The sun had brought an obscuring fog. After breaking their fast the two men had tirelessly boarded a hansom cab and were now moving towards the house of Alan Campbell. Dorian kept his finger splayed over his knees, watching the window of the cab without interest. Dupin sat across from him, his knuckles white as he clutched his cane. Gray placed his hand to the window, then slammed it down against the seat.
"Why do you suspect Campbell? He has nothing to do with this." Gray's shoulders shook and his neck was stiff between them. Dupin tapped the top of his cane with his fingernail.
"It is a curious thing, this chemist, to come to your house when you are not at home. That is why I feel he has something to do with your picture, Monsieur Gray." Dupin cleared his throat, sitting tall in his seat, "Your study smelled distinctly of nitric acid, though you suggest ammonia. Nitric acid is used for few things among chemists, used especially to dissolve the vivisected. Now, why is it that your room would smell so strongly of nitric acid?"
The blood of Dorian's face drained away to reveal a chalked mask. "That is enough, Dupin." The detective smiled thinly, and shrugged his shoulders.
"I am merely to suggest that your painting may have been destroyed."
Dorian blushed, "of course. But I do not think that possible."
"Why not, Monsieur? The painting is just of sentimental value. The thief is perhaps not a thief at all, yet merely a vandal."
"It is impossible, detective. I do not believe that my painting was destroyed."
"Anything is possible, Monsieur."
"Yes," Dorian replied, and ran his fingers through his golden curls, "anything is possible."
The hansom came to a jolting stop.
"I shall suppose this is it?" Dupin opened the door and walked from the cab. Dorian followed, slowly at first, but kept pace with the detective. The house was small, crushed between its adjacent buildings, like black keys upon a piano. They crossed the gate and rang the doorbell. The fog slid over their shoes and clung to the petty patches of grass that penetrated the walkway.
The door creaked open slightly.
"Campbell?" Dorian's voice quavered. The door opened fully; a woman, swathed in black, stood before them.
"Mr. Gray?" the woman nodded to them both, "I'm sorry, please come in." She dabbed her sleeve against her red-rimmed eyes. "I'm glad you came, you and Alan used to be such good friends." She escaped the living room and left the two to wait. Dorian paced the floor, trying to keep his eyes from wandering around the room. Dupin sat, unmoving, in a chair by the fireplace.
"Sit down, Monsieur. Certainly Campbell wishes to see you to complement his visit." The detective waved his cane towards the opposite chair. Gray dug his nails into his palms, biting his lower lip.
"Damn you, he does not wish to see me!" The youth placed a hand upon the back of his empty chair. "And I would rather die than see him again."
"Then that is fortunate for you," Dupin removed his hat and placed it upon the arm of his own seat, "because Alan Campbell is dead."
Gray narrowed his pristine eyes at the detective, "how do you know this?"
"I read," he said, and folded his arms. Dorian gritted his teeth.
"So you brought me here on a whim, Dupin?"
"No, Monsieur. I was merely following the logical progression of this case. Your room smelled of acid, a chemist had visited very recently. Surely, the connection is plain."
"Yet you suspected—"
"I did not."
Dupin leaned forward in his seat, interlacing his fingers. His fine smile made Dorian's throat tighten. A deep red spread from his nails, which creased the upholstery of his chair, to his thin wrists. The detective did not flinch. The youth's skin blanched as Dorian loosened his grip upon the chair.
The door swung open and the woman appeared once more. With a glance to Dupin, Dorian rushed to her side. She pressed herself to the closed door, her form folding before him.
"Mrs. Campbell," he took her rough hands in his, "tell me your husband died by some accident, or by the hand of a murderer." An unfamiliar wrinkle that seemed painted on his face pushed her down, and her throat wailed as she tried to speak.
"I do not know what brought him to this," Mrs. Campbell placed Dorian's palm to her face, her tears sliding down his porcelain knuckles, "I found him, dead among his equipment. He had slashed his throat!" Gray pulled his dampened hand away from her. His nose wrinkled at the woman, who now clawed at his arm.
"He was a good man, a good husband! What drove him to it," she fell to her knees before him, clutching the leg of his pants, "what brought him to abandon his science, his children! What led him to abandoning me?" Dorian stood stiffly before her, trying to step back from her claws.
"Good God, woman, get up." He snatched his leg back, and Mrs. Campbell fell unto her forearms. He snatched her wrist, prying her to her feet. Her hand and face slowly drained of color. "Crying is the refuge of the ugly," he snapped, his face pinched into a sneer.
