The Sacrament of Poison

By Paul TN Chapman

While field testing new laboratory equipment, Max Fite uncovers evidence of long-concealed homicides. He recognizes the names of the victims because he's visited their graves often.

 

As evidence leads him and his colleagues to suspect the worst, he teams up with Lauder Gray, a private inquirty agent, to follow clues that lead him to an unexpected conclusion.

 

The question isn't only 'who did it?' but 'HOW?'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul TN Chapman
• Release date: Aug 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393397205

Paul TN Chapman

Paul TN Chapman is a freelance writer and authors, living the the US East Coast. He maintains a monthly website of his essays, edits publications, and spends most of his time writing novels.  

Book preview

1

Twenty years ago....

The pudgy young friar-priest, Father Ephraim, struggled out of the small wooden boat as it rocked at the river’s edge. The water was greenish-brown, and the vegetation along the banks of the river stank. It was hot, but only he seemed to mind.

He’d been out of the seminary only six months, and cursed the superior of the friary where he’d lived since he was seventeen. On the day of Ephraim’s ordination, Father Prior announced the new priest needed missionary experience. Using a world map, a dart, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he decided to send Ephraim to Africa, to join the Augustinian brothers in Tanzania. This would prepare him more fully for priesthood in Gaelia, a servant to all.

Ephraim didn’t follow the logic of this decision; he’d grumbled for months.

Six more months to go! Dammit!

He had to admit, this wasn’t quite as bad as the stories he’d heard from returning missionaries when he was in seminary. The bugs, the oppressive heat, and the intolerable food (what he wouldn’t give for salad and roast beef!) were what he’d been told to expect.

Instead of working to convert the natives, helping in the fields or tending cattle, and doing it all with a pious smile, he’d been assigned, as the youngest and strongest missionary, to assist visiting Japanese medical researchers sponsored by the Tanzanian government. Grumbling had its benefits – he was in the field instead of out in the fields.

He accompanied Dr Hisashi Nakamura to Lake Eyasi, where the doctor was testing an experimental drug on large animals.

Dr Nakamura was unquestionably brilliant, and apparently lived in a world all his own. He was so focused on his research that he had to be reminded to watch where he was walking, and sometimes, even to eat and sleep.

Father Ephraim, good soldier of Christ, had seen more elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses and hippopotami than he had local people on this trip. He assisted in shifting cameras, recording equipment, boxes of scientific supplies, and rowing the boat. He took notes, and kept records. He carried luggage. He occasionally cooked.

Surely this wasn’t how he was meant to be a servant to all! Damn Father Prior!

They were a team of three. The third man was a native named Aki. Dr Nakamura was pleased with this, because Aki was s Japanese word for bright. He took this as a good omen.

‘I’m surprised you believe in omens,’ Ephraim said to him. ‘As a scientist, I mean.’

Hisashi responded in heavily accented, awkward English, ‘Everything comes from something. Sometimes we know before we see.’

Ephraim had no idea what that meant, and remained prudently silent.

The drug Hisashi was testing had an unpronounceable Japanese name. Ephraim and the officials from the Tanzanian government simply referred to it as KDK. It was being developed to treat neuromuscular disorders in humans, but the Tanzanian veterinary fraternity thought it might be suitable for their larger problem as well. KDK was experimental; the Asahikawa Medical University, in collaboration with the Wildlife Department in Tanzania, had sponsored Dr Nakamura’s research.

So far, KDK had not been a riveting success. The line between ‘therapeutic’ and ‘lethal’ was so thin, and the dosage variables so irregular, that Nakamura was killing more animals than he was saving. The deaths were gruesome to observe.

‘I’m surprised you don’t need special storage for your drug,’ the friar commented as he steadied the boat on the bank of the river.

‘Oh, drug is crystal, dissolved in sterile binder,’ Hisashi explained. ‘As crystal, will last forever and not lose strength. See?’ He displayed a plastic bottle filled with white crystals. He shook it, and the bottle made a dry rattling sound. They had prepared and filled vials at the base camp, varying the concentrations.

