And then Ashton discovered that Tomás’ sister, Patricia Inez Staffordshire, had married one Lord Milton Percival Falmouth, the Imperial Councilor in charge of the Department of Health.
“His sister married that jackass,” Ashton snarled. “It’s gotta be him. He was Falmouth’s brother-in-law!”
He called Dr. Graham.
“So you want me to have the lab see if the dosages were consistent across batches?” Graham asked, trying to understand what little Ashton had told her; he didn’t want to accidentally influence her results.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Ashton confirmed. “And then I want you to provide me a list of the batch lots with the following information: lot number, all drug components, percentage of each drug relative to prescribed dosage, and compounding chemist of record.”
Graham raised an eyebrow. “You’re on to something.”
“Maybe. That’s why I need that specific information.”
“How fast?”
“Well, given that the Empress is long dead, I dunno that it has to be incredibly fast,” Ashton pointed out. “It needs to be accurate more than it needs to be fast. But if we’re gonna clear things up, we can’t let it drag on, either.”
“Right,” Graham replied. “Then I’m gonna do it myself.”
“I like the sound of that,” Ashton averred.
It took just over a week, during which time Ashton oversaw operations of the Field branch of the IPD and handled a couple of minor cases, himself. But finally Dr. Graham sent a message in VR, with a large file attached, letting him know the review was complete.
To: DXA
From: SGraham@PhysikeMan
Subj: Inquiry
Here is the data you asked for. I see nothing added except the disalicylcocaethylene, and we discussed that already. There seems to be a systemic problem with the cardiac medications as well, most notably the blood pressure medication. I wonder if there was an error in calculating the correct quantity in the mix, and it was never rectified. The determination of fractional molar quantities in a given drug lot can be a bit abstruse, even for those of us experienced at it. And the labeling the manufactory puts on the batch lots isn’t always as clear as it could be.
Most of the problems are one-sided, as you will note.
But that said, Hardacre was on the Palace assignment longer than Staffordshire was, and she mostly worked from memory, unless a new prescription came down from the Empress’ personal physician. And as you can see, by and large, my current assays on the compounding batches she made show fairly correct dosages, allowing some leeway for slight nonuniformities in the mixing. But she was more experienced, and that is why she was given responsibility for Empress Adonnaya III, and Staffordshire for Ms. Song.
Please let me know if I can do anything else to help your investigation, and please let me know what you determine.
~S.G.
“Well then, this should be interesting,” he muttered to himself, opening the file and reading it in the lower half of his vision. “There’s the nutritional supplement. Looks like Dr. Hardacre started off as the principal compounder, but then got replaced by Staffordshire. And that’s when… yep, that’s when the problems started, about a month after he took over. And… whoa, look at that. Whenever Hardacre mixed the supplements, there wasn’t any Aspalcaine added, and whenever Staffordshire mixed it, there was. And… wait, what?” Ashton sat up straight in his desk chair. “The blood pressure medication was only about half the dosage prescribed? And never went up, despite the doctor prescribing higher and higher doses?” Ashton scowled. “And is the Aspalcaine still in her vitamins? No, there it goes, tapering off slowly, shortly after the first blood pressure prescription came in. Damn the man! Wait, let me check…” he scrolled back through the listings, “yeah, the dosages were hosed only when Staffordshire compounded the stuff. He screwed up the BP meds and vitamins, both. Oh, look here; they must have been busy, because Hardacre did the vitamins, and Staffordshire the meds… and the vitamins are straight, and the meds are low-dose. Shit. How the hell did he manage to hide…”
Ashton studied the components of the blood pressure medication carefully, then realized that the ‘fillers’ in the pills were anything but; a quick search of the database determined that the ‘filler’ components could, under certain circumstances, actually mimic all of the effects of the principal medication except the pressure reduction. And, he realized, they also would help disguise any withdrawal symptoms from the Aspalcaine dropping off to nothing.
“And I’ll bet,” he decided, “when the doctors finally put her on medicines for a failing heart, those weren’t at the full, intended doses, either.” He scrolled down through the data that Dr. Graham had sent him. “Sure enough! There it is. I can’t see Empress Ilithyia surviving this at all. This was a concerted, multi-year effort to take her out in as subtle a fashion as possible.” He stopped, thinking. “Okay. Time to find out how Staffordshire died, whether or not Hardacre knew what he was doing, and how Staffordshire was sicced onto doing this in the first place.”
Dr. Jennifer Hardacre, an older woman with steel-gray hair, faded blue eyes, and firm, open features, was called in to IPD New Headquarters for questioning, and volunteered to be placed in the lie detector chair.
“Because I know I’m telling the truth,” she told Ashton, “and I want you to know that, too. I’m not sure what happened, but I was careful to take good care of the line of Empresses. I can’t think Tomás wasn’t, either, but he’s not here to tell us, God rest him.”
So Ashton called in the interrogation team. Officer Scott Sanders manned the console for the chair, while Dr. George Withers, IPD staff physician, monitored Dr. Hardacre’s vitals. Ashton decided to take the interrogator’s seat.
