Salarius

By Nina Martineck

The conservatory would have been positively majestic if not for the body lying in the center.

Mr. Jerome Arkwright had noticed a peculiar aroma as he stepped into the conservatory that morning. Usually, he could smell the imported orchids as soon as he entered the wispy glass room, but an acrid odor masked their fragrance. He resolved to have Lancing look into it once he’d had his tea.

That is, until he rounded the corner and saw Lancing sprawled among the flowers.

What a shame. The blood dripping from his mouth would surely stain the white tiles. Get in the grout, too, and cloud the mosaics. Such a vibrant color never truly fades. And Arkwright had never known a better gardener than Lancing. The man had cared for the exotic plants as if they had been his own and never asked too many questions about their origins—or how Arkwright came to acquire them. He would have to hire a new gardener before the week’s end if his plants were to survive.

He ought to call someone. The body couldn’t remain here. It would upset his wife to have a corpse in the house. And the longer it stayed there, the harder it would be to remove the stains from the floor and the stench from the air. Everything would need to be cleaned. He would put his best maids on the job… after his tea.

After all, they had already set Arkwright’s morning tea and biscuits on the table. Surely, he couldn’t let them go to waste. He stepped over Lancing and made his way to the table.

Mrs. Warner made the most wonderful biscuits. He went to bite into one, but the sight of Lancing mussing the tiles ruined his appetite, so he set it on his saucer. Perhaps he could take morning tea in the parlor or the library instead.

Odd that Lancing should have collapsed after the tea had been served. If not, then surely some maid should be let go for not immediately reporting a dead body to her superior. He would have to look into that. After his tea, of course.

Poor chap. The blood from his mouth dribbled down the front of his shirt. Arkwright found this sight especially disruptive. It seemed invasive to see the help’s blood. Like seeing their bedclothes. But, despite this, Arkwright was curious. One does not bleed from the mouth on an average Thursday morning.

Arkwright had heard horror stories like this before. The men who brought him specimens always wanted to impart a tale or two on his boys at the back door of the carriage house, and they seemed eager to tell the maids, who would tell his wife as they helped her dress or curled her hair, and she would tell her husband over a glass of brandy. He never wanted to hear them, but it kept her from talking about other things. He found it inappropriate for his staff to discuss his business behind his back, though it amazed him to hear how misinformed they all could be. Arkwright had dangerous plants, surely, but he couldn’t take down an army with them. A small battalion, perhaps, but not the entirety of an army. And he usually did nothing more than observe them. Perhaps pen some notes in his journal if the day was especially slow. He was not the soulless madman they made him out to be.

Arkwright bit into his biscuit and immediately spit it into his napkin.

Mrs. Warner’s biscuits were usually eccentrically sweet. They tasted like summertime in the darkest throes of winter. The spices cast sunbeams on one’s face as they indulged themselves. They danced across the tongue like a warm breeze, bright and refreshing. Buttery and warm long after they’d cooled, Arkwright could not start his day without them. However, this biscuit here, crumbling on his saucer and discarded in his napkin, was not Mrs. Warner’s biscuit.

Granted, he might be able to locate the cinnamon if he concentrated. And there was surely no shortage of butter. But something else had taken the spotlight. Something salty, as if she had made them with seawater. It had sucked the moisture from his mouth, leaving him parched. He drank half his tea in one gulp.

He would think that Mrs. Warner’s eyes had failed her and she had used salt instead of sugar, but he undoubtedly tasted the sugar. This ingredient was an addition, not a substitution. But why must she mess with a tried and true recipe? He liked his biscuits a certain way and would take nothing else. She should know that.

He strolled around the conservatory to clear his head, taking a different route through his specimens than usual so he could avoid the body. However, he mistakenly caught a glimpse of Lancing from behind a shrub. In his limp hand rested a crumbling biscuit.

Arkwright held his nose and approached the body. Yes, that was one of Mrs. Warner’s biscuits all right. Had Lancing stolen from his breakfast tray? Had he not been dead, Arkwright might have had to let him go for such an infraction.

He had taken such a large bite.

Ah. The flavor, the bleeding—

Arkwright hurried to the back corner of the conservatory. He skimmed through the identification tags until he found that of Dendrobium salarius. One bud could kill a grown man. Six buds were missing.

How dare someone take his plants without his permission and use them against his gardener. The nerve—

Lancing was never supposed to eat a biscuit. They were not meant for his consumption.

Arkwright sighed. He would have to call the police on Mrs. Warner, of course. Which meant he would never taste her biscuits again, and he would have to find a new cook by lunchtime.

After his tea, that is. Which had grown quite cold. He called for a new cup.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nina Martineck has been writing for nearly all eighteen years of her life. She published her first novel, The Knowers, at age seventeen, and The Eminence a year later. Her short story “The Bug Whisperer” was featured in the Western New York Young Writers’ Anthology when she was ten. She currently studies architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.

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