Brisbane stirred slightly. “He was conscious, giddy even. What does that signify?”
“It signifies that it was not arsenic,” Doctor Bent said, with only the faintest air of triumph. “Did he pass blood?”
Brisbane frowned. “Mordecai, I hardly think that Her Ladyship wishes to know—”
“But I must!” Doctor Bent countered fiercely. He tugged at his hair, leaving it standing electrically on end. Brisbane sighed.
“No.”
“And was there an odour of garlic?” the doctor demanded.
“No.”
“There would not have been,” I put in suddenly. “Edward could not abide garlic. He would never have eaten it.”
Doctor Bent’s face was shining evangelically. “The odour of garlic is not from the plant itself,” he explained. “It is from the arsenic. Do you not see, Nicholas? Victims of arsenical poisoning almost always sink into a coma before dying. There is—” he paused with an apologetic glance in my direction “—usually considerable bloody offal, smelling heavily of garlic.”
Brisbane fetched out one of his slender brown cigars and lit it, smoking energetically. “That is acute arsenical poisoning—a massive dose, administered all at once. What if he were poisoned slowly, over some months?”
“You are determined to see Magda hang,” I burst out.
“I am determined to find the truth,” Brisbane returned coldly. He fixed his attention on the doctor, who was looking uncomfortably from one of us to the other.
“When arsenic is administered in small doses, over a long period of time, it produces jaundice and episodes of gastric distress. From those symptoms one might make an assumption of gradual arsenical poisoning, although I must warn you, those findings are my own. I hope to publish them one day, but they are not universally accepted in the medical community.”
“It does not matter,” I said, jubilant. “Edward did not suffer from gastric distress, and he certainly was not jaundiced. Magda is acquitted,” I finished with a jerk of my chin at Brisbane.
He ignored me, which was probably for the best. “What could it be, then?”
Doctor Bent shrugged. “Without a proper postmortem, I can only offer the broadest suggestions. Perhaps some sort of plant poison. But I cannot tell you how it was administered. If I had seen the contents of his stomach, or the pallor of his skin…” He threw up his hands helplessly.
“What about Doctor Griggs?” I put in. “Surely he would know those things. I mean, not the stomach, of course—” I felt slightly queasy discussing this, but I pressed on “—as there was no postmortem. But he might have noticed something during the examination that would shed some light on matters.”
Doctor Bent and Brisbane shared a look.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Mordecai wrote to Doctor Griggs regarding another patient. I had him test the waters a bit to see if perhaps he could form some sort of professional relationship. A means to eventually questioning him informally about Sir Edward.”
“And?”
I looked from one to the other. Doctor Bent did not meet my eyes. Brisbane’s handsome mouth had curled into a sneer.
“Doctor Griggs does not associate with Semites, professionally or otherwise,” he said flatly.
I swore softly and Doctor Bent’s head came up. He smiled.
“Thank you for that,” he murmured. “But really, it is nothing new to me. Besides, there are many others who do not share his views. The real difficulty is that it means we are at a loss. We have no way to proceed without some detailed knowledge of the state of Sir Edward’s body.”
I looked again from one to the other.
“Why not ask Mrs. Birch?”
Brisbane pulled lazily at his cigar. “Who is Mrs. Birch?”
“The parish worker who washed his body, of course,” I said impatiently. “Really, you didn’t think I did it, did you?”
Slowly, dazzlingly, a smile—a real, bone-deep expression of violent joy spread across Brisbane’s face. It was perhaps the first time I had seen him really smile. I had been so accustomed to his scowls and frowns that the effect was rather unsettling.
