.

Motioning for the officers to stay where they were, I looked behind me to see Constable Dawes follow me into the room, his nightstick at the ready.

He nodded encouragingly at me, so I walked over to the reticule and to my surprise found it open. Inside, amongst some goblets and liquor, I found a single glass vial containing some cream-colored powder. I carefully handed it to one of the officers at the door and was directing him to take it to the medical examiner when I recognized the sound of Miss Barclay weeping.

Hurriedly, I made my way over to her father’s bedroom door, followed again by Constable Dawes.

“
Miss Barclay,” I said through the door, testing the handle. It was locked, this time from the inside. “It’s me, Portia Adams.”

“
Go away!” she wailed.

“
The police are here, Miss Barclay, you must come out,” I explained. “They really must speak to you.”

More wails. “I cannot! You must tell them I cannot! It is not safe!”

“Not safe?” whispered Dawes at my shoulder.

“
Who is not safe, Miss Barclay?” I called out.

“
They didn’t even let me say goodbye to him!” she cried. “And now I will never see him again!”

I absorbed that. “Your father, Miss Barclay? Of course you can see him again. Your brother is with him now. I can take you to them!”

“No, no, you can’t, Portia!” she replied, hiccoughing her words through her tears. “You are not safe, Portia, none of you are!”

Brian shook his head at my questioning raised eyebrow, and then Sergeant Michaels appeared at the outer door, impatiently waving us over.

Brian holstered his weapon and automatically walked over to his superior. Spying the book I had been reading to Judge Barclay on the table, I stooped to pick it up, my senses tingling.

Odd — the bookmark I had laid in it yesterday was there, but there was something strange … this book was newer … the one I had been reading was dog-eared, its pages bent from someone’s habit of licking their finger to turn the pages.

“Miss Adams!” Sergeant Michaels hissed at me from the doorway, but I barely heard him.

Why replace the book with a new one? And so carefully as to place the bookmark between the same pages?

Rudely ignoring the sergeant, I pushed past him and ran out of the anteroom and into the library with the book in hand. Once there, I pulled book after book off the shelves, opening them, flipping through them and tossing them aside in a frenzy. I had made it through a dozen books when the men caught up with me.

“
Miss Adams, I must protest!” Sergeant Michaels said angrily, grasping my shoulder to turn me toward him.

“
Help me find some dramas, please!” I said to the officers who had followed us into the room. “Plays, satires, anything like that, please!”

To my delight, and I’m sure Sergeant Michaels’ consternation, all three men began scanning the bookshelves for books of that genre.

“Miss Adams, that vial you found,” Sergeant Michaels said. “I need to know everything about it. James Barclay claims you have been witness to a most heinous crime!”

“
I have indeed, sir,” I said breathlessly, continuing to scan the bookshelves myself.

“
Here!” announced one of the officers, pointing to the lowest bookshelf in the room. “All of these are dramas and plays, miss!”

He tried to hand one to me, but I raised my hands. “Please, open it?”

He looked confused but obliged me, flipping through a few pages with his gloved hand.

“
Miss Adams!” Sergeant Michaels repeated, his face growing red with impatience. “We believe a man has been poisoned by his own progeny! Surely that deserves your undivided attention.”

“
It does.” I nodded as a second officer joined the first at the lower bookshelf and started flipping through a book of collected sonnets.

“
Well?” demanded Michaels as Brian entered the room, looking around at all the activity in confusion.

“
Has the poison been identified?” I asked, feeling dizziness stealing over me as a third officer pulled a book from that shelf.

“
Yes!” Michaels admitted. “Though a lot of good it will do poor Judge Barclay!”

“
Is there an antidote at hand?” I said, reaching out to steady myself as the third book was flipped open in front of me.

Michaels looked like he was about to explode, even to my suddenly swimming vision. “Yes!” he finally burst out. “But again. The
man
is
dead
!”

“
But we’re not,” I stated, sinking carefully onto the couch, noting the alarm on Brian’s face as I pointed at the bookshelves. “Seal this room and touch nothing else till I wake.”

“
Till you wake?” asked Brian, who was looking very blurry to me, even as he stepped closer.

