Chapter 25

Joseph reappeared and, at Dr. Calderbrook's instruction, gave her a tour of the place. He was quiet, borderline rude, in the gruff way he pointed out rooms and features and tersely responded to her questions. He also did not provide her another name by which to call him, so she simply called him Joseph when necessary, and he didn't correct her.

The rest of the first floor contained the offices dedicated to the seed catalog and the mail, which Joseph described as "a hefty pile on the daily." The ground floor was made up of the laboratory, a sitting room, a library, a lavatory, and a kitchen and scullery from which a kitchen maid provided a simple lunch each day.

The second floor, he mentioned as he led her into another wing, was off-limits to the regular staff.

"Why?" Saffron asked him.

"Director's rooms," Joseph replied.

It was good to know Nick hadn't been wrong. "Where do the other staff members live? Here in town?"

"Some are in Harpenden," he said, opening a door for her and standing dutifully to the side as she passed into a long corridor of more worn hardwood floors. There was no carpet here, and their steps echoed as he led her down the hall. "Some are up from London every day."

"I'll be coming up from London," she said. "And you?"

He shrugged and pointed to an open door. "Mycology."

"Joseph!" barked a man from within. "Get in here."

Joseph sighed and went to the door. Saffron followed, peering over his shoulder.

A man in a white coat had turned from the microscope sitting on a high counter before a window. He looked to be fifty years old, with thinning brown hair and a hefty, slightly bowed frame that suggested too much time bent over his work. "Tell Mary to get back in here!"

His accent was flat and clipped, indicating origins somewhere to the north.

"Aye, Dr. Sutcliffe," Joseph said without feeling. Dr. Sutcliffe began to turn away, but Joseph added, "New staff, by the way. Miss Everleigh."

Saffron edged around him into the lab for an introduction. Sutcliffe whipped around and roared, "Don't you set one foot into my lab!"

Stunned, Saffron jerked back and ran into Joseph. He steadied her for the merest instant before stepping well away from her.

"For heaven's sake!" cried a muffled female voice. A moment later, a tall woman also in a white coat threw open the door of the room at the end of the hall and strode toward them. "If you didn't want anyone coming into your lab, why'd you leave the door open, you daft old bear!"

The woman stomped up to Saffron and Joseph and stuck her head into the lab. "No terrorizing the new staff, you hear me?"

Sutcliffe jabbed a finger at the woman's foot, which was just inside the door. "Get your feet out of my lab! You're not wearing your gear!"

"You aren't wearing your gear!" she shrieked back before reaching inside the room.

Sutcliffe got to his feet, apparently enraged, but the woman had taken hold of the doorknob. She slammed the door.

The ringing silence of the hall was broken by low grumbling from within Sutcliffe's room.

The woman turned to Saffron and Joseph. She had an angular, middle-aged face. She topped Saffron by a head or more, even in the flat walking boots she wore with her dress beneath her white coat. "Ignore Sutcliffe. He's spent too much time with his growths to understand the ways of Homo sapiens any longer." She stuck out a broad hand and shook Saffron's enthusiastically. "Edna Quinn—call me Quinn, everyone does. How do you do? You're here for Horticulture, I hope."

"Yes, I'm the new assistant," Saffron said, then gave her name.

"Welcome to the Path Lab. I assure you, we're not as cracked as we seem. Joseph!" She turned to him, and Saffron saw he was already halfway down the hall. He flushed, displeased he'd been caught in his retreat. "You must come to introduce Miss Everleigh to the rest of us!"

Joseph wordlessly acquiesced, and Quinn didn't bother to keep her voice low as she leaned over to Saffron and said, "The boy needs interactions with people! He's always hiding away in the greenhouses when Calderbrook doesn't have need for him."

Joseph's shoulders tensed before them. They passed a door marked Records, and another marked Samples, before they reached the large, bright room at the end of the hall.

Agriculture and horticulture had always been considered far more pragmatic sciences, and to some, not even sciences but practices. The Paris conference had reminded Saffron that this was not the case, and the laboratory she now stood in confirmed it. This was no rustic outpost stocked with a few tins of soil or seeds but a bustling center of science. She ought not to have expected anything less, it being the child of the Jodrell Lab at Kew.

The room might have once been a modest sort of ballroom, for it was a single large, open space. A maze of workbenches topped with shelves laden with chemical containers of amber, blue, and clear glass had been erected within. The windows let in streams of light, ensuring that all the benches were adequately lit, though each one had several articulating lamps at the ready. Dark wood beams crisscrossed a high ceiling that had been stained in several places.

A smile tugged at Saffron's lips. The lab might be in a strange place, full of odd people, but this was very familiar ground.

"A fresh face to greet, everyone," called Quinn. She sounded very much like a schoolmarm, a bit overbright and forceful. It matched her appearance: perhaps in her forties and tidy, with streaks of gray in her brown hair. Her nose was rather red, including red marks on the bridge which suggested she'd recently removed a pair of spectacles.

