A Beautiful Poison Read online

  “I’ll take his name, and we’ll obtain a statement tomorrow,” the lieutenant said.

  It was past midnight when the police took Florence’s body away. Her stockinged foot peeped out from the shroud they’d covered her with, and something about the sight made Birdie start crying. Allene handed her a French lace handkerchief, but she wouldn’t take it, instead smearing her eyes on a palm. Even now, after Allene had ignored Birdie so abominably for so long, Birdie refused to rumple the nice things in Allene’s life.

  Allene thought, I don’t deserve her. But on second consideration, she decided, Why yes, I do.

  Mr. Cutter said a few last words to the officers. Florence’s parents were at their tobacco estate in North Carolina for the week, soon to return. A telegram would be sent. With the war, telegrams never held anything good.

  Lucy approached the group. Her lace cap was a little crooked, her normally smoothly combed ebony hair falling out in loose tendrils. “Miss Birdie, I’ve turned down the guest room bed and laid out some sleeping things for you. Mr. Jones, I believe Mr. Biddle is arranging for the motor to take both you gentlemen home.”

  “Thank you, Lucy,” Allene said. She caught Jasper’s eye and smiled, even though death was in the air, even though there was a door about to close on the evening. She smiled her best, most perfect smile, and waited.

  Like a slow sunrise on Christmas morning, Jasper smiled back. Her heart knocked inside her rib cage. She knew she would see him again, and soon.

  She and Birdie walked Jasper to the door. By necessity, they had to pass the stairs. No one wanted to look; a splotch of blood darkened the polished oak, and the remnants of the champagne glass had yet to be cleaned up.

  “Do you smell that?” Jasper asked, sniffing.

  “What? You mean that perfume?” Allene asked. Without the crowd of guests, it was quite noticeable now.

  Birdie’s eyebrows pinched together. “I smell it too. Like Christmas cookies that got baked too long.”

  Jasper stooped and picked up a shard of glass, one that still cradled a little liquid. “Almonds.”

  “Almonds?” Allene and Birdie asked at the same time.

  “Bitter almonds.” Jasper turned to them with a grim expression on his face. “I would know that smell anywhere, because my parents reeked of it when they died.” He dropped the shard before wiping his hands on his trousers. The glass clinked as it bounced.

  “What is it?” Allene asked.

  “Florence Waxworth didn’t just break her neck from tripping on the stairs,” Jasper said. “Someone poisoned her.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Almonds, sweetish but almost burnt, like overcooked nut brittle. The scent was one he’d never forget.

  It spiraled Jasper into memories of his parents’ Fifth Avenue bedroom. He could see his mother’s paper-white hand hanging over the bed, nails perfectly filed into ovals. His father’s mouth sagged open, as if his last word had gagged him. Both were neatly dressed for church, though it wasn’t a Sunday. Their hands were far apart in death, and they faced opposite walls, their bodies sinking into the goose down of the coverlet. They had chosen to die, and to die together, but not amicably.

  Young Jasper had crawled onto the bed, put his mother’s hand in his father’s stiff one, and then rung for the police.

  He should have seen the symptoms of the cataclysm. Only in retrospect had he realized that over the past six months, Mother’s neck and earlobes had grown less and less ornamented with gold and pearls. There were nervous whispers behind closed doors, wrung hands, arguments. Oscar had taken to leaving for weeks at a time for the company of college chums on Long Island. The servants had been sent away. The townhouse was being sold.

  Jasper had been too distracted to notice. He spent his spare hours at the Cutter house with his Birdie and Allene, whose boyish, twig-like figures were rounding out, much to his fascination. Birdie, in particular, was blooming with an almost unearthly beauty. He’d see her in his mind’s eye when he slept at night. The sight of her new breasts affected his own growing body in ways that were terrifically strange and inconvenient.

  He had dismissed the new, relentless changes at home. After all, his parents were probably packing up for another summer trip to the shore. Instead, they’d left for a different destination.

  They’d left him and Oscar behind. They’d left them penniless.

  And they’d left them with that smell.

  God, this smell.

  “Are you . . . absolutely sure?” Allene whispered, glancing at the servants only a few feet away. Behind her, Mr. Cutter was escorting the last police officers out the door.