Aki said something and gestured to a spot across the river. There was the sick hippo they’d been looking for. ‘Ah!’ Dr Nakamura exclaimed softly. ‘A patient. Help me fill dart – I used my last. We try 2%.’

Ephraim held a glass vial filled with prepared KDK, while the Japanese drew some of the fluid into a hypodermic dart. Aki moved to watch, and the boat rocked.

‘Aiee!’ the Japanese cried. He held up his hand, and Ephraim saw that it had been jabbed with the needle. It was bleeding. Drops of clear liquid, the KDK solution, dripped from the wound in his hand.

‘This is bad. We go to camp now!’ The scientist rinsed his hand in the river water, pulled a kerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around his hand. ‘Get thing to tie this!’ He made gestures indicating a tourniquet.

All Father Ephraim had was his rosary. ‘This will have to do.’

It took the better part of the day to return to camp. Aki and Ephraim rowed as hard as they could against the current in horrendous heat. The trip home, which had taken three hours downriver, took almost five travelling upriver.

Ephraim and Aki were both dehydrated by the time they arrived. They had given Dr Nakamura all their drinking water.

By the time they reached camp, Hisashi Nakamura was complaining of stiffness in his muscles. By sunrise the next day, he had had seizures. His condition deteriorated, and he was in agony.

He died before anyone could help him.

The natives stood apart from the missionaries, making caustic remarks in their own language about the ineffectiveness of the God of the priests.

The missionaries and the other Japanese scientist, Dr Nakuni, who had come to Tanzania with Dr Nakamura, gathered near the fire, debating what to do.

‘This stuff, this medicine, is evil!’ a friar from Spain exclaimed. ‘We should get rid of it! It’s killing the animals, it killed Dr Hisashi!’ The others murmured their agreement. Dr Nakuni absently waved a hand. His colleague and friend was dead, the project was in ruins, and all he wanted was to go home.

‘Allow me,’ Father Ephraim said, and gathered a half-dozen bottles of crystal KDK into his meaty hands. He picked up a box with prepared vials in the other. Nearing the fire, he began tossing them in the blaze, one by one.

Except for the three he hid in his shirt.

2

Ashcroft, Gaelia, present day....

The Laboratory at Ashcroft Medical Centre (AMC) was a hive of activity. Technicians and analysts at work stations peered through microscopes, consulted textbooks and computer data bases, and ran chemical assays – no one was not busy. Stacks of papers and medical files cluttered available surfaces. Long fluorescent light banks ran across the ceiling, making the room cold and impersonal.

The Day Shift supervisor was a tall, lean man with collar-length dark hair and a short beard. Max Fite was not only a microbiologist and histologist, but a painter of portraits, landscapes and seascapes. The majority of his time was spent in scientific pursuits, but artwork was much more than a hobby.

As excited as he was about science, and as passionate as he was about art, he had to admit both could be monotonous. Hours were often filled with repetitive routine in both disciplines – all those little brush strokes that had to be so uniform so precise! Endless parades of microscope slides peered at until your eyes were too fatigued to focus!

Tedious!

His work was often interrupted by one of his team, but most frequently by the department chief, Stirling Meadows, MD PhD. He was the administrator of all the hospital laboratories, and a certified pathologist.

Today, the doctor was cock-a-hoop because he’d received fantastic news and his mind was racing with possibilities. He was practically dancing in place.

‘MedWare is sending us their newest analytical models for field testing!’ he chortled to Max. ‘This is fantastic! We get these new machines and a technician to teach us and work as one of our team!’

‘We have machines,’ Max pointed out. ‘Good ones.’

‘Yes, but these are brand new, state-of-the-art, top of the line, cutting-edge machines, representing incredible technical advances! They do everything! The spectrometry equipment combines multiple older technologies! The DNA sequencer – I can’t begin to tell you! Plus, this equipment connects to a massive global database! It connects with worldwide medico-legal libraries!’ Dr Meadows eagerly shifted from one foot to the other. ‘More thorough analyses, more accurate diagnoses! This’ll be great for public health work as well, too!’