Two people emerged from the maze of shelving. From the far left side stepped a willowy man with hair that was either very pale blond or had gone white. He had large features: a wedge of a nose between light blue eyes that reminded her of a basset hound's. The other was a polished woman Saffron's age with a stylishly cropped head of brunette hair. She wore a white coat, like everyone else, and looked at Saffron with friendly curiosity.

"Where is everyone else?" Quinn demanded.

"Crawford and Burnwell will be gone for another two weeks yet, remember?" said the younger woman. Her voice was soft, but she spoke with the same flat vowels as the shouting scientist. She stepped forward and offered a hand. "Mary Fitzsimmons, Mycology. I believe you've met my colleague, Dr. Sutcliffe."

Saffron could feel heat rising in her cheeks. "I did, yes."

Mary gave her a sympathetic look. "Don't mind him. We must take our safety protocols more seriously than the rest, else we risk contaminating the whole lab. I'll explain the rules after you've met everyone and gotten settled a bit."

"This is Dr. Narramore," announced Quinn, beckoning the blond man. "He runs Entomology, and I am his assistant."

Saffron was surprised to hear this; with her masterful manner, she'd have guessed she was in charge of her own department or even several. She shook Dr. Narramore's hand.

"And you know Joseph Rowe, of course," said Quinn, waving at Joseph.

He was standing unobtrusively behind them. He nodded solemnly as Quinn added, "He is our man of all work. Nothing he can't do or fix, apart from his determination to be quiet." Quinn barked out a laugh. "Speaking of which, I would like you to run to the post office, Joseph. We've been promised new specimens from Devon and I'm getting a bit impatient for them!"

"They'll arrive when they will," Dr. Narramore said, his voice low and resonant.

Quinn gave him a fond look and sighed. "You're quite right. We've enough to be getting on with already. Never you mind, then, Joseph."

Taking that as his dismissal, Joseph retreated from the room.

Narramore disappeared into the shelving, Quinn following him and speaking enthusiastically about something to do with phosphates.

Saffron looked to Mary hopefully. "I don't suppose you could tell me what I'm meant to be doing?"

Mary sighed, giving her another commiserating look. "I really ought to return before Sutcliffe starts shouting again. I was only in here for another set of these." She held up a few white pieces of fabric Saffron recognized as lab masks. The white cotton filtered out some of the potentially harmful things one might breathe in working in a lab. "Come with me. Horticulture is set up over here."

Saffron followed Mary to a series of waist-high benches against the wall in the far right corner of the room.

Mary glanced around the workspace. "Usually there's a set or two of keys wandering around the lab, but you'll need to ask Dr. Calderbrook for your own if you're to get into the files to see what you're meant to be doing. You'll learn more at our meeting later this afternoon. Most of your duties will be tending the pyrethrum daisies. You'll find your spot in the greenhouses easily enough. Joseph can always help if you have trouble."

Mary left the room, and from her seat, Saffron could see her pausing outside Mycology's door to don one of the cotton masks.

Saffron let out a breath. She'd made it past two hurdles—getting Calderbrook to hire her and meeting the staff, but now the real work was to begin. She began with searching for keys among the instruments and files before resolving to do as Mary suggested and ask Dr. Calderbrook for a set of keys of her own.

Saffron took the rest of the day to familiarize herself with the work that Demian Petrov and Jeffery Wells had been doing before they died. She was there to investigate the lab, but she was also there as herself, and she refused to do a shoddy job.

Her tasks seemed simple enough: manage and observe the growth of pyrethrum daisies. Each batch of Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium—not a daisy at all, though the cheerful blooms closely resembled them—was planted in a different kind of soil, with a different variation of fertilizer and companion plant. Her duties included measuring their growth, watering and fertilizing them in careful amounts, and recording it all on the provided charts and graphs. It was easy work, tasks she'd done as a student.

She read over the horticulturalists' notes, hoping for a hint of might have led to their deaths, but found only fretting about the growth of the plants in plot thirteen. The masses of daisies in that plot were a bit shorter, growing a little unevenly, she supposed, but even her desire to do good work during this temporary job couldn't bring her to worry much about it. The plants in these plots were intended for the harvest of the toxins in the daisies—pyrethrins—which the other scientists would test on pests. There were other plots being grown for strength and productivity.

Joseph acquainted her with the greenhouse procedures and where things were located, and by teatime, apparently a firm ritual at Number 28, she felt she'd found her footing.

She said as much to the staff as they stood around in the ground floor library, sipping tea around a table laden with a large tray the kitchen girl brought in. She was perhaps fifteen or so, with a rosy complexion and her hair hidden beneath her white cap. She must have been shy, for she set the tray down and darted from the room without a word.

Quinn poured the tea for everyone, and Saffron watched her ministrations carefully, wondering if this was the way whatever killed Petrov and Wells had been disseminated. It was unlikely, from the random way the cups were distributed and the fact that everyone drank from the same pot. Sugar and milk were also too randomly consumed to target a specific person.

"Glad you're getting into the swing of things," Quinn said in a motherly tone as she handed Saffron her tea.

"Just with the daisies," Saffron admitted. "There's far more to catch up on with the other projects, I'm afraid."