  “I think so,” Jasper whispered back.

  “Well, that’s exciting!” Allene blurted, then covered her mouth.

  Jasper took a step closer. “For God’s sake. Someone died, Allene!”

  “Someone whom none of us is that sad about!” she reminded him.

  “Shhh!” said Birdie, scandalized. “It isn’t Christian to speak of the dead.”

  “What you smelled?” he told them. “It’s poison. Cyanide. I would bet my life on it.”

  They looked at him and knew he was right. Everyone knew about Jasper’s parents. Four years ago, he lost them, lost his money, and gained a scandal. He went to live with his alcoholic uncle in the Bowery. Mr. Cutter had instructed his servants not to answer the door when Mr. Jones called at the house. He’d forbidden Allene from finding him. Birdie, unaware she was about to be cast out, lived in Allene’s shadow. And her shadow had shunned him too.

  Allene took a huge breath. “Well, if you’re sure, Jasper Jones, then you’re about to turn my life inside out.” She somehow didn’t look upset by this possibility.

  He took a step back, trying to clear his head of the cobweb of memories that threatened to ensnare him again. His mother’s face on the pillow, her lifeless hazel eyes wide open. Jasper had inherited those eyes. God. “Look. I could be wrong. I’ll be at the Bellevue morgue tomorrow for work. I’m assigned to that wing of the building. Maybe I can . . . take another look at Florence. To be sure.”

  Allene’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. “You could do that?”

  Jasper nodded. He tried damn hard not to grin. After working every shift he could squeeze in and sleeping a scant five hours a day, he had finished his two years of college at age seventeen. There wasn’t enough money for medical school, not yet. But he’d read all about Dr. Norris. The medical examiner’s office at Bellevue had opened only a few months before and already was eschewing bribes from the Tammany Hall politicians. The forensics department was rapidly but quietly gaining fame for scientifically and systematically finding murderers, no matter how inconvenient. The murder-suicide that turned out to be a double murder by a jealous police sergeant. The twin babies that died “naturally” in their sleep from a purposeful overdose of teething medicine given by the wife of a Tammany Hall regular who “didn’t want to be bothered by their screeching anymore.”

  If he could get his foot in the door of the medical examiner’s office, it would be his ticket out of obscurity. He wouldn’t follow his brother’s listless path, finding direction only once he’d been drafted, then dying soon after. In the last few years, he’d snubbed offers of friendship, girlfriends, and he even dispensed smiles with tightfisted, calculated effort. He was too busy to be friendly to strangers, and most people burnt time he didn’t have. At eighteen, he felt it running thin through his hands.

  No, Jasper would be in charge of the fate of the most notorious and the most powerful people in New York, the ones who thought they had the right to decide who lived or died in this world. He looked well bred, had himself a good brain and loads of ambition—and now he had a corpse.

  Alive, Florence was a snooty socialite who’d thrown snide remarks at him countless times, including last evening.

  Dead, she was his salvation.

  “Jasper.” Allene was watching him as carefully as Birdie was. “Thank you. I’ll speak to Father about all t
his. Right now, you need to go home. But promise to see me again. Soon.”

  Something in her expression made him pause. It wasn’t just excitement; it was the brightness and energy you see in a bird behind gilded cage wires. So pretty, so alive, but trapped all the same. He saw how Allene had reacted to Andrew’s kiss before. She could care less about that lucky bum.

  Jasper donned a brilliant smile. “Oh, I’ll see you soon. Even if you’re going to be married, doesn’t mean I can’t get my share of your time before then. Thank Florence for that.” He leaned forward and gave her a slow kiss on the cheek. When he pulled away, he squeezed her waist. Allene was blushing. Excellent.

  “You’re a cad,” she said.

  He winked. “Of course I am.”

  Allene was a piece of a puzzle in a plan he was still working out. No doubt he was resentful of her for snubbing him these past years, but she would make it up to him. He would make sure of that. When he’d received the invitation, he had thought of torching it in the sink, but then considered. Allene had everything he no longer did—connections and money. There were smart ways to get both without begging. Some of the most eminent physicians were friends of the Cutters—perhaps they would cross his path now. If he wanted to find Florence’s murderer and rise beyond being a janitor forever, he would need Allene.

