The Perfect Poison (26 page)

“I understand.” He concentrated on fastening his shirt. For some reason the pattern of the buttons and buttonholes seemed extraordinarily complicated. “You have every right to demand marriage. But I told you that is the one thing I cannot give you.”

“Rubbish. This is not about marriage. It is about something far more important.”

He planted his hands on his hips. “And just what the hell would that be?”

“The truth.”

He exhaled slowly, deeply. “I cannot give you that, either.”

“Why not?”

He shoved his fingers through his hair. “Because it will destroy what we do have together, and I cannot bring myself to do that. I need you too much.”

“Oh, Caleb, whatever it is, it cannot be so terrible that we cannot face it.” She rushed around the cot and grabbed handfuls of his shirt. “Don’t you understand? We must confront this together.”

“Why?”

“Because it affects us both.”

“It affects me, not you. Do not concern yourself, Lucinda.”

“Stop it.” She was very fierce now. “Do not try to tell me that you are unaware of the connection between us. Even if you were to sail away to the farthest corner of the world tomorrow I would never be free of you.”

The anger overwhelmed him then. He seized her wrists, imprisoning her.

“Nor would I ever escape you,” he said. “No matter what happens to me, no matter how far I sink into madness, I will never forget you, Lucinda Bromley. I swear it on my soul.”

“Madness?” Her eyes widened. “What are you talking about? I realize that you are inclined to become very intense and single-minded, perhaps a trifle obsessive at times. But you are certainly not mad.”

“Not yet.”

He released her and plunged into the maze of bookshelves. When he reached the door of the vault he worked the combination that opened the massive lock.

By the time Lucinda caught up with him, the steel door was opening ponderously to reveal the pool of night behind it. Palpable energy pulsed from the shadows, the result of so many paranormal objects massed together. He felt his senses stir and knew that Lucinda was equally aware of the disturbing currents.

As the opening widened, light from the nearest lamp spilled into the yawning darkness, illuminating the shelves of ancient volumes and strange artifacts. He reached up and took down the heavily worked steel box that contained the journal and the notebook.

Lucinda’s brows crinkled together above the rims of her eyeglasses. She hugged herself and shivered, as though chilled by a cold draft of air.

“What on earth is that?” she asked, wary now.

“The reason I am inclined to be somewhat tense these days.” He strode back through the maze of shelving and set the chest on the table in front of the hearth. Raising the lid, he took out the two leather-bound volumes inside.

She studied the books with an expression of intense curiosity. “What are those?”

“You will be interested to know that the Jones agency has recently solved a rather old case of murder. The killer’s name is Barnabus Selbourne and he has been dead for nearly a century. But Selbourne is not one to allow a little thing like death to stop him. There is a very high probability that he is about to kill again.”

“Dear heaven, who?”

“It appears that I am the next person on his list.”

Comprehension lit Lucinda’s face. Behind the lenses of her eyeglasses her eyes were very blue and very intense. “You believe that little notebook can kill?”

“I believe it has already done so. The victim was my great-grandfather, Erasmus Jones.”

He dropped the book back into the steel chest and picked up the brandy decanter. “You say you want the truth?” He splashed the brandy into a glass. “Very well, sit down and you shall have it.”

She sank slowly into one of the chairs, watching uneasily as he tossed back half the contents of the glass in a single swallow. Then he sat down and removed the notebook from the steel chest again.

“First, the details of our clever little case of murder,” he said. He held the notebook with both hands and contemplated the leather cover. “The motive became clear as soon as I had finished deciphering the code Erasmus employed in his journal. It begins with a love triangle.” He gave her a derisive look. “I did tell you that I am not a romantic, did I not?”

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that once or twice.”

“I’m not at all certain that Erasmus Jones believed in love, either. But he did comprehend desire and the wish to save a young woman from a hellish marriage. Isabel Harkin’s father intended to force her to wed our villain in the piece.”

“Barnabus Selbourne?”

