Once more I traversed the dormitory, scratching lightly at Brisbane’s door. After a long moment he answered, still wearing his dressing gown and trousers.
“I have brought your basin.”
He took it, but to my surprise, stepped aside. I moved wearily into the room and sank down into one of the armchairs by the fire. “So we may presume they were drugged intentionally. To what purpose?”
Brisbane took the chair opposite me. “Perhaps because they wished to escape the inevitable.”
I stared at him. “I do not think I comprehend you. I am stupid with tiredness. Do you mean to suggest they took the laudanumon purpose?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. But unlikely. I could believe it except for the footman. If Emma had brought the drugged brandy into the chapel for the purpose of destroying herself and her sister, how did the boy come to drink it?”
I said nothing, but merely nibbled at my lip. It was a dreadful but alarmingly possible theory. Emma was just devoted enough to take Lucy’s life to save her from the horror of a state execution. Naturally she would take her own life as well. I hated to admit it, but Brisbane might well have deduced it.
He passed a hand over his brow. I looked at him sharply.
“Headache?”
He smiled, a thin, wry twist of the lips. “Not yet. I have managed to keep them at bay for some time.”
“A new medicine?” I asked hopefully.
“Of a sort.”
I had discovered during our last investigation that Brisbane was prey to violent headaches, migraines of the most virulent type. After employing traditional medicines to no avail, he had been driven to more exotic methods.
He rose and rummaged in the wardrobe for a moment, returning with a peculiar piece of apparatus he placed on the floor in front of him. It was a tall, slender glass vessel, reaching as high as his knee and divided into a few chambers. Into one he poured some water. Then he fiddled with a live coal and a bit of silver paper and a small greenish-brown brick of some substance I did not recognise. There was a tube attached to the vessel ending in a carved mouthpiece. Brisbane put his mouth to it and drew in a breath. He did this a few more times, and after a moment I could detect a heavy, sweetish smell, very unlike his usual tobacco.
“I know what that is!” I cried suddenly. “It is a hookah!”
“And you know this from your many nights spent in opium dens?” he inquired blandly.
“Alice in Wonderland,actually,” I admitted. “The caterpillar.‘You are old, Father William.’”
Brisbane said nothing but drew in a deep, languid breath. He held it in rather a long time, then exhaled slowly, letting a thin, sinuous plume of smoke curl over his head.
“That is not your usual tobacco,” I pointed out.
He took another slow, sensual draw off the pipe. “It is called hashish. It is widely used in the East. In small doses it relieves pain and acts as a mild intoxicant.”
“And in large doses?”
Brisbane shrugged. “Hallucinations, if one is stupid enough to take too much.”
I was silent a moment, thinking of the one time I had seen Brisbane in the throes of a sick headache. Absinthe had been his drug of choice then, leaving him prey to hallucinatory stupors. The experience had been disturbing.
But as he smoked, I realised the hashish seemed to have no effect beyond a mellowing of his temper. He smoked slowly, and as I watched, his pupils dilated and he relaxed visibly. His posture eased, and his eyes, always expressive, seemed to take on a Byzantine slant. It was oddly fascinating. He might have been a sultan at his ease in aharim,and I his trembling concubine. The thought was a diverting one, but this was no time to pursue it.
He said nothing for a long while, then he removed the mouthpiece and held it out to me. I swallowed hard, then reached out and took it. His eyes never left mine as I pulled in a modest breath of sweet, heavy smoke. I coughed and my eyes watered, but by the second draw I was comfortable and by the third I held it, then blew the smoke out slowly between my lips.
He pulled the pipe out of my hands. “That is enough. I shall not be responsible for your corruption.”
I opened my mouth to remonstrate, but he waved me to silence.
“Now,” he began, more briskly than I had expected, “let us theorise for a moment on why anyone else would wish to harm Lucy and Emma.”
“Because they saw or know something they oughtn’t,” I said promptly.
“And who would wish to do that?”