if she fought, or at least tried to?” Narraway asked.
Brinsley winced. “She tried. A few ugly bruises have come out. They do, after death, if they were inflicted just before. Wrists, arms, shoulders. He was unnecessarily brutal. Thighs, but you’d expect that. And the bite, of course, on her breast.” His mouth was tight, as if his jaw was clenched. “Only thing that might make a difference to you is that I’m now quite certain she actually died of opium poisoning. Overdose of laudanum, dissolved in a glassful of Madeira wine. Pretty heavily laced, I must say. Far more than enough to kill her.”
Narraway stood paralyzed, grief washing over him. He had hoped the doctor’s initial reading had been an error. Now he couldn’t help but picture the despair she must have felt, as if everything she was had been torn violently from her: her body, her dignity, the very core of herself damaged beyond hope.
“I’m sorry,” Brinsley said hoarsely. “I keep thinking that one day I’ll get used to it, but I never do. I can’t say for certain that it was suicide, since we don’t know if the man stayed long enough to force her to drink it, but that seems extremely unlikely. If he’d wanted her dead he could simply have broken her neck. I’m afraid everything suggests she crawled to the cabinet and poured herself enough to deaden the pain, and either accidentally or intentionally overdid the dose.” His face was bleak. “I’m sorry.”
Narraway struggled to picture it. “Could she have dragged herself that far? And why on earth would she keep laudanum in the cabinet in the hallway? Wouldn’t she keep it upstairs? In the bedroom?”
“I’ve no idea,” Brinsley said patiently. “But as far as we know, there was no one else in that part of the house, right? And from the bruising on her knees, I believe she crawled over to the cabinet. It isn’t difficult to assume that from there she opened it and poured and drank the Madeira. The dregs were full of laudanum, both in the glass and in the bottle.” He shook himself. “For God’s sake! The poor woman can’t have had the least idea of what she was doing. She just tipped the laudanum into the bottle and drank the whole damn thing. Can you blame her?”
“It doesn’t make sense. Why would she pour opium into the bottle? Why not just straight into her glass, then?”
“I don’t know,” Brinsley said. “I’ve just given you the facts, and I don’t see what else you can make of them. But I hope to hell you find whoever did it, and if you can’t hang him, literally, for murder, then find a way to get him for rape.”
“I’ll try,” Narraway swore. “Believe me.”
HE VISITED AND SPOKE with all the other people on Miss Flaxley’s list. He gained a wider view of Catherine Quixwood, but it did not alter radically from that already given him by Mary Abercrombie. Catherine had been interested in all manner of science, in the artifacts of other times and places, in human thought and above all in the passions of the mind.
She seemed to have skirted more carefully around the edges regarding passions of the heart. He wondered if they had frightened her, perhaps come too close to breaching the walls of her own safety, or her loneliness.
Or was that his overfanciful imagination seeking in her a likeness to himself? He could understand being drawn to the music of Beethoven, and yet at the same time frightened of it. It challenged all the flimsy arguments of safety and dared beyond the known into something far bigger, both more beautiful and more dangerous. At times he wanted to stay with what his mind could conquer and hold. To be enchanted by the brilliance of the mind was exciting, but without the risk of injury.
Look at vases of flowers, not the wild paintings of Turner in which all the light was caught and imagined on canvas. Look at the artifacts of ancient Troy, but do not think of the passion and the loss of the time. Always keep the mind busy.
Was that what Catherine had been doing?
At the end of three days Narraway had a plethora of facts, statements, and stories, but no fixed frame in which to place them. If she had made secret assignations with anyone, she had been sufficiently clever in concealing them that he had found no trace. She was charming to everyone and intimate with