Part 22 (1/2)
”Yes, thank you so much. I trill like a nightingale for hours after. Have you used it yourself?”
Hortense reached into a basket on the table to extract an apple, into whose red cheek she bit with yellowed protuberant teeth. The cores of the apple's consumed brethren littered a Meissen plate, pips piled in a neat anthill near one edge.
”My voice is not my livelihood, Miss Adler. With my husband gone at the southern estates so much, I need not even raise it.”
Irene laughed far more than this feeble jest deserved as the d.u.c.h.ess dipped a handkerchief in a bottle of clear fluid and daubed her temples.
”For the headache,” the d.u.c.h.ess Hortense said. ”Lily of the Valley distilled in white wine.”
”I should think the white wine would give one a headache,” I couldn't help remarking.
The d.u.c.h.ess pinioned me with a disapproving stare. ”It is Austrian wine,” she answered, as if such a vintage was invariably free of flaws. She finished her apple and deposited the core on the plate, but not before idly picking the pips free and pus.h.i.+ng them with a fingernail into the rough pile.
When we had taken our farewells and were again in a deserted hallway Irene kept silent beyond her habit.
”What are you thinking?” I unwisely asked.
”Of how I could get into brother Bertie's room to see his hair preparations.”
”Now that is clearly improper! Even dangerous. I forbid it!”
”Of course I shall not, then,” Irene said with mock meekness.
”Of course you will... Oh, Irene, you cannot behave in Prague Castle as if you still lived in Saffron Hill. If you are caught doing anything out of character here, it will end your influence with the Prince. He is a stickler for appearances.”
”You think so?”
”I know so. I also can guess what you're contemplating. If the Prince found you in male dress, even as an excuse to investigate Bertrand's room...!”
”Of course I shan't storm Bertie's room in pin-striped frockcoat,” Irene said impatiently. ”If I can't enter myself, I shall have to use another pair of legs. Perhaps his man.”
There the discussion ended. Two days later I found Irene in the castle's huge and musty library. It was a fanciful chamber, a high-ceilinged tower with books and wrought-iron balconies strung around its perimeter like frills on the skirt of an evening gown.
Irene was seated under the curl of a wrought-iron spiral staircase, a small, much aged tome in her hands.
”Jaborandi,” she greeted me triumphantly.
”I beg your pardon? Is that Czech?”
”Too many vowels. No, it is what brother Bertrand puts upon the billiard ball he calls his head, but perhaps a fiendishly clever head at that.”
”Bertrand? Clever? Irene, tell me something I can credit.”
”Jaborandi,” she repeated. ”An herb used to stimulate hair growth, so the loyal unsuspecting body servant, Kurt, tells me. This book in my hand-and, significantly, in the castle library-tells me that it is also deadly poisonous. The villain is a substance called pilocarpine. Isn't that a wonderful word? It sounds like something one could call a melodrama villain: 'Leave my house, you pilocarpine!'”
”Poisonous?” I ignored Irene's histrionics as I sat on a wrought-iron stair, my skirts cus.h.i.+oning me from its steely pattern. ”How, if Bertrand is using it daily?”
”Externally.” Irene patted the top of her luxuriant curls. ”But Jaborandi is liquid and could easily be slipped into a sickroom broth. Especially since both Hortense and Bertrand have shown themselves aware of herbs.”
”What of ...Willie?”
”Willie?”
”He is the heir. The others have nothing to gain.”
”Willie would not stoop to poison; it is alien to his character-he who has always been bigger than life. When Willie wishes to speed a person on his way, he will tell that victim outright, expecting him to wither from sheer sorrow at the withdrawal of Willie's princely presence.”
”Or her.” I could not quarrel with Irene's knowledge of the Prince, but I could s.h.i.+ver a bit at this astute characterization. ”You describe a ruthless person.”
”He is royalty; they are all ruthless by birth. You harbor a bit of that attribute yourself, Nell.”
”I?”
”You ... when you think that you are right.”
”Apparently you are right. This Jaborandi can be fatal and is at hand to palace intimates. Still, how will you accuse a princeling like Bertrand?”
”I will refrain from it, dear Nell. Not from fear, but because there is something in Hortense's behavior that disquiets me more-”
”There is a great deal in Hortense's behavior that is disquieting, but it need not be murderous.”
”Still, did you notice her apples the other day? She had eaten half a basket-and it is her custom to consume a great many a day. I have inquired-discreetly-in the kitchen.”
”Eating apples is not a suspicious act.”
”It is if you save the seeds.”
”Seeds? There are no seeds in apples-oh, you Americans call pips 'seeds' ...”
”Whatever you call them, in quant.i.ty they are rife with poison, as are peach pits, which perhaps you British call 'pips.'”
I ignored Irene's linguistic baiting. ”But how could one dose an invalid with a quant.i.ty of apple pips?”
”Ground in a mush, crushed in a tea. This volume states the interesting case of a gentleman who so loved the seeds that he ate the harvest of several apples a day- suffering no ills because a steady, small intake acclimates the person to the poison. Then, one day, in an orgy of apple seed indulgence, he saved up and consumed a cup's worth. Dead as a dodo by the next day, despite his previous tolerance.
”I wonder if Hortense could have been dosing the King with just enough to weaken him before administering the coup de grace. For a man of his age and weakness, a half cup should suffice and could easily be concealed in an apple cake or brewed into a heady concentrate of herbal tea.”
”So the poisoner is Hortense then? But why?”
Irene frowned as she shut the book and slipped it in the pocket of her voluminous skirt. ”I am unsure on both counts. As you point out so lucidly, the motive seems strained. Simply because I do not relish Bertrand or Hortense as an in-law is no reason to convict them of crime.”
”You, like Willie, observe the proprieties,” said I.
”Exactly, my dear Nell. So I shall muse upon the matter and ask the staff what and how they feed the old gentleman, the King-”
”Without exciting suspicions about yourself! Irene, if the King should die of poison, you would be a far likelier suspect than any member of the family.”