The Soldier's Poisoned Heart

Which left Simon. Simon stood to gain quite a bit, compared to the others. While there was less money involved than the inheritance, John Paul guessed that there would be quite a bit more urgency attached to not having to pay off a debt of nearly a thousand pounds.

Yet, that didn’t fit neatly into the story, either. He simply hadn’t been around enough. John Paul had eaten with him thrice, and… he shuddered. Both of those times had been only a few days before his accidents. It was possible. He tried not to think about it. Though it was certainly possible, he couldn’t simply go around accusing people without evidence.

Still, he thought, it was better to avoid the Wakefield boy for a few days. Or perhaps he could waive the debt. Call it a wedding present, or what-have-you, he would be able to manage that much. It might stop the poisoning in its tracks.

But he still wondered. What sort of poison would have such sudden effect, days later? He racked his brain. There had been courses on this sort of thing, in officer’s training. He had learned about poisons. Yet, nothing came to mind immediately.

Perhaps in a pill of some kind, which would dissolve over a matter of days and then disperse? Not likely, he thought. He would have noticed it while he chewed his food, and if he somehow had not, he wondered if a pill would stay in his system for three days.

It boggled his mind. No, it couldn’t be that. It had to be something else, but what?

There was another thing, though. Another possibility.

Lydia.

No, he thought. It couldn’t be her, not directly.

But perhaps, he thought, what if she were to have been tricked somehow? What if she were, say, given some poison to administer?

She had brought sweets, he thought, to the walk. What if poison had been injected into them? It didn’t have to be her doing directly. They could have been poisoned by her brother after having been cooked quite diligently by her. Some spice could have been replaced with poison, so that when she tried to adjust his food a bit when he wasn’t looking—quite innocently, of course, out of a desire that he might eat better-tasting food, she had in fact been spreading poison.

It would be easy, he thought, to convince her. She was pure, but that could come at a cost, as well. Often, the purest are equally naive, as well. They’ll believe simple, honest-seeming reasons, because they themselves have no need for complexity. No need to trick or fool anyone. Therefor, their defenses are easy to get through, because they see no reason to put any up in the first place.

Diligence, then. He would simply have to perform his due diligence in making sure that no alterations were made to his food by either Lydia or her brother, under any auspices at all. Then surely they would be proved quite innocent, he would get over this bout of illness, and all his fears would prove quite silly indeed.

Or at least, so he hoped. He didn’t want to think about the alternative.

Chapter 15

It seemed obvious what the answer was, of course. He smiled to himself the next morning. There was no reason to suspect Thomas, of course, but there was risk there. Maybe he was responsible, or complicit. Maybe he was completely innocent but the food had been tainted before he prepared it. There was always the chance that having the food cooked removed any sort of taint, but there was always the chance that it would not. John Paul decided that he wouldn’t rather take the risk.

He sat down in the front room. The answer was obvious.

Just don’t eat anything that Simon could have gotten to. Or Lydia, or Henry. Nothing from his house, nothing from the Wakefield home.

He set out a few minutes later. If he got better, that was all the proof he would need. Getting better on other foods. Then he could start looking into who was directly responsible, once his mind and body were in order. That was the only smart way, he decided.

He took a horse, swearing Mark to secrecy, and went into town for the day. The tavern was closed, and besides that he had no particular desire to drink. He would need to pass the time somehow, though. He started to walk aimlessly. There was, he understood, a library. He hadn’t seen it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there, after all. Perhaps he’d try to find that.

He didn’t bother to ask anyone on the street. With an entire day to spend out and about, he really had no particular need to find it quickly. Rather, make a game out of it, he thought, and then he’d be able to keep himself amused as he walked.

He turned a corner and passed a large building. Perhaps that was the library? He came in sight of a large sign with block letters. “City Hall,” it read. He shook his head. Very well, then, it couldn’t be that one, but it coule be another, after all. He took another turn. He could see that just a little ways down the road, perhaps another block or two, it became residential; that was not the way, then, either. He frowned. Where, then?

He kept walking. His legs were beginning to tire, though it had only been a few kilometers. He sat down on a bench across from a book store. After a moment he decided that, having nothing to do, he should get a book of some sort. He stepped inside and asked after paperbacks. They turned him to a section of poorly-produced, shabby-looking books.

There were relatively few that seemed small enough to jam into his coat pocket without popping a seam. A few American westerns, a few penny-dreadfuls… He picked up a western. He hadn’t read one, but he had had a little bit of experience on the frontier in a certain sense. The outback was similar, wasn’t it?

He started reading as he walked out the door, dropping back onto the first bench he found. There were some marked differences, he noted. Not the least of which being that Australia wasn’t some lawless wasteland, and he hadn’t raised any cattle. It seemed appropriately American, though, so he slipped it back into his pocket after a chapter or so and started off again.

The walk proved to be going longer than he had expected as the chuchbells rang one. He stopped at a diner and placed his order with a waitress. She brought him out his food and he ate. It pleased him to think that he was quite untouchable here; whatever trouble might come, he wouldn’t be facing it here. Nobody would be poisoning this food.

He was troubled to realize that he had quite made up his mind that it must have been poisoning. He had thought of it, consciously, that he might be making it up, a result of some poor health and his mind making monsters out of the shadows, but he had been pleased that he had managed to keep the monsters, so to speak, at bay.

They were no longer; he had let them in. He tried not to imagine his soon-to-be brother-in-law trying to murder him, but he couldn’t quite push the thought away. Only Lydia still wore her halo in his mind. Even Henry was not perfectly above suspicion, though it seemed terribly unlikely. He had been putting forth such a great effort, after all, to save his uncle that it seemed downright improper to even consider that he might be doing it.

But consider it, ever so briefly, he did.

He ate dinner in the city, as well; then for lunch the next day, and di