Page 21 of The Case at Castle Rock Cove (Beau Monde Secrets #4)

T his time, Ben’s stomach took longer to heal than after the previous bouts of sickness. He wondered if the mystery food that had sickened him might be somehow accumulating in this body. All he knew for certain, though, was that his stomach hurt after every meal. The pins-and-needles sensation in his fingers and toes lingered, too.

On account of his irritated digestive system, Ben faithfully followed the doctor’s advice and restricted himself to beef tea and toast. It wasn’t particularly difficult, given how little desire for food he felt. Even the hours he spent writing notes about past meals did little to stimulate his appetite.

Unfortunately, the notes did nothing to stimulate his powers of problem-solving, either. He’d done his best to recall what he had eaten each of the times he’d been sick. The housekeeper’s menu book was an enormous help, as it listed what had been served at every dinner and luncheon. But neither the housekeeper nor the cook recorded which members of the household had eaten specific foods, leaving Ben to rely on faulty human memory.

Still, between the menu book, his memory, and conversations with Mrs. Kirby, he had a good idea of what foods could have been involved in the earlier gastric attacks. The problem was that he could see no pattern.

There were some foods and beverages that he consumed nearly every day: sweet rolls and tea at breakfast; port wine and biscuits at night. But why would those foods make him sick one day and not another? Or why would the tainted food sicken one member of the family one time, but not the others?

There must be some explanation, but he could not figure it out. Which meant he had no idea what to do to prevent another attack. Ben might be healthy enough to bounce back from such an illness, but the same could not be said for his grandfather and his aunt.

He was still looking over his notes when he heard footsteps pounding down the hall. He stacked all the loose pieces of foolscap together, slipped out of bed, and hurried to see what was going on.

When he realized the hubbub centered on the master suite, Ben had an unpleasant hunch about what happened. His grandfather’s condition must have taken a sudden turn for the worse.

Indeed, when Ben peered into the room, he saw his grandfather doubled over, retching into a basin. One of the footmen supported him, while Aunt Faith hovered anxiously nearby, holding a washcloth. She caught Ben’s eye and subtly shook her head. Evidently, she didn’t want him to witness this.

Ben retreated to his room, mind teeming with eager questions. What would have caused Grandfather Marlowe’s relapse? Why was he vomiting again, when Ben was not? What had he eaten today?

He did not get a chance to ask those questions until much later in the day. Dr. Gladwell had long since returned to London, so Dr. Milner was summoned to his bedside. After examining Grandfather Marlowe, the physician held a hushed consultation with Ben’s father and aunt.

Despite his protests, Ben was excluded from this meeting. Unwilling to give up his quest for information, he hovered in the entryway, biding his time. When Dr. Milner headed for the doorway, Ben pounced.

Dr. Milner was so startled he literally flinched like a shying horse. “Ah, Mr. Radcliffe! Good to see that you are doing so well today.”

“How is my grandfather doing? Do you know why he relapsed?”

The physician sighed and lowered the hat he’d been about to don. “Your aunt can probably explain the situation about as well as I can,” he grumbled. “I do not know why he relapsed. I would think it was something he ate, but he has had nothing but tea and toast today. I suppose it could have been the milk in the tea, since some people react poorly to milk, but who knows?” He raised his hands in a “what can you do?” gesture.

Ben frowned. “Hmm. I don’t think it could be the milk, since I added milk to my tea, too. I don’t feel at all unwell today.”

“As did your aunt,” Dr. Milner said. “I must confess, I am out of ideas. We can only treat Mr. Marlowe’s symptoms and hope for the best. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”

Ben stepped aside, hardly noticing when the door shut behind the doctor. By then, he was already deep in thought. He paced back and forth in the entryway, trying to work through all the possibilities.

Thus, when someone knocked a few minutes later, Ben opened the door before either of the footmen could reach it. “Oh, Willa! It’s good that you’re here. There’s a new wrinkle in the case.”

She blinked at him, apparently startled by this untraditional greeting. “Oh? What now?”

He led her upstairs, while catching her up to speed on the newest developments. “So you see, this complicates our theory about food contamination.” He sat down on the edge of his bed and handed her the stack of papers. “I’ve spent hours poring over all the details I could find about everyone’s diet before each attack of gastritis, but I haven’t discovered any pattern. And I am usually good at detecting patterns!”

“Hmm.” She sat down and began flipping through the stack of papers. “What did your grandfather eat today? Or yesterday?”

He shuffled through the pages until he found the one with today’s breakfast. “The same thing I ate and drank—merely black tea and buttered toast.” He tapped the relevant lines. “My aunt insisted we weren’t well enough for anything stronger yet. You see, that’s what doesn’t make sense to me. If Grandfather and I ate the same things, why did he take a turn for the worse when I did not?”

“Does he take his tea the same way?” she asked. “Did you both put butter on the toast?”

He shook his head because he’d already thought of that. “It can’t be the butter or the milk, because I take my tea with milk, too.”

“Milk and no sugar?” she asked. “Is that how you both take it?”

Ben stilled. “Grandfather takes his tea with sugar, but I do not.” He stared down at the paper. He hadn’t written “sugar” on the page. He probably hadn’t recorded it for any of the meals.

