The Apothecary's Poison (Glass and Steele #3)(14)

"I've a mind to chase him down and tell him what's what. He suspected you, and after everything you did for him, too!"

"What did we do for him?" Matt shot back. "His son died."

"That ain't your fault. If it weren't for you and India, the body would never have been found."

Matt dragged his hand through his hair and scrubbed the back of his neck. "That's why he came here personally. He gave us the benefit of the doubt—"

"Benefit of the doubt!" Willie threw her hands in the air and let them fall on her hips. "Why would he think you had anything to do with murdering Hale?"

"If you let him finish," Duke said, "maybe he'd tell us."

I sat on the sofa and patted the seat beside me. "You'll wear out the carpet with all that pacing, Willie. Come and sit with me, and Matt will tell you what happened."

"Don't leave out no details," she told him, sitting dutifully.

Matt told them why the police suspected us. "The commissioner's been talking to Payne," he finished. "Or his detective has. It must be he who put the notion in his head that I know about poisons."

Willie once again shot to her feet. "If I knew where that low-down dog was staying I'd go there and blow his brains out."

"And make matters worse for Matt," I told her.

"Sit down, Willie," Duke snapped. "And stop going off half-cocked. Just listen, for once."

She did not sit but stood by Matt, arms crossed, and glared daggers at Duke as if it were his fault that Matt was in this predicament. Poor Duke merely sighed.

"You've got a plan to clear your name," Cyclops said, a smile flirting with his lips. "You're going to find the real killer."

"I'm going to try," Matt said.

"How?" I asked.

"I don't know, yet, but I'm not leaving my fate to a young and enthusiastic detective who may be influenced by Payne."

"I agree," I said. "So let's think about this. Where should we start? Get our hands on the poisoned bottle of Cure-All, speak to Dr. Ritter or Wiley, and perhaps the nurses? Sometimes you learn more from the lower orders than you do from those in charge."

Matt drummed his fingers on the mantelpiece, nodding slowly. "Cyclops, Duke and Willie, see what you can learn at the hospital. There must be gossip about Hale's death."

"How?" Duke asked. "None of us have medical knowledge. We can't pretend to be doctors."

"One of you go in as a patient," I said. "And the other two as concerned friends."

Duke squared up to Cyclops. "All right. Punch me in the jaw." He cricked his neck from side to side. "I'm ready."

"I'll do it!" Willie pushed off from the mantel, but Matt caught her arm.

"Or you could just feign illness," he said.

"Spoil sport."

"What will you two do?" Cyclops asked.

"Visit Oscar Barratt, the author of the article about Hale's medical miracle," Matt said. "Now we have something else to ask him—does he know who would want to murder Dr. Hale?"



The office of The Weekly Gazette was as close to the headquarters of most of London's influential newspapers on Fleet Street as it could be without actually being on Fleet Street. We drove past the grand buildings of The Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph and into a lane that looked like Fleet Street's rubbish dump. Sheets of newspaper flapped and rolled in the swirling breeze, piling up in doorways and against lamp posts. Where Fleet Street bustled with activity, and rightly earned its reputation as the heart of the London news scene, Lower Mire Lane felt as if it clung to its more sophisticated brother's coattails by its dirty fingernails. A freshly painted red sign above the The Weekly Gazette's door was a bright spot in an otherwise drab, deserted street.

We had decided to use our real names and tell Oscar Barratt about our interest in magic, since we were quite sure he was aware magic existed. His articles, when analyzed with that in mind, certainly pointed in that direction. Matt hadn't forbidden me to mention my own magic, and I suspected he wanted to decide for himself if Barratt was a threat first. As did I.

We asked a spotty faced lad in the outer office if Mr. Barratt was available and gave him our names.

"What do you want to speak to him about?" he asked, sounding bored. Perhaps people walked in off the street all the time and asked to speak to a journalist. Or perhaps he simply disliked his job.

"Dr. Hale's murder," Matt said.

The youth's eyes lit up and he raced through a door behind a desk as if our arrival was the most exciting thing to happen to him all week.

"That got quite a response," I said.

"Salacious news always does, and The Weekly Gazette is one of the worst offenders," Matt said.

"You dislike it? But I thought you enjoyed reading it. You buy it every week."

"I buy almost every newspaper and journal I can get my hands on. You never know when something interesting crops up, as it did in yesterday's edition. I might read it, but I don't like the sensationalist nature of the reporting. It wouldn't surprise me if half of it were made up. At the very least, pertinent facts get left out or distorted."

"Like the fact that Dr. Hale's miracle patient wasn't dead and he used a medicine?"