Albert Victor was nodding, childlike, trusting. “Yes, yes of course I shall. Forgive me, I should have realized all was not lost. You have advised me so admirably in the past . . .”
Lachley patted Eddy’s hands again. “And I shall continue to do so in future. Now then . . .” He walked to his desk, from which he retrieved a vial of the same medication he had given James Maybrick. Many of his patients preferred to consult with him in a more masculine and private setting such as his study, rather than the more public and softly decorated parlour, so he kept a supply of his potent little mixture in both locations. “I want you to take a draught of medicine before you leave, Eddy. You’re in a shocking state, people will gossip.” He splashed wine into a deep tumbler from a cut-crystal, antique Waterford decanter, stirred in a substantial amount of the powder, and handed the glassful of oblivion to Eddy. “Sip this. It will help calm your frayed nerves.”
And leave you wonderfully suggestible, my sweet and foolish prince, for you must never recall this conversation or Morgan or those thrice-damned letters ever again. Eddy was just sufficiently stupid, he could well blurt out the entire thing some night after a drinking spree in the East End. He smiled as Eddy swallowed the drugged wine. Lachley’s one-time public persona, Johnny Anubis, might have been little more than a parlour trickster who’d earned ready cash with the mumbo-jumbo his clients had expected—indeed, demanded. Just as his new clients did, of course.