She kept her eyes firmly off the stains in the bedclothes that were no doubt causing the wretched smell. An old-fashioned wash basin on the bedside table answered for the rest of it. It was full of old sick.Saffron moved as far from it as possible, coming to stand next to Nick.
“Look here,” Nick said, carefully pointing to Wells’s hand.
Wells had cupped his hand to his chest just as Saffron had moments before. A horrific gash, crusted and black, seemed to peel away from his flesh in layers
“Dear God,” she whispered, daring to inch closer to lean over Wells. “What on earth happened to him?”
“I’m guessing it’s the same thing that got Petrov,” Nick replied. “Petrov was also sick on the train.”
Adrian hadn’t mentioned that, but most people wouldn’t discuss the unsavory things the human body did while in distress.
“Petrov didn’t have any injuries like this,” Saffron said.
Nick turned to look at her in surprise. “How do you know that?”
She had little emotional capacity left for embarrassment or guilt, and she doubted Nick would object to her snooping, considering he’d invited her along for this. “I looked at the coroner’s report in Detective Inspector Green’s office. It said he died from kidney failure, and possibly liver failure as well. I don’t suppose we’ll know what killed Mr. Wells until his own autopsy, but Petrov did not have a black gash on him anywhere. It would have been noted.” She turned away from Wells. “I don’t believe Petrov was poisoned all at once, if at all. I think it would have been a chronic poisoning, like spouses do to each other. They add a bit of arsenic to the sugar basin, and let their spouses drop poison into their tea each day until it finally kills them.”
“You are unexpectedly macabre, Saffron Everleigh,” Nick said with a hint of teasing.
“I am a scientist who looks at the evidence, Nicholas Hale. It’s not my fault the evidence is so ghastly.”
Saffron left Nick to examine the body more thoroughly, promising to inform her of any further grisly details. She went to search Wells’s things.
She hadn’t expected, necessarily, to find the same herbs as Petrov had in his flat, but it would have been convenient. As it was, Wells had only the usual headache powders and digestive tonics in his medicine cabinet.
Nick found her in the kitchen, looking through piles of receipts Wells had shoved into a drawer. She’d learned nothing from them other than Wells had bought a pack of cigarettes every few days and frequented the Dancing Sparrow, one of the pubs in Harpenden’s main square.
“I saw nothing else worth noting on his body,” Nick said. “He’s been dead longer than a day, but less than three.”
“How do you know that?”
“His body is cold but no longer stiff.” At Saffron’s baffled look, he added, “Rigor mortis lasts about twelve hours. He’s no longer stiff but has not begun to bloat yet. The grate in his hearth was also cold, meaning the house has been cold for some time. Cold slows decomposition, if you’ll recall. Not to mention there are no longer signs of blood pooling in the low points of his body. I am estimating he’s been dead much longer than twelve hours but no more than seventy-two.”
“How will you ensure the police won’t notice he’s been moved?” she asked. She’d kept her gloves on, as had Nick. But that didn’t mean the police wouldn’t notice if Wells had been rolled over for Nick to examine his back or legs.
“I have arrangements in place, don’t worry,” Nick said.
“That is not very assuring.”
“Be assured,” he said with a small smile, “that I have leave to be here.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered, setting the receipts back in the drawer. “What now?”
“Now, you return to London. I have some business here in Harpenden.”
The truth was that she didn’t want to be in this house any longer. She’d managed to soldier through seeing the body, but her own didn’t feel right.
Nick walked her back to the train station and saw her to her train. Saffron sank into her seat, ignoring the squabbling children in the next row over. She ought to feel some relief. Nick had confirmed it had been in the last seventy-two hours that Jeffery Wells had died.Adrian couldn’t be responsible unless he’d snuck away. That was possible, but she did not believe him a murderer. She held on to that belief on the journey back to London. It didn’t prevent her from reliving all she’d seen of Jeffery Wells’s terrible end, however.
Saffron emerged from St. Pancras Station in a daze. The train had felt like some sort of purgatory, where she was neither a part of the world nor separate from it. She’d been unable to think of anything but Wells and Petrov, Adrian and Alexander. The idea of sitting in her quiet office or returning to her flat with nothing but silence to accompany her was unthinkable. She couldn’t go to the police station, though her conscience screamed for her to do so and tell Inspector Green everything. Nick hadn’t required her to promise not to reveal matters to anyone, but as he helped her onto the train he said something about appreciating her discretion and that her cooperation had made a difference. She had no desire to betray his trust, even if she wished he hadn’t given it to her in the first place.
She passed through the gate into the Quad, hardly realizing she’d made it back to campus. Her eyes lifted to the columns of the Wilkins Building. The library. It was safe there.
It was quiet in the gallery and the stacks of the library. It was as if the sun’s disappearance behind the city’s buildings had reduced the volume of the city itself. The rows of shelves stood like silent soldiers, steady and assuring.
Saffron sank into one of the worn wooden chairs without thinking. As she sat, she realized her legs were shaking. Distantly, she found her whole body was shaking. She was cold.
Cold like Wells.
