The Butterfly Conspiracy Read online

  “What do you mean?” Foxwell asked. “Did my aunt have a heart attack?”

  “That is … possible.” Sir Edward’s tone betrayed that he didn’t really believe it himself. He knotted his bony fingers, keeping his gaze on the floor.

  “What do you think ails her?” Foxwell pressed him. “I can assure you that when my aunt and I drove here tonight, she was in fine health.”

  He had barely finished his sentence when the doctor rushed in, carrying his big leather bag. “Someone is unwell here? I came right away.”

  The sight of him filled Merula with relief. Unlike Sir Edward, he was a professional who treated patients on a daily basis. He would no doubt establish that Lady Sophia was already coming to her senses again and that no harm had befallen her. He would suggest some fresh air or a few sips of water to help her regain her bearings. Then they could go on admiring the butterfly.

  The doctor disappeared behind the screen. They heard his bag thud on the floor.

  A few moments passed, stretching into what seemed half a day.

  Then the doctor’s voice called out, “Why have I been summoned? There is nothing I can do anymore. This woman is dead.”

  “Dead?” Havilock thundered. “Are you sure? Check again.”

  Merula pressed her nails into the palms of her hands to keep herself from showing her shock. She had never seen a dead body before, and the idea that the death had actually happened in front of all of them was quite disturbing.

  The doctor appeared with a cold look on his face. “I can do many things,” he said, “but I cannot revive the dead. This woman has no pulse. Judging by her facial expression and the bluish tinge of her lips, I’d say she died of suffocation. Has anyone harmed her?”

  “Harmed her?” Havilock echoed. “Of course not. She was in full view of all of us this whole time.”

  “No one has harmed her,” Foxwell spoke, slowly and carefully, “but she might have been stung by a creature. Could that have caused her to die?”

  Merula blinked as she tried to work out what he meant.

  The doctor’s eyes went wide. “A creature? You mean, a snake or something?”

  He glanced across the floor as if he expected a huge adder to come slithering up to him and climb up his leg. “You keep snakes in your home?”

  “Of course not.” Havilock looked appalled. “All of my samples are dead. Which cannot be said of the creature you brought here tonight, DeVeere. You should have known better.” He turned to the door, which was still open following the doctor’s entrance, and snapped his fingers. “Dispose of that thing.”

  Upon this signal, Havilock’s butler rushed in, carrying a poker in his hand, with which he struck at the butterfly as it hovered over a sofa.

  Its left wing smashed, it fell to the floor.

  “No!” Merula cried. She felt as if she were caught in a dream where everything was happening very fast and she could do nothing to stop it. “Uncle, say something. It is not dangerous. The butterfly didn’t cause Lady Sophia’s death. No, don’t…”

  But the butler’s shiny shoes had already trampled the fallen form. In moments the tender creature that had filled her heart with hope and happiness was reduced to dust on the carpet.

  Merula raised a hand to her face, wanting to scream her razor-sharp disappointment into the crowded room. It had taken her so much time, effort, and money to make this possible, and her moment of glory had been ruined in a few heartbeats. Their host had ordered the beautiful creature’s destruction without being certain it was even responsible for Lady Sophia’s death.

  “We need the police,” Foxwell said in a cold tone. “That man”—he pointed at Uncle Rupert—“hated my aunt. He poisoned her on purpose.”

  Reeling under this second blow, Merula jerked her head to look at Uncle Rupert. His eyes bulged as the red spots on his cheeks faded to a chilly white. He looked as if he would be next to collapse and need the doctor’s assistance.

  “Stop this.” Royston’s words were a quiet command. Everybody looked at him. “Do we really want to be like those people in Limehouse who scraped off their wallpaper, believing it was killing their children?”

  The doctor said with a tight expression, “Can you blame people for looking for a reason when four of their children waste away in just a few weeks’ time? No cause was ever found.”

  “Exactly,” Royston said. “Nobody established with absolute proof that those children died of poisoning, let alone that the alleged poison had come from the wallpaper.”

