The Butterfly Conspiracy Page 4

  He continued, “Besides, I feel I’m to blame. I shouldn’t have been so skeptical, challenging you to release the butterfly.”

  He held her gaze. “I do realize you released it for my sake. To prove that it was alive. If you had just kept it behind the glass, Lady Sophia might have died anyway, but your butterfly would have had nothing to do with it. Now we need proof that it wasn’t the cause of her death. And your second cocoon is that proof. A friend of mine has a laboratory and can establish without a doubt that there is no poison in the animal that can kill a human being.”

  Merula shook her head. “I will not let you dissect my other Attacus atlas.”

  “Not even to save your uncle’s neck?”

  “Lord Havilock will stand by Uncle Rupert. He is a level-headed man; he knows butterflies do not kill.”

  Royston shook his head. “As soon as the word poison was mentioned, Havilock realized he might be accused. It happened in his home. He was so quick to deny his champagne had anything to do with it. If he can blame your uncle so nobody looks at him, he will certainly do so.”

  Royston held her gaze. “Everybody who was there tonight will point the finger at your uncle so they can all go scot-free. It’s as simple as that. Their testimonies will be worthless because they won’t say what they actually saw but what they believe they saw. I wager that, right now, people are declaring they witnessed Lady Sophia being stung. That they heard her cry out in pain or something. They will claim that they knew from the moment they detected the butterfly behind the glass that it was extremely dangerous. They will all have some story, if only to make themselves interesting, or because they are afraid. The police will be clueless about the butterfly’s true nature and readily believe whatever they are told. After all, what else will they have to go on?”

  CHAPTER 3

  The hansom dropped them off in front of the beautiful home that had been her haven ever since she could remember. As she looked up to its warm stone and sleepy windows with their curtains drawn, Merula’s chest contracted with remorse at what she had, unwittingly, set into motion.

  Royston moved as if to take her by the arm, as if he sensed her emotion and suspected she needed physical support, but afraid a friendly touch would unsettle her even more, she shook him off.

  Her mind couldn’t dwell on feelings right now, whether pain or regret, but had to be fully focused on finding the other butterfly and taking it to Royston’s friend with the laboratory so they could learn more about its properties.

  She wanted to march up the steps and ring the polished bell so the butler could let them in. But Royston caught her elbow and shook his head. “Let’s go in by way of the servants’ entrance, without announcing our arrival at the house.”

  “What for?” Merula asked.

  He shrugged. “Word of the disaster will travel fast. If the butler knows we are in the house, we might not get away with the evidence to have my friend examine it. We need to buy ourselves some time.”

  She hesitated a moment, then acknowledged that he was probably right. She took him into a narrow alley beside the house. At the back, a few steps led down to a door. She tried it, and it was open. She shot him a quick look. “Aunt Emma would be upset to know this door is open at night. But then Lamb has to be able to leave and come back in without the butler knowing about it.”

  “Lamb?” Royston inquired.

  “Her name is Anne, but we already had an Anne, so everybody calls her by her last name. She has an elderly mother who can barely take care of herself. Lamb’s brother has moved away from the city, and she is now the only one this old woman can depend on. The butler is less than sympathetic to such needs, so Lamb made an arrangement with me.”

  “With you?” Royston hitched a brow. “You can decide such things in this house? But you are just a niece, I heard.”

  “And the only one who cares.” She gave him a sad smile. “Aunt Emma is very good to the servants in terms of paying them fair wages and giving them their days off, but she wouldn’t allow a maid to leave often, believing it sets a bad example for others. She is always afraid that something will upset the smooth operation of the household. So I discussed the matter with Cook, who agreed Lamb’s old mother needs her daughter’s help. As long as Cook doesn’t get in trouble because of it. She can’t afford to lose her position here either.”

  “Seems like a delicate balance to maintain,” Royston said. “Are you such a diplomat?”

