The Impossible Poisoning.

Chapter 8

"Hettie?" I murmured again.

"What is it?" Hettie asked gently, putting the food to one side and taking my hand.

"Could you get Robert?"

Hettie sighed heavily, stroking my fingers. Newham had stayed well away from me ever since the argument with Isabel, and I had reason to believe he was extremely disappointed with my behaviour.

"I'll see if he'll come" she told me soothingly, squeezing my fingers.

"No. He has to come" I said petulantly, shuffling and trying to sit up. I knew Hettie would never let me, but it was dramatic effect only.

"Shhh now" Hettie ordered, gently but firmly, pushing me back down onto the bed and stroking my hair. "I can't promise you he'll come, but..."

"Alright" I smiled feebly. "But please do try."

"Now?" Hettie asked, making to go. I weighed this up, eventually shrugging a little.

"Whenever you like."

Hettie sat with me for fifteen more minutes, before getting up, saying a quiet goodbye and leaving, shutting the door behind her. I took a deep breath. Newham would come to see me. I needed him to.

Sure enough, half an hour later, just as I was giving up on him, Newham rather sulkily put his head through the door.

"What?"

"I wanted to talk to you" I said pleasantly. Newham sighed, crossing over and sitting not too delicately on the bed.

"I know what you've been up to" he told me. I feigned confusion.

"After everything we've said. After everything we've done. And you still go on."

I gave up playing dumb.

"Surely it's better to be safe than sorry" I reasoned. "And to be honest, being dead is a pretty big sorry."

"Even the doctor says you're fine" Newham argued. I pouted.

"Doctors can be wrong."

I looked away, shutting my eyes.

"Do you have any idea?" Newham then asked. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to love you sometimes?"

I nodded, still with my eyes shut.

"I do. You've stuck with me longer than I'd stick with me."

I heard him exhale tiredly.

"After everything?"

I looked up at him, smiling faintly.

He smiled as well, shaking his head, squeezing my hand. I relaxed back into the pillows.

"I'm sorry for being such a little witch. I'm just as scared as you all are."

"What are we going to do?" Newham then asked. "We can't stay here forever. We'll have to move on eventually."

"I'll think about that...when I'm better" I yawned. "Will you keep an eye on me?"

"Right" Newham smiled. "Allie-sitting duty for me, then."

I laughed a little, weakly.

"You don't have to sit here" I told him. "You'll keep me talking. Go and sit in the window seat if you like."

The window seat was a large, semicircular affair, with curtains cutting the semicircle off from the rest of the room. Only the curtain closest to me was open at that time, and Newham settled himself behind the other one, facing me. He pulled out a book I recognised.

"You're reading that?" I asked, as he opened Mystery Man at about halfway through.

"Hettie brought it" he explained. "So I thought I might as well. Now rest, you. Or I'll be in trouble for keeping you awake."

I obediently shut my eyes, relaxing down into the pillows. I didn't sleep for long, or at least I thought I didn't, and soon another plate of food was being placed on my lap by Hanson. This meant either it had been morning and was now lunchtime or it had been lunchtime and was now dinner.

I reached out, gripping the maid's wrist tightly.

"What type?" I asked. She looked strangely at me, trying to pull her arm away.

"On the sheets" I corrected myself. "What type?"

To this, Hanson laughed, a shrill bark of an affair.

"Why do you care?" she said derisively. "Whatever it is, you'll still be just as dead when it's done its work."

"I'm a detective" I reasoned. "I like to know things. And besides, what difference will it make. Nobody'll believe me. They all think they're safe out here."

Hanson laughed again, but otherwise kept silent.

"I thought I was safe out here, too" I murmured sadly. "For a little while. I was lucky, though. Lucky the book I was reading gave me a clear-cut description of what was wrong with me."

We stared at each other, her standing at the foot of the bed and me laid in it.

"Why?" I asked.

"I owe Master Stephenson my life" Hanson replied simply. "Me and so many others. He saved us all from the gallows, you see, and we're dotted throughout Britain, each with our own seperate districts. And, if anyone comes into our districts with a price on their heads, well..." she smiled horribly. "Safe to say yours was a very pretty price, Miss Winter."

"How did you know I was coming?" I then asked. She shrugged.

"I got a letter. From the Master. Telling me what I had to do and how cleverly I had to do it."

"But nobody knew where we were going" I muttered, alarmed. "Someone's..."

"A traitor, yes" Hanson finished smugly.

"Yes" I agreed, as circumstances began to click into place. "Indeed. So what type?"

"It's a poison derived from thallium" Hanson explained. "Soaked and dried into the fibres of the sheets, rubbing off on you the longer you lie in the bed."

"So it's a downward spiral" I realized, alarmed. "I slept in the bed on the first night, absorbing some of the poison through my skin, then when I fall ill I'm taken back to the thing that made me ill in the first place. I'd almost say I like it."

"He was right, you know" Hanson then commented. "You are smart as a tack. Almost too smart."

"Oh?" I asked, a hint of worry rising in my throat. As I had spoken, Hanson had whipped out a hypodermic syringe from her apron, and I now stared at it in horror, trying my hardest to hide my fear.

"You wouldn't dare" I bluffed, but she laughed at me, prowling around the bed as I tried to move away.

"I wouldn't dare?" she scoffed. "Look what I've done already!"

She lunged forward, but then her hand with the syringe flew back, her head also snapping away as she was pulled roughly off me. She screamed, and I heard instant feet on the stairs outside.

Because of course, Newham had been sitting behind the curtain the entire time.