All in the Golden Afternoon (Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler fanfic)(Sebastian x Ciel)

Digitalin

He pulled two stems out at random from neighbouring sage plants and held them against his white glove for maximum impact. One stem was a brighter green than the other, suggesting that it really was not a sage plant.

The demon looked closer at the other plant and observed that the flower buds had been cut off unlike the sage. He held up another stem of the mystery plant for a closer examination of the bud and saw that the colour of the bud was a pinker shade of purple as opposed to the blue purple flowers of sage.

He smirked, recognising the plant for what it was.

"Foxglove. Digitalis. Also highly poisonous."

Clearly the murderer was quite intelligent considering how well the method had been thought out and the foxglove had to have been planted with the sage some time ago. He straightened up, pocketed the stems and returned to his master after a detour to the kitchen to ask more questions.

"Digitalis?" his master said. "I have heard of it being used in medical applications. At least we know what the poison is now and it eliminates two suspects."

The careful planting of the foxglove disguised as sage suggested that the murderer was involved with the running of the household which only left the Lord and Lady of the house as the fiancée and the victim's best friend would not have the opportunity.

"Would you like to know who picked the sage for dinner?" Sebastian offered with a smile.

"Who?"

"The victim herself. Apparently she was interested in gardening."

Ciel rolled his eyes in exasperation. The case was proving to be difficult, even more so when all he wanted to do was sleep and he was feeling nervous around his butler.

"It may have been a suicide then... It explains how she ingested a larger amount, but there is little motive for her to kill herself. Or perhaps she wanted to frame her fiancée for it."

He scowled, not happy with this explanation and sought for another. As he did so a medical encyclopaedia on a shelf caught his eye and he resolved to check what medical application Digitalis was used in. He stood on his tiptoes and pulled it out and ran his finger down the index and found the relevant page and smiled widely when he read the answer.

"Cardiac Disease. There is one suspect with a heart problem and has tonic for it. That tonic should contain more Digitalis."

The demon thought back to his brief search of the house the previous day. There had been a number of tonic bottles in the bedside cupboard in the bedroom of Lord Bercy.

"Are you suggesting that he killed his daughter?" Sebastian asked confusedly. "It fits, but what is the motive?"

"She was adopted," Ciel stated simply and added as an explanation," Whilst you were in the garden I did some eavesdropping and learnt who is taking medicine for his heart, who is adopted and what is going on between the victim's former fiancée and her best friend."

"How does that make him the murderer?" the demon questioned, still not fully convinced.

His master coughed delicately. "I remembered some of the society gossip Madam Red told me once- you were not around to block my ears. It was about some Marquis or another being a little too fond of his adopted ward and married her after his wife's death. I can only assumed in this instance, he killed her so he would not have to give her away to a man who is cheating on her with her best friend."

Sebastian fitted the pieces together and came to the same conclusion as his master. Although the boy was sleep deprived and paranoid, he was still able to solve a murder case, he admired him for that. However, regardless of his admiration, he was still going to be the one to win the bet.

The pair interrogated Lord Bercy when he returned home from the funeral and in light of the evidence against him, he confessed and put up no resistance when he was taken away by the investigating officer which turned out to be Inspector Abberline. He had spent a long time planning his daughter's death and had administered the fatal dose of Digitalis as a tonic to ease her stomach pain after dinner.

The teenage Earl was subdued on the carriage ride home and did not speak until the carriage came to a halt in front of the manor.

"Sebastian, have you ever seen a cherry blossom tree?" he asked curiously.

Again, Sebastian was forced to speak the truth. "Yes."

"Why are they pink?" Ciel demanded unexpectedly.

The demon flinched almost imperceptively which did not go unnoticed by his master and he answered the question after a moment of silence.

"Because that it is in their genetic makeup."

His prey narrowed his eye and dismounted from the carriage gracefully with no further comment causing the demon to have some misgivings about his previously guaranteed chances of winning of the bet. The boy was showing unmistakeable signs of remembering the whole incident.

That night, after dismissing his butler, Ciel sat up in bed in his pitch black bedroom and tried to work out what was going on.

He was having repeated dreams of cherry blossoms which Sebastian was reacting strangely to. Sebastian's presence was no longer comforting like it was before and he had a sense that his time left to live was rapidly ticking away. Technically that was true as he had made a contract with a demon and his soul was the payment. However he was nowhere near finding the culprits for his family's downfall so that did not make sense.

In addition, he had a feeling that whilst he had been on the brink of falling asleep the night before and on the carriage ride yesterday, that someone had spoken to him and mentioned a bet and corpses. That person could have only been Sebastian as he was the only person other than him in the carriage and his bedroom.

In order to vanquish his feelings of unease and to live long enough to hunt down the perpetrators of his parents' murder, he needed to do something to win this elusive bet that he knew nothing about.

As if to encourage him, he had a variation on his usual dream when he slipped off to sleep that was much more informative.

***

Early medicine used for heart problems did indeed contain Digitalis which is poisonous, but only in large amounts. I used to accidentally come in contact with foxglove on my way home from primary school and my mother would kindly tell me it was poisonous and scare me.