I swallowed. “I was sick in a basin before I went to bed, and I woke with a dry throat and headache. My back was sore, I recall, and my knee ached—though it usually does in the morning. Flaccid, I think.” My face warmed. “I was restless, my hands tingling, my feet rather numb. The warm water with my shave felt good. I was much better after I dressed, and able to walk through town, though I was a bit fatigued. Later that evening, Grenville’s wife told me my eyes were slow to focus.”
The surgeon listened in silence. No nodding as I listed my symptoms, no flick of eyes or thoughtful movement of brows. I might have been speaking to a statue.
The clock ticked. Outside, people walked by the house, their voices loud through the windows open at the top for air. A woman’s voice: “… Spending so much time in a carriage, bumping over roads for hours, and there was nothingthere.” A man; “I thought the church quite fine …” The woman again, “No different from the parish church in …”
They faded, disgruntled travelers irritated the world hadn’t arranged itself to please them.
“There are several possibilities.” The surgeon’s clear words were startling after the quiet. “It is a question of what would be available to the person or persons who gave you the dose.”
Denis took up his pen and dipped it in ink. “The possibilities are?”
“From the ordinary to the extraordinary: Laudanum. Opium, ingested, not smoked. Either of these mixed with a large quantity of alcohol. There are purer forms of opium being distilled as medicines; one in particular relieves all pain but might render you immobile at the same time.”
“I walked from place to place without trouble, it seems,” I said. “Spoke to people, in fact.”
The surgeon went on as though I hadn’t interrupted. “There are oils from the Dutch East Indies that render a person quite inebriated and cause memory loss. An extract from a plant from the Americas can make a man see things that do not exist, and he does not remember his trance when he awakes. The natives of certain regions use it in religious ceremonies.”
Dubious, I asked, “How likely are such substances to be in England? In Brighton?”
“I possess some of each I have mentioned,” the surgeon said. “The very distilled opium I use only rarely, but I keep a small quantity about in case it’s needed. However, all my medicines are locked away in London.”
He’d given Donata a medicine when she’d borne Anne to help heal her, and I’d never learned what. I hadn’t cared, so long as Donata recovered.
I thought about what Marianne had told me the night of the lecture. “Mrs. Grenville suggested that sailors bring such things into the country all the time. Actors apparently make use of dangerous substances to enhance their looks or give them the courage to enter the stage.”
Denis was making plenty of notes, his pen lightly scratching in the stillness. “Laudanum would be the easiest thing to give you.” He wrote a few more words and laid down his pen. “But you are familiar with it and would recognize the taste. Also, as you have used laudanum often to quell pain, it would take a very large dose to render you insensible. You would have noticed drinking such a quantity.”
“The purer distillation of opium is more likely, in this case,” the surgeon told him. “The oil from the East Indies is less likely, though some apothecaries sell it … discreetly. I have not seen in England the American juice that causes delirium but that does not mean no one else has obtained it.”
I gazed at the surgeon in disbelief. “So I am looking for a person who has visited an apothecary not adverse to selling exotic potions.”
“That is a possibility,” the surgeon said. “You could also search for an avid gardener who knows a thing or two about extracting and distilling substances from plants. The opium poppy is cultivated not only for medicine but for its bright colors and edible seeds.”
“In other words, anyone in England could have given me this substance,” I said despairingly.
“Not anyone,” Denis pointed out in his cool voice. “Only those close to you Monday night. You drank any number of substances—wine at supper, port afterward, coffee at the public house.”
I thought of Captain Wilks. He himself could have doctored my coffee—a bitter enough drink that I might not have tasted any addition. Or the publican could have, paid by my enemy to do so.
“Would I not have noticed someone emptying a vial into my port or coffee?” I asked testily.
“Not if you were distracted,” Denis said. “Arguing or debating, speaking to another while your glass remained behind you … It is a simple matter to slip a dose to a person without their knowledge.”
I did not like contemplating how he knew this. “Which puts me no closer to the truth.”
“On the contrary.” Denis looked over his notes. “How long do the effects of this distilled opium last?” he asked the surgeon.
“Two or three hours if a small dose but it can also obscure memories from before the dose is taken. As it wears off, the patient sleeps, has nightmares, headaches, and wakes with numbness and very little interest in copulation. He remains slightly inebriated by it for as much as an entire day.”
He described my condition so exactly that I shivered.
Denis switched his focus to me. “Then the concoction could only have been given to you in a narrow window of time, by any person you met Monday evening. I suggest you look at each one very carefully. Also consider that the person who gave you the substance might not have known it would make you forget taking it. This was fortunate for them. But they might worry that one day, those memories will return.”
“Am I likely to regain the memories?” I asked the surgeon.
“Not very,” he answered without hesitation. “Events wiped away by substances such as these are usually gone forever.”
I didn’t like the despondency his answer gave me. The blank in my mind was unnerving, and he’d just told me I’d have to live with it the rest of my life.
