“You did English, chemistry and biology didn’t you, Hemms?”
That old nickname, dusty with age; it took a moment to connect it to me. “Yes.”
“Any biochemistry since then?”
“No, I did an English degree, actually.”
“I’ll translate into layman’s terms then. Putting it very simply, Tess had three drugs in her body when she died.”
She didn’t see my reaction, looking down at her notebook. But I was stunned. “What were the drugs?”
“One was Cabergoline, which stops breast milk being produced.”
Simon had told me about that drug and again the fact of it gave me a glimpse into something so painful that I couldn’t look any further; I interrupted my own thoughts: “And the others?”
“One was a sedative. She’d taken a fairly large amount. But because it was a few days before Tess was found and a sample of her blood was taken—” She broke off, upset, and gathered herself before continuing. “What I mean is, because of the time delay it’s hard to be accurate about the actual amount of sedative. James said all he could offer was educated guesswork.”
“And …?”
“She had taken far more than would have been indicated as a normal dose. He thought that it wasn’t high enough to kill her, but it would have made her very sleepy.”
So that was why there had been no sign of a struggle: he’d doped you first. Did you realize it too late? Christina read out more of her perfect italic writing, “The third drug is phenylcyclohexylpiperidine, PCP for short. It’s a powerful hallucinogenic, developed in the fifties as an anesthetic but stopped when patients experienced psychotic reactions.”
I was startled into parrotlike repetition, “Hallucinogenic?”
Christina thought I didn’t understand, her voice patient. “It means the drug causes hallucinations, in lay terms ‘trips.’ It’s like LSD but more dangerous. Again James says it’s hard to be certain how much she’d taken, and how long before she died, because of the delay in finding her. It’s also complicated because the body stores this drug in muscle and fatty tissues at full psychoactive potential, so it can continue to have an effect even after the person has stopped taking it.”
For a moment I just heard scientific babble until it settled into something I could understand. “This drug meant she would have been having hallucinations in the days before she died?” I asked.
“Yes.”
So Dr. Nichols had been right after all, though your hallucinations weren’t because of puerperal psychosis but a hallucinogenic drug.
“He planned it all. He sent her out of her mind first.”
“Beatrice …?”
“He made her mad, made everyone think she was mad, and then he drugged her before he murdered her.”
Christina’s brown eyes looked enormous through the lenses of her pebble glasses, their sympathetic expression magnified. “When I think about how much I love my own baby, well, I can’t imagine what I’d do in Tess’s place.”
“Suicide wasn’t an option to her, even if she’d wanted to take it. She simply wouldn’t have been able to. Not after Leo. And she never touched drugs.”
There was a silence between us, and the inappropriate noise of the bar around us broke into the booth.
“You knew her best, Hemms.”
“Yes.”
She smiled at me, a gesture of capitulation to my certainty, which carried a blood-tied weight.
“I really appreciate all your help, Christina.”
She was the first person to have helped me in a practical way. Without her I wouldn’t have known about the sedative and the hallucinogenic. But I was grateful to her too for respecting my view enough to withhold her own. Six years of being in the same class as emerging adolescents and I doubt we even touched, but outside the door of the restaurant we hugged tightly good-bye.
“
“No, but it was relatively simple to research it on the Net. I found out that it causes behavioral toxicity, making the victim paranoid and giving them frightening visions.”
Did you realize you were being mentally tortured? If not, what did you think was happening to you?
“It’s especially destructive for people already suffering psychological trauma.”
He used your grief against you, knowing that it would make the effect of the drug even worse.
“There were sites accusing the U.S. military of using PCP at Abu Ghraib and in rendition cases. It was clear that the trips it caused were terrifying.”
What was worse for you: the trips? Or thinking that you were going mad?
“And you told the police?” asks Mr. Wright.
“Yes, I left a message for DS Finborough. It was late by then, way past office hours. He phoned back the next