  She led him reluctantly to the large double doors. Andrew was waiting for him, looking clean worn out. “Aren’t they something?” he murmured, watching Allene’s and Birdie’s mesmerizing feminine silhouettes recede to the drawing room.

  “Mmm.” Jasper wasn’t sure how to respond. Andrew seemed like a friendly chap, never once looking down his nose at him, unlike everyone else at the party. If things had been different, Jasper would have been the one in the tuxedo, marrying into the Cutter family. He wouldn’t have to wake up tomorrow morning on Eldridge Street and scrub urine stains off Bellevue’s tiled floors.

  Actually, Jasper despised Andrew, now that he thought of it.

  “You’re very lucky,” Andrew said, filling the silence.

  Jasper twitched out of his resentful torpor. “Excuse me?”

  “Birdie. What a patootie. She’s your girl, isn’t she?”

  “I thought I was the one who was supposed to be doing the congratulating tonight,” Jasper replied.

  This time, it was Andrew’s turn to say, “Mmm.” He abruptly faced Jasper, just as the motorcar rumbled up to the curb. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Say. When Florence fell down the stairs . . . where were you, really? You weren’t actually in Allene’s room, were you?”

  Where was he? Where he shouldn’t have been, of course.

  “Just kiss her!” Allene had teased.

  Jasper had been lounging on her bed, surrounded by an overabundance of lace pillows.

  It was a dare and a test. He knew it. Birdie had scorched her cheap dress by standing too close to the fireplace. She’d always done that, trying to escape notice by backing against a wall. He’d followed them to Allene’s room, past the party guests, and Allene had permitted him to enter. Just like when they were children.

  It was all innocent. Birdie had changed behind a silk screen, damn it. So much for seeing more of Birdie Dreyer. But Allene had caught him staring and wouldn’t let it go.

  “I’ll bet she’s never been kissed,” Allene went on. “Have you, Birdie?”

  Birdie shook her head. The blush now extended down to the top of her bosom, peeping out from the borrowed dress.

  “If you’re such an expert,” Jasper challenged Allene, “then show me how it’s done. I’m just a poor student, you see.”

  She laughed and waggled her large sapphire ring at him. “I’m getting married! This is my engagement party, if you haven’t noticed.” But she took a timid step closer to him anyway.

  “You’re not married yet. Consider it an early present.” His hubris was irresistible; Allene stepped another inch closer.

  “No.”

  “Yes!”

  “Jasper Jones!” But now she was laughing less. “Fine. You can kiss me if you kiss Birdie too. That will make it all very equitable and innocent,” she said, as if trying to convince herself. Her fingers fiddled with the beads on her dress. After being so keen on the idea, she seemed awfully nervous now. Jasper had hardly moved. “This is a terrible idea.”

  “Don’t you just love those?” Jasper said, smirking. Birdie tittered in agreement. He stood and reached for Allene’s waist and closed the final distance between them. “Just remember, Allene. You invited us here, not the other way around.” The lace of her dress caught his rough fingertips. He looked down on her perfectly coiffed hair, and she lifted her chin.

  “Don’t you dare tell a soul,” she whispered, her voice shaking a little. The giggles and bravado had dissolved away.

  “Not by a darn sight,” he said. “Cross my heart.”

  She was so close that their bellies touched, and her hip bones tapped against his. Her lips were smudged with a coralline salve that smelled of roses. The tiniest sound escaped her mouth when he leaned in. A whimper, almost.

  The kiss was long and short, soft and firm at the same time. She tasted like sugar and flowers. Much better than the Bowery girls he’d meet in the cheap dance hall on Third Street, the ones who fell victim to his rather effective, crookedly roguish smile. They’d let him dispense his heated frustrations between their welcoming thighs for an evening and wonder why he didn’t call on them afterward. Like sticks of chewing gum, their sweetness lasted for only so long before he no longer wanted them.

  When Jasper’s lips pulled away from Allene’s, he realized his eyes had been closed. Allene blinked a few times and put her fingertips to her lips.

