“Three.”
“Three what?”
“Three hot, interesting people,” I mumbled.
“That weird guy who was handing out tea? Okay,definitelygo for it. He is fucking gorgeous, and I don’t even like dudes. Who is he, anyway? I haven’t seen him before, and I’d remember a face like that. He’s a thing of beauty. What kind of a name is Quoth?”
“He said his parents were seventies goths,” I went with the cover story I invented for Quoth. Jo snorted. “I know, right? He’s a friend of Morrie’s. He’s staying at the flat for a while. He’s an artist – really good one, too.”
“He did those paintings hanging around the shop?”
I nodded.
“Okay, youhaveto date him. Artists are always good with their hands.”
The heat crept down my neck. “This is insane.”
“Not at all. Once you’re sleeping with him, can you get me a discount? I’ve got my eye on that painting above Heathcliff’s desk.”
“I can probably get you a discount.”
“And I want all the gory details. I’ve only ever had one threesome. It was with my last girlfriend, Dr. Adele Martinez, and her young technician, Michael Rousseau, at the annual digital pathology symposium. After one too many G&Ts at the conference dinner, we decided to sneak into the mortuary for our dalliance. Rousseau got so freaked out when we told him to lie on the autopsy table that he ran away and myself and Adele continued on our own. So I guess it wasn’t really a threesome at all. I want to know what it’s like with all those dicks flying around—”
“Can we talk about something other than my sex life or threesomes or flying dicks? You did Gladys Scarlett’s autopsy today. Was it a heart attack?”
“Nope.” Jo tapped her nails against the stem of her glass. “It turns out your local busybody Mrs. Scarlett didn’t die from natural causes.”
“No?” My chest tightened.
“I found high levels of arsenic in her blood. She’s been poisoned.”
Chapter Eight
“Poisoned? But… how?”
“I’ll know more once I get the toxicology results back from the lab, but a lethal dose of arsenic is usually administered in food or drink, because it dissolves easily in liquid and it doesn’t have much of a taste.”
My heart thudded. “But we all ate food at the meeting. Could we all be—”
Jo held my hand. “Relax, Mina. I’d have notified you immediately if that was the case. If you’d ingested any arsenic, you would have felt symptoms by now. The body tries to expel the poison by vomiting and diarrhea. Also, didn’t Gladys only eat very specific food because of her intolerances?”
“Yes, that’s right. We all drank from the same teapot, but she had her own plate of sandwiches and treats. But that means…”
After the food was delivered, only myself, Quoth, and the ladies went anywhere near it. Someone in the Banned Book Club must have administered the poison.
Jo nodded. “I can tell by your face exactly what you’re thinking, and you’re right. It means one of those kind old biddies is a cold-blooded murderer. Can I get you another drink?”
I pushed my empty glass away. “I’m not thirsty anymore.”
“Really? I’m parched. Murder cases are thirsty work.” Jo waved at the landlord, who ambled over with two more glasses for our tab. “This case is fascinating. Arsenic was actually one of the most common types of poison to be used throughout history. Murderers love it because it has no obvious taste, and the symptoms can appear similar to dysentery or cholera, which were pretty common.”
“So it’s not difficult to make?”
“Oh no. It’s a simple chemical process that’s been known to poisoners since Ancient Egypt, and it was a particular favorite murder method of the Borgia family. Apparently, they’d spread it on the entrails of a pig, leave them to rot, then dry what remained and grind it into a powder calledla cantarella, which they added to the food or drink of their enemies.”
“You sure know a lot about killing people,” I mused.
“Hello, I’m a forensic pathologist,” Jo grinned, pointing to her chest. “I’ve got loads more stories if you want to hear them, but you might have trouble holding down your dinner. This is actually my first arsenic poisoning. You don’t see it used much anymore. During the Industrial Revolution, arsenic was as common as mud because of the huge demand of iron and lead – the extracted ore contained arsenic, and during smelting, the arsenic would condense in the chimneys as a white solid that could be scraped off and sold. Every household had arsenic for killing rats and mice and other vermin. Now, of course, you’d need a special license to purchase it, or access to an industrial plant where it’s stored. It’s not a very common poison anymore, which means it should be easy to figure out who’d have access to it.”
