Chapter 6: The Marked Cup

I did not accuse anyone that afternoon.

I told the aide and the general what I thought, in the study with the door shut, and we made a plan.

The aide brought me a small black lamp from the security office and a jar of pale powder.

"It's invisible in normal light," he said. "Under this, it glows. We use it on gate locks."

That night the general slept in the locked study, with sealed bottles and the aide at the door.

At eleven I dusted the handle of the empty water carafe on his bedroom nightstand.

Then I sat on the dark landing at the top of the stairs with a blanket over my knees and waited.

The house ticked and settled.

At ten to midnight the night nurse came up the back stairs in her soft shoes, as she had every night for eight months.

She was a plump, pleasant woman with a thermos, and she had asked me on my first evening whether I took sugar.

She went into his room.

She was inside for three minutes.

When she came out she had the carafe's lid in her hand.

She wiped it on her apron and pushed it into her pocket, and then she hurried down the hall.

I watched her go and felt sick.

I had liked her.

In the morning the whole household came to the dining room, because the general had ordered it.

There was the cook, and the housekeeper in her gray cardigan, and the driver.

The aide stood by the window.

The night nurse sat at the end of the table with her thermos, smiling at nobody, and I sat across from her.

Ansel was at the head, on a plain chair with no cane.

He had not slept.

He had been warned, and he looked at her without any expression at all.

"Thank you for coming," I said. "I need to show everyone something. Sergeant, the lights, please."

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