by Jess Faraday
“Please allow me to introduce Mr. Oliver Lewis,” I said.
Cal opened his mouth to speak. Just then, a cry tore through the air.
“Papa!” Miss Lewis surged out into the corridor and threw her arms around her father’s neck, sobbing.
“It’s all right, darling,” he said, rubbing her back. “Everything is going to be all right.”
“You’ll be happy to know, there will be no New Year’s epidemic tearing across Britain tonight,” I told Cal. I quickly outlined the events as I understood them.
After nearly three decades of keeping silent about the atrocities he’d witnessed during the 1860 rebellion in Calcutta, for which he had received a substantial amount of money from those involved, Oliver Lewis’s complicity had become too much for him to bear. He had been planning to speak before Parliament, but for some reason—threats against his family was my guess—he thought better of it. The idea had arisen to fake his death.
“With what?” Cal demanded. He turned to Mr. Lewis. “Forgive my doubt, sir, but your wife’s symptoms are all too real.”
The smell of vomit hung heavy in the air in the compartment. I forced myself not to look too closely.
“You’re not wrong, young man,” Mr. Lewis said, regarding us over his daughter’s shoulder. “The substance that my wife must have ingested—and God only knows why—is deadly in larger doses. But in smaller doses, it causes only the appearance of death.” He turned to his daughter. “Is there no way of knowing how much she took? Or even why she would do such a thing?” Miss Lewis shook her head, her mouth working, but unable to find words. “Of course not, darling,” he said, smoothing back a bit of hair that had stuck to her face. “You didn’t know anything about any of this, and for that I am so very sorry. Has she…has her stomach…attempted to reject the poison?”
Cal glanced down at his fouled clothing. “Quite vigorously, in fact.”
“That’s good,” Mr. Lewis said. “There’s no antidote, but if she can get it out of her system, she’ll have a fighting chance.”
“I’ll take your word for it. But what the devil did she take?” Cal demanded.
Mr. Lewis took a deep breath. “It comes from the spines of a certain tropical fish,” he said. “There are self-styled holy men—showmen—in Calcutta, who perform certain religious rites for the entertainment of tourists. I attended one of these rites, once, when I was a young man. The performer took a dose of this very substance right in front of us. We were all invited to check his pulse, his heartbeat, to feel his cooling skin. We then watched his confederates bury him. The next evening we all returned to the site and witnessed the man rising again, perfectly sound. I purchased the substance as a souvenir. Perhaps at some level I sensed it would come in handy. And it did—when that scar-faced chap started turning up just after I’d agreed to speak to Parliament. That’s when my wife and I hatched the plan.” He shook his head sadly. “I should have disposed of the remainder after I took my own dose. We can only hope that hers was sufficiently small, and not…not intentional. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to see my wife.”
Cal stepped aside and closed the door to give the Lewises their privacy. I turned to the train manager, who had been looking on in horrified silence.
“Telegraph ahead to the next large town,” I said. We’ll need to make an emergency stop and bring Mrs. Lewis to a hospital.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Have the police meet us as well. There’s a certain scar-faced brute in the baggage compartment who’s overdue for an interrogation.”
The train manager nodded his approval. As he left, Whittaker, who had been furiously scribbling notes, scrambled after him, probably eager to get his side of the story. When I turned back to Cal, he was smiling.
“Well, Sergeant,” he said.
“Well, Doctor.”
“It was rather thrilling watching you work.” He gestured toward his temple. “All those wheels and cogs going a mile a minute. And you were right about most of it.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Quite the opposite, actually.” He bit his lower lip, and my heart skipped several beats. “I daresay we work very well together.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I hope…” He looked down at the floor. Scuffed the toe of his boot against the floorboards. “I hope we can work together again.”
I laughed. “But hopefully under more pleasant circumstances.”
He met my eyes, his own intense and clear. “I don’t care what circumstances. Simon, I can’t bear to be apart from you any longer. I’ll come to Cornwall if you want me to. Or London. I don’t care—”
“I do care,” I said. I gave his fingers a brief squeeze. “You were born for…this.” I gestured at his muck-speckled clothing. “And you’re really good at it, too. You’re going to make an outstanding doctor, and I can’t stand in the way of that. No, I’ll not have that on my conscience.” I sighed. “But I don’t want to lose you again, either. This past year has been….”
“Abominable,” he finished.
“Calamitous,” I said.
“Unrelentingly pathetic.”
“A festival of self-destruction.”
He grinned. “I’m glad we’re agreed on the problem. Now we just need to find a solution.”
“And a new shirt for someone,” I said, gesturing at his ruined one. Then a thought occurred to me. The stains on his clothes. The stain I’d seen earlier on Mrs. Lewis’s dress, near where a pocket would have been. “My God,” I said. “It was an accident.”
“Eh?”