‘As well, too? You are excited!’ Max laughed.

Dr Meadows was the head of the Pathology Department at AMC and Medical Examiner for the Ashcroft Council. Public Health fell under his banner. The police sometimes utilized the Lab’s expertise in complex criminal cases. Their own labs were small but competent for routine jobs. They needed AMC for more detailed work.

He couldn’t imagine a better job for himself! So many spectacular toys!

‘You should sit down before you break something,’ Max laughed again. Dr Meadows had been known to dance jigs, not in the privacy of his tiny, crowded office.

‘Max, start making a list of our oldest mystery samples. Get DNA from Sasquatch and those Area 51 aliens the Americans are hiding. Pull anything that’s eluded analysis. We want to make these babies sit up and bark!’

Max laughed. ‘I’d like to see a barking baby,’ he told his boss. ‘I assume you want to include the Unsolved List.’

‘Naturally!’

The Unsolved List was an inventory of medical puzzles that had presented themselves at AMC Labs over the years. When there were significant advances in technologies, the list was reviewed in hopes of unravelling old puzzles. Advances in DNA analysis, for example, had revealed an unusual strain of bacteria that affected farm workers. The strain was previous unidentifiable because DNA testing had been less sensitive. Later, it was identifiable and treatable.

The majority of Unsolved List patients were on the list because of elusive diagnoses, but some were on the list because they had died from unknown causes (‘idiopathically’), or died from causes that shouldn’t have been fatal. Samples were taken for research purposes, and sat in cryogenic storage. New technology allowed the Lab to solve the mysteries.

Dr Meadows’ ambition was to identify a new pathogen and present it to the world. He wasn’t thinking of personal fame – he was thinking of the excitement of opening a scientific door wider!

‘I see at least six papers coming out of this!’ Meadows continued excitedly. ‘Perhaps even a presentation at next year’s annual conference!’ Chuckling, he bustled back to his office to begin a series of gleeful telephone calls.

As a youngster, Max had deeply involved himself in things that caught his casual interest. In the years before university, he became interested in Ragtime piano after hearing some of Richard Dowling’s recordings. Within months, he was expert in the genre, and had created a large recording collection by Zez Confrey, Jelly Roll Morton and other composers/performers of the genre.

He’d had shown talent for sketching from an early age, and delved deeply into art as a worthwhile fascination. By age thirteen, he was painting in oils and watercolours – portraits, landscapes, and seascapes – and had an enthusiastic group of admirers. He decided to make art his career, and enrolled at the University at Simsbury, which had an excellent classical art programme.

He called this zealous pursuit of curiosities fascination with a purpose. Unlike his contemporaries, shaped by trends and fads, he expanded his cultural and intellectual horizons by following personal fascinations.

In his second year at university, Max took Professor Glastonbury’s figure painting class, offered to only the most talented applicants within the Arts College. Max’s name was second on a list of seven student accepted from more than three hundred applicants.

Professor Glastonbury only engaged amateur models for his classes. Each model was interesting to paint and often well suited to a particular period of art. Each had to speak authoritatively about a particular aspect of art during modelling sessions. Many model-applicants were turned away and invited to reapply when they could speak informatively about an aspect of art or art history that Glastonbury recommended. It usually took a semester for them to come up to snuff.

Their first model worked evenings in the University Library, and augmented her income by posing for Glastonbury’s class. She knew the biographies of the Masters, and informally lectured the students on them as they worked.

A male model, a graduate student in anatomy, demonstrated musculature, the mechanics of movement, and range of motion on his own well-formed body.

Then Max met Fenella.

She was known to most of the students as the girl who took fresh coffee to the homeless every winter morning. She organized drives to raise funds for winter items – scarves, gloves, socks, winter underwear, and coats – for the destitute on the street and in shelters. When she could, she gave them cash and groceries.