  She studied his expression to see if he was teasing her, but he seemed to be in earnest. With a rush of surprise, she realized he had answered her questions about suffocation without saying it was no subject for a lady. He had even welcomed her suggestions about how the death could have come about. Now he seemed to admire her for her tactful treatment of the servants. What sort of odd man was he? To hide her confusion, she said quickly, “Let’s go in now.”

  She pushed down the door handle and went in ahead of him.

  Through a storeroom, they came into a large kitchen, where a thickset woman was dozing in front of the fire.

  Merula put a finger to her lips, and they both tiptoed past the sleeping figure and came into a corridor. Merula’s heart was beating fast, and all her senses seemed heightened. She heard every creak and tick in the house as if she were entering it for the very first time. As if she were a burglar coming in to steal a precious family heirloom.

  “Here we are,” she whispered and led him through the first door, then the second.

  “It’s not a dry heat in here,” Royston said. “How do you create this high humidity? By letting water evaporate?”

  “Yes, the orchids need it. They can’t stand a splash of water directly on their roots. Then they die.” She smiled at him. “The secret of good orchids is the right amount of water.”

  Royston reached up and loosened his necktie, then slipped out of his jacket and hung it over his arm. He looked around, quickly taking in everything from the tropical flowers growing on a dead tree trunk to the wooden contraption against the wall where her butterflies hatched. “You devised this?”

  “There were plants here already. My uncle let me have it for my research. I mean, um, plants and things are not really his interest. He’s not very practical when it comes to making things. So I designed that.” She pointed at the pupa cabinet, hoping it would distract him from asking more questions that would expose her secret.

  Walking closer, Royston studied the cocoons pinned to the back of it and the ledges on which hatched butterflies sat. Some of them had no wings it all, just tiny crinkled rudiments on their backs. In some, these were already developing into flaps, still flat and fragile, while others had full-blown wings and were trying them carefully.

  Royston leaned over and let his eyes travel back and forth between the specimens of the different stages of wing development. “It’s amazing,” he cried out, “as if they are unfolding.”

  “I think it’s more like filling with air, like when you puff your breath into a glove and the fingers inflate,” Merula said at his shoulder.

  He glanced at her, taking in her expression with one probing look. “This is your work,” he said with certainty, “not your uncle’s.”

  She flushed, remembering his earlier observation to that point at the lecture. Her attempts to pretend she had merely assisted her uncle with some practical things, such as choosing plants and designing the pupa cabinet, hadn’t been credible at all.

  Royston continued before she could deny it, “Your uncle knows next to nothing about animals. Still he is praised for doing important research in which even the Royal Zoological Society is interested. He could be invited to meet the queen, while you do all the real work. Why on earth does he take credit for your accomplishments?”

  “You can answer that question for yourself. Because nobody would allow me in. I am a woman. You heard them earlier. They do not even accept Uncle Rupert telling them anything, whether he has the support of the Royal Zoological Society or not. They would never listen to
me, a mere girl with what they call fanciful ideas.”

  Merula knotted her fingers. “Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to think I knew anything about nature. I studied books, but I have no experience with live animals. I feel so responsible for the present trouble.” As tears stung her eyes, she focused on a practical issue. “How do you propose to take the cocoon along? It’s fragile.”

  Royston held up his jacket. “I can wrap it in this. The layers of cloth will protect it and also provide some warmth. My friend doesn’t live far from here, and he has means to take care of it. While he investigates its possible toxic capacities, we can ask around as to who might have had reason to want Lady Sophia dead.”

  Grimly he added, “Apart from your uncle, of course. The scene at the club ensures that half of London knows about his argument with her. That is, unfortunately, a powerful motive.”

  Banging rang out in the nightly quiet.

  Merula looked up, her heart skipping a beat at this sudden disturbance. “What is that sound?”

  “I wager it is the police at your front door.” Royston straightened up. “We have to leave.”

