Chapter 5 - The wine cellar


After we ate, Rûkhnar led us to the kitchens, which were in a one-story stone building connected to the palace by only a single hallway. It was noticeably more modern-looking than the rest of the palace, with pourstone foundations and tin protecting the edges of the roof. Rûkhnar led us inside. The building was still bustling with cleanup from dinner, but the head chef made time for us when Teti showed him the brooch and told him why we were there.

"It's about time somebody came down here," said the chef. "I'm just mortified that something like this has happened on my watch. What can I do to help you get to the bottom of this?"

Teti smiled warmly. "You can show me the wine cellar, please."

The chef smiled. "Of course!"

The staircase down was narrow, but the cellar itself was quite large, a veritable maze of shelves, casks, and bottles.

"No sign of forced entry anywhere," Teti said as he inspected the room. At Teti's request, the chef showed us the type of wine that had been served at the feast. There were three bottles of the same wine in the cellar, and these Teti scrutinized especially intensely. "There is no sign of any tampering with these bottles. Still, I would recommend extreme caution before serving any of them."

"Yes of course," replied the chef.

"Teti," I asked, "I've been wondering. You've said before that you think the wine was poisoned in the bottle, but Elrond said he opened the bottle himself. So how did the poisoner get the poison into the bottle?"

Teti looked confused. "I imagine the poisoner first removed the cork, and replaced it with a new one."

"But how did he get the new cork into the bottle?"

"My friend, how do you think corks are put into wine in the first place? There is a tool for it, I imagine the kitchen has one."

"Yes, there is one on the wall there," the chef said. "It gets fairly regular use; I don't imagine there is anything to find on it."

Teti inspected the tool and agreed that there was nothing to find. "Still, Abrazîr makes a good point. If the wine was uncorked previously, perhaps there is some sign of it here." He dropped to his knees and inspected the ground. "Yes, there is a spent cork here under the shelf."

"Hardly unusual in a wine cellar," Rûkhnar said.

"Quite right, but it is suggestive." Teti replied. He turned to the chef. "Who else has access to this cellar?"

"Besides myself and the sous chef, the queen's maidens and the king's valet have access. And the king and queen themselves of course."

"That narrows it down considerably," said Teti, "Though I suppose a key could have been stolen, or the lock picked. I think we have seen all there is to see in this cellar. You were no doubt working during the feast when the poisoning happened, please tell me of it."

As we returned to the kitchen, the chef proceeded to give us a very detailed account of all the dishes, the careful timing that was required to make sure each was ready at the proper time, and many other details specific to his profession. At long last he got to the end of the night. "I was in the dining room overseeing the presentation of an especially delicate dessert. The guests were deep into their toast giving at this point, and the king called for a bottle of the wine I showed you in the cellar, which is an especially good year of a sweet wine imported through one of the colonies in the east. There is limited access to the wine cellar, so I left and brought the bottle myself. The queen had retired by the time I returned, so the king had that elven fellow pour it. Then Zigûr accused him of poisoning it."

"Did you see him pour the wine?" Teti asked.

"I was distracted by the dessert I'm afraid; I couldn't tell you if he put anything in it. There was an argument, and Zigûr told him to drink the wine to show it wasn't poisoned. 'Very well,' the elf replied, 'I am happy to show what a fool you are being.' Then, with a cheeky toast of 'Almien!' he drank down the cup."

Teti seemed surprised. "The whole cup?"

"Yes, it was a toast, and that is how toasts are done in this land."

"Interesting. That narrows the possibilities considerably. Do you remember anything unusual about the bottle?"

"I saved it actually, so you can check for yourself."

"With the wine in it?" Teti asked. The chef nodded. "My dear chef, that is fantastic! I really cannot overstate how wonderful that is."

The chef blushed. "I read the stories your friend writes, I thought it was the sort of thing that might be important."

He brought the bottle, which was open and was about three quarters full of wine. It looked to me like an ordinary bottle, but Teti inspected it closely.

"The label is torn slightly here, perhaps to mark this bottle as the poisoned one," he said.

"Or perhaps it just got jostled a bit during shipping. It had a long journey here," Rûkhnar replied.

"That is true," Teti admitted. "There is also sediment here at the bottom," he held the bottle up to the light, "but not more than one might see in some wine. I can see only one way to definitively show that the wine in the bottle is poisoned. Have you a rag you could bear to part with?"

The chef returned with a stained tea-towel.

"What do you intend to do?" I asked, fearing another of Teti's reckless experiments.

"The poison produces a rash from even slight exposure. Extended contact of either the powder or the liquid with the skin is usually sufficient to trigger it, though it takes a few hours to show. I intend to soak the rag in the wine and hold it against my skin for a few minutes, then see if a rash forms. If it does, we may conclude that the wine in the bottle is poisoned."

"Can any other symptoms of the poison be triggered this way?" I asked.

Teti hesitated. "Yes, some," he admitted cautiously.

"Which ones?"

"Well, all of them actually. But they will be far more mild than they would be if I were to ingest the wine. It is highly unlikely such a small amount would be fatal to me, at worst I would simply become very ill. I see you disapprove. May I remind you of what is at stake?"

I was forced to admit that he was right; this was really the only course of action. If we could not show that the wine was poisoned in the bottle, we had no hope of showing Elrond's innocence. But Teti's assertion that it was merely "unlikely to be fatal" worried me deeply.

"Let me test it instead," I said. "I am quite a bit larger than you, and I believe I would fare better against the poison. Besides, the rash will show better on my skin than on yours."

"I could not ask you to do that," Teti replied.

"You do not have to, I am volunteering," I told him.

At Teti's direction, I unlaced the neck of my tunic, saturated the tea towel with wine, and laid the wine-soaked cloth across my chest. The chef provided me a small wood stool to sit on. I sat there for several minutes, feeling rather foolish-looking. I passed the time by watching the bustle of the kitchen around me. The room was very noisy, full of the banging of pots and pans and the clink of plates as dinner dishes were washed and put away. The sound began to pound in my head. Teti watched me intently.

"Do you feel anything?" Teti asked.

"I'm just getting a bit of a headache from all the racket," I told him.

"Take it off at once!" Teti exclaimed. I did so, and he grabbed a dry towel from one of the dishwashers and frantically dried the remaining wine from my chest.

"Teti, please, you are ruining their good towel," I said. "Really, I'm fine." I tried to stand, but to my surprise my legs seemed to shake under me and I stumbled and fell to the ground. My head began to pound and the sounds of the kitchen seemed to swirl about me. I heard Teti's voice through the din, frantically calling my name and urging me to breathe. It was the last thing I heard distinctly that night.