“I heard a snuffling noise just as we came near to it. There! I heard it again.”
“I have thorns in my sit-upon parts,” he said aggrievedly.
“I have no doubt you will recover in due course,” I told him firmly. “But whilst you sit and nurse your injuries, I will be unmasking a villain.”
There is no substitute for the element of surprise in such situations, and I had no intention of wasting the advantage that Fate had so kindly presented to me. With that, I launched myself from the concealment of the shrubbery and into the belly of the beast. It is my custom, at these kinds of critical moments, to employ the tactics of the Viking berserker or the Maori and issue a battle cry in order to strike terror into the heart of my foes. In this instance, I chose a particularly chilling one, delivered in the original Gaelic.
“Sons of the hounds, come here and get meat!”
With the Celtic invocation still rolling in my throat, I burst into the Megalosaurus, ready to do battle with whatever dastardly malcontent had taken Beatrice’s life. I landed in a half-crouch, hands curled into fists and knees flexed, teeth bared in a snarl. Instantly, I was assailed—a heavy blow landed squarely in my solar plexus, driving the wind from my lungs and causing me to drop to my knees. At the same time, a foul-smelling liquid drenched me from head to hem, leaving behind an oleaginous green slime. Hampered by the pond-like condition of my hair hanging in my face, I could see little except shapes in the gloom of the dinosaur. I leapt up with a roar, flinging myself in the direction of the shapes. I made contact with one and hurled it to the ground, deeply gratified to hear its shriek of pain.
“Surrender, villain!” I cried.
“For god’s sake, Veronica!” I heard Stoker behind me, exclaiming in astonishment.
“Stand down, Stoker, I have the matter in hand and the other miscreant may be armed,” I ordered. I drove my knee into my prisoner’s softer parts—the stomach, I guessed, and was rewarded with another shriek. “Explain yourself!”
“She might if you left off suffocating her,” Stoker said sternly. He shoved me aside and I pushed my hair out of my face in time to see him hauling J. J. Butterworth to her feet. She whooped in air as she looked at me reproachfully.
“Good gad, Veronica,” she said hoarsely as she put a hand to her side. “I think you have cracked a rib.”
“Well, it is as much as you deserve for attacking me,” I pointed out. I saw from the silver vase lying on the floor that she had hurled one of the epergnes at me. The foul-smelling liquid was the flower water in which the blooms of last night’s arrangements had been quietly, warmly rotting. Decaying petals festooned my hair and dress and I shook the fetid matter from my soaked skirts.
“Attacking you! You are the one who burst in here as if all the loosed demons of Hell were after you,” she retorted. “What was that you shouted?”
“The battle cry of Clan Cameron,” I told her. “It is said to strike terror into the heart of the clan’s foes. And I thought you were a murderer,” I pointed out, mildly annoyed that Stoker had taken out one of his vast red bandanna handkerchiefs and was using it to wipe a few stray droplets of stinking water from his sleeve whilst I stood quietly dripping from every possible part of my anatomy.
“Veronica,” Stoker said, his voice dangerously quiet, “you do not seem at all surprised to see J. J.”
Before I could reply, a low moan sounded from the depths of the beast. A second person was still concealed in the shadows, and I peered into the gloom to see Julien huddled on the floor, a bottle of excellent cognac cradled in his arms. He snuffled softly and I crept near, careful to keep my damp person from despoiling his clothes. I needn’t have bothered. Julien, usually so fastidious that not a mark could be found upon the pristine white of his chef’s coat, was thoroughly disheveled. His velvet cap had been discarded and his coat was streaked with various substances, none of which I cared to identify.
“Julien,” I said gently. “Are you quite all right?”
“Of course he is not,” J. J. snapped. “He is distraught about what happened last night.”
Julien let out another low moan, this one punctuated with long phrases in sobbed French. I recognised one word—“ruination”—and put my hand to his arm.
“Of course you are not ruined,” I said stoutly. “You are in no way responsible for what happened to Contessa Salviati.”
He lifted mournful eyes to mine, his swollen and swimming in tears. He smelt strongly of cognac and sugar. He continued to bewail his fate, and I listened for some time before my patience began to ebb.
“My dear fellow, I am quite fluent in French, but I am afraid my skills are not equal to your Caribbean patois, particularly when you are sobbing half the words. Now, dry your eyes, there’s a good man, and tell me what troubles you.”
He did as I bade him, wiping his eyes upon his already untidy sleeve. He gave a great gulping snuffle and then took a bracing sip of cognac. “The mushrooms. I gather them myself for the consommé. From the forest. What if I made a mistake? What if I have killed her?”
He finished on a low moan, dropping his head into his folded arms.
Stoker put a consoling hand to his shoulder. “It was not the mushrooms, Julien. It was strychnine.”
Julien lifted his head, eyeing Stoker suspiciously, as if not daring to hope. “You are certain, my friend?”
“I am,” Stoker returned stoutly.
“You have done the tests of the chemicals?” Julien demanded.
“Well, no,” Stoker admitted. “There is to be no inquest, and without a proper postmortem—”
Julien gave another moan and took a long pull at the bottle of cognac. “All of my fine cooking, the dishes I have created, the triumphs in my kitchens. It will not matter. There will be talk. The story will go abroad. I cooked in a house where a lady met her death. They will whisper that it was my fault and I will be finished.”
