The Detective Seven |
The greenhouses were a strange place. Mallory had spent the vast majority of his life in the city. He only ever ventured out of it when his job called for it, and that wasn’t all too frequent. Most murderers happened where people were, by obvious necessity, and most people were in the city.
He could smell the greenhouses before he arrived. A faint but cloying scent of greenery and manure that he knew would cling to him.
There were several greenhouses, all rather squat, but long buildings with glass roofs and several windows on the sides. There were opened vents along the eaves and even from afar he couldn’t help but imagine that it was stiflingly warm in there.
He circled around the front for a moment before seeing a man that he assumed was Professor Moss. The man was bent over a hip-high planter, one filled with green-blue plants with fat leaves. He was tending to the dirt below, adding more from a bucket resting in a wheelbarrow.
Mallory walked over to the front door and knocked on the frame.
The Professor looked up, then frowned before wiping the sweat off of his brow. “Hello there?” he asked as he started to walk over. He removed a pair of dirty gloves and slipped them into his belt. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Hello, are you Professor Moss?”
“I am,” the man replied. “You have me at a disadvantage.”
“Ah, no, that’s fine. The blue-bellies can wait. Did you want to come in?”
“Certainly,” Mallory replied. He regretted it a moment later. The threshold of the greenhouse turned an otherwise warm but cloudy day into an oven. He instantly reached up and undid one of the buttons of his shirt. “Warm in here.”
“It needs to be,” the professor explained. “These are tropical plants, imported from far away. They need warm temperatures all year round. More importantly, they need high humidity. It means that maintaining them is a hassle, but it’s worth it. There are several active ingredients that these plants produce that you can’t really obtain from elsewhere.”
“Poisons?” Mallory asked.
“Medicine. Though I imagine you know well that one can become the other.” That was a fair point. “So, what kind of questions did you have for me?” The Professor didn’t stop his work to speak and instead started to move some plants around, then he shifted a wheelbarrow over to be further into the room.
“I was investigating the accident that led to a death in the school. Just tying up some loose ends. I spoke with Nurse Kaeres, and she mentioned that the victim may have choked before taking his fatal tumble down the stairs.”
“Hm,” the man said non-comitally.
“She also mentioned that you had taken a bit of interest in the matter?” Mallory said. He was fishing, but his gut told him that there were fish in these waters, so to speak.
Professor Moss paused, then turned towards him. “Follow me,” he said.
Mallory did so, following the man out of the greenhouse through the back. He sighed in relief as they returned to the normal warmth of a muggy day. The professor crossed two smaller greenhouses, then gestured to a short, squat hut. The building was little more than a roof that sat at about hip-height. “In here,” he said.
There was an entrance dug into the earth. Steps leading down to a sealed doorway. Mallory followed him down the steps, then into a small, poorly-lit antechamber. The professor flicked on a small lighter and then used it to light a lamp which he hung up on a hook above. The light carried through a small window near the ceiling and into the next room over.
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“Put this on,” the professor said as he fetched a long handkerchief from a box of tools. “Over your mouth. You don’t want to breathe in naked spores.”
Mallory did was he was told. The professor was acting strangely, but none of his skills warned him of any imminent danger from the man.
The moved into the next room, which was predictably dark, and surprisingly cool, especially compared to the greenhouse. The humidity immediately seeped through his long coat and he suppressed a shiver. “A mushroom farm?” he asked.
“Yes,” the professor said. “My final year students have a course on mycology and other less direct forms of agriculture. This is what I wanted to show you.”
He moved to the very back of the room, then lit a second lamp before gesturing at a small metal rack on the wall. There were three mushrooms growing next to each other.
Mallory leaned forwards and fired off an inspection skill.
[Mutated Agaric] - Rare
A mushroom filled with toxic spores.
“Mutated Agaric,” he said.
“Hm,” the professor said. “An inspection skill?”
“Yes,” Mallory confirmed.
“Mine’s a little more accurate when it comes to plants and mushrooms,” the professor said, which rang true to the detective, and was a rather obvious thing for a man of his profession to have. “It’s a modified, mutated form of the Fly Agaric. A rare mushroom borne of combining several other mushrooms together.”
“You can do that?” Mallory asked.
“I can’t. Someone can. I found a few spores on the noble’s body. In his nose and throat. I recognized them as spores, so I’ve spent the last months growing these. They’re weak, less potent than I think the mushrooms that created the original spores would have been. Still lethal, I think. Though I don’t plan on testing it.”
“What do they do?” Mallory asked.
“A few things, none of them pleasant. I had our professor of pharmacology look at a few of the spores. He has some skills that are better than my own for identifying active ingredients. These cause internal haemorrhaging, irritate the lungs, and cause hallucinations.”
Mallory felt another shiver crawl its way down his spine. “That’s a deadly combination.”
“It’s a lot of deadly things, yes,” the professor said. “I considered informing the police, but the investigation was closed, and the school wouldn’t appreciate it. Also, between you and I, I don’t like being involved in things like this.”
“Like this?” Mallory asked.
“This isn’t the tool of an amateur. Someone tossing these spores around is putting themselves at great risk.”
“Do you know anyone who could use that kind of thing?” Mallory asked.
“No,” the man lied.
Mallory held back on questioning him on that directly. “What would someone need to be able to handle this safely?” he asked.
“There are some skills that could protect you. A lot of people that work with plants, especially more dangerous ones, will want to acquire poison resistances, or more specific resistances for plant-based irritants. Then there are normal safety precautions. Gloves, masks, being in a well-ventilated space. Speaking of which, we should move. I planned on moving the mushrooms out of here soon, before the fall semester begins.”
“What will you do with these?” Mallory asked.
“Give them to a few alchemist and pharmacist friends. No worries. We all have the permits required to handle dangerous materials.”
“Of course,” Mallory said. He might even look into that. But his senses, experience, and skills all suggested that the professor here wasn’t a culprit. Which begged the question... “I need to ask. Who would use something like this? You know the city better than I. Has there ever been anyone that has used this kind of poison before?”
The professor didn’t answer right away, instead leading them out into the antechamber after tugging down the wick on the lamp he had lit. “A few years ago I heard a report. It was kind of amusing. The Bullies, sorry, the police in the city, had a run-in with a strange powder. It caused them some... bowel distress. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that?”
“No, not at all,” he admitted easily.
“Well, it was mostly just amusing. I didn’t get to see any of the powder myself. No one thought to collect it, and as it was used on one of the main streets, it was swept away by the wind soon enough. But I do know a friend who worked with the police on occasion, supplying them with medical aid and potions, and he said that the poison was mycological in nature. A strange coincidence, yes?”
“Yes, indeed,” Mallory said.
He would be digging into that as soon as he was back at the headquarters.
They spoke a little more, but he didn’t gain very much from the rest of the conversation. What he had for now, however, might just be enough. It was more of a lead than he had that morning, at least.
***