The Butterfly Conspiracy

by Vivian Conroy

  She sat up and looked at Galileo. “This response that people have to certain foods, this sensitivity, does it only occur when they eat the food, actually have it in their mouths and throats and swallow it down, or can it also happen through inhalation?”

  “Particles can be on the air and can be inhaled, and inhaled particles can cause a response. Bad or favorable. Some lung problems are cured by burning herbs in the fire and inhaling the scent of the burning herbs.”

  Galileo leaned back in his chair, apparently ready to expound, but Merula said, “The fan. It was the fan. It is so clever, so … Lady Sophia inhaled the almond scent. She started to feel unwell. She wafted more air into her face, but that was also full of almonds. She kept waving, desperate to stay conscious.”

  “Again waving more air into her face that was, to her, poisonous.” Royston stared at Merula. “That is brilliant.”

  “She worsened her own symptoms,” Galileo cried. “She just kept adding more stimuli. She applied the fatal dose to herself.”

  “Unknowingly.” Merula nodded. “How terrible when you think about it. Poor woman.”

  “But wouldn’t she know the scent of almonds?” Royston asked. “You always hear it is so distinctive.”

  “Not all people have a great sense of smell,” Galileo said. “Besides, ladies perfume their fans. I bet you it was so full of her favorite perfume she wouldn’t have smelled anything on it. Almonds or whatever else.”

  “So the killer must have introduced almonds to the fan somehow.” Royston gestured with his hands. “Almonds are solid, but I assume that you can somehow also turn them into a liquid form?”

  “Almond essence,” Galileo said with a nod. “You don’t need fancy equipment or intricate chemical knowledge to make it. All you need is almonds and alcohol to soak them in. The alcohol takes on the essential ingredients of the almonds. The longer you leave it, the stronger it gets.”

  “And you could mix it with perfume and put it on a fan?” Royston asked.

  “Yes. I wouldn’t advise anyone to just start soaking almonds, though. Apart from some people’s sensitivity to nuts, there is cyanide in almonds, and in soaking them, you might be brewing your own poison. It would be dangerous to keep around in a household.”

  “The killer didn’t care about the risks of the cyanide,” Royston said slowly. “He or she needed an almond scent that Lady Sophia could inhale. A special poison, as it were, to kill Lady Sophia in the most ingenious manner.”

  “But who knew that Lady Sophia would have a response to almonds?” Merula asked with a frown of concentration. “The cook who was dismissed for the almond incident at the time, no doubt. Other servants, perhaps? Guests at the party … Wouldn’t they have believed it was a simple matter of choking on something she accidentally inhaled? They can’t have concluded anything more.”

  “Unless they had the knowledge to do so.” Royston rubbed his hands together. “Now we are getting somewhere. We have to find out who had such knowledge. And if the fan was really treated with almond essence.”

  “I could analyze it,” Galileo said, “if I had access to it.”

  “Buckleberry can help us get it. It must be at Lady Sophia’s house. I don’t think the police saw any reason to look closer at it.”

  Merula frowned. “It fell to the floor when Lady Sophia collapsed. I can’t remember if it was still there later. What if the killer took it away?”

  Royston gestured with his hands. “We won’t know that until we have asked for it. Bowsprit and Galileo, you go into London first thing and see if Buckleberry can get his hands on the fan. Tell him he will certainly get his bearer bond if he helps us with this. Then take the fan to Galileo’s if it’s still safe there and test it. Let us know what you find.”

  Bowsprit and Galileo left the room at once. The book lay on the table forgotten.

  Merula looked at it, her throat suddenly tight again. “Raven,” she asked slowly, “that dead bird your mother found under her bed, what species was it? Did she mention it in her notes?”

  “Yes. I had expected it would be a crow or a raven. A big black bird. But it was actually a magpie.”

  Merula’s stomach filled with ice. “Your father, did he know anything about birds? Did he like to study them, look at them, read about them?”

  “Not that I can remember. How come?”

  “That book…” She pointed at it. “Is it his?”

  Royston went over and looked. “I can’t remember having seen it around the house. But the library is extensive, and it was a long time ago. Why do you ask?”

  “Galileo found it hidden away in the library. He mentioned to me that it’s about animals and superstition. It has marked pages. One of them describes the dead magpie as a portent of something valuable being taken away.”

  “A threat to my mother,” Raven said in a low voice. “Referring to her sanity.”

  “Or her marriage,” Merula added, “or you, her child.”

  Royston stared at her. “My father had that book? He marked those passages? He … drove her mad?”

  “We don’t know that. You never saw him with the book. The book was hidden, so someone else might have put it there.”

  “That mysterious someone we want to have been here to clear my father…” Royston laughed softly. “Perhaps he was a mean man who liked to make my mother suffer. I do know he was jealous and could accuse her of betraying him. He might have believed she had a lover and this was his way of punishing her for what he believed to be true.”

  “We don’t know,” Merula repeated softly. It hurt her that he was torturing himself with all of these speculations, questions he could no longer find an answer to, as both his mother and his father had died.