  Normally the idea of lethal wallpaper would have intrigued Merula, but the presence of the dead body behind the screen chilled her to the bone. The end had come suddenly, without warning, and from what? How?

  “There is arsenic in certain shades of wallpaper dye,” Foxwell said in a weighty tone, apparently eager to demonstrate his knowledge of the subject. “And arsenic is indeed poisonous. Sir Edward here mentioned a mottled color and her lips. He thought it was poison right away. Foul play!”

  Merula had to admit Sir Edward had looked flustered when he appeared from behind the screen. Upset by more than having to attend to an ill woman. Had he really realized at once that Lady Sophia had been poisoned?

  Everybody stared at Sir Edward now, waiting for an explanation. He straightened up slowly as if trying to regain control of a situation that was too much for him. “Like I said, I was an army doctor years ago. During campaigns abroad, homesick or frightened young soldiers sometimes … took their own lives.”

  Merula swallowed. Such actions were usually kept very quiet for the sake of the families involved and the reputation of the army. That Sir Edward freely shared this proved he saw a need to do so.

  Sir Edward said, “As they fell ill, I was called in to attend to them, but of course there was nothing to be done anymore. I must confess that some of the symptoms I saw with Lady Sophia just now could indicate … poisoning. Her behavior before she collapsed, gasping for breath, turning red in the face, can all show that a poison was causing speedy suffocation.”

  “Poisons are usually administered by ingestion,” Royston said.

  Havilock cried, “Are you accusing my champagne?” He took a step toward Royston as if he wanted to grab and shake him.

  Royston held up a soothing hand. “I’m just saying we need more information before we draw any sort of conclusion about what happened here.”

  Merula was relieved that someone was trying to address this rationally, but Foxwell laughed grimly. “It is clear enough to my mind. I can testify that Lady Sophia drank nothing after we arrived here. We had just had dinner at her house, and she didn’t want to drink anything when we arrived. Her symptoms started after the butterfly sat on her arm.”

  People murmured their agreement. They looked with disgust at the place where the butler had trampled the insect.

  Someone said in a raspy voice, “Didn’t the doctors in the case of the poisonous wallpaper claim that the victims inhaled the arsenic by simply being present in the room where the wallpaper was?”

  At once people edged toward the door as if they feared some lethal residue might be left on the air.

  Her heart pounding at the idea that her butterfly could have killed someone, Merula fought for composure. Royston was right: they had to stay calm and rationally work out what had happened. Was Foxwell’s assertion even true? Hadn’t Lady Sophia gasped when the glass container was still in place? Merula had then ascribed it to her shock at seeing such a large insect, but what if she had already begun to feel ill?

  And, yes, now that she thought about it, Lady Sophia had also been waving cool air into her face with her fan while Havilock escorted her to the place of honor. Had she felt as if she couldn’t breathe well? They should ask Foxwell if Lady Sophia suffered from lung trouble or the like.

  Havilock was saying, “… for the police to figure out.” He nodded at his butler and a footman, who closed in on Uncle Rupert and pinned his arms at his sides. Uncle Rupert didn’t flare at this treatment
but stood with his head down as if all life had ebbed out of him.

  Merula swallowed hard. The police couldn’t ask Lady Sophia exactly when she had started to feel ill. Would the officers be interested to know when the symptoms had begun or question Foxwell about possible causes for the death? There were dozens of witnesses right here who would declare that Lady Sophia had died after an insect of unnatural proportions sat on her bare arm.

  An insect brought there by Rupert DeVeere, who, according to Foxwell, had hated the dead woman.

  Merula had no idea why Uncle Rupert would hate anyone, let alone this particular reclusive lady, but he had acted earlier as if he’d wanted to avoid the lady in question, and right now he was not defending himself in any way.

