Twenty-two

As it was, his eyes were riveted to the stage, which gave me the chance to look around the audience and see if Anson Poindexter was there. He wasn’t, of course. It would have been unthinkable for a newly bereaved husband to go to the theater. In fact I had no idea really why I had insisted on going to this theater. Just wanting to see Fifi in the flesh, I suppose. And I certainly saw large quantities of that. But I saw nothing else that aroused any suspicions and I wasn’t sure what to do next, if Emily and I were going to pursue the matter. Visit Dorcas’s home, of course, and find out who had been to see her or sent her gifts of food in her last days. Also try to visit Honoria Masters’s home and see if there was anything that linked the three women in any way.

Now that I had time to consider, it did seem a little improbable that a respectable man like Anson Poindexter would go around killing women willy-nilly, just on the off chance that his dead wife had told them something suspicious. After all, the doctor had signed a death certificate with no qualms. Fanny was buried in the family tomb. He had essentially gotten away with murder, if that was what it was. So why risk two further attempts?

I made up my mind that I would go with Emily to Dorcas’s and then I would close my files on the case. After all, I wasn’t being paid, and I had another case on my hands that I had almost concluded. All that was needed now was a visit to Horace Lynch, and I planned to fit that in tomorrow afternoon. Then I would be able to tell Emily the truth about her parents.

On Sunday morning I met Emily as arranged and we walked together to Dorcas’s house. To tell the truth, I felt most uneasy about intruding in this way on a family I hardly knew. The Hochstetter mansion was clearly in a state of mourning. Black drapes swathed the windows. We stood in a darkened front hall and after a while Mrs. Hochstetter Senior came down the stairs to us. She was dressed all in black.

“Miss Boswell?” She held out a hand. “I believe we have met before. You were our daughter-in-law’s friend from Vassar, is that not correct?”

“I was indeed,” Emily said. “And this is my dear friend Miss Murphy, who also knew Dorcas. We came as soon as we heard the terrible news, to offer our condolences.”

“You are most kind.” She put a black lace handkerchief up to her lips. “She was a lovely young woman and we are desolate to have lost her. My son is beside himself with grief and of course young Thomas will now be without a doting mama.”

“What exactly did she die of?” I asked. “When we came to visit her last week, we heard that she had influenza. She seemed sick and weak but she told us she was on the road to recovery.”

“Influenza, that’s what the doctor said it was.” Mrs. Hochstetter fought to retain her composure. “Simple, stupid influenza. We did everything. The doctor was here, I nursed her myself, and she just slipped away from us.”

“So tragic,” I muttered, feeling like a hypocrite. “I wondered whether anything she had eaten might have made her condition worse.”

“Eaten?” she demanded sharply. “The poor woman couldn’t keep any food down. She took nothing except for barley water and a few sips of broth.”

I couldn’t think of a way to ask if the servants were trustworthy and the cook had prepared these items herself. “I expect her friends came to visit as we did and brought her all kinds of lovely foods she couldn’t eat,” I said. Even as I said it I had to agree that it sounded strange.

“I gave strict orders that she was to be allowed no visitors as soon as I saw how weak she had become,” she said firmly.

“Of course.” I nodded.

“Mrs. Hochstetter, might it be possible to say our final farewell to Dorcas?” I asked. “Her body has not been taken away yet, has it?”

“She still lies in her marriage bed,” Mrs. Hochstettter said. “I have not allowed anybody in there, on account of the virulence of the sickness. Anything that can kill a healthy woman in a few days should be given a wide berth and certainly not allowed to spread.”

“Of course not,” I said. “But as it happens I have recently recovered from the same influenza and I understand that one cannot catch it twice. And Emily works in a drugstore and deals with sick people every day.”

Mrs. Hochstetter was still regarding us with a quizzical stare. “If you insist, then I suppose you know what you are doing.”

“She was my Vassar sister,” Emily said.

“Very well.” Mrs. Hochstetter smoothed down her black skirt before ringing a little bell on the side table. “Soames. These young women wish to say their farewells to Mrs. Hochstetter Junior,” she said. “Please escort them to her room.”

“Very well, madam.” The butler indicated we should follow him. Up the stairs we went, along a hallway that was bathed in gloom and made the statues in niches look like disembodied heads glaring down at us. He opened the door to Dorcas’s bedroom with obvious reluctance.

