A Beautiful Poison

“Oh, Birdie!” She reached for Birdie’s hand. Allene’s fingers were strong, her hand broad without being coarse. Strength simmered beneath the skin there, and Birdie wondered at it. Since Birdie had been banished, she had always thought of herself as the strong one—her life had been taken away, yet she provided for her sister and looked after a mother who had been willing to descend into moral decay in exchange for numbness. When Birdie reentered the Cutter house, she had kept that inner part of herself taut, knowing what was at stake and what Holly had to lose.

But now, looking at Allene, she felt unsure, and it was her own bones crumbling to dust before she was ready. How had this happened? Why should Allene always, always be so fortunate? But then her old, passive ways won, and Birdie sank back into the cushions, ready for the inevitable.

There was a quiet knock at the door. Jasper entered, nodded at both of them, and drew a chair to Birdie’s bedside next to Allene.

“Well, what did I miss?”

“That I’m dying?” Birdie quipped, but no one laughed.

“Why?” Jasper asked with the appropriate gravitas. What a good boy.

“Don’t play dumb, Jasper. The doctor told you. There are tumors in my bones,” Birdie explained patiently. “It’s why my leg broke. And he doesn’t know why I have a cancer. Bad luck, I suppose.”

“Is it possible,” Allene began, “that you’ve been poisoned as well?”

No one spoke for a moment.

“Perhaps. The truth is, I’ve been feeling sick for a long while. What could it be, though? Something I’ve eaten? Then Mother would have suffered from it, and Holly as well. But they were—are—”

“No, it can’t be that,” Jasper thought aloud.

“But what if I have been poisoned? I don’t care about me anymore. It’s too late. Maybe that’s the answer to this sick game we’ve been immersed in. Maybe we’re the final players. Maybe I’m simply the first of us three.”

“What can we do?” Jasper said. “Stop eating for fear that every morsel is going to kill us? Stop living?”

“Or we could get out of the game completely,” Allene commented. “Forget the policy my father had on your uncle, forget the methyl alcohol, forget everything.”

They both looked at her. She had an untouchable, faraway expression. Something had profoundly untied Allene from the world they were living in. Her friend was falling beyond her grasp, and it terrified Birdie.

“No. Not yet,” Jasper said. He leaned closer to them both. “What do we know? Florence was poisoned with cyanide. We don’t know who put it in her wineglass, but we’re sure it wasn’t an accident. Hazel died of a laudanum overdose, but it looked like an accident. A simple switch of one bottle for another by an inexperienced pharmacist who lost his job over it. And my uncle died because he drank one of his fake alcohols.”

“Violently,” Birdie added. “More like he was attacked and someone poured wood alcohol down his throat.”

“Then there were the letters,” Allene said, seeming to wake up from her torpor. “It’s as if someone is making them all look like accidents but letting us, and only us, know that it was on purpose.”

“And there was that man I saw,” Birdie began. “I never did tell you because I wasn’t sure. But he was standing at the end of the block, watching us all as we ran into the apartment the night Jasper’s uncle died.”

“How do you know it wasn’t just a bystander watching?” Jasper asked.

“I don’t know. It was just a feeling. When I stared at him, he practically ran away from me.”

Allene frowned. “That isn’t enough information for anyone to use.”

“Well, I know it was a man,” Birdie insisted. “He was tall, nearly six feet. Slim. And he didn’t walk like an old man. He was youngish, I’m sure.”

“That narrows it down to, oh, at least a million possibilities,” Jasper mused.

“But a million possibilities are all fighting in France,” Birdie reminded him.

“What about Lucy?” Allene added.

“Lucy was just bad luck,” Birdie noted. “It was the flu.”

“How can we be sure? You could easily hide a murder in all the influenza deaths,” Allene retorted.

Jasper tilted his head thoughtfully. “But Lucy was just household help. She wasn’t important like the other people dying around us.”

Allene stared at Jasper coldly. “Are you saying that Florence Waxworth meant more to me than Lucy?”

“Did she?” Jasper asked, less of a challenge and more an honest question. Allene went quiet, and she stared at the carpet for a long time. She sniffled.

“No. Lucia was so much more important. I think she was a better mother to me than my own mother.”

Birdie felt a prickle of jealousy. Stop it, she thought. You’re here now. “She’s right,” Birdie admitted. “Lucy was special to Allene.”

“But no one knew that. Even you didn’t, until it was too late,” Jasper said.

For several seconds, none of them could speak. Birdie seemed too frightened to correct him, and it was Allene who finally broke the silence.

“Jasper Jones, that is the coldest thing I’ve ever heard you say. Are you just fussed that Lucy doesn’t fit into this neat, dramatic string of murders you’re keeping track of, trying to prove you’re a star at your new job?”

He reddened. “I’m just trying to help!”

“Are you? Because it sure seems like everything is going your way. Just swimmingly! Florence dies and you get a new job. And you get your feet wet trying to solve a case that wasn’t even a case to begin with. Your uncle dies of something you knew was poison. You were running out of money; I saw the bills. Maybe you didn’t know about that insurance policy, and you just wanted to get him out of your life.”

“Oh, so now I’m a murderer? And I killed Birdie’s mother because I woke up and felt like it?” he yelled, standing up so he could use the full force of his lungs. “Let me slip you an earful. You’re just fussed that I’ve got a life, though you kicked me out of yours four years ago, aren’t you? And we all know you’re trying so damned hard to lie to everyone and yourself!”

“What are you talking about?” Allene practically spat.

“Andrew!” Jasper pointed out the window, as if the offending gentleman were standing on Fifth Avenue, watching the whole argument. “By God, he’s having an affair with Birdie under your nose. He smells of her perfume all the damn time. Are you blind? It’s obvious to everyone in all of New York and in this house! And you won’t break it off because you like the name Biddle better than Cutter, and I won’t marry you, and you want to make me jealous. You don’t want Birdie to have me, or to have Andrew.”

“Be quiet!” Allene hissed.

“That’s why you never called Birdie all these years you spent shopping for new clothes and a new husband, because you were so bloody jealous. That’s why you brought us back into your life, because you couldn’t bear the thought that we went on living without you, and you had to show that you’re faring so much better than we are. And it wasn’t just a party either. Of course it had to be dramatic. Of course there had to be a scandal with Florence—”

“Stop it, Jasper!” Allene yelled, standing up.

“—And you want to pretend that you’ve got this perfect life, while your mother is drunk and having parties of her own in Saratoga—”

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