He and Simpson left. Dr. Maxwell returned a moment later.
“What did they say? What did the inspector want to know?” he demanded, brow furrowed.
Having never been questioned by the police before, Saffron couldn’t say if his questions had been out of the ordinary, though they’d seemed basic enough. But Dr. Maxwell looked so on edge, she gave him a bracing smile. “Nothing of great importance, Professor.”
CHAPTER 4
They attended to business until lunch. Dr. Maxwell, who continued to be agitated, didn’t notice how often Saffron was distracted from her work. The events of the past days circled in her mind, stirring up unanswered questions. Who would poison a woman in the midst of a party? Was Mrs. Henry the intended victim? Why her?
Saffron wanted to ask Dr. Maxwell for his thoughts and maybe hear some reassurances too. Her list of people she could confide in was short, and he was near the top. But she also wanted to ask about his rejection from the expedition crew. It hurt that he hadn’t mentioned his interest in going to the Amazon, and had even gone so far as to apply to join the expedition without telling her, as if her future wouldn’t be affected.
But she held her tongue, and after lunch, Maxwell sent her off to the library to do some research, with the expectation that she would be there for the rest of the day.
In the main floor of the Wilkins Building, at the center of campus, was the library. The long hall was filled with soaring stacks standing sentinel over students hunched over rows of scarred tables. The librarians didn’t dare expose the books to the elements, so there was no chance of a cool spring breeze from the tall windows lining either side of the hall to blow away the scent of old tomes and anxious young men. The air was not still, however, but rife with the fluttering of turning pages and the coming and goings of scholars as they mined the stacks for knowledge.
Saffron didn’t bother approaching the botanical section, but instead ventured off through the lofty stacks into the medical section, looking for texts on poisons. It would be impossible to concentrate on work when the inspector’s questions and her own buzzed in her head like flies to a blooming Amorphophallus titanum. She picked a promising looking book off the shelf. Flipping through its tightly written pages, however, she found it was arranged by a list of toxins by name rather than by symptom. She replaced it and pulled down several others, no doubt sullying her white blouse and gray skirt with dust.
Saffron sat at one of the long center tables, dredging through unfamiliar medical terms for five minutes before returning for a book of medical terminology. After looking at list upon list of poisons, Saffron began to wonder if Mrs. Henry had been given a manmade toxin, something readily available. Saffron was sure that, somewhere, the minions of Inspector Green would be scouring the shops near the homes of all the partygoers, looking to see who had bought rat poison recently.
The inspector said he couldn’t say, but something in how he’d spoken of the poison and glanced at his sergeant made Saffron think they didn’t know what the poison was. Surely he’d spoken with the doctors. If it was a common poison, then the doctors would recognize its symptoms and possibly identify it through a blood test of some kind. It was probably something obscure, then. Unfortunately, the faculty at the university had access to all kinds of toxic chemicals and plants. Had Inspector Green considered that? Yet another question.
Saffron contemplated all the plants in the university greenhouses. She knew all the plants growing there by heart, including which were currently flowering and producing fruit. She wrote the list out, then crossed off the ones that would not have any seriously toxic effects if consumed, and put a question mark next to the ones she was unsure of. Inspector Green would have his hands full narrowing down the possibilities. If, indeed, the inspector thought that a plant was responsible.
Her eyes fell on the name of a plant from south-central Mexico, brought back decades ago by Dr. Maxwell. The vine was a sickly yellow color and zigzagged around trees as it grew, clinging tightly to its host. Maxwell had named it the xolotl vine, after the Aztec god of death and lightning, since the growth pattern resembled a fork of lightning and the toxin in its leaves struck as quickly. Saffron had the feeling that Maxwell enjoyed the notorious reputation of his plant, occasionally still telling secondhand stories of people dropping to the ground immediately upon consumption. He’d warned everyone to treat the Solandra xolotum with the greatest caution and always wear gloves when tending to it. As a result, most people avoided it in the greenhouse, allowing it to take over a large section of a relatively empty greenhouse. Mr. Winters, the caretaker of the greenhouses, generally ignored it except for giving it water.