The Secret History - Donna Tartt [116]
I leaned against my dresser and stared at him, my haircut forgotten. “Let’s see what you have,” I said.
He looked at me intently for a moment or two, then reached into his pocket. When his hand opened, I couldn’t believe my eyes, but then I stepped closer. A pale, slender-stemmed mushroom lay across his open palm.
“Amanita caesaria,” he said. “Not what you think,” he added when he saw the look on my face.
“I know what an amanita is.”
“Not all amanitae are poisonous. This one is harmless.”
“What is it?” I said, taking it from his hand and holding it to the light. “A hallucinogen?”
“No. Actually they are good to eat—the Romans liked them a great deal—but people avoid them as a rule because they are so easily confused with their evil twin.”
“Evil twin?”
“Amanita phalloides,” said Henry mildly. “Death cap.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment.
“What are you going to do?” I finally asked.
“What do you think?”
I got up, agitated, and walked to my desk. Henry put the mushroom back in his pocket and lit a cigarette. “Do you have an ashtray?” he said courteously.
I gave him an empty soda can. His cigarette was nearly finished before I spoke. “Henry, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”
Why not, he asks me. “Because,” I said, a little wildly, “they can trace poison. Any kind of poison. Do you think if Bunny keels over dead, people won’t find it peculiar? Any idiot of a coroner can—”
“I know that,” said Henry patiently. “Which is why I’m asking you about the dosage.”
“That has nothing to do with it. Even a tiny amount can be—”
“—enough to make one extremely ill,” Henry said, lighting another cigarette. “But not necessarily lethal.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, “that strictly in terms of virulence there are any number of excellent poisons, most of them far superior to this. The woods will be soon full of foxglove and monkshood. I could get all the arsenic I needed from flypaper. And even herbs that aren’t common here—good God, the Borgias would have wept to see the health-food store I found in Brattleboro last week. Hellebore, mandrake, pure oil of wormwood.… I suppose people will buy anything if they think it’s natural. The wormwood they were selling as organic insect repellent, as if that made it safer than the stuff at the supermarket. One bottle could have killed an army.” He toyed with his glasses again. “The problem with these things—excellent though they are—is one, as you said, of administration. Amatoxins are messy, as poisons go. Vomiting, jaundice, convulsions. Not like some of the little Italian comfortives, which are relatively quick and kind. But, on the other hand, what could be easier to give? I’m not a botanist, you know. Even mycologists have a hard time telling amanitae apart. Some handpicked mushrooms … a few bad ones get mixed in the lot … one friend gets dreadfully ill and the other …?” He shrugged.
We looked at each other.
“How can you be sure you won’t get too much yourself?” I asked him.
“I suppose I can’t be, really,” he said. “My own life must be plausibly in danger, so you can see I have a delicate margin to work with. But still, chances are excellent that I can bring it off. All I have to worry about is myself, you know. The rest will take care of itself.”
I knew what he meant. The plan had several grave flaws, but it was brilliant at its heart: if anything could be relied upon with almost mathematical certainty, it was that Bunny, at any given meal, would somehow manage to eat almost twice as much as anyone else.
Henry’s face was pale and serene through the haze of his cigarette. He put his hand in his pocket and produced the mushroom again.
“Now,” he said. “A single cap, roughly this size, of A. phalloides is enough to make a healthy seventy-pound dog quite ill. Vomiting, diarrhea, no convulsions that I saw. I don’t think there was anything as severe as liver dysfunction but I suppose we will have to