She was lesser-known for another kind of work. Most nights, Fenella worked as an escort (aka prostitute), catering to an elite group of wealthy men and women. This was her principle source of income. She wasn’t shy about saying what she did for a living – it came up in conversation during her first posing session – and the students were shocked.

Fenella said that many artists, from Caravaggio to Picasso, had used prostitutes as models for their work. In fact, painting and prostitution had gone hand in hand for centuries. She delivered this talk while admiring a bouquet of flowers in one hand as she sat nude in a wicker chair.

The students had to find a balance between depicting a naked body clinically, and portraying the sensuality of a beautiful figure. ‘We don’t want Grey’s Anatomy images, but neither do we want to be raided by the police,’ Glastonbury advised his class. Properly done, eroticism was implied, not portrayed.

Fenella was pretty, but Max thought she had probably been prettier before her enhancements. She had several tattoos, tasteful but unnecessary adornments, and several piercings. She had had implant surgery on her breasts and buttocks.

Hers was the face of a goddess, unblemished and perfect in every way – clear skin, high cheekbones, slender nose, and oval face. She had sparkling eyes, and the whitest teeth Max had ever seen.

Fenella was vivacious and friendly; she conversed with the artists while they worked, and not only about art history. She was bright, witty, compassionate and insightful. She was skilful in getting students to talk about themselves. She was an inspiration. In a short time, each of the students fell a little bit in love with her, declaring her their favourite model, proclaiming her their friend.

A month after she began posing, Fenella called Professor Glastonbury to cancel her sessions. She hadn’t been feeling well, she said, and she’d been to the doctor. He was admitting her to hospital for tests. He thought she might have contracted something from her ‘other job’. She didn’t know how long she’d be unavailable.

Professor Glastonbury said he was sorry she was ill, hoped she’d feel better soon, and informed his class of a change in plans.

A week later, Glastonbury gloomily informed the students that Fenella had died. He had no details, and the art group spent the entire session in impromptu group therapy, discussing the tragedy of their friend’s death.

The students didn’t know Fenella outside of class. She was simply one of the models who posed for them. Her death propelled each student into limbo. Most were too young to have experienced the dying of a friend. It had never happened before. It wasn’t to be thought of.

With the rest of the figure class, Max attended Fenella’s graveside service. It was a sunny day, with a gentle breeze and flitting birds. The grave, an open wound in the earth, was surrounded by floral displays. The service was attended by many homeless people, other ‘working girls’, advocates against sex workers, and advocates for the sex industry. One or two men prowled at the back of the crowd, wearing sunglasses and low-pulled hats.

As he turned away from the grave at the end of the ceremony, Max felt connected to Fenella for an instant. The pain in his heart lifted. He had the sensation of being desperately and affectionately embraced.

Remember me!

3

The cause of Fenella’s death was never determined; she was just one patient on the medical resident’s service, and he had to move on.

She was a hooker, and probably nobody cared, the younger Max had thought angrily.

Someone should have cared. Max had gone to visit her in hospital, but was turned away. Fenella quickly had gone from being unwell with a virus to seriously ill from unknown causes. She’d suffered muscle rigidity, seizures, and coma before she died. No one understood how or why this had happened. They assumed some sort of rapidly developing brain fever; they couldn’t understand how they’d missed it.

Fenella’s death became a fascination with purpose, leading Max to choose science over art. Returning from her funeral, he contacted his academic advisor and changed the focus of his studies to medical science. It added a year to his undergraduate studies, and was followed by two years at graduate school. He left University with a Master’s degree.

Fenella’s death stayed with Max. He visited her grave often, leaving small tokens – flowers, a carefully penned poem or a photograph she would have enjoyed.

Max liked going to the cemetery, and it became a comfortable port of call. It was quiet, peaceful, and green, a stark contrast to his regular daily environment. He encountered other taphophiles – people who liked funerals and graveyards – and became friends with a taphophile named Astrid.