  “Oh. Well.” She turned away, red faced. “Birdie, now you.”

  Birdie shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “Come now! It’s only fair.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’ll show you how harmless it all is,” said Allene. She gaily swept over to rest her hands on Birdie’s shoulders, barely covered by the silk gauze of her dress. She looked to make sure Jasper was watching. Of course he was.

  “Now you put your hands here, on my hips,” Allene instructed. “Close your eyes.”

  Birdie obeyed, and Allene leaned forward. Her eyelids drooped as her lips captured Birdie’s under her own. Allene leaned in a little more, and Birdie’s mouth yielded to the pressure. The kiss might have lasted a thousand years, or a second. Jasper couldn’t tell.

  “Golly” was all he could manage to say, after swallowing hard. “Golly,” he said again.

  The girls parted and swayed drunkenly, though neither had sipped any champagne that evening.

  “Oh,” Birdie murmured.

  “Nothing to it,” Allene said, trying to smile but failing. She seemed desperate to look at anything that wasn’t Birdie or Jasper. “Well? What are you waiting for, Mr. Jones?”

  This time, Jasper didn’t hesitate. He stepped over the ottoman by Allene’s vanity and slid his hand around Birdie’s silk-bedecked waist. She was thinner and more delicate than Allene. He could break her in two if he wanted.

  “One kiss.” Birdie held up a cautionary finger. She seemed slightly out of breath, still recovering. “Between old friends.”

  “Between old friends,” Jasper repeated. Birdie’s lips were slightly parted, and he tasted the tiniest bit of sweet tongue and a bit of rose salve from Allene, which confused him. Warmth rose in his body like a humid July day. His hands squeezed her waist harder before he abruptly stepped back.

  “Why, Jasper Jones, you’re red as a beet!” Allene hooted. Her own face had already cooled, and her eyes were neutral, watching.

  He had the sudden urge to escape the two of them. He didn’t feel like he knew what he was doing anymore.

  A series of thumps and crashes shook the floor below them.

  “What was that?” Allene wiped her mouth hastily and straightened her dress and hair. Footsteps pounded toward the bedroom
door, and the dark-haired maid, Lucy, burst inside.

  “Oh, Miss Allene! I do believe Miss Florence Waxworth has fallen down dead!”

  A Klaxon sounded obnoxiously from the waiting car, and Jasper jolted back to the curb, where the August evening warmed him in his suit. Andrew had been studying the various emotions playing over his face.

  “So where were you when Florence died?” Andrew asked again.

  Ruining my life.

  Jasper slapped on a quick grin. “I was in the bathroom. Champagne went right through me. I’m more of a suds downer myself.”

  Andrew looked dissatisfied, but the lie had slid off Jasper as easily as water on oiled paper.

  Somehow he knew the lying would get easier from here on out.

  CHAPTER 3

  Florence had stared at the three of them just before they ascended the stairs so Birdie could change her burnt gown.

  “Look at you all,” she had drawled, after a sip of champagne. “Trying so damn hard not to be yourselves.”

  Something dug sharply into Birdie’s hand, and the memory of Florence’s acid comment disappeared. She looked down. Allene’s sapphire ring was enormous and the new platinum prongs were sharp. Birdie wished it was gone, like all the other guests that had fled the Cutter house minutes ago.

  “You’ll stay tonight, won’t you?” Allene’s face was expectant, but not desperate. She knew Birdie’s answer even before Birdie did.

  “Of course,” she said. “But I need to telephone my mother first, to let her know.”

  Allene squeezed her hand again. It pained Birdie’s fingers, but she swallowed the discomfort.

  Allene looked over her shoulder. “Lucy? Show Birdie to the study, will you?”

  The gesture was unnecessary. Birdie knew her way around the Cutter house in the dark. She had been born here, after all—her mother too. The Dreyer women had always been lady’s companions to the Cutters, with their own rooms and allowances and personal maids. For three generations, they’d been a part of the Cutter family, until they weren’t. Until Mrs. Cutter decided that her case of consumption should be blamed on the prettier Hazel Dreyer—and the scourge and her daughter should leave the Cutter house forever.