The surgeon had positioned himself near the fireplace, which lay between two windows. I realized that anyone who looked in from below would not be able to see him.
He studied me now without changing expression. Even Denis’s guards appeared more interested in the problem than he did.
“Describe what happened,” he commanded.
No greeting, no waiting until I’d been offered a seat or refreshment. Denis said nothing at all, expecting my response.
“I’ll do my best.” I launched into my tale. “Even the memory of coming to myself in the Pavilion is fuzzy,” I concluded. “I managed to get out of the building and make my way home. When I woke, I remembered nothing at all—I’ve been trying to discover exactly what I did that night and who truly killed Colonel Isherwood, but there are still large gaps.”
The surgeon watched me stolidly. “No, what exactly do you remember? What was your last memory before the absence of them? Were you disoriented when you came to, or clear of mind? When you slept, did you have odd dreams—could you sleep at all? Did you seem to experience things that could not possibly have happened?” He ceased the rapid-fire questions and pinned me with a hard stare. “I will need all details.”
I told myself that a physician must be much like a general—a commander could only know how to meet the enemy if he knew precisely where they were, how many soldiers they had at the ready, and what weaponry they possessed. The more details, the more prepared he could be.
“I remember talking with the other guests at supper,” I said. “Mostly about common concerns, such as the weather, farming, and events in the newspapers. Desjardins regaled us with a tale of a chamber pot Bonaparte supposedly left behind in Madrid, and how it was auctioned off for a very high price once he was deposed.” I paused, recalling how Desjardins had laughed very hard, and Isherwood had upbraided him for telling such an anecdote in front of the ladies.
The surgeon took it all in, again without changing expression. “Go on.”
“I recall enjoying a glass of port afterward. A fine vintage from the Douro Valley in Portugal, near Régua. I had gone into an antechamber and Isherwood joined me there. Isherwood took me aside and sneered something about his former wife. Bad taste to bring that up, I thought, and told him so. He even threatened to speak to my wife, but apparently he did not.”
Denis cleared his throat. “I’d have a care whom you reported that detail to.”
“In case they believe I murdered a blackmailer?” I grimaced. “There is nothing to say I did not.”
Denis only gave me his bland stare. “Continue.”
“After that, I walked with Grenville in the park. I haven’t the faintest notion what we said to each other. I smoked a cheroot. He said good night, and …” I spread my hands. “The rest is a blank until I found Isherwood dead in the Pavilion.”
The surgeon listened to all this dispassionately. “Have you had any flashes of memory? Even vague feelings you don’t understand?”
I hesitated. “When I saw Lord and Lady Armitage at the lecture on Tuesday night, something tickled in my brain. But I have no idea what.”
“That is all?”
“Earlier today, when Captain Wilks took me to the tavern he said I’d been in, I remembered a picture on the wall, one of an actress. But that likely only means I truly had entered that tavern.”
“You slept after you went home,” the surgeon stated.
“Indeed, I went to bed. I tossed and turned a bit before sleeping—had dreams first of Isherwood, then of faces coming at me, changing and merging. I woke late in the afternoon with no idea I’d slept away much of the day.” I let out a breath. “That is all I can truly tell you.”
“No, there is much more.” The surgeon rested one elbow on the mantelpiece. “When you woke in your bed, was your mouth dry? Did you have a headache? Any other aches in your body? Were you flaccid or rigid? Did you twitch or were you completely relaxed? Were your feet and hands cold or warm?”
His hard look said he expected me to answer the litany, no matter how embarrassing.
I swallowed. “I was sick in a basin before I went to bed, and I woke with a dry throat and headache. My back was sore, I recall, and my knee ached—though it usually does in the morning. Flaccid, I think.” My face warmed. “I was restless, my hands tingling, my feet rather numb. The warm water with my shave felt good. I was much better after I dressed, and able to walk through town, though I was a bit fatigued. Later that evening, Grenville’s wife told me my eyes were slow to focus.”
The surgeon listened in silence. No nodding as I listed my symptoms, no flick of eyes or thoughtful movement of brows. I might have been speaking to a statue.
The clock ticked. Outside, people walked by the house, their voices loud through the windows open at the top for air. A woman’s voice: “… Spending so much time in a carriage, bumping over roads for hours, and there was nothing there.” A man; “I thought the church quite fine …” The woman again, “No different from the parish church in …”
They faded, disgruntled travelers irritated the world hadn’t arranged itself to please them.
“There are several possibilities.” The surgeon’s clear words were startling after the quiet. “It is a question of what would be available to the person or persons who gave you the dose.”
Denis took up his pen and dipped it in ink. “The possibilities are?”
“From the ordinary to the extraordinary: Laudanum. Opium, ingested, not smoked. Either of these mixed with a large quantity of alcohol. There are purer forms of opium being distilled as medicines; one in particular relieves all pain but might render you immobile at the same time.”
“I walked from place to place without trouble, it seems,” I said. “Spoke to people, in fact.”