Astrid was also a science grad student. She approached him one day when he was making sketches of Fenella’s headstone, and they began to talk. They became friends, but never really ‘clicked’. Astrid was a little ‘weird’ – she sensed the spirits of the dead, enjoyed their company, and often went to cemeteries to form new relationships.

Very weird.

They lost touch when Astrid graduated and moved to Capitol City.

Max honoured the legacy Fenella had left, and on finishing grad school, moved to Ashcroft to work in the Pathology Lab at Ashcroft Medical Centre.

He rose through the ranks, and soon began to develop his own Unsolved List.

Ashford Memorial Park was peaceful and ancient, and immediately appealed to Max. The landscape was dotted with gnarled trees and lush shrubbery.

The various styles of headstones and mausolea enticed him. Many belonged to a specific era, and once you recognized a particular style, you knew roughly when the headstone had been erected.

The artist in him knew he’d enjoy the oldest sections. The earliest headstone was dated 1703. The people of that time created lavish stonework memorials. Markers were upright and intricately ornamented with scrolling and engraving. Since size and elaboration were indicators of a family’s wealth, some stones were enormous.

The same was true of mausolea. A family had to have wealth to afford one, of course, and some were relatively simple – a small, windowless building with a door, and the family name in stone over the entrance. Others were larger and ornate, with etched glass doors behind wrought iron gates, flanked by stone columns. These belonged to proud families of great wealth. His favourite contained stained glass windows in the doors and the rear wall.

Over time, headstones became less elaborate, but still handsome and upright. By the early 20th century, erect stones had given way to machine polished-and-engraved granite lumps. By the middle of the 20th century, they had become boring: flat horizontal plaques – slabs, really – mechanically inscribed, and artistically dull.

The advent of photography made grave markers more interesting. As early as the mid 19th century, some headstones included sombre photo insets of the deceased.

Max believed the time of fascinations with purpose might have passed. Since Fenella’s death, the next fascination – science – had been the last, and as a fascination it was much different in character because it did not draw on his acknowledged talents.

In Ashcroft’s Memorial Park, a new fascination occurred. Max fixated on graves.

In the first instance, fascination was an exaggeration. Max found the grave of Rebecca Gordon, a ten year-old girl who’d died in 1978. He noticed the grave, and spied a tiny slip of brass affixed to the headstone: Donated by the Ashcroft Leukaemia Society. Whenever he saw Rebecca’s resting place, there were new flowers, and around her birthday, the headstone was buried under stuffed animals, cards and balloons. She must have been much loved for people to leave tributes three or four decades after her death.

Max had a sense of tranquillity about Rebecca and her grave. He was touched and moved by it, but it wasn’t a fascination

The next headstone was a fascination. Late in the autumn, as Max was leaving the Park to go home, he saw a grave marker he hadn’t noticed before. It was several years old, jet-black, highly polished, upright with a photo inset. The stone was surrounded by flowers – so many that it was impossible to see the inscription without moving the flowers in their bronze holder.

Pearl Falco Hendry had been twenty-nine when she died in 2014. The photo showed an attractive woman with a gentle smile, long black hair gathered into braid that fell over the near shoulder. The sentiment was brief: forever loved.

‘Nice,’ Max thought, replacing the bronze holder. He took a photo of the marker with his mobile. He recognized Pearl Hendry’s name – it was on the department’s Unsolved List. When he got home, he looked her up on the Internet:

Pearl Falco Hendry, wife of Hector and mother of Florence, died at Ashcroft Hospital as a result of recent illness. The funeral will be held at....

He shut off his computer, not imagining that something new had begun in his life.

Rebecca Gordon’s grave gave him a peaceful feeling, but there was no peace about Pearl Falco Hendry. Max felt agitation. He returned to the park, specifically to visit Pearl’s grave, wondering: What is it about this I find so captivating? Is it that she died young? That she’s pretty? Or simply that I recognize the name?

Since his last visit, the headstone had been carefully swept, the