  Merula shook her head. “Impossible. There is but one way out of here, through the double doors, ending up in the corridor where they will see us. We must hide here until they have gone again.”

  She pulled out the pin from the back wall and transferred the large cocoon to rest in his jacket. Together they wrapped the cloth around it. Merula took him by his sleeve and directed him to a corner where there were several large bushes in pots. “Behind this. Quickly.”

  They crouched side by side, waiting, listening for sounds that would indicate feet coming for the conservatory. Merula knew that, if they were found here, their last chance of proving the butterfly was not the cause of Lady Sophia’s death would be gone. They would then have to depend on the police to sort it out. And after the picture Royston had painted her about the false witness statements that would be given, she had little confidence in the outcome.

  The banging came closer, and suddenly with a crash there were several men in the conservatory, shouting, asking where the poisonous creatures were. The edge in their voices betrayed their fear, reminding her of how little Merula had sung loudly every time she had to go up the deeply dark stairs in the DeVeeres’ country estate where something evil might lurk to grab at her.

  The heavily gilded family portraits of frowning gentlemen hadn’t helped, or the gargoyles grinning under the roof’s edges. Everything had seemed to breathe disapproval or malice there. She had always released a sigh of relief when they could go back to London and her nights of terror were over until the new summer season came around.

  “There,” a man called out. “A cupboard full of insects.”

  Merula didn’t dare straighten herself to look at what they were doing. She might be seen. She might give away the man who wanted to help her and the cocoon carefully wrapped in his jacket.

  A hacking sound resounded.

  Merula grabbed Royston’s arm, pinching. “They are destroying all my butterflies. The little ones have done nothing wrong.”

  She wasn’t even sure he could hear her anguished whispering over the crashing as wood was torn away and splintered. She closed her eyes a moment to lock out the reality of these events.

  Then a nervously high-pitched voice cried, “We have to burn everything in here to cleanse it of the evil.”

  Merula scooted closer to Royston. “Are they mad? They could set the whole house on fire!”

  Should she rise and try to explain to them that they were taking this too far, that the butterfly hadn’t killed Lady Sophia?

  But she knew nobody would listen to her. These men were frantic. They’d rip the jacket out of Royston’s hands and crush the cocoon. Then they’d set fire to the place anyway. Their fear would turn them into spooked horses that break into a gallop and thunder along, trampling everything in their path.

  There came the hiss of a flame, then a shout. “Let’s get out of here!”

  There was a shuffle of feet and the thud of the doors.

  Royston rose to his feet, clutching the precious bundle. Flames licked up the tropical plants and crawled across the floor, which was strewn with wood slivers. “It’s pointless to try the doors,” Royston said. “They will have secured them. Besides, if we try to escape that way, they may still catch us and destroy our evidence. We have to get out some other way.”

  “There is none,” Merula said. Panic began to rise in her throat as she realized their position. They were trapped in a burning room, with the only exit closed off to them. Unless they were willing to deliver their sole hope of saving Uncle Rupert’s neck into their pursuers’ hands.

  She looked up at her companion. “You should not have interfered.”

  He snorted. “On the contrary, my lady. My presence here will be your salvation. Hold this.”

  He pushed the bundle into her hands and moved to her workbench. With a giant sweep, he emptied it of tools and utensils. Glass broke as vials of liquid rained to the floor.

  “Gently,” she protested, upset with the rough way he treated her carefully collected work. But the metal clanging of the falling tools mixed with the crackling of fire reminding her sharply that her efforts were going to waste anyway. And this man she had just met tonight was trying to save her life.

  Why? To make up for the lives destroyed that he had briefly mentioned on their way here? To do better than in a previous instance where he had been unable to act?

  Royston grabbed the edge of the bench and moved it a few yards so it stood under the lowest point of the slanting glass paneling. “Give me that big pruning tool,” he called to her as he clambered onto the bench.

  She ran to hand it up to him.