“Mrs. Lewis. She must have put the phial with the remaining poison into the pocket of her dress for safekeeping. Then the phial broke somehow, and she absorbed the poison through her skin.”
“Through all those skirts and petticoats and whatnot?” Relief spread across Cal’s face. “Then she can’t have absorbed that much at all.”
“That’s the hope,” I said.
“Do you know what I’m hoping for?” he asked.
“A set of fresh clothing?”
“That, yes.” He met my eyes again. “And perhaps someone to help me out of this one once all this is over.”
•••
A handful of police officers were waiting when our train pulled into Kingston Upon Hull, sometime around eleven. Medical personnel were waiting as well. Cal and I parted to attend to our respective duties—he to see Mrs. Lewis safely to the hospital, and I to fill in the local constabulary about the day’s events, and to interview the man who had been threatening the family.
“Promise me,” Cal said, “You won’t leave town without finding me first.”
“Never,” I said.
I wanted, desperately, to seal my promise with a kiss—and the longing in his eyes told me he felt the same way. We had a lot to talk about. I wondered if my two-week leave of absence would be enough.
We did find each other, the next morning, in the lobby of the St. Johns Hotel. He was going out, while I was coming in.
“Sergeant,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“You’re a sight for sore eyes. For any eyes. You look well rested.”
“And you look like you spent the night at a desk.”
I shrugged. “Guilty.” It hadn’t been a desk, but a chair, but the effect was the same. “Where are you off to?”
“Going to find some breakfast. Want to come?”
“More than anything,” I said. “But I need to lie down before I fall down.”
He leaned in, a mischievous spark in his eye. “Care for some company? I’ll let you be first foot.”
•••
We’d not seen one another for more than a year. Our hearts and our minds knew that. But when our bodies came together, time and distance evaporated, and it was as if we’d never been apart. Fatigue melted away, replaced by desire—no, naked and unvarnished need. I had to feel him skin to skin, under me, surrounding me, lips and hands and mouth and cock. My greed was matched on
ly by his own. We were wild, desperate, incautious to say the least. To this day, I’m still surprised no one called the police, mistaking the noise for a murder in progress. When it was all over, we lay on top of the the sweat-soaked bedclothes, drained and exhilarated and happy.
“I meant what I said about leaving Edinburgh,” he said after a bit. “This is my last year of study. I can come down after I finish. I hear Cornwall is lovely.”
“I’ve lived in worse places,” I said.
Still, his entire life was in Edinburgh. His studies, his future, and everything he’d been building to this point. If anyone would be able to start over somewhere else, he would. But he shouldn’t have to. Not for the likes of me.
Besides, from a purely practical standpoint, how would it work? With him in Bodmin and me in Penbreigh? The village already had Elizabeth; it couldn’t support two physicians. It had been bad enough going back and forth to Bodmin to see Theo. Now that Cal and I had found one another again, I wasn’t sure I could stand being even that far away. And the thought of running into Theo after all that had happened….
“I can hear the gears grinding away,” Cal said, tapping my temple. “Tell me what’s going on in there.”
“Elizabeth was right,” I said. “I’m not going back to Cornwall.”
“Oh, aye? London, then?”
“Not a chance.”
I turned to face him and propped myself up on an elbow. The air was warm and damp with our combined perspiration. The smell of his musk made me temporarily lightheaded.
“Actually,” I said. “I hear Edinburgh is miserable this time of year.”
A slow smile spread across his lips. “That it is.”
“Filthy, cold, crime-infested….”
“Mm,” he said. “I read somewhere the police are having a devil of a time convincing good coppers to stay on. Seems once they get any experience at all, they’re off to somewhere with better pay and better weather.”
“So you reckon they might have a place for a village plod looking to expand his horizons?”
His smile became a grin. “Aye, I reckon they might.”
“Then it’s a good thing I don’t mind rotten weather and worse pay.”
“Well, I hope the company will make up for that,” he said.
I ran my fingers through his thick hair, combing it back from his face. Then I kissed him long and hard. “Of that,” I said. “I have no doubt.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jess Faraday is an award-winning writer and editor of mystery and suspense. Her first novel, The Affair of the Porcelain Dog, was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, and her third, Fool's Gold, won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Historical and was a runner up for Best Gay Novel overall. Her novella, “The Strange Case of the Big Sur Benefactor,” was both a GCLS finalist and a Rainbow Award Winner for Lesbian Historical. When not writing, she moonlights as the mystery editor for Elm Books, chases cryptids, and runs the hills and trails of the Scottish countryside.
You can follow her adventures at:
Website: www.jessfaraday.com
Twitter: @jessfaraday
Instagram: jessfaraday
Facebook: Jess Faraday
Other Titles By Jess Faraday
Blades of Justice
The Affair of the Porcelain Dog
Turnbull House
Fool’s Gold
The Left Hand of Justice
The Strange Case of the Big Sur Benefactor
THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS
FIRST FOOT
About the Author