"We do like to keep busy," Quinn said. "Each department has at least two other studies in addition to the pyrethrum daisies. We've all got a hand in that study."

Saffron glanced at Sutcliffe and Mary, who were speaking near the window, the curling steam from their teacups catching the light.

"Yes, Mycology too," Quinn said, following her look. "You are growing the stuff as robustly as possible, and Entomology and Mycology are finding ways to kill it." She chuckled when Dr. Narramore, who'd been silent at her side, sipping his tea, gave her a sour look. "Come now, Neville, that is what we are doing."

"We're not killing the plants," he protested. "We're researching what insects might kill it."

"It's easy work, I don't mind saying," Quinn said to Saffron. "The entire reason we're researching the stuff is that insects don't care for it. Chrysanthemum cinerariifolium has been used for hundreds of years as a deterrent, a companion plant like marigolds, you know. We're just experimenting to see just how effective it can be in other forms as well."

"I see," Saffron said. It was not particularly interesting work, she thought, but she was glad someone was excited to do it. "What part does Botany play, if Horticulture is the one to grow the specimens?"

"Botany covers physiology, mainly, in addition to the pathology aspect. They diagnose what mechanisms are affected by what disease. They pass that information on to us if it's related to insects, or to Sutcliffe if it's a fungal problem. Viruses and bacteria were dealt with in cooperation with Petrov."

"Petrov was the chief of Horticulture," Saffron said, more a statement than a question.

"Yes," Quinn replied. She sighed, glancing at Narramore, who'd retreated back into his abstracted gaze. "Poor Demian. He was an émigré, you know, but never did he give me a moment of doubt about his ability."

Rather than frown at Quinn's assumption, Saffron thought of the books in Petrov's rooms, the range of subjects in so many different languages. He certainly seemed very intelligent. "He died unexpectedly, I understand."

"He did, yes," Quinn said. "His assistant too, if you can believe it."

"Were they in an accident of some sort?"

Saffron's question drew the attention of Mary and Sutcliffe. Mary's face pinched with what might have been sadness or concern. "It was so tragic, to lose two members of our lab so close together. I worry—"

"Petrov was an old man," Sutcliffe said flatly, cutting her off. "Looked like a stiff wind could blow him over most days. It was nature at work, nothing tragic about it."

Mary gave him an admonishing look. "But Mr. Wells wasn't so old."

"What happened to him?" Saffron asked.

Next to her, Quinn went still. Saffron glanced at her, then followed her attention to the hall, where Joseph's back disappeared into the kitchen.

"Excuse me," Quinn murmured. She slipped from the library as Mary answered Saffron's question.

"We were told he died of a sudden illness," Mary said, her frown tightening further.

The horrible sights and smells of Wells's house crashed into Saffron, almost as if she'd stepped inside the house once again. She swallowed convulsively.

"Are you all right?" Mary asked, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," Saffron said quickly. "Just got a bit dizzy, is all."

"You've been wearing your protective equipment, haven't you?" Mary asked anxiously. "Without it, you can breathe in all sorts of nasty things."

After assuring Mary she had been taking precautions, she excused herself to the ladies'.

The lavatory was at the back of the house, once elegant with marble and wallpaper that now showed decades of wear. Saffron pressed her back against the door. She wished she hadn't closeted herself in so close and stuffy a space, but there was a tiny window over the toilet, so she climbed atop it and pushed the window open.

A blast of cool air hit her face, and she sighed in relief. She needed fresh air to forget the awful things she'd seen—and smelled—in Wells's home.

Saffron inhaled the scent of winter air, touched with the smell of manure and fresh earth that emanated from the nearby greenhouse. She supposed dead bodies were a reality that she should inure herself to, considering this was the third time she'd assisted in some sort of criminal investigation. It was perhaps the worst part—or the second to worst, considering the danger she'd found—but she rather thought she ought not to get used to dead bodies. She wanted to help those who'd lost their lives, not necessarily look at them.

Those squeamish thoughts were interrupted by a low voice coming in the window on the wind.

"I haven't seen them, I told you," a sullen male voice said. She was sure it was Joseph.

"You're in and out of the lab all day," Quinn's clipped voice replied. "You could have taken them by accident—"

Joseph grew louder. "I haven't seen your papers."

"A mere mistake can be forgiven, my boy," she said patronizingly.

"Then admit you lost the papers. Don't go blaming me."

Quinn's tone turned sharp. "What about the vivarium? You expect me to believe that one of our costly vivariums just happened to fall off the counter and shatter? We didn't even get to collect the specimens inside before it was swept away. It was almost as if someone was trying to cover up they'd broken it."

"I've already told you, and Dr. Narramore, and Dr. Calderbrook that I had nothing to do with that." He spoke over Quinn as he added, "I'm going back to work."

The sound of a door slamming came a moment later. Quinn grumbled something under her breath, then the door sounded again, more quietly.

Saffron latched the window and stepped to the floor, mind racing. Missing papers and a vivarium, in addition to two dead scientists? Perhaps there really was something going on at the Path Lab.