  “No, we don’t know anything, and that is the worst.” Royston stood and stretched his shoulders. “When I came back from riding, I felt better for a while, but now I feel again as if the weight of the world is on my shoulders. We have to solve this thing surrounding your uncle. You need answers.”

  He looked at her, pale and tired. “Believe me, Merula, there is nothing worse than having to suppose a thousand things and not knowing one of them for sure.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The atmosphere in the house was dark and brooding, and the tension of waiting for Bowsprit and Galileo to return seemed unbearable. Merula walked around the rooms for some time, staring at the furniture covered with sheets and trying to picture Raven there as a little boy. His mother, his father. A happy family, put under strain by a stranger?

  Or a family where the tension had come from within, where jealousy had eaten its way into the very heart of their lives?

  Had Raven’s father become so obsessed with his wife’s supposed infidelity that he had started to keep an eye on her, only pretending to have gone to the city but hanging about the house, watching her and after a while also scaring her with dead birds under her bed and blood on the mirror?

  What would the purpose of such actions have been?

  Driving her back into his arms? Seeing if she would confide in him?

  Or torturing her, punishing her for the loss of her love for him, as Raven had supposed? Who knew what went on in a mind driven mad by jealousy and the fear of losing a beloved wife?

  Yes, love could have caused it all, Merula supposed.

  Still, listening to her own footfalls on the floorboards, she could not completely dismiss the theory that another had done it, for a reason they could not understand.

  Or could they? The image of the girl twirling in front of her mistress’s mirror and laughing hysterically would not let go of her. Had she been obsessed somehow? Had she started to believe she was entitled to this house, to her master and the child? Had she done those evil things?

  Her being in the mistress’s bedroom had proven that she could go there freely. She could have put the dead magpie under the bed.

  She might never have read that book in the library. But she need not have. As a local, having grown up with a granny
who told stories or listened to folktales around the village, she might have known about the superstition surrounding magpies. Knowledge was conveyed in many ways other than books. And it was just as powerful.

  But the deviousness of putting that book in the library, half hidden, so it would seem that the master of the house had tried to hide the evidence of his machinations against his wife …

  Wasn’t it too clever and too ingenious for an infatuated local girl?

  She had to ask Raven who had benefited from his mother’s death. It was an unfeeling question, but it might point them in a certain direction. With Lady Sophia, it certainly had.

  Simon Foxwell.

  He had tried to take the fan away from his aunt. Had he known she was going to collapse and wanted to make sure the fan would not be studied more closely?

  But why would anyone suspect a fan of having anything to do with her collapse?

  And had Foxwell really wanted Lady Sophia to die? If the suggestions made to them were true, Foxwell had already been able to sell off bits and pieces from the zoological collection. He hadn’t needed to kill Lady Sophia for that. He had alienated her from her former friends so that he didn’t have to fear she would believe any stories about the collection being sold off. And she herself never came near it, so discovery of his actions would have seemed unlikely as well.

  What could have forced Foxwell to murder her?

  Besides, if Galileo was right in assuming the almond essence for the fan had been homemade, it had taken time. As he had explained, you had to soak the nuts in alcohol for weeks to get a strong concoction. That meant it hadn’t been an impulsive decision from the killer but a plan long in the making. Why?

  What had provoked it?

  Oppressed by the silence in the house, Merula left it and walked across the grass to a formal garden in the back. At least, it had been a formal garden once. The traces of flower beds were still visible, but everything was covered with brambles and weeds. Some had grown as tall as she was, and the thorns clawed at her arms, attaching themselves to her sleeves. Still, underneath that tangled mess, something was blooming. A few roses had survived and showed their white and yellow flowers, albeit suppressed by the intruders.

  Merula smiled at them. “Well done,” she said softly. “I hope that one day…”

  She halted and considered. Did she really think Raven could ever live here? That he could take on a gardener to restore these gardens and that he could live in that house, with those memories? That he could live near the pond where his mother had drowned?

  A strange need to see it drove her to walk on, searching for a body of water. She almost felt that if she could see it, stand near it, she could imagine the state of mind Raven’s mother had been in when she had come out that night. That she could understand what had happened there.

  She wanted to understand it. She wanted to give Raven some answers, as he had said, so sadly, that it was the worst thing not to know.

  “Merula!” The hoarse voice came from behind. Before she could even turn, someone grabbed her by the shoulders. She gasped.

  Strong hands spun her around, and Raven, deathly pale, looked down at her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I want to find the water.”

  He stared into her eyes. “I should never have brought you here. The atmosphere of this place is getting to you. Seeping into your very soul.” He shivered.

  Merula shook her head. “There are no evil places. Just people who did evil things there.”

  Raven squeezed her shoulders. “Why didn’t you stay in the house? I was looking for you, and when you weren’t there…”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I only wanted to see the pond.”

  “Where my mother died?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I hoped I could deduce what happened that night.”

  “Deduce…” Raven laughed. “As if it could be done like that.”