“Yes. It seems Selbourne was known for a violent temper. He had already been widowed three times before he offered Isabel’s father a king’s ransom for her hand. All three of the previous wives had died untimely deaths after what were rumored to be very short and very unhappy marriages.”

“Selbourne murdered them?” she asked quietly.

“That is what Erasmus concluded. As I said, he was determined to save Isabel from the same fate. They eloped. When they returned, Isabel’s father was furious but that was nothing compared to Selbourne’s rage. My great-grandfather wrote in his journal that it was as if Selbourne had been deprived of his chosen prey.”

“What a ghastly expression.”

“Erasmus observed that Selbourne’s previous wives had all had a superficial but nevertheless striking resemblance to each other and to Isabel. Same color hair, eyes, proportions, age and so forth.”

“In other words, Selbourne was obsessed with women who looked like Isabel.”

“In the year following the wedding, two attempts were made to kill my great-grandfather. He suspected Selbourne was behind the attacks but could not prove it. Then Selbourne tried to murder Isabel. At that point, Erasmus considered that he had no alternative. He had to kill Selbourne.”

“How did he plan to do it?” Lucinda asked, fascinated.

“The old-fashioned way. Pistols at dawn. Selbourne was grievously wounded and died two days later. But he had already prepared his revenge in case he did not survive the encounter. He intended it to be a dish served very cold indeed.”

“What happened?”

“A few weeks after the duel, this little volume came into my great-grandfather’s hands. It was rumored to be a lost notebook of none other than Sylvester Jones. Erasmus was, of course, intrigued with it and immediately set about trying to decipher the code.”

“Did he succeed?”

Caleb set the book on the table. “After spending some weeks working on it he was able to translate portions but they made no sense. He concluded that there was another code concealed within the first and began trying to find the patterns. In the ensuing months he became increasingly obsessed with deciphering the notebook. He very quickly went insane. Shortly thereafter he died.”

“What happened to him?”

“In the end he set fire to his own laboratory, jumped out a window and broke his neck.” Caleb tilted his head against the back of the chair. He closed his eyes. “But not before he made certain that his journal and the notebook would be preserved for those who came after him who possessed his talent.”

Lucinda shivered. “What a great tragedy.”

Caleb opened his eyes and drank some more brandy. He lowered the glass with great precision. “And thus was a family legend born.”

“Jones men who are born with your sort of talent are condemned to be driven mad by their psychical abilities? Is that the legend?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really believe that there is something about that notebook that drove your great-grandfather mad?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that the notebook was written by Sylvester?”

“No. It is most certainly a forgery created by Barnabus Selbourne.”

“How could a book drive a man insane?” she asked.

“I think there is something about the code.” Caleb turned the brandy glass in his hand. “Deciphering it became a compulsion for Erasmus. He sank deeper and deeper into the maze, seeking the pattern, but he never found it. He knew that he was going insane but somewhere along the line he became convinced that the secret to avoiding his fate was in the damned notebook. In the end, however, he was lost.”

She leaned forward and put a hand on his thigh. The warm touch had a miraculously calming effect on his senses.

“You speak as though the book cast some sort of spell over your great-grandfather,” she said gently. “Surely you do not believe in magic, Caleb.”

“No. But I do believe in the power of obsession. God help me, Lucinda, for months now I have felt myself being sucked into the chaos inside that abominable notebook.”

“Burn it,” she said forcefully.

“If only I could. I think of that option every day and every night. I have lost track of the number of times I have built a fire on the hearth and tried to throw the notebook into the flames. I have not been able to make myself do it.”

“What stops you?” she asked.

He looked at her. “The same thing that stopped Erasmus. I know it sounds bizarre and irrational, but my talent tells me that I dare not destroy the book before I discover its secrets.”

“Why not?”

“For some reason I cannot explain I am certain that, although the notebook may be the death of me, it is also my only hope of escaping the curse.”

“Hmm.”

He finished the brandy and set the glass on the table. “I do not know quite what sort of reaction I expected from you but ‘hmm’ definitely isn’t it.”