“Mrs. Hochstetter Junior is at repose in here.”

We stepped into a room that was as dark as the hallway had been. The odor of death came to greet us and we both recoiled a little, Emily giving me an alarmed glance.

“Are you young ladies sure you wish to go inside?” he asked.

“Vassar would expect it of me,” Emily said. “May we turn on an electric light?”

“Certainly not. This house is in mourning,” Soames said.

“I really would like to take one last look at my friend,” Emily said. I was impressed she could be so persistent. Soames was quite an intimidating figure. “May I then open the drapes just a little?”

I thought he was going to say no to that too, but he sighed. “I will open them a crack for you, if you really insist, but it is highly improper.”

He held open the curtains just an inch or two, sending a thin stripe of bright sunlight across the darkness.

“Thank you.” Emily went to stand by Dorcas’s bed. The body was covered in a white sheet. Emily pulled back the sheets and let out an audible gasp. “Poor Dorcas,” she whispered. “Poor, dear Dorcas. She was the brightest of us all.”

She bent down and kissed the dead cheek before pulling up the sheet again.

While she had been occupied at the bed, I had tried to observe everything in the room. Given the almost complete darkness and the clutter of stuffed birds, artificial flowers, and every other kind of knickknack, it was hard to see anything. I didn’t know what I should be looking for anyway. There was hardly likely to be a bottle of poison sitting on the bedside table. But as my eye moved over Dorcas’s dressing table I felt I was looking at something I had seen somewhere else before. I looked again and couldn’t for the life of me decide what that was.

“I think you should depart now,” Soames said, letting the drapes fall into place again and plunging us into complete darkness.

We did as he requested and walked in silence down the stairs. We encountered nobody in the front hall and stood blinking in the blinding light of the street.

“Well?” Emily said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t see how she could have been poisoned,” I said. “Her mother-in-law guarded her fiercely. You heard her yourself. She was allowed no visitors during the last days and she took no food apart from barley water and broth.”

“Well, I have some strands of her hair, just in case,” Emily said.

“Emily!”

“It was easy enough. It came out in my hand. I didn’t even have to yank it hard.”

“We’ll see if Ned turns up anything.”

“Emily, what is he likely to turn up?” I found myself getting a trifle annoyed. “It was quite obvious that Anson Poindexter had not been near the place. Bella came and brought grapes but they were not touched.”

“Bella? What has she to do with it?” Emily asked sharply.

I realized that I had not told her what I had observed at the funeral—that intimate look that had passed between Bella and Anson when they thought that no one was looking. I decided to stay mum.

“Nothing at all,” I said. No good could come of yet another complication, but I resolved to pay Bella a visit, just in case. If she had wanted to assist Anson in getting rid of a rich wife he didn’t love, as well as a friend who had been told too much, then it would have been easy enough to tamper with something in the room—the glass of barley water, for example.

“I tell you what, if you’d like to give me that hair sample, my friend Captain Sullivan can have it tested in the real police laboratory—just to make sure.”

“Oh, but Ned can test it for us,” she said. “He’s able to do this kind of thing, in fact he loves a challenge like this. He told me so.”

“Then how about we divide the sample,” I said. “You give half to Ned and I’ll give half to Captain Sullivan and we’ll compare results. That is what any good scientists would do and I’m sure Ned would not object.”

“Of course not,” she said. “I’ll tell him about it today.”

“I thought he went to visit his mother on Sundays.”

“He does.” She blushed bright red. “But today he wants to take me with him. Isn’t that wonderful? I’m now the girl that a young man brings home to meet his mother.”

“That is wonderful,” I said. “I’m happy for you.”

“So am I,” she said. “Things finally seem to be going right for me. And now I remember that you were going to tell me what you discovered in Massachusetts.” She slipped her arm through mine. “I am all agog. You really found out the truth? Were they really missionaries? Am I really an heiress?”

“I can’t tell you anything until I have made one more visit,” I said. “I have to verify the facts first. But with any luck you should know the truth this week. Of course, I might be barking up the wrong tree, but I don’t think so.”

Her face was alight with hope and I felt guilty. If my news were true, then I’d hardly be making her happy, would I? Still, it’s always better to know the truth. I’ve found out that much in life.