Under the Blossoms:
Chapter 2:
"Did I talk in my sleep last night?" Ciel enquired the next morning after all of the suspects had finished eating and had left the room.
Sebastian was forced to tell the truth in this instance as not lying was one of the terms in the contract.
"Just a little."
The Earl scowled. "What did I say?"
"It was mostly about cherry blossoms, young master," Sebastian informed him, naturally neglecting to mention that he was the cause of most of the sleep talking and was able to because it did not count as lying.
"I am sick of dreaming about them," Ciel griped.
"I am sure that the dreams will stop soon," the demon suggested innocently.
Ciel shot him a suspicious look, but did not say anything and resumed eating his scone.
"Do you have any ideas about what avenue of investigation we should take, Sebastian?" he enquired once he had finished it.
Sebastian looked thoughtful before replying. "I found out what was served at dinner that night and I discovered an illuminating fact. All those present at the dinner table have particular tastes and that was catered for by serving them all different dishes and they only had done dish in common."
"I see, since they all had stomach pains, the poison must have been in that dish," Ciel cocked his head on the side. "What was it?"
"Sage and onion stuffing. The sage was from the herb garden and the onions from the vegetable garden."
Ciel frowned and glanced out the window and the blooming roses in the garden.
"It seems a little strange that they all became ill with one person dying. It was either a weak poison or only a small dose was used. The victim must have consumed a larger amount than everyone else do have died."
The demon poured his master tea into a flower patterned cup and wondered briefly what the reaction would be if the teacup was patterned with cherry blossoms. It would certainly assist in increasing his prey's paranoia considerably. It was entertaining to watch him puzzle over cherry blossoms to no avail.
"Perhaps she consumed something else laced with poison after dinner," Sebastian suggested.
"It's a possibility," Ciel said vaguely and looked out at the garden again. "Go and search the garden, Sebastian. It may have been a plant based poison and we need to find out what it was."
"Understood."
The Earl waited for his butler to leave the room before letting out a sigh of relief. He had noted over the past few days since he had started having those dreams that Sebastian was acting differently and whenever he was around the atmosphere was heavier and something deep within his mind was telling him that it was significant. Alternatively it could also be a sign that he was losing his mind.
He shook his head and finished off his tea before retreating to the library to find an interesting book to read to alleviate his stress. The murder solving was not progressing well. Fortunately for him the library seemed to be the place for murder suspects to have clandestine conversations and he discovered several interesting points by eavesdropping.
In the garden Sebastian poked and gently pulled at all the plants for any signs of tampering or poisonous plants being grown with the herbs. He was about to stop and move onto the vegetable garden when his sharp eyes noticed something strange about the colour of the sage stems.
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.