She was in no shape for questioning. Maggie stroked her friend’s pale cheek. “The doctors will take good care of you. And I’ll do everything I can to figure this out—I promise.”
Sarah didn’t reply.
Chapter Eleven
After a restless night at the Caledonian, Maggie woke. It was just after seven.
The Black Dog bared his teeth and warned her against trying to go back to sleep, so she washed and dressed. When it was time for visiting hours at Chalmers, Maggie met Mark in Sarah’s room.
Sarah was asleep. She was pale, and the bones of her face looked more pronounced. Almost more like a skull than a … Then, Stop it! Just stop!
Maggie didn’t want Mark to see her cry, so she turned and walked quickly to the window. Outside, the sky once again threatened snow. It was gray and heavy, just as the Victorian soot-stained buildings were gray and heavy. She swiped at her eyes with her gloved hands. Very Victorian train station, David had once said about the Langham Hotel, mocking its pretensions. Victorian …
“Victorian,” Maggie said suddenly. She turned to face Mark. “Victorian!”
“Er, yes?”
“Everything here’s Victorian.”
“Well, many buildings are, although you can also see other architectural influences, depending on if you’re in New Town or Old Town—”
“No, no,” Maggie interrupted impatiently. “Not just the architecture. Tussy-mussies. Ballerina bouquets. Floriography. The language of flowers.” She began to pace.
“Sorry, not following.”
“There was a huge bouquet for Estelle in the dressing room, arranged in the Victorian tussy-mussy style—”
Mark scratched his head. “So?”
“Mark, we need to go to the library!”
“The library?”
“We need to find out the meaning of the flowers. When we do, we’ll have an idea of the message the murderer was trying to send—and, maybe, who it was. Come on,” Maggie said, pulling Mark by the arm, “hurry!”
The Edinburgh Central Library was an imposing building on George IV Bridge, between Old Town and the University quarter. They raced up the wide central staircase to the Reference Library, on the top floor. It was an enormous room, with Roman arches, high windows, and banks of wooden card indices.
Maggie wandered the high stacks until she found what she was looking for, pulling several books off the shelf. Henry Phillips’s Floral Emblems, Frederic Shoberl’s The Language of Flowers; With Illustrative Poetry, and The Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway. She brought them to a table and started reading.
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed Maggie, paging through the Greenaway volume.
“Ah-ha?” said Mark, who was checking his watch. “Look, Miss Hope, I’ve been patient, but—”
Maggie put the book down. “Floriography is a sort of cryptological communication—code—using flowers. It’s been used for thousands of years, all over the world, in works like the Bible and Shakespeare’s plays.
“Floriography was popular in Victorian times. Bouquets called tussy-mussies were sent as a coded messages, allowing the sender to express feelings that couldn’t be spoken aloud. You could say almost anything with flowers, in the right combination. There was a tussy-mussy in the dressing room at the ballet. Estelle, Mildred, and Sarah all touched it. I remember thinking the flowers were odd, especially for wartime Edinburgh.”
“But odd doesn’t mean murder …”
“In Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde used specific flowers to define character. Basil Hallward is associated with the rose—the symbol of love—while Lord Henry Wotton is paired with yellow laburnum, a poisonous plant symbolizing evil. Estelle’s bouquet was made up of white roses, yellow laburnum, purple carnations.”
Maggie flipped through the Greenaway until she found what she was looking for. “White roses signify death, while yellow laburnum symbolizes poison.” She flipped through more pages. “Purple carnations mean infidelity.”
“So the bouquet is really a coded message, saying—”
“I’m going to kill you with poison because you were unfaithful.”
“And Estelle was unfaithful with whom?”
“It wasn’t Estelle’s infidelity—she was unmarried. But her lover was married. And what if Mildred found out about the affair? But how would she have had access to anthrax?”
“Wait one moment—first we need to find the bouquet, to see if there’s actually anthrax on it.”
“Then we need to find out if Mildred sent it,” Maggie finished.
Frain had left messages for Edmund Hope at both Bletchley Park and MI-5, to no avail. But he did know one place he might find the man: his club in London.