The surgeon went on as though I hadn’t interrupted. “There are oils from the Dutch East Indies that render a person quite inebriated and cause memory loss. An extract from a plant from the Americas can make a man see things that do not exist, and he does not remember his trance when he awakes. The natives of certain regions use it in religious ceremonies.”
Dubious, I asked, “How likely are such substances to be in England? In Brighton?”
“I possess some of each I have mentioned,” the surgeon said. “The very distilled opium I use only rarely, but I keep a small quantity about in case it’s needed. However, all my medicines are locked away in London.”
He’d given Donata a medicine when she’d borne Anne to help heal her, and I’d never learned what. I hadn’t cared, so long as Donata recovered.
I thought about what Marianne had told me the night of the lecture. “Mrs. Grenville suggested that sailors bring such things into the country all the time. Actors apparently make use of dangerous substances to enhance their looks or give them the courage to enter the stage.”
Denis was making plenty of notes, his pen lightly scratching in the stillness. “Laudanum would be the easiest thing to give you.” He wrote a few more words and laid down his pen. “But you are familiar with it and would recognize the taste. Also, as you have used laudanum often to quell pain, it would take a very large dose to render you insensible. You would have noticed drinking such a quantity.”
“The purer distillation of opium is more likely, in this case,” the surgeon told him. “The oil from the East Indies is less likely, though some apothecaries sell it … discreetly. I have not seen in England the American juice that causes delirium but that does not mean no one else has obtained it.”
I gazed at the surgeon in disbelief. “So I am looking for a person who has visited an apothecary not adverse to selling exotic potions.”
“That is a possibility,” the surgeon said. “You could also search for an avid gardener who knows a thing or two about extracting and distilling substances from plants. The opium poppy is cultivated not only for medicine but for its bright colors and edible seeds.”
“In other words, anyone in England could have given me this substance,” I said despairingly.
“Not anyone,” Denis pointed out in his cool voice. “Only those close to you Monday night. You drank any number of substances—wine at supper, port afterward, coffee at the public house.”
I thought of Captain Wilks. He himself could have doctored my coffee—a bitter enough drink that I might not have tasted any addition. Or the publican could have, paid by my enemy to do so.
“Would I not have noticed someone emptying a vial into my port or coffee?” I asked testily.
“Not if you were distracted,” Denis said. “Arguing or debating, speaking to another while your glass remained behind you … It is a simple matter to slip a dose to a person without their knowledge.”
I did not like contemplating how he knew this. “Which puts me no closer to the truth.”
“On the contrary.” Denis looked over his notes. “How long do the effects of this distilled opium last?” he asked the surgeon.
“Two or three hours if a small dose but it can also obscure memories from before the dose is taken. As it wears off, the patient sleeps, has nightmares, headaches, and wakes with numbness and very little interest in copulation. He remains slightly inebriated by it for as much as an entire day.”
He described my condition so exactly that I shivered.
Denis switched his focus to me. “Then the concoction could only have been given to you in a narrow window of time, by any person you met Monday evening. I suggest you look at each one very carefully. Also consider that the person who gave you the substance might not have known it would make you forget taking it. This was fortunate for them. But they might worry that one day, those memories will return.”
“Am I likely to regain the memories?” I asked the surgeon.
“Not very,” he answered without hesitation. “Events wiped away by substances such as these are usually gone forever.”
I didn’t like the despondency his answer gave me. The blank in my mind was unnerving, and he’d just told me I’d have to live with it the rest of my life.
“I wonder if Isherwood himself gave me the dose,” I said, mostly to distract myself from my disquiet.
“Possibly, but I’d wonder at his purpose.” Denis neatly pushed his notes aside, his tone suggesting he was finished with the conversation. “Determining who had such an opium solution and the opportunity to feed it to you will no doubt reveal the killer and why they wished you to be accused of the crime.”
“Must be driving them spare that you ran off,” Brewster put in. “And that the dead colonel’s son won’t tell anyone he was murdered.”
“Indeed.” Thoughts began to turn in my head—I was a slow thinker but my advantage was that I never let my thoughts cease. “I wonder what would happen if the murderer believed I had regained the memories?”
“Disaster,” Brewster said, full of gloom. “That’s what. And me having to come behind to pick up the pieces.”
The sky was darkening to evening by the time I returned home. Gabriella had returned from her day out with Lady Aline, but she intercepted me before I could enter the drawing room for a much needed coffee.
“Stepmamma is in there,” she whispered. “She said she needed to compose herself.”
I raised my brows, foreboding chilling my blood. “Compose herself for what?”
“She had callers while you were out, and she sent me away so she could speak to them alone.” Her brown eyes held worry. “I did not know them. Mr. and Mrs. Gibbons?”
I turned abruptly on my heel, thanking Gabriella, who was too polite to ask more questions. I quickly entered the drawing room and shut its door behind me.
Donata reposed on a sofa, her feet on an ottoman she’d drawn to it, her legs crossed at the ankle. A lit cigarillo wafted smoke from a bowl on a nearby table, and Donata held a glass of brandy she was in the act of finishing.