“
And administer the antidote to Miss Barclay and then myself immediately,” I managed to say before giving in to the darkness.

I awoke on the settee I had selected for myself in the same room, with Dr. Joyce and Brian bent over me. Both heaved sighs as my eyes focused first on the doctor where he crouched beside the settee, and then on Brian, who was hovering over him. “Welcome back, Miss Adams,” the doctor said with a smile.

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said, slowly sitting up with the doctor’s help. “How long was I out?”

“
Less than fifteen minutes, because you knew your own ailment,” replied the doctor, replacing his equipment in his bag. “If only I had known that Marcus was being poisoned with cyanide, I could have cured him as easily and as well, poor man! In small amounts, this particular poison works over time, though you might have a more delicate constitution, Miss Adams, as it affected you quite dramatically. I have administered amyl nitrite now, but you should rest here until you feel better.”

Brian sat down beside me on the couch and wrapped an arm around my shoulders just as Sergeant Michaels and James Barclay entered the library.

“How did you manage to get yourself poisoned, Miss Adams?” Sergeant Michaels demanded.

“
The same way Marcus Barclay did, sir,” I said, looking at James Barclay, feeling Brian’s arm stiffen around me. “And the same way poor Elaine Barclay did.”

Barclay looked decidedly worried, and when he glanced around the room at the books strewn everywhere, he seemed to pale even more.

“Judge Barclay’s food was poisoned by his own child, that much is clear, but how did you and Elaine Barclay come to get poisoned?” Michaels said. “Did she make a mistake? Or did she realize that you saw her administering the poison and somehow poison you as well?”

“
It was a mistake, one the killer tried to correct,” I said, “because they needed me very much alive.”

I tried to stand and pace but didn’t quite have my balance back yet, so I sat back down next to Brian. “The books you see all over the floor — if you examine them, you will see that each has been meticulously poisoned,” I explained, pointing at the books littering the floor. “All except the plays — the Shakespeare, the Henry James, the Greek tragedies — those are untouched.”

“Poisoned?” repeated Michaels. “How do you poison a book?”

“
By applying a liquefied version of the poison to the tops of the pages with a brush, I suspect,” I suggested. “If you knew that your intended victim had the habit of licking their finger and turning the page, it would be a reasonable way to deliver poison.”

“
A reasonable way to…” Sergeant Michaels repeated again. “We already have a ‘reasonable’ way, Miss Adams. Judge Barclay’s food was being poisoned by his daughter, using that very glass vial that you identified!”

“
Yes, that is what I was meant to discover, was it not, Mr. Barclay?” I said, looking at my classmate. “You hired me as an unwitting accomplice to help frame your sister for murder.”

The room went silent at my words, Sergeant Michaels looking back and forth between us, Dr. Joyce and the other officers looking shocked, but I had eyes only for James Barclay. Brian stood up and stalked over to the man’s side, taking hold of his upper arm.

“Answer Miss Adams,” he commanded, his lip curled in an expression I had never seen before.

Barclay said nothing, only stood there, as if in shock.

“But Miss Adams,” said Dr. Joyce, “it was Elaine Barclay who barred my colleagues and I from examining her father, not James. If not for Elaine, one of us would have discovered that the man was being poisoned, and we could have saved Marcus’s life!”

“
Yes, and when Miss Barclay is made aware of that, it will likely haunt her for the rest of her life,” I admitted. “But her crime was gullibility, influenced by her brother’s actions, and fear brought on by months of poisoning. Not premeditated murder.”

I glanced again at Mr. James Barclay, but he remained silent, even with Brian and now Sergeant Michaels looking at him with accusing eyes.

“I will admit that this plan was very bold, but if you examine these books, you will find the evidence I described. I have never taken a meal or even a drink in this house. These books were the only opportunity to poison me, and I contend it was a mistake. If you will allow me to at least demonstrate Miss Barclay’s innocence, I will make an attempt,” I said, standing finally.

Sergeant Michaels had opened his mouth, probably to deny me, but Constable Dawes spoke up. “If you could coax Miss Barclay out of her rooms without violence, that would be helpful to us, Miss Adams.”