  He stared past her. “I’ve tried to deduce it, as you call it, many times. Especially after I received her notes suggesting someone had been terrorizing her. But I could never make it all fit.”

  He let go of her and stood awkwardly, dangling his arms. “You won’t find the pond.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You won’t find the pond. It’s no longer there. My father had some workers fill it up with earth. He didn’t want to keep it. As it was the place where she had died, I suppose.”

  Or to remove possible traces of what happened. Traces of his presence on the scene?

  Merula shivered as she realized it was a real possibility in her mind that Raven’s father had killed his mother. Knowing that would not make it better for Raven. He was already afraid that his mother had suffered from delusions and that one day he might suffer the same fate.

  But what if he had to conclude that instead his father had been a killer?

  Of course, it didn’t mean he had to become one as well, but …

  Didn’t you often see that a character trait from the father was present in the son as well? Easily inflammable temper. Tendency to gamble. Fear of heights even, or something else quite innate. Not taught, but present deep inside the human mind. Inborn, perhaps? There was so much about human nature and psychology they didn’t yet understand.

  Could a killer be born with the need to kill? Could he be more prone to do something evil at some point in his or her life? When provoked, when put in the right situation?

  Raven studied her expression. “What are you thinking about?” His gaze held hers insistently. “Are you afraid to be alone with me, here in this place?”

  Merula said, “I don’t know. Part of me tells me there is nothing to be afraid of, as you saved my life and have proven to be a true friend to me. But part of me also knows there is so much I don’t understand. About you, your family, about life in general.”

  Raven laughed softly. “Life in general,” he scoffed. “Why not start with something smaller, my dear Miss Merriweather?”

  Merula didn’t look away. “I feel like a fool,” she said, “in this whole investigation. I’m just groping in the dark, hoping I can catch something. I don’t understand people or their behavior. I don’t understand why they crave wealth, as I ‘ve always known I would never have it and I’ve accepted that.”

  “You could marry a rich man.”

  Merula laughed. “With my past, my…” She gestured. “I know I’m not a great beauty like Julia. It isn’t bad for a woman to be plain if she has a title or a fortune attached. At least, that is what Aunt Emma always says. I think I would feel bad if I had a title and a fortune and men came to me for that, thinking it didn’t matter how plain I looked.”

  “You are far from plain,” Raven said. “And far from a fool. You have acted very astutely in this case. I didn’t want to pay that former neighbor of Lady Sophia for his information, but you persuaded me and it turned out to be very important indeed.”

  He held her gaze. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you. The women in my acquaintance are all … Well, some of them know what they want and how to get it, but in an unappealing way. As if they are hunting men. Then there are some who simper and cry constantly, or faint over every little thing. I don’t have patience for that. Now you … you have been in fear for your life and you never cried.”

  Merula took a deep breath of the clear fresh air. “I don’t have time to cry. I have to save Uncle Rupert, and the rest of the family, from ruin. It’s all my fault, and even if it was not, I’d still want to help them. They took me in and gave me everything I have today.”

  She leaned back on her heels. “I hope that we can prove a connection between almonds and the fan.”

  “Even if we can, we still have some problems. We’ll have to convince people that a healthy woman can die of contact with almonds.”

  “I’m sure there are doctors who can give testimony to such cases. Galileo knew about them.”

  Raven nodded. “I think I heard
something about a man who is trying to prove that all kinds of things make people sneeze. Feathers and fur from animals and other things. It is also a response of the nose to something irritating.”

  “I see.”

  Raven smiled sardonically. “I was asked to invest in his research, but I didn’t see an immediate practical purpose for it.”

  “But you did see such a purpose for the hair tonic for balding gentlemen?”

  Raven winced. “My friend assured me it was going to be a sensation. Indeed, it was when skulls got burned!”

  Merula studied him with a frown. “My uncle told me that your brother bribed the police to get you out of it.”

  Raven looked sour. “Yes, my brother is rather concerned for the family name. Or I suppose it’s his wife putting him up to it. My sister-in-law merely married for the title and the money attached. I can’t see how she ever managed to snare my brother, as she is about as interesting as a dead canary and that would probably be an insult to the canary.”

  Merula said, “She must have some hidden charming side that your brother discovered.”

  “Or he just let himself be talked into the relationship. You have no idea how that goes. You visit a few parties and you speak with a woman there. Rumors abound of an attachment while you never meant anything of the sort. Then you have to ask for her hand to prevent her from being ruined. It’s just a trap!”

  Merula laughed. “So you make sure you will never get trapped like that?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Raven said. “I don’t want to tie myself down. Besides, I don’t know if I would put any woman through the ordeal of being married to me.” He forced a laugh. “My untidy habits, my peculiar friends, not to mention my spending.”

  “You make light of it, but you are truly worried about your past. Your mother and the implications of her death.”

  Raven looked at her. “I can’t deny that. There are several choices. My mother was mad. My father was obsessed with the idea of her infidelity and killed her. Both would not be very palatable to a young lady contemplating living under the same roof with me. Not to mention having children.”