“That’s right. You told me you took sugar in your chocolate, but not tea and coffee.” Willa wrinkled her forehead as she thought. “Did you have anything sweetened with sugar before your illness?”

Ben sat still as he ransacked his memory. “Now that you mention it, I had a cup of chocolate the night before my latest attack.” His heart began to beat more quickly. “It had sugar in it.” A look laden with meaning passed between them.

“But how would something toxic have gotten in the sugar?” Willa wondered.

“We may be jumping ahead too quickly,” Ben warned. They did not even know for certain that Grandfather Marlowe had taken sugar with his tea today. His illness could have thrown him off his usual tastes. “I will have to ask—”

The door to Ben’s room abruptly swung open, startling them both.

“Ben? Who are you—oh! Lady Wilhelmina! I did not realize you were here.” His father stood in the doorway, momentarily dumbfounded. Gradually, his look of surprise turned into disapproval. “Benjamin, if you wish to entertain guests, the morning room is free. But you must not tire yourself out with visitors. We do not want you to have a relapse, too.”

Ben opened his mouth, intending to remind his father that Grandfather Marlowe had experienced a relapse without receiving a single visitor today or yesterday. The stern expression on his father’s face changed his mind. “Yes, we should go down to the morning room.”

“I can only stay for a few minutes, anyway,” Willa chimed in. “I have, ah, errands to do.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth kicked up in a smile. He was fairly certain that Willa had invented those “errands” at a moment’s notice.

He escorted Willa back downstairs, still thinking about the sugar theory. “I need to find out whether my grandfather took sugar in his tea today or yesterday. I should probably ask Mrs. Kirby some questions about the source of the sugar, too.”

“I wish I could stay and help you investigate, but I really ought to go back home.” Willa tipped her head back to look him in the eyes as she whispered, “I don’t think your father was happy to see me here today.”

Ben had to agree. “He was unhappy because you were in my bedroom,” he reminded her. “He probably thought we were up to no good.” Being betrothed might make it easier to spend time with Willa, but there were still rules. Apparently, Ben had broken them without realizing it.

Willa softly chuckled. “Little does he know that you are too preoccupied with toxins to plan a seduction right now.”

“Yes, quite,” he murmured, only half paying attention. He was distracted by the question of when he had eaten or drunk something sweetened with sugar.

If the sugar were toxic, wouldn’t all of Mrs. Kirby’s desserts have made people ill? But Ben had consumed biscuits, cakes, and puddings from her kitchen without ill effects. So had Aunt Faith and Willa and a handful of other guests who’d dined at Marlowe Tower over the last few months.

Willa sighed. “Well, good-bye then.” She stood on her toes to press a kiss against his cheek. He waved a silent farewell and returned to his pacing.

Only after she left did it occur to Ben that she might have been unhappy about his preoccupation with the case. Had she wanted him to seduce her? Surely not!

*

Ben had to time his visit to the kitchen carefully. He knew better than to interrupt in the middle of dinner preparation. Fortunately, he caught Mrs. Kirby just before she began preparing a chicken for roasting.

“It’s funny you should ask about the sugar,” Mrs. Kirby said. “We had a full cannister of it that vanished into thin air. We had to buy more!” She leaned against the heavy kitchen table. “We were lucky the sugar bowl was still full.”

“The sugar bowl for the tea set, you mean?” Ben asked.

“Yes, full to the brim it was,” one of the kitchen maids chimed in. “When you asked for chocolate the other day, I took the sugar from that bowl, because we couldn’t find our main supply.”

A thrill coursed through Ben. The chocolate he drank the night he fell sick had been sweetened from the same source that sweetened Grandfather’s tea. This was it. He was certain of it.

“What about the sugar in the bowl now?” he asked eagerly. “Is it the same as what you put in the chocolate?”

“That I do not know,” the cook admitted. “Carrie?” She looked towards the maid.

“I don’t believe the sugar bowl has been refilled yet,” the maid said. “Mr. Marlowe is the only one who normally takes sugar in his tea, and with him so sick, there hasn’t been much call for it. I think there’s a little left.”

“Can I see it?” Ben asked hopefully. Then he modified the request. “Actually, can I take what is left in the bowl, in order to examine it? I have some, um, experiments to do with it.”

The maid and the cook exchanged puzzled looks. Then Mrs. Kirby shrugged. “I don’t see what that would hurt. We’ve more sugar in the pantry now. But what kind of experiment is it?”

“An experiment in toxicology.”

Mrs. Kirby looked none the wiser for his explanation, but she asked no more questions. She refused to let Ben take the bowl itself, so he poured its contents into an empty stoneware crock and carried it off to the carriage house. He knew without even asking that his aunt would not want him conducting chemical experiments in the house.

Not that he knew what kind of experiment he needed to conduct. He had read a little about chemistry now and then, but there were large gaps in his knowledge. He had certainly never studied poison.

Fortunately, he knew where to look for directions, because his copy of Orfila’s General System of Toxicology had finally arrived from London. Today, he’d sit down with the book and dig in. Orfila was the most significant living scholar writing about toxicology. Ben was confident that he would find the answers there.