Viridian

Viridian

The entire hall was heaving with bodies, the wintry night outside soon forgotten by the hot, perfumed crush. Condensation drip-dripped down the arched windows.

Gentlemen friends shook hands, grinning with wine-sparkling eyes, and kitchen staff vanished the empty plates and glasses like magicians. Girls reached out to friends, espied through the crowd, fluttering their fingers in greeting. Woven into their hair were sprays of living roses.

Among the white of the debutantes' skirts and the black of the gentlemen’s jackets was the occasional flash of colour: a lavender muslin, or an amber scarf, or a dress of whispering green silk, like the carapace of a jewel beetle.

*

The wearer was slight. She was not short, and yet not tall either. She stood very still and straight, due perhaps to the stiffness of her dress. She seemed ill at ease, and very aware of her exposed throat and shoulders. Every now and then she raised her hand to her hair or placed it over the necklace at her sternum. There was the sense that she had been persuaded into wearing the dress by someone else.

She danced once with her husband, and then with a brother-in-law, catching the eye of the occasional onlooker who noticed so quiet a face in so loud a place, or who merely remarked on her fashionable dress as it was gathered up, splayed out in a turn and swept back over her shoes. The ribbons, dangling from her little sleeves, rippled when she moved. An emerald sheen poured over the many folds; it was as though the reflected light emanated from the fabric itself.

The gown’s colour, so in vogue that season, was known by shop clerks and fashion devotées as Paris Green.

*

The night grew more festive as it progressed. The conversation redoubled in volume and the crowds became more and more flushed. At one point, a large flower arrangement was knocked from its stand in a spectacular shattering of china, to much startled tittering from the guests. Afterwards, the flow of wine was replaced with flasks of coffee and water, on the orders of the maître d’.

Furthermore, throughout the course of the evening, several of the young ladies were taken ill. It was attributed to the heat, the close air, and the girls’ general state of excitement. A side chamber, windows thrown open, was set up for the discreet recovery of the collapsed guests. Even one or two of the young gentlemen were taken there for a glass of brandy and some air (‘Weak constitution, perhaps?’). However, the complaints were not unrelated, as the newspapers speculated in the following days and weeks.

*

It was in the wee hours of the morning when a throng of guests were taking their leave. They were trickling down the steps towards the dozing horses and cabbies, when the young lady in green slipped from her husband's side and slumped to the limestone steps.

At first, nobody noticed.

And then there were gasps, turning heads, the concerned voice of the husband, and a bottle of smelling salts was being produced when the woman began to retch. There were more gasps, calls for ‘a physician — good God!’

She was shuddering violently, crumpled, almost prostrate on the dirty steps. Her skin had erupted in hives: angry red blotches. In between coughs her stomach was disgorging a foamy, greenish stuff.

Finally, a departing guest — a young doctor — carved an open space out of the crowd of onlookers. He took the woman’s pulse at the wrist, noting her high temperature, and questioned her gently. The husband was still kneeling nearby, transfixed by the spectacle of her.

She slowly raised her head. Her hair had come loose, strands plastered to her moist face. She lifted stricken eyes to the doctor, eyes with whites turned yellow like a cat’s.

At one o'clock she was pronounced dead.

*

Even after the mortician’s cart had carried her away, the doctor remained sitting there. On the entrance steps, tie untied, forehead in his palm. By his feet, his black bag lay scuffed and soiled. Never in his career, in his entire life, had he seen such a thing.

The God-awful sight of her as she was taken away. Her skin stippled with hives, her nails and fingertips yellowish, like her eyes. And on the side of her hand, as it brushed against her gown — a trace of some powder. A smear of moss green, with a hint of viridian. The colour of envy. Of poison.

No.

The doctor sat up straight, staring after the long-departed cart.

The colour was the poison.

Tiny, snow-like particles of dye, sifting through minute gaps in between fibres.

* * *

“Well may the fascinating wearer of it be called a killing creature. She actually carries in her skirts poison enough to slay the whole of the admirers she may meet with in half a dozen ball-rooms.”

The Times of London

“Arsenic trioxide . . . piled outside a Cornish smelter they had found enough of the stuff to destroy every animal on Earth.”

British Medical Journal

“Everything she looked at was green.”

Unknown

* * *