Dupin stood. He raised his cane and slapped it down onto the arm of his chair with a crack. Dorian gasped, and Mrs. Campbell placed a hand to her heart. Dupin drew his cane back to his side. "I am named Cécil Auguste Dupin. I am a private investigator hired by Monsieur Gray. Gray and I, we are here because of the implications of Monsieur Campbell's death in accordance to Gray's predicament. We are sorry for your loss but please, Madame Campbell, cease your sobbing." He brought forth a handkerchief from his breast pocket and gave it to her. With shining fingernails she snatched the cloth and dabbed at her eyes.
"Yes, I'm sorry," she turned away from Dorian, "excuse me." Wiping her cheeks, she walked to the door and held it open, "come with me, please." The black lace of her dress shivered as she led the two men into the depths of her home.
"The wake is this afternoon, Mr. Gray," her voice was high and flighty, "I do hope you will come." She opened a door and took them up a narrow flight of stairs. Dorian ran a hand over the lapel of his shirt, the floral patter of the yellow wallpaper seeming to close in on them.
"I shall not."
"I see," she said, wringing the handkerchief between her thin fingers, "you two were such good friends. Inseparable, I heard him once say. Something happened that day, when he was called to your home. Did you have an argument?" She stopped before a door at the end of the hallway and turned to Dorian, one hand upon the doorknob. She could not look at him.
"I don't know what you mean. Alan Campbell did not see me that day." Dorian brushed his hair behind his ears. The woman nodded silently and, placing Dupin's handkerchief over her nose and mouth, opened the door to her late husband's laboratory.
The same burning scent washed over the three. Mrs. Campbell's eyes watered and she took a step back. "I'm sorry," she said through the cloth, "I can't go in. Do what you must and leave here." Bowing her head, she slipped past the men and walked down the stairs, her black skirts trailing after her.
"What a loathsome woman," the youth said, stepping in front of Dupin.
"Ah, but Monsieur, women defend themselves by attacking. By submitting to you and me she has dutifully attacked." Dupin, taking up his cane, walked into the acidic depths of the room. The youth followed.
Each step caused the glass upon the shelves to clink together. The smell was unbearable; they tied cloth around their mouths and nose to protect them from the toxic air. Wooden boxes lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and straw littered the floor. Dorian placed a hand to his throat. Between the stalks of packing, spots of blood could be seen. Dupin quietly uncovered these with his cane, noting where they fell.
"I do not wish to stay here for any longer than we must, Dupin." Gray folded his arms over his chest and stood amongst the straw. Dupin, approaching the chemist's desk, stretched his gloved fingers.
"I would like to know why the chemist would pack his laboratory, then go to his death." He leaned his cane against the desk and ruffled through the chemist's papers carefully. "It is most curious, the habits of the English." Dupin heightened the flame of the lamp upon the desk, and flipped through the letters.
Dorian peered at them over Dupin's shoulder. "What good will this do?" He pulled at the edges of his coat, "Alan could not have possibly stolen my painting. He is a chemist, not a thief, and he is dead."
"You forget, Monsieur. Campbell is our only clue. Perhaps he merely consorted with thieves. We do not know." Dorian froze as Dupin held up a flimsy sheet of paper, stark white between the fingers of his glove. "We do not know of yet."
"Is that a diary?"
"No, this is from a newspaper. Such is that you may know a man by what he reads, and not by what he writes." He unfolded the paper and spread it over the desk, smoothing the creases and adjusting the lamp to the paper.
Iping had been ravaged by an unseen assailant. Dorian Gray turned and shook his head, "this is old. The alleged invisible man is dead. Almost all of Port Burdock saw him die."
"Ah, no," the lamp illuminated Dupin's dark eyes as he moved them over the written words, "is that not a contradiction of terms?"
Dorian looked away, straightening the sleeves of his coat. "This is not bringing us closer to finding my painting, detective."
"A brief distraction," Dupin held up another, smaller piece of paper, "I apologize, but your painting is but a small piece of this." Gray snatched the paper from Dupin's gloved hand.
"What does this have to do with my painting? How does the burglary of a sanitarium, of all places, coincide with my painting?" He threw the news-clipping at the detective, who caught it in the air.
"But monsieur, you must look closer." He pointed to the photograph in the article. Burned into it was the image of a cat, black and terrible. "I told you, we shall have a chat."