  He struck at the glass with one arm, using his other to protect his face. The normally moist heat in the conservatory was turning into dry desert air as the fire consumed everything that would easily burn.

  Glass broke, shards raining over Royston. He tore off his necktie and wrapped it round his hand for protection, then broke the remaining points of glass from the window frame. He reached down to her. “Come up with me. Be careful of the glass.”

  Holding the bundle gently against her chest, she let him pull her up to stand beside him. He took the coat from her and nodded at the window frame. “Pull yourself up and out.”

  She gave him a startled look, and Royston began to laugh. “Oh, please don’t tell me you don’t know how. Did you never climb out of your window at night to roam outside and look up at the stars?”

  Or check in the stables to see if the foal had already been born, or make sure Uncle Rupert’s rich friends had not abused the horses? Apart from her fear in the dark staircase of the impressive house, life had been sweet during long summers in the country.

  “Try,” Royston coaxed her, kneeling on top of the workbench so she could clamber onto his back. She hoped the heels of her dancing shoes wouldn’t poke too painfully into his flesh. But he was strong and stable, an excellent support as she grabbed the frame and hauled herself up, then out. Her palms ached from gripping so hard and her heartbeat droned in her ears, but the cool air lapping at her face was delicious. She took two deep breaths before steadying herself and reaching back to him. “Give me the bundle.”

  In an instant she had it and crawled away from the hole, pushing herself against the glass panels that were still unbroken. The heat radiating from the conservatory reminded her of the danger still lurking there, and she held her breath as Royston emerged. He looked around.

  “If we go that way,” she nodded with her head, “we can lower ourselves into a small backyard. It’s closed off by a gate, but the lock is poorly maintained and easy to open.”

  As he hitched a brow at her, she added innocently, “So I heard from Cook when she instructed Lamb about alternative ways of entering the house at night after she had taken care of her ill mother.”

  Her cheeks flamed at the idea he might not believe
her and think she herself was sneaking around London in the dead of night. What kind of idea did he have of her?

  But what did it matter what he thought? He had helped her save the cocoon, and she was grateful for that. She would be more grateful still if his friend could prove Uncle Rupert’s innocence in the matter of Lady Sophia’s demise. But that was all. After that they need never see each other again.

  In fact, she was sure she would prefer never to see him again, never to be reminded of this terrifying night and her shameful retreat from Lord Havilock’s home.

  Don’t worry, she said to herself as she lowered herself into the backyard. After this disaster, Uncle Rupert will forbid you to ever go out again. You won’t research plants and butterflies anymore, nor attend lectures like Sir Edward Parker’s. You won’t even be allowed to read books on the subject. After all, your interest in zoology caused all this misery.

  In the distance, the bells of the fire brigade rang out.

  Royston caught her arm. “Listen! At least they had the decency to call in the fire brigade, not risking the entire house and neighboring buildings. I’m sure the fire will be doused soon and your home will be saved.”

  He leaned over the lock on the door and hmmed, then dug into his pocket and produced a small knife. As he put the tip of the knife into the lock, he said, “But the police will be looking for you very soon. The butterflies were hatched under your guidance. Your uncle may want to protect you and try to keep you out of it, but once they start questioning him thoroughly, he will have to admit he knows next to nothing about insects.”

  The lock clicked open, and Royston opened the door. Ushering her into the street, he continued, “All eyes will then be on you.”

  Merula swallowed. Her uncle had status and influential friends who could, to some extent, protect him. Who would hire the best solicitors to try to get him released. His case would look grim because of the influential victim and his recent argument with her, but it might not be completely hopeless.

  However, once suspicion shifted to her, she would stand alone. Her interest in a male-dominated field would be considered unnatural. Her dubious parentage would make it even worse. The papers would start writing about the murderous foundling, the girl without a past who had caused the death of one of the most respected members of London society. Lady Sophia’s family would call for her head, led by the arrogant Simon Foxwell, who had been quick enough to assume foul play to begin with.