“You could have put them off,” I said before she could speak. “The Gibbonses. I’d have interviewed them. There was no need for you to.”
“There was need.” Donata spoke calmly, but I saw the brandy glass trembler. “It is not often a lady can interrogate her husband’s former mistress.”
I made for the brandy decanter and poured myself a measure. I drank it in one go, the smooth liquid burning to my stomach. “At least you could see that she is happy, living with her husband, her old life behind her.”
“Happy in her marriage, yes,” Donata said. “Unnerved of course by Isherwood’s murder, but not unduly so, I think. Do sit down, Gabriel. You make me nervous when you hover.”
I poured more brandy and folded myself onto the sofa next to her.
“That’s better,” she said. “I wished Mrs. Gibbons had come alone so I could quiz her more pointedly, but that would hardly do, would it? They expected to find you here, not me, and Mrs. Gibbons would never embarrass her husband by calling on you on her own.” Donata plucked her cigarillo from the bowl, thin smoke rising. “By the way—I was correct. Marguerite Gibbons was not the woman who accosted you outside the public house on Monday night.”
I sipped my second glass of brandy more slowly. “You believe her?”
“It is not a question of believing her. Mrs. Gibbons and her husband were still in Portsmouth at the time you were in the public house—she has many witnesses who will swear the Gibbonses did not leave home until Tuesday afternoon. They arrived in Brighton late Tuesday night.”
I deflated. “I suppose that is easily checked.”
“I do not intend to take her at her word, of course, and I have sent a note to Mr. Quimby that he should find out. But it is highly unlikely the woman outside the public house was Mrs. Gibbons. She could not be in two places at once.”
“Then who was the woman?” I said half to myself.
“What does Mr. Denis say about it? He has many resources—he needs to use them.”
“Mmm. He has hinted that he intends to help me out of this dilemma only so he can use my services for something else. He has not told me what.”
Donata took a pull of her cigarillo, her eyes narrowing. “Well, we will have to take care of that problem when we come to it. What did he want today?”
My injured knee was unhappy so I lifted my foot to join hers on the large ottoman. “To have his pet surgeon ask me about my inebriation.”
Donata listened with interest as I related the surgeon’s speculations. I ended with my plan to put it about that I was beginning to clearly remember events of the night.
“That will be exceedingly dangerous,” Donata said, worry entering her eyes. “If the murderer believes you know his identity …”
“He will confront me, and then we will have him,” I said firmly. “I do not intend to meet him alone in a dark lane, unarmed. I will have Brewster, Quimby, and other stout fellows with me to arrest him.” I quieted. “It may be that there will be no murderer to find but me.”
“We have discussed this.” Donata tossed her spent cigarillo into the bowl. “I do not believe you killed Isherwood, no matter how angry you were with him. He was horrid to his wife, yes, and angry at you for helping her, but that was seven years ago, and he had not seen you since. It is unlikely you were still incensed enough about that to run him through—and even then, you’d challenge him to meet with seconds.”
“I hope you are right,” I said. “Then again, who knows what would set me off if I’d drunk a strong concoction of opium?”
“I suppose it is true we can’t know that, but I still do not believe you’d lose your sense of honor, even then. And how do you plan to let it be known that you’ve regained your memory of the night? Invite all those we supped with at the Pavilion to dine? There were twenty people there—we haven’t the room.”
I laid my arm across the back of the sofa, letting it touch her shoulders. “I will ask Isherwood’s son if he’ll allow Mr. Quimby to announce that Isherwood was murdered. Mr. Quimby can imply that I know something about it and am helping to find the killer. Which is true.”
“Young Isherwood might not agree,” Donata warned. “He was adamant, you said, not to put the stain of murder onto his family, and not to embarrass the Regent.” She took a breath. “Oh, Lord, what if the Regent truly did kill Colonel Isherwood? You’ll cause a terrible scandal if you reveal it.”
“The Regent causes enough scandal on his own—will anyone notice?” I spoke lightly then sobered. “I understand your fears. A man who accuses his monarch of a capital crime will not be well received, even when that monarch is unpopular already. I hope it will not come to that.”
“I had planned to call on Lady Hollingsworth today, but the Gibbonses arrived. I will go tomorrow and persuade her to tell me all the Regent said to her that night, including any intention to run back to the Pavilion and stab Isherwood.”
“Would she tell you?” I asked doubtfully.
“She would.” Donata gave me an arch glance. “My dear Gabriel, I know many things about many people. Most will take great care that these things are not made common knowledge.”
I gazed at her in half admiration, half worry. “You mean you blackmail them.”
My wife smiled at me. “Only a little.”
I suppressed a shudder. “I pray you will not have to exercise your criminal tendencies. I will find Mr. Quimby and ask him to pay a call on young Colonel Isherwood.”
I had a repast first, with Donata and Gabriella, then went out into the gathering darkness, heading for Quimby’s lodgings. On the way, I found the Quaker woman, Miss Purkis.
Or rather, she found me.