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Perilous Pâté

I made the pâté de foie gras, using nothing but the best ingredients, including exceedingly expensive black truffles, minced fine. The four slices had to be irresistible in taste as well as appearance.

My own kitchen was the scene of my preparations, which is not to say that, as a rule, I cook. I have better things to do with my time than to waste it on what, among nonprofessional cooks, is considered woman’s work. But any scientist who has worked in a lab can follow a recipe. This one had been in my family for generations. I followed it exactly but for the one tiny addition, which should not change the flavor for the worse. Even if it did, it was only one tiny drop surrounded by several inches of delectable homemade pâté on all sides. This particular compound is over 1,250 times more toxic than cyanide and would begin to do its work rapidly—the more ingested, the quicker the effect.

I made it in my lab. Not an easy synthesis, but it had been done before; in fact, the compound was becoming of interest medically in very dilute solutions. The solution in my small vials was not at all dilute and, therefore, satisfyingly deadly. Having made the pâté in a small roll, I sliced it neatly into four rounds and carefully placed a drop in the middle of each. Then I covered and refrigerated the tray that held the rounds and, after running water into the vials for a half hour each, I crushed them in a towel and disposed of the whole, along with my protective gloves, by putting the “evidence” into a paper bag and throwing it into a public trash container in a suitably distant neighborhood. It was early morning when I returned to prepare the offering of iced champagne and pâté with toast accompanied by the handsome computer-generated note attached to the champagne. Again I wore gloves so that there would be no fingerprints except those of the delivery messenger, who would not be able to identify me because I disguised myself as a messenger in taking the package to him.

I couldn’t predict whether both or only one of the visitors would eat the pâté with its unexpected ingredient. But surely at least one would love pâté enough to indulge. If the husband, my vengeance would be direct. If the wife, her loss, for gossip revealed that he was very fond of her, would be devastating and would last as long as he lived. Or as long as I allowed him to live. I had not yet made that decision.

Or perhaps they would both die. By leaving something to chance, my retaliation became the more exciting.

“Wish me luck,” I whispered to the ghost who haunted my rooms and my dreams.