Scratch the Surface

as well as her own, Felicity planned a bland meal of roast chicken, steamed rice, and green beans, the ingredients for which she had on hand. She then turned to planning the Prissy LaChatte mystery to be written after the one now in progress. The motive and the opportunity for the murder were marinating to her satisfaction, but the means she’d chosen, mercury poisoning, was proving troublesome, and if she substituted some other toxin, it might prove incompatible with the motive and the opportunity.
    She had originally been drawn to mercury in part because of its ready availability. It was in old-fashioned glass thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs, thermostat probes in gas ranges, and dental amalgam. Felicity preferred not to make the murderer a dentist, but perhaps the villain could remove the fillings from his own teeth. So, mercury was ubiquitous. But what kind of mercury? The elemental mercury in fever thermometers was far less toxic than she had hoped; contrary to a widely quoted claim, the one-half or one gram of mercury found in a glass thermometer was not enough to contaminate a twenty-acre lake. Damn!
    What she needed was the kind of soluble mercury that descended to- the earth in rain and was converted to methylmercury, which ended up in fish and, eventually, in the bodies of people who ate fish, especially big ocean species like tuna and swordfish. How many tuna sandwiches would the murderer have to feed to the victim to achieve a fatal result? And what did mercury taste like, anyway? She wasn’t eager to experiment on herself. But the ideal form was dimethlymercury, which didn’t pose the literary risk of leaving the victim stricken but alive; a drop or two on the skin was deadly. Unfortunately, the compound was used only in chemical analyses and wasn’t sitting around where her murderer or any of her red herrings could get hold of it. Furthermore, it was so dangerous that it would be difficult for her to do in the victim while keeping the murderer alive for Prissy to bring to justice. Damn, damn, damn!
    When Janice arrived at six-thirty, Felicity was setting the kitchen table and still fretting about the technical challenges posed by mercury. The rotten stuff! Well, at least she wasn’t making tuna or swordfish for dinner. She had taken a short break from the irksome toxin problem to glance through the manuscript of Janice’s book, Tailspin. The protagonist was a man in his fifties. A journalist, he had ruined a successful career by drinking and was now a teetotaler. His two Abyssinian cats were not named Koko and Yum Yum; they were called Louis and Murphy.
    She knew that Janice had arrived before the doorbell rang. The luxury vehicles driven by the residents of Newton Park were almost silent. Hearing a noisy engine and the shotgun sound of backfiring, she looked out the window and saw that Janice was making the mistake of parking her mud-colored clunker with its wheels on the Trotskys’ lawn. Consequently, she hurried out the back door and down the driveway while waving a hand to get Janice’s attention.
    Opening her car door, Janice stepped out and returned the wave. “I’m so glad to see you, too, Felicity!”
    Felicity made a quick recovery. “I’m glad you’re well enough to be here. Maybe you could move your car to my driveway?” Lowering her voice, she said, “The man who lives in that house has some silly notion that the street is his property.”
    Janice returned to the driver’s seat and, after struggling to start her car, moved it as Felicity had requested. As Felicity headed toward the back door, Janice said, “Is this where you found the body?”
    “No. The body was at the front door.”
    “Could we go that way? It’s terribly important, I think, to view real crime scenes.”
    “There’s nothing to view. Everything has been cleaned up. And I don’t have the key to the front door with me.”
    “Maybe later? Atmosphere is crucial, isn’t it?”
    “You’re welcome to soak it up whenever you want, but let’s go in this way.”
    When the two women had climbed the half flight of stairs to the kitchen, Felicity took a good look at Janice and realized that she was still showing the effects of the food poisoning. Her chalky-white complexion was even paler than usual, and her crimson lipstick looked like blood applied with a brush. Her hair was lank, there were dark circles under her eyes, and her eyelids drooped.
    “Let me take your coat. Have a seat,” said Felicity.