  A strong arm grabbed her round the waist, and she was shepherded out of the room as if she were near fainting. She tried to protest, but there was no way to fight Royston’s persuasiveness, for it was he who held her. Her chest ached with sharp stabs of pain for Aunt Emma and Julia, who were innocently enjoying themselves at a ball, unaware that their husband and father was about to be arrested.

  She gasped for breath to speak clearly. “How dare you? I am not leaving my uncle’s side. That would be like an admission of guilt. The butterfly did nobody any harm, and I intend to stay and prove it.”

  “How? Nobody is going to listen right now. If you want to prove something, you must take another route,” Royston retorted, pulling her to the front door. “Those fools just destroyed the evidence.”

  “Evidence?” Merula echoed, puzzled.

  “You have more of these things, I presume?” he queried hurriedly.

  “In my conservatory, there is another cocoon that has not yet hatched, but what—”

  “Excellent. Just what we need.” He had opened the front door already and yanked her into the cold night air outside.

  Merula almost tripped as her companion rushed her down the blue stone steps.

  Calling out to a passing hansom, he managed to halt it and drag her in with him. He glanced at her. “The conservatory is at your uncle’s house?”

  She nodded. He called the address out to the driver. The hansom lurched as the horse jumped forward under the coachman’s urging whip.

  Merula leaned back against the cushions and stared at the man beside her. He had simply forced her to come with him without even explaining what he had in mind. She had to admit there had been little time to explain anything, but still it wasn’t her way to follow a man blindly. And Uncle Rupert had even called Royston a disaster magnet, urging her not to associate with him. In the current trouble, Royston might be more of a burden than a help.

  “I believe I’ve made a mistake,” she said, sitting upright. She put as much conviction in her voice as she could muster under the circumstances. Lady Sophia’s flustered face and terrible staring eyes were seared into her memory. A woman who had wanted to attend a quiet night of scholarly discussion had died minutes after her arrival. Merula believed in earnest that it had not been her butterfly’s doing, but deep inside she knew she couldn’t be completely sure. After all, it was an animal from a wild and exotic place, about which they still had so little knowledge.

  What if she herself was the guilty party, even if she had acted in innocence?

  Resisting a shiver, she said, “Please ask the coachman to turn around and bring me back to Lord Havilock’s house. I must support my uncle.” I must accept my part in this, whatever will come of it.

  “Lord Havilock will not be able to protect you from his guests’ wrath,” Royston countered in a calm tone. “Lady Sophia was powerful and respected. Your uncle will be blamed for her death. Especially after their recent argument.”

  “What argument? I know Foxwell just said my uncle hated her, but that isn’t true. My uncle doesn’t hate anybody. He is the kindest and most soft-spoken man I know. He doesn’t judge or condemn people on a whim and—”

  Royston laughed softly. “You misjudge what happens to a man when he is humiliated. Even the meekest spirit can be taunted to retort.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Royston said with a sigh, “It seems that this Simon Foxwell, who is cast as her heir, was taking too much interest in your cousin, Julia DeVeere. He was even seeing her in secret, making plans to elope with her.”

  Merula stared at him. “Julia, run away from home? That can’t be. She would have told me.” Her mind was reeling at the possibility that her cousin had been about to change her life so drastically, for a man she had barely met, and had not even told her. Had not even betrayed herself by little things that …

  Or had Merula perhaps been so caught up in her butterflies, her books, and her plans for tonight that she had not listened well? Had she missed the signs, had she …

  Failed her cousin, and failed her family?

  Royston continued, “Lady Sophia didn’t consider Julia well-bred or educated enough for her nephew. Julia may be the daughter of a lady, but she has no title of her own, and Lady Sophia wanted her nephew to make a much better match. She told your uncle in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t expect to profit from her fortune by an alliance.”

  Merula stared at Royston. “I know nothing of this. Lady Sophia hasn’t visited our home to speak to my uncle, I’m sure of that. Is it not just rumors?”

  “I was there when she told him. It was a scene if I ever witnessed one. At his club. As a woman, Lady Sophia should, of course, not appear there, but she never much cared for rules if she wanted to have things her way.”

