Death By Darjeeling

Chapter 29

By evening, the rain still showed no sign of letting up. A tropical disturbance had swept in from the Atlantic and hunkered down over the grand strand and the sea islands. Its fury extended a hundred miles in either direction, north to Myrtle Beach, south to Savannah.

Above the tea shop, in her little apartment just six blocks from Charleston Harbor, Theodosia could feel the full fury of the storm. Rain pounded the roof, lashed at the windows, and gurgled noisily down drain spouts. At moments when the storm’s saber rattling seemed to abate slightly, she swore she could hear a foghorn from somewhere over near Patriots Point.

Lighting a fire in the fireplace in the face of so much wind would have meant losing precious warmth. Instead Theodosia lit a dozen white candles of varying sizes and placed them inside the fireplace. Now they danced and flickered merrily. Maybe not imparting warmth in terms of temperature, but certainly lending a cozy, tucked-in kind of feeling.

Curled up on her couch, a handmade afghan snugged around her, Theodosia sipped a cup of Egyptian chamomile. The taste was slightly sweet, reminiscent of almonds and apples. A good evening calm-you-down tea.

Calming was exactly what she needed, because instead of conducting a quiet investigation and perhaps discovering a lead on Hughes Barron’s murderer, she seemed to have uncovered a number of potential suspects.

Timothy Neville hated Hughes Barron with white-hot passion, despised the man because of Barron’s callous disregard for historic buildings and architecture. Somehow Timothy had known that Hughes Barron was making a play for the Peregrine Building. Timothy’s assumption had been that Hughes Barron would have made significant changes to it. Would that have enraged Timothy Neville enough for him to commit murder? Perhaps. He was old, inflexible, used to getting his way. And Timothy Neville had a bottle of sulfuric acid in his study.

She had told Drayton about her discovery last night, after they’d departed Timothy Neville’s house. He’d reinforced the notion that sulfuric acid was, indeed, used to remove rust and corrosion from old metal. But Timothy Neville going so far as actually pouring a dollop in Hughes Barron’s teacup? Well, they didn’t really have the toxicologist’s report, did they? And neither of them could recall Timothy Neville’s exact movements the night of the Lamplighter Tour. They only remembered that, for a short time, he’d been a guest in the back garden at the Avis Melbourne Home.

Then there was Lleveret Dante. From the conversation she’d overheard outside Sam Sestero’s office, Hughes Barron’s portion of Goose Creek Holdings fell neatly into Lleveret Dante’s hands as a result of Barron’s death. Plus, the man was obviously a scoundrel, since he was under indictment in another state. Theodosia wondered if Dante had fled Kentucky just steps ahead of an arrest or, like so many unsavory business characters today, had a slick Kentucky lawyer working on his behalf, firing off a constant barrage of appeals and paperwork until the case all but faded away.

Finally, there was Tanner Joseph, executive director of the Shorebird Environmentalist Group. She had brought him into their lives, had invited Tanner Joseph into the safety and security of their little tea shop. Could an environmentalist be overzealous? Consumed with bitterness at losing a battle?

Theodosia knew the answer was yes. The papers were full of stories about people who routinely risked their own lives to save the whales, the dolphins, the redwoods. Did those people ever kill others who stood in the way of their conservation efforts? Unfortunately, the answer was yes on that point, too. Redwoods were often spiked with metal pieces that bounced saw blades back into loggers’ faces. Some animal rights activists, bitterly opposed to hunting, actually opened fire on hunters. It wasn’t inconceivable that Tanner Joseph could be such a fanatic. History had proven that passion unchecked yields freely to fanaticism.

Theodosia shucked off her afghan, stretched her long legs, and stood. She padded to the kitchen in her stocking feet. From his woven rag rug in front of the fireplace, Earl Grey lifted his fine head and gazed at her with concern.

“Be right back,” she told him.

In the kitchen, Theodosia took an English shortbread cookie from one of the pretty tins that rested on her counter. From a red and yellow tin decorated with pictures of noble hunting dogs she took a dog biscuit.

Doggy biscotti, she thought to herself as she returned to the living room where the two of them munched their cookies companionably. Could be a profitable sideline. Just last month she’d seen a magazine article about the booming business of gourmet dog treats.

Finishing off her cookie, Theodosia swiveled around and scanned the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf directly behind her. She selected a small, leather-bound volume and settled back comfortably again to reread her Agatha Christie.

The book she’d chosen was a fascinating primer on poison. She read eagerly as Agatha Christie described in delicious detail a “tasteless, odorless white powder that is poorly soluble in cold water but excellent to dissolve in hot cocoa, milk, or tea.”

This terrible poison, arsenic, Theodosia learned, was completely undetectable. But one tablespoon could administer ten to thirty times the lethal dose.

As if on cue, the lights flickered, lending a strange magic lantern feel to the living room. Ever the guard dog, Earl Grey rose up a few inches and growled in response. Then there was a low hum, as though the generators at South Carolina Light and Power were lodging a mighty protest, and the lights burned strong and steady again.

When the lights had dimmed momentarily, Theodosia’s startled reaction had been to close her book. Now she sat with the slim volume in her lap, staring out the rain-spattered window, catching an occasional flash of lightning from far away.

She considered what she had just read. Arsenic was amazingly lethal and extremely fast acting. Death occurred almost instantaneously.

But from what she had been able to piece together, Hughes Barron had walked into the garden under his own power and probably sat at the far table, drinking tea, for a good half hour. So Hughes Barron must have died slowly, perhaps not even knowing he was dying. Poisoned, to be sure, but some type of poison that deliberately slowed his heart until, like a pocket watch not properly wound, it simply stopped.