Chapter 39

Although Saffron had already done a fair bit of creeping around the main area of the laboratory, it was something quite different to do so in utter, silent darkness. Light and shadow flitted over the rows of glass and metal equipment as she moved toward the rear of the lab to Entomology.

A soft ripping noise made her jump. She jumped, flinching away from the noise, and found she was being pulled back. Flailing, she staggered away, only to find it was her skirt, caught on a brass valve sticking out from a workstation. The wretched thing had ripped her skirt and nearly given her a heart attack to boot. Glaring at the valve, she turned away and hurried toward Entomology.

She hadn't gone a handful of steps before she swallowed a terrified gasp. Something loomed out of the darkness.

Hand pressed to her thundering heart, Saffron forced herself to slow her frantic breath. The largest vivarium dominated the first workstation. Within lay a massive piece of driftwood, which, in the bleaching light of her single lamp, looked like an alien skull. Worse, it was crawling with insects.

Saffron brought her lamp to the glass and cringed when the dark, shining bodies of dozens of earwigs scuttled away from the light and into the crevices of the driftwood and rolled newspaper littering the bottom of the vivarium. Earwigs did not go into the ears of humans to nibble on the insides of one's head as they'd once been believed to do, but that did not mean Saffron wanted to spend time with the creatures.

Quinn had explained that Entomology had recently shifted its focus to testing the pesticides the Path Lab was developing from the oil of the pyrethrum daisies on a handful of insects, earwigs among them. This was their second round of earwigs, she had said. Some of the previous year's brood had been used to test the pesticides over the summer, and they'd kept the other half to breed. Half of the brood set to hatch in 1924 had been set aside in a small vivarium to test the pesticides on the egg and larval stages, and the rest was in a third vivarium, apparently empty, to grow into maturity and continue the cycle.

Saffron uneasily watched an earwig frantically scuttle across the glass, its little pincers waving. These insects hadn't been used as test subjects yet, just to breed more earwigs.

She was suddenly quite glad she studied plants and not things that could crawl away from her. Resolving to ignore the creeping earwigs, she started her search.

After ten minutes, all she'd found were supplies and a collection of dead bugs. There were none of the fascinating shapes and colors one might find in an entomological display at a museum, just beetles and flying insects that Saffron had seen a hundred times over in the country.

She'd hoped that the drawers might have revealed something relevant rather than just headless pins and forceps and a number of preservation chemicals, the names of which were familiar to her from the list she'd given the Datta siblings, but she was disappointed.

On to Botany, then, Saffron thought with a deep, bracing breath.

The workstations were clear. Within the drawers were familiar tools and materials. Nothing stood out to her. The last drawer contained a stack of weathered and stained field notebooks dating back to 1911, all marked with the chief of Botany's name: A. Crawford. She flipped through the pages, willing something useful to make itself known, but found only a series of charming sketches of leaves and flowers. The rolling cursive showed the notebooks contained mostly field notes from various farms in Hampshire.

She closed the drawers and relocked them, then sank onto a stool to think. She heard only silence from the rest of the house. Alexander was apparently still searching Mycology. If he found nothing useful in there, she wasn't sure what she would do. Would she have to give up this venture and trust that Nick really could figure out what was happening here at the Path Lab?

Doubt nipping at her heels, she carefully made her way into the hall.

She'd never seen anyone go in or out of the records room, but she knew which key would open the door. The tiny room smelled like paper and that indefinable soil scent and had no more space for two people to stand within at once. Blowing out a breath, she stepped inside and shut the door. She couldn't risk anyone coming to the hall and seeing the door open, but she immediately felt the difference, as if the closed door had reduced her lung capacity.

The lamp flickered as she set it down on the floor. Shelves lined the walls to the ceiling, each stuffed with row upon row of paper sheaves wrapped in string. She pulled the first one from the nearest shelf and saw the date was April 1921. Working backward, she found the records from the latter half of 1923.

Each farm and research station had its own file for each month. Unfortunately, there were twenty-two research stations that shared information with the Path Lab, and still another handful of private farms that sent in reports and samples.

She scratched nearly illegible notes in her notebook on the floor as she pulled down file after file, noting anything promising, only to dash them off as she found the concluding notes for each tidbit of information. A rash of mosaic virus that took out a massive portion of tomatoes, the loss of acres of young potatoes to blight, a curious fungus that was identified and eliminated, with thanks to Dr. Sutcliffe for his recommendations.

By the time Saffron reached September, her knees were aching from kneeling on the hard, cold floor. The dates from the reports Nick had shown her echoed in her mind as she meticulously worked through each set of reports in search of a mention of Specimen No. 28923.

The specimen number didn't show up as she reached the relevant dates, but, as she untied the papers from the week of September twenty-fourth through twenty-eighth, she realized that the specimen number was the date. Her fingers shook with poorly suppressed excitement as she sorted through the papers. But there was no report from Friday, September twenty-eighth in the stack.