  “She came to my uncle’s club? She told him Julia wasn’t good enough for her nephew in front of all his friends and relations?”

  “Exactly.” Royston held her gaze. “You understand what that means. Lady Sophia publicly declared war on Rupert DeVeere, and now she is dead. Died shortly after the butterfly that Rupert DeVeere supposedly hatched sat on her arm.”

  All strength ebbed from Merula’s body, and she sank back into the hansom’s padding. This was bad indeed. Her uncle had had a most compelling motive to wish Lady Sophia harm. To get even with her for the insult, yes, but also to pave the way for an alliance between his daughter and the nephew who would, after Lady Sophia’s death, inherit her entire fortune.

  Houses, land, stock, horses, jewelry.

  Men had killed for less.

  But Uncle Rupert would never kill. It wasn’t in his nature.

  Her mind raced to find a logical explanation for what had happened in that room. Anything other than that the butterfly had caused the death. “The doctor said it was suffocation. What can cause suffocation?”

  Royston shrugged. “Strangulation with a scarf, for instance. But we were all with her when she collapsed. No one was strangling her.”

  “And how does poison cause suffocation? So quickly? Didn’t the doctor mention that in this case you brought up, of the allegedly poisonous wallpaper, the children wasted away in a matter of weeks?”

  Royston nodded. “Yes, but why is that relevant?”

  “Well, I’ve heard about poisoning cases where people became bedridden and died, and their family and even the doctor believed it was something they had eaten or a contagious illness. Only later was it believed they’d been poisoned. But in all of those cases the people were ill for a few days or a few hours at least. How can a poison kill someone so fast as we witnessed with Lady Sophia?”

  Royston held her gaze as if he wondered how she knew of poisonings, a subject kept well away from young ladies. He didn’t ask, though, but explained, “That depends on the poison. In India there are snakes whose bite can kill people in a matter of moments.”

  “But butterflies do not bite or sting. If they hadn’t been so stupid as to destroy the butterfly, I could have shown everybody on the spot, under Lord Havilock’s microscope, that butterflies have a tongue with which to drink honey but no teeth to bite and no stinger like a bee or wasp.”

  “Of course,” Royston said in an ironic tone. “Those people would have just let you c
apture that thing to look at it under a microscope. I wager that they are right now clamoring for your head.”

  The idea of an incensed mob, not consisting of street rabble but of the most powerful men in London, was fearsome indeed.

  But Merula wasn’t about to despair yet. “Because I fled. Because you made me flee.”

  She gave him her best angry stare. “What was going through your head for you to do such a thing?”

  “Your beautiful dress would only get stained in prison.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “Excuse me?”

  Was this some kind of ill-timed joke?

  Some men of the higher classes who had never had a care in their lives made light of everything. Maybe this gentleman by her side even considered these shocking events a refreshing change from an otherwise dull evening?

  At her expense!

  Royston made a reassuring gesture with his hand. “What I’m trying to say is that I had no wish to see you arrested with your uncle and locked up while some incompetent constable does nothing to ascertain your uncle’s innocence. The police might be capable enough of dealing with murderers who wield a knife or pistol, or even those who slip poison into someone’s morning broth. But the subtleties of this case obviously go far over their heads.”

  Case? Who did he think he was? Some sort of lawyer or consulting detective?

  Clenching her hands into fists, she shot at him, “First you tried to play inventor with your steam-powered coach and your hair tonic, and now you think you can dabble in solving crime? I won’t let you wager my uncle’s life, my family. This is not a game.”

  Royston threw her a dark look. “Far from it,” he said between gritted teeth. “I’ve witnessed once before how a hasty conclusion destroyed a life. Several lives, in fact. I won’t let it happen again.”

  She had no idea to what he was referring, but the tight lines in his face made it clear he was remembering something infinitely painful.

  Something intensely personal too, more than just a case he had read about in the newspaper or a thing that had happened to a friend.