A Beautiful Blue Death

The room’s most distinctive feature was a thin spiral staircase made out of marble, with cherubim carved into it. The staircase led up to a balcony, which encircled the room on all four sides. A thin railing closed it off, but there were chairs and tables overlooking the lower level. Behind them were rows of cases, filled with McConnell’s books. Collecting first editions of early English and Latin scientific texts was his hobby, and he had managed to fill many of the shelves, so that standing in the middle of the lower level one could see an entire universe up the small staircase. It was where McConnell had his guests to tea, but he offered nothing to his guest this morning, rightly suspecting that Lenox had eaten with Toto.

The doctor liked to say that this was the sole place in the house upon which Toto had never left her imprint, and while Lenox would never for a second have thought to comment on their marriage to either of them, he had noticed, recently, that in a small way Toto had begun to leave her imprint on the study. She had had the late rosemary sent in, Lenox guessed, the flower of remembrance—he couldn’t see McConnell putting it there himself—and there were a few new paintings on the walls. They were of wild horses in the Scottish dales, Mc-Connell’s home country. Scotland had always divided the two, but she had had them commissioned, Lenox knew, which was just the sort of peace offering she was likely to make.

They walked toward the laboratory at the end of the room.

“The glass,” said McConnell, “was trickier than I suspected it would be.”

“How do you mean?”

Both men stood by a large black table covered with beakers full of chemicals and solutions, of which the centerpiece was the object in question, enclosed in a case, almost exactly as Lenox had last seen it.

“Well, there was no doubt in my mind that bella indigo killed Miss Smith. Poisons, as you know, are one of my hobbies.”

“Partly why I asked you to come,” Lenox said.

“Of course. As I say, there was no doubt in my mind. I came back that evening and searched through my sources”—he gestured toward a stack of books in disarray by his desk—“and confirmed my first reaction. In conjunction with the small clues that you gathered, I assumed that the glass would yield up no more than what I had suspected. Murder. But there was a bump in the road.”

“What was it?”

“When I tested the glass, I found that the resin on its lip was not, in fact, bella indigo.”

“Then what was it?”

“It was identical to the contents of the bottle of poison it stood next to on the desk. Arsenic. Mixed with a dash of water, I expect, for it was fractionally weakened.”

“That makes my work significantly harder,” Lenox said. “If arsenic killed her. Or significantly easier, if Jensen comes up with a name from his research into the bottle.”

“Ah. Perhaps if you had sought another man. But I delved deeper.”

“And found what?”

McConnell pointed at the bottom of the glass. “Do you see anything?”

“It looks clean, I should say.”

“It does. But there were a few specks of poison at the bottom. There usually are—sometimes enough for a small sample if you do it cleverly, though my colleagues would declare that heresy. My own opinion is that one day even a single speck of something will tell us everything about it.”

“Doesn’t seem quite right, that,” said Lenox dubiously.

McConnell chuckled. “Anyway, I checked, and those dregs, unlike the poison that so dramatically turned yellow in the victim’s room, turned purple. The glass had been used—filled with bella indigo, that is—then washed, then filled with water and arsenic, and finally drained again into a sink.”

“Fascinating.”

“A double deception. To confirm what I had found, I looked around the rim of the glass.”

“Yes?”

“While there was arsenic on the lip of the glass, there was no longer any sign that any human being had drunk from the glass. No partial print, even. And glass is notoriously easy to find fingerprints on, even with our inadequate system. The glass was washed after Prue Smith ingested the bella indigo and before it reached me, or her fingerprints would be all over it.”

“All of it is crafty,” said Lenox, “but only to the point that the murderer assumed that the police would conclude that the girl had destroyed herself.”

“Exactly. Though the murderer wanted to conceal as well the use of the rare drug.”

“Which may mean he knew the poison was so rare it would lead to him, perhaps. That’s very helpful. But why not just use the arsenic?”

McConnell looked at him keenly. “That crossed my mind,” he said. “I think there are two reasons. The first is that the murderer thinks himself very clever—a doctor, perhaps. The second is that arsenic is less definitely deadly than bella indigo, which always kills. Arsenic is hard to dose. It can make people very sick rather than kill them, for instance. And it’s easier to trace. The arsenic on the table must have been an afterthought.…”

Both men walked toward the armchairs by the fire. A window was open, as it was in every season, and a chill blew through the room.

“Can I offer you a glass of something?”

“This early?”

“It’s nearly ten, you know.” McConnell studiously avoided Lenox’s eyes as he poured himself a drink and took the first sip. “Anything else new?”

Lenox shrugged. “Yes and no. I know who Barnard’s guests are, now.”

“Who?”

“Two nephews. Neither of them seems the sort. And two politicians. Neither of them seems the sort either.”

“Which ones?”

“Soames and Duff.”

“Newton Duff?”

Lenox nodded.

“I wouldn’t like to have him in my house, for what it’s worth,” said McConnell, and took another sip.

“Nor would I,” Lenox answered. “That doesn’t convict him, unfortunately.”

“Who’s the last?”

“Roderick Potts.”

“The fellow with all the money?”

“Yes.”

“Toto won’t let us see him. She says he’s a beast, whatever that means. Perhaps even a perfect beast, which from my experience is a title that she reserves for few people. Shreve, on occasion her father, on occasion… well, myself, I suppose.” McConnell laughed uneasily and took a long sip of his drink.

“So you don’t know him at all?” said Lenox quickly.

“Not at all.”

“Toto may be right about him. Jane, insofar as she controls my social life, would never let me see him either.”

“Lower class, or a brute?” asked McConnell.

“Both, perhaps. From what I know he has few social aspirations, which sets him apart from most of these enormously rich men who come to London.”

“Sets him apart from Barnard.”

“You’re right,” said Lenox, “absolutely right. I would say that the only force strong enough to draw each to the other is a large amount of money. And as it happens, though I can’t mention details, there is a large amount of money on the periphery of the case.”

“Perhaps at the center.”