He felt oddly crushed. He had told himself he did not want her pity but she could have shown a bit more sympathy. Before he could come to terms with his own reaction to that little ‘hmm’, she picked up the notebook and opened it.

“Well, well, well,” she said, turning the pages slowly. “How interesting.”

He gripped the arms of his chair and shoved himself to his feet. He needed another brandy.

“I’m glad you find the bloody thing interesting,” he said. He picked up the decanter and poured himself another stiff dose. “Especially since I doubt that you can even read the title page. It is written in the same damned code Selbourne used throughout the notebook.”

“I cannot read it,” she said, calmly turning another page. “But I can tell you that it certainly is not going to drive you mad.”

He nearly dropped the decanter. For a moment all he could do was stare at her, transfixed.

“How do you know that?” he said finally.

She riffled through a few more pages. “You are right about the notebook. It did drive your great-grandfather mad but not by luring him into a chaotic universe created by an undecipherable code.”

He forgot about the brandy, just stood there, staring at her, mesmerized.

“How, then?” he asked. Even to his own ears his voice sounded harsh and raw.

“Poison, of course.”

“Poison?”

She wrinkled her nose. “It is infused into the very pages of the book. The paper was no doubt dipped into the toxic substance and then allowed to dry before the author took up his pen. Every time your great-grandfather turned a page he absorbed a little more of it. I suspect that Selbourne used gloves to protect himself when he wrote the nonsense in the notebook. Fortunately for you, the stuff is now nearly a century old.”

It dawned on him that she was holding the notebook in her bare hands. “Damn it to hell, Lucinda, put it down.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “Why?”

“You just said it was poisoned.” He snatched the notebook from her fingers and hurled it into the cold fireplace. “You must not touch it.”

“Oh, it won’t affect me or most other people, for that matter. The poison is psychical in its effects but it is finely tuned to work only on an individual with your particular talent. I can sense it but it will not harm me.”

“Are you certain?”

“Positive.” She looked at the book. “Selbourne must have been something of a genius with poisons to have prepared such an elegantly lethal substance. I suspect his talent was quite similar to my own.”

“He was nothing like you. Selbourne was an alchemist rumored to have dabbled in the occult.”

“I think it more likely he dabbled in some very exotic hallucinatory substances. I recognize a few of the ingredients in the poison but not all. I suggest you burn the thing.”

“An excellent idea.” He went to the hearth and set about making a fire. “It is strange but even now that I know that it was poisoned, part of me resists the notion of destroying the notebook.”

“Your unnatural interest in it is perfectly understandable. The stuff has lost most of its potency but there is still more than enough to rattle your senses and create that unhealthy fascination you feel for it. Your great-grandfather would have stood no chance against the power of the poison when it was fresh.”

He watched the flames take hold and start to lick at the little book. “I was right about one thing, that damned notebook was the murder weapon.”

“Yes.”

He rose, gripped the mantel with one hand and used the iron poker to prod the leather covers open so that the flames could more easily reach the pages. He had to fight the urge to pull the damned thing out of the fire.

“I would advise you to move away from the flames,” Lucinda said. “It is quite possible that the smoke contains traces of the poison.”

“Should have thought of that myself.” He went back to the chair, sat down and watched the book burn. “I owe you my sanity and my life, Lucinda.”

“Rubbish. I do not doubt but that you could have continued to resist the effects of the poison.”

He looked at her. “I am not at all sure of that. Even if it did not succeed in driving me mad, it would certainly have made my life a living hell.”

“Yes, well, I will allow that it is extremely fortunate that you are so singularly strong-minded. I fear that a man endowed with a weaker psychical constitution would likely have been fitted with a straitjacket by now.”

He forced himself to look away from the burning book. “Will I feel this damned mesmeric fascination for the thing the rest of my life even though the book has been turned into ashes?”

“No, the effects will fade quite quickly. But a few more cups of the tisane that I prepared for you will hurry the recovery process along, especially now that you are no longer being exposed to the poison.” She gave him a suspicious look. “You have been drinking the tisane, have you not?”