"Don't worry, it's not my first rodeo," said Lapointe. "Any thoughts on the remaining four?"
"I don't like any of them, really," said Alex with an amused huff. "Periwig seemed sensible enough until she decided it was ghosts. Halliwell is too easy to offend. Knapweed has that air of superiority some nobles get, along with a sense that she knows things we don't but not necessarily about this. Berkelshire,well, honestly she's also pretty easily offended but otherwise inoffensive herself."
"I keep half-forgetting her," admitted Julian, "which doesn't mean she didn't do it, just that she's good at avoiding our attention."
"Which actually might mean she did do it," said Lapointe. "What about the one with the poison garden, Gallowglass?"
"She wasn't in the room for the first one," said Alex. "She also seems more the stabbing sort, to be honest, or possibly a duel."
"Definitely a duel," said Julian. "She'd find the whole thing a great lark."
Lapointe sighed. "However, we should ask her if she'd brought anything with her."
Alex made a dubious nose.
"Belladonna can be used recreationally in very small doses, but you have to control for it and expect it, and I think there's some measures you can take not to throw up afterward," said Julian thoughtfully. "Since I'm not into the ritual stuff, spiritual hallucinations and all that, I don't know that well, but one of my books was talking about people using it."
"She doesn't seem the prophetic type, either, though," said Alex. "I don't know, maybe her hallucinations are more fun than one impatient elf in the woods."
"Is that what you saw?" said Julian, trying not to giggle over the image of it.
"They told me they wouldn't answer anything about the murders, so I asked about our magic thing," said Alex. "My dream was very straightforward."
"Possibly to do with your personality as much as the low dose," said Julian. "You never did put up with a lot of symbolic faff if you didn't have to."
"And yet, my whole career has been about figuring out obscure symbolism," said Alex dryly. "Maybe my spirit guide or whatever took pity on me."
"At least you didn't have to read runes in the tree leaves or whatever," agreed Julian.
"If you two are done," said Lapointe, reminding them she was still waiting on the other end of the phone call, "is there anything else important I should know?"
"Bring your own thermos and don't let anyone touch it," said Alex. "Or even near it."
"Warn everyone only to accept food or drinks from staff," said Julian. "They'll do what they can to keep people away, but they can only do so much if a noble bullies them about it."
"Of course, if someone was bullied, Chudleigh's staff would immediately snitch," said Alex approvingly. "They're still kind of upset that no one saw who got to the snake."
"That does seem to be a crime of opportunity," said Lapointe. "If we can figure out where these new poisons are coming from, maybe we can find our culprit."
"I believe in you," said Alex tiredly. "I am so terrible at all of this, but I believe in your ability to untangle it."
"I believe in Alex's ability to annoy the culprit until they make a mistake," said Julian cheerfully.
"We all believe in that," said Lapointe dryly. Even Horace chirped his agreement.
"I do what I can," said Alex, sarcasm dripping from his tone. "Now, are you done with me or what?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll come wake you tomorrow if you're not around whenever we can finally show up." Lapointe hung up on them, as was her wont, and Julian put the phone on the bedside table.
"At least there will be food soon," said Julian, curling back up into Alex.
"The cuddles are nice," said Alex, "but I am starving."
"Yeah, I bet," said Julian. "Oh, we have some of the snacks we packed!" He went and rummaged, coming up with a small tin of the high-energy oatcakes that Jacques and Alys had been working on. They were a little dry without tea, but they'd finally managed to make them taste like food and not just something you ate because it was good for you. Not as delicious as some things, but decent.
They were still munching on those when a knock came at the door, and Julian opened it to find Smithson himself with a big tray of food and two whole pots of tea. Horace flew over to sit on the tray and make a show of looking everything over, as if he knew the first thing about poison.
"I wanted to bring things down personally, and thank you two for not accusing me," said Smithson, chuckling at the bird's antics. "It'd be easy, you know, for them to pin it on the working guy."
