“And who is the prospective poisoner?”
“Count Camus.”
“Just heavens! Tell me, for I am vastly interested, how you found this out?”
“A few days ago—or, to be more precise, the day after Count Camus had returned from a hunting expedition with Monsieur de Rochefort, he was walking with his wife in the grounds of Trianon. He had brought with him a prepared rose.”
“A prepared rose?”
“A rose poisoned with one of those subtle poisons, whose secret was brought to France by the Italians in the time of King Charles IX. Once prepared, these roses have to be kept under cover, enclosed in a box. So kept, their virtue, or rather their vice, remains unimpaired for a considerable time, but once removed from the box, it disappears in the course of a few hours.”
“Yes, yes, but what is their power, and how is it used?”
“Quite simply. The person who smells the perfume of the rose dies.”
“Dies, simply from the perfume?”
“Absolutely, and as certainly as though he had drunk the Aqua Tofana of the Florentines.”