“Beatrice will not listen to her father; she prefers the advice of her young lover. He, being deluded as to the true situation, recklessly urges her to drink the potion, which is to her peculiar nature a poison rather than an antidote.

She dies, and in dying, breaks the hearts of her father and lover alike.” Charlotte had struggled hard to follow the implications of this curious tale while it was being told, trying to figure out how it could possibly have anything to do with the murder of Gabriel King—or why Oscar Wilde might think that it did. In the end, she could only say: ”You think that the man you know as Rappaccini might be acting the part of his namesake—much as you make a show of acting the part of yours?” Wilde shrugged his shoulders. “In the story, it was Rappaccini’s jealous colleague who committed murder, if anyone did. But Rappaccini did collect the fatal flowers: les fleurs du mal. In today’s world, of course, it would be very difficult indeed to raise a child in such perfect seclusion as Beatrice. If the man I knew as Rappaccini had a daughter raised to be immune to poisons, but poisonous herself, we must assume that she would be wiser by far than her predecessor. She would surely know, would she not, that her glamor and her kiss would be poisonous?” “Her kiss?” Charlotte echoed.

“We saw her kiss poor Gabriel, did we not? Did you not think that it was a very deliberate kiss?” “This is too bizarre,” Charlotte complained.

“I quite agree,” said Wilde equably. “As lushly extravagant as a poem in prose by Baudelaire himself. But then, we have been instructed to expect a Baudelairean dimension to this affair, have we not? I can hardly wait for the next installment of the story.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Charlotte.

“I doubt that the affair is concluded,” Wilde replied.

“You think this is going to happen again?” “I’m almost sure of it,” said the beautiful but exceedingly infuriating man, with appalling calmness. “If the author of this mystery intends to present us with a real psychodrama, he will not stop when he has only just begun. The next murder, as your aptly named colleague must by now have deduced, might well be committed in San Francisco.” Charlotte could only look at Oscar Wilde as if he were mad—but she could not quite believe that he was. For a moment, she thought that his reference to her “aptly named colleague” was to Lowenthal, but then she remembered the stale jokes about Holmes and Watson, which had had to be explained to her when she had first been teamed with Hal. She recalled that Wilde considered himself an expert on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature—or some of it, at least.

“Why San Francisco?” she asked, wishing that she did not have to hold herself in such an awkward position while her car threaded its way through the dense traffic. The funeral was long gone, but its congestive aftereffects still lingered.

“The item which was faxed through to me along with the peremptory summons that took me to the Trebizond Tower here was not a copy of the text which appeared on my screen,” Wilde belatedly informed her. “It’s a reservation for the midnight maglev to San Francisco. Inspector Watson discovered that when he traced the call.” The flower designer took a sheet of paper from a pocket in his suitskin and held it out for Charlotte’s inspection. She took it from him and stared at it dumbly.

“Why, didn’t you show me this before?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Wilde said, “but my mind was occupied with other things. I do hope that you won’t try to prevent me from using the ticket. I realize that Hal took great care to recruit me as an expert witness in order to make sure that I might be kept under close surveillance, but I assure you that I will be of more use to the investigation if I am allowed to follow the trail which the murderer seems to be carefully laying down for me.” “Why should we?” she replied, bitterly aware of the fact that it was entirely Hal’s decision. “We’re the UN police, after all—and this isn’t a game. Whether or not those flowers that killed Gabriel King were capable of producing fertile seeds, they constitute a serious biohazard. If something like that ever got loose… why do you think Lowenthal’s here?” “I thought he was with you,” said Wilde mildly.

“Well, he’s not,” Charlotte snapped back. “He’s from some mysterious upper stratum of the World Government, intent on making sure that we aren’t trembling on the brink of a new plague war.” “I hope you’ll forgive the contradiction, Sergeant, but I never said any such thing,” said Michael Lowenthal, speaking just as mildly as the man beside him.

“You seem to have taken the wrong inference from my declaration that I’m just a humble employee.” This was too much. “Well who the hell are you, then?” she retorted.

“I’m not required to divulge that information,” Lowenthal countered, apparently having taken it upon himself to see if he could match Oscar Wilde’s skill in the art of infuriation. “But I’d rather you weren’t laboring under any delusions about my working for the UN. I don’t.” Charlotte knew that every word of this conversation would eventually be replayed by Hal Watson, even if he were content for the time being to rely on her summary of its results while he was busy chasing silvers through the dusty backwaters of the Web. She was painfully aware of the fact that the replay wasn’t going to make her look good—or even halfway competent.

“What do you think is going to happen in San Francisco, Dr. Wilde?” she asked, taking a firm grip of her temper.

“Call me Oscar,” he pleaded. “I fear, dear Charlotte, that it may already have happened. The question is: what am I being sent to San Francisco to discover? I daresay that Hal is doing what he can to make the relevant discovery before I get there, and we shall doubtless find out whether he has succeeded in a few minutes’ time, but the pieces of the puzzle have so far been placed with the utmost care. There is so much in the unfolding picture that I am able to recognize without having to delve in esoteric databases that I am forced to the conclusion that the whole affair was planned with my role as expert witness very much in mind. I don’t know why this ingenious murderer should have taken the trouble to invite me to play detective, but it seems that I may be better equipped to draw inferences from whatever discoveries you may make than anyone else. I hope that you will trust my judgment, allowing me to help you in the way that seems most appropriate to me.” “And if we did that,” Charlotte said, “we’d look even more idiotic than the meanest sloth if it eventually turned out that you were the one who had planted all these crazy clues, wouldn’t we? If it turned out that you were the architect of the whole affair, and we’d let you lead us halfway around the world while posing as an expert witness, we’d look like the stupidest idiots that ever enlisted in the UN police.” “I suppose you would,” said Oscar Wilde. “I fear that I can’t offer you any incontrovertible proof that I’m innocent—but you’ll seem just as foolish, I fear, if you refuse to avail yourself of my expertise, and it later turns out that I am innocent and could have given you significant help in solving the mystery.” Charlotte had to admit, if only silently, that it was true. If Wilde really did have the temerity to have himself summoned to the scene of a crime which he had committed, so that he could savor the frustration of the UN’s investigators, the ticket to San Francisco might be a means of escape that he was flaunting in front of her, but if not… “If you’re going to San Francisco,” she said, hoping that she could get Hal to back her up, “then I’m going too.” On the theory that a reckless gamble shared was an uncomfortable responsibility halved, she added: “How about you, Mr.

Lowenthal?” “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Lowenthal said. “I’ll book our tickets now.” He unhooked his beltphone and set about doing exactly that.