She groaned with frustration. Wells must have taken it. Blast, but she wanted to see what it said! Would they have made copies of any of the reports? She would possibly have to get into Dr. Calderbrook's office …

She hastily tied the twine around the papers and shoved them back onto the shelf. The force of her frustration caused a cascade of sheaves to fall to the floor.

"No, no, no, no!" she whisper-shouted.

Half of the sheaves had slipped apart, leaving a heap of papers on the floor. Borrowing a few of Elizabeth's favorite curses, she hurriedly began shuffling papers together again.

The door opened. Saffron jerked back, gasping. The lamp cast eerie shadows on his face as Alexander took in the mess on the floor. "What happened?"

Saffron's explanation died in her throat at the sound of a floorboard squeaking. "The stairs," she whispered. "Someone is coming down!"

Alexander stepped inside the records room and closed the door. "Lamps."

They blew them out at the same time. In the darkness, Saffron could make out the sound of fabric swishing. She sensed Alexander kneeling down a moment later, then heard his shoes crinkle over the papers littering the floor.

"Sit down," he breathed, and she shifted so her bottom was on the floor rather than her knees. He did the same, and they ended up pressed together from hip to ankle.

Soft footsteps padded across the floor in the distance. Saffron could trace their path in her mind: coming down the stairs, then around the corner past the library and lavatory. Down the hall, toward them.

She blew out a shaking breath. Alexander's hand found hers. She clung to it, wrapping both her cold hands around his warm one. The rise of his chest slowed and deepened. She tried to focus on the rhythm, will some of his calm into herself. But the darkness of the room bore down on her. She knew the room was tiny, knew they barely fit inside. It was suffocating.

Her chest tightened. Her heart thudded wildly. She squeezed Alexander's hand tighter, but even with him as her anchor, the storm of her panic only grew stronger.

When Saffron had told him that she didn't care for small, enclosed spaces, Alexander thought she merely had a distaste for them. He realized now that she had far more than mere dislike. She was on her way to over-breathing.

He didn't dare move to comfort her. The footsteps were in the hall beyond the door, shuffling along unevenly. Should they stop outside the door, they'd likely be able to hear Saffron's heaving breaths.

So he turned toward her, used his other hand to tilt her chin up, and kissed her.

It wasn't a scientifically sound way to cope with triggered anxiety, but it was effective.

He'd always had luck snapping himself out of attacks by disrupting patterns dragging him deeper into panic. Focusing on a mundane object could snap him out of visions of war, or a sharp, unusual smell might help clear his head of the remembered stench of blood or smoke. Saffron's frantic breathing needed to be interrupted. Kissing her was a quiet, effective way to do that.

It was hard to tell her reaction from the half second of frozen stillness. His hand moved to cradle the back of her head, and his fingers slid along the back of her neck.

Her grip on his other hand eased. He smiled against her lips in relief. With tentative pressure, she kissed him back. It was brief and firm, as if she was saying, "Thank you." Their foreheads rested against one another. He slowly stroked the soft nape of her neck.

The sound of muffled footsteps was receding.

They sat like that for a long time, well after the house had gone silent again, his hand on her neck, sharing her breath.

At long last, Saffron whispered, "Do you think we can get up?"

He nodded. By feel, he reached for his coat. He'd removed it and rolled it against the bottom of the door in the hope that it would block the smell of the extinguished lamps from wafting into the hall. The coat was no doubt covered in dust now. He grimaced at the thought.

Beneath his feet, papers crinkled. He reached into his pocket for the matches he'd begged off the barkeep when they bought their pub sandwiches and lit one.

Saffron was kneeling on the floor, retrieving her lamp. Just as their eyes met, the match went out. He lit another, and she was lifting the lamp to him. He took it, the light dropping out for a moment as the wick of the lamp caught.

"Wait!" Saffron hissed, nearly making him drop the lamp. "The light! Bring it back!"

He turned the handle to make the lamp brighter. Saffron was scrambling to her feet, a paper in hand and eyes huge.

She shoved the paper at him. "Alexander, look!"

He winced at the clear imprint of his shoe's tread on it. Anyone looking at this paper, or any of the others still under his feet, would know something had happened with the reports. "We'll have to hope no one wants to look these over any time soon."

"Not the footprint." She jabbed the paper. "This."

"Erratic behavior" was his first indication of what Saffron meant, followed by "prolific destruction."

He set the lamp on the nearest shelf and read over the entire paper, Saffron peering over his shoulder. It was a report, but a second or third page, as the page had no introductory information and the first line was a continuation of a sentence. It seemed to refer to an insect or group of insects, a sample of which a certain farm, referred to as "Farm E," had sent into the laboratory.

"What does this mean?" he asked.

"I have no idea," Saffron admitted. "But I've never seen any reports referring to prolific destruction! That has to be meaningful."

He had to agree. "Where do they keep the samples from the farms? Maybe they still have it."

Color had returned to Saffron's face, along with the enthusiasm he found so damned irresistible. "Help me sort these, then I'll show you."