Twenty-six

I found myself hurrying to Alice’s house as if propelled by an unseen force. I wasn’t sure if I was being driven by the need to find out that Alice was indeed alive and well, or that she had been the one confidante who sat at Fanny’s bedside. Sweet, gentle Alice who would have sat at Fanny’s bedside day and night if she had been allowed to . . . There have been stranger murderers before.

“Ridiculous,” I said to myself. Now I was seeing suspicious motives in everyone. When I had finally finished this case it would most probably turn out to be quite simple: Anson Poindexter had a mistress. He decided to sever all ties with her because his conscience got the better of him when his wife became sick. She died. End of story. I thought of his smiling, affable face. Was that the face of a cunning murderer? If he had been guilty, wouldn’t he have shown more alarm at seeing me on his doorstep? Frankly, I didn’t know how murderers thought. I didn’t know much of anything, in fact.

My pace slowed as I reached Alice’s street. Was this really a good idea? Was I helping Fanny in any way by airing her dirty laundry? And yet I had opened the floodgates. I couldn’t stop until I knew.

The establishment was humble by the standards of my recent visits—a respectable brownstone with bay trees in pots on either side of the front door. The maid who admitted me was also not quite of the quality of the last house. A trifle slovenly, in fact. It might seem that gentle Alice wasn’t too good at managing servants. But I was shown into a pleasant enough sitting room up a flight of stairs and found Alice on the floor, playing with a one-year-old baby. From the blond curls and petticoats I couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl, and since she addressed it as Treasure I was none the wiser. On seeing me she handed it to the maid to be taken to the nursery and brushed off her skirts as she sat on the sofa. I noticed she was wearing black.

“Miss Murphy. What brings you here?” She sounded breathless and surprised.

“In the first place I was charged by Mrs. Bradley to make sure you had not taken ill. She was very worried that you had spent so much time at Fanny’s bedside and might have caught the dreadful illness.”

She smiled sadly. “Oh no. Hale and hearty, as you see. I always was the strong one. I didn’t catch measles and mumps when Fanny did, although we played together all the time. I do hope Treasure has inherited this from me. But then my dear Arthur is also of a sound constitution. How is Mrs. Bradley faring? I worry so for her. They did adore that daughter.”

“She seems to be holding up well. It is her husband she worries about.”

“I can see that,” Alice said. “He positively idolized Fanny. He spoiled her horribly, of course.” She paused and smiled. “But who could not love Fanny? He’s not the only one who feels a light has gone from their life, I can assure you. Fanny and I were as close as sisters. I feel absolutely bereft.”

“I’m sure all her friends feel the same way,” I said. “I’ve come with a rather awkward question, Mrs. Trotter. You were closer to Fanny than anybody—did she ever share any concerns with you about her husband?”

Her forehead wrinkled charmingly. “What kind of concerns, Miss Murphy?”

“I wondered if she ever mentioned to you that she suspected her husband of infidelity? Or that she was thinking of divorcing him?”

She looked shocked. “Thinking of divorcing Anson? No, whoever gave you that idea? I suppose it was Emily.”

“Actually . . .” I began, then I stopped. “Emily?” I asked.

“Well, naturally she came to mind,” Alice said. “Wishful thinking, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Miss Murphy, that Emily was hopelessly smitten with Anson during her Vassar days. Worshipped the ground he trod on. Of course it was all rather awkward for Fanny. But it was obvious from the first that Anson would pick Fanny over Emily, wasn’t it? Fanny had money and Anson liked to live well. Emily had nothing.”

“I see.” I felt as if I had been punched in the stomach.

“So I thought that maybe Emily had been spreading rumors in the hope of souring Fanny’s marriage.”

“So as far as you know she and Anson were happily married”

“Oh she complained about him sometimes,” she said airily. “The hours he came home. The amount he was away. Lack of attention. But then we can all find something to complain about in our husbands, can’t we?”

“You were with her a lot that last week,” I went on, not knowing how to put any of this now. “Was there anything about her sickness that seemed to you—well, not quite right?”

Again she frowned. “I don’t quite know what you are driving at, Miss Murphy. The only thing that was not right was that Fanny got sicker and sicker whatever we did for her. Watching her slip away from us was more than a body could bear.” Her expression suddenly sharpened again. “Wait? You are not suggesting that somebody—that Anson might have? No, that’s too ridiculous. He was distraught. I had to comfort him.”

“I really didn’t mean to suggest any impropriety,” I said hastily. “Emily merely suggested that the sickness didn’t seem to be following the usual course of influenza and she wondered whether Fanny had been taking anything that might have further upset and weakened her.”

“Emily again,” Alice snapped. “It sounds to me as if she wanted to cast suspicion on Anson. Who knows, perhaps she is out to get revenge for being spurned.”

“I don’t think that sounds like Emily,” I said. “Besides, she has a new beau now.”

“She always was devious,” Alice said. “I suppose it came from being on her own so much as a child.”

I got to my feet. “Look, I’m sorry to have troubled you. And I’m even sorrier to have worried you in this way. Obviously nothing I have mentioned is true and Fanny’s death was a tragic sickness.”

I left her sitting pensively on the sofa.

I stumbled down the steps and started to walk, faster and faster, trying to keep up with my racing thoughts. It was Emily who first suggested that something wasn’t right in the manner of Fanny’s death. And that, coupled with what Fanny had just told me about her intention to divorce Anson, had made me equally suspicious. But I had not, for one minute, suspected Emily herself: Emily the lonely, not very beautiful child who had grown up unloved and then been thrown out into the world. Surely if anyone had become bitter and twisted it could have been she. And she was bright, too—smart enough to learn a thing or two about clever poisons.

It suddenly struck me that I had been set up. Had she made friends with me because she thought I was gullible and she wanted a gullible witness? I stopped so abruptly that a woman with her shopping bag barreled into the back of me, then took off again, muttering. Emily was Fanny’s dear friend. Could Emily ever have killed Fanny just because she had married Anson? Killed her to get back at Anson? Surely this was far-fetched and went quite against the sweet Emily I had come to know. And we hadn’t even been allowed in to see Fanny when she was still alive—unless Emily had come alone, earlier in Fanny’s illness. Maybe Fanny had come down with a simple case of influenza and Emily had managed to administer some subtle poison or—I came to a halt again, making the crowd divide around me like a stream flowing around a rock—the stomach mixture. Emily delivered it. I had now given a sample to Daniel and he had indicated in his note that something interesting had come up.

“We’re going to find out the truth about you, Emily Boswell,” I muttered. Should I wait for Daniel to come and tell me what he had discovered or should I go to Emily right away? My anger and indignation swept me forward in the direction of Emily’s drugstore. It was close to her lunch time. I would take her out, tell her what I had discovered about her family background, and then, while her emotions were in turmoil from that news, I would demand the truth about Fanny and Anson. I would tell her that the stomach mixture was currently being tested by the best police doctors. She would break down and tell me all . . .

I arrived breathless and with hammering heart at McPherson’s drugstore. There was no sign of Emily, and Ned came around from the back room at the sound of the bell.

“Can I help you, miss?” he asked, pushing open the swing door, then recognized me. “Oh, Miss Murphy, it’s you.”

“Good day to you, Ned. I came to see if Emily would join me for lunch, but I see that she’s not here. Is she out making deliveries again?”

“She’s out sick again, I’m afraid,” he said. “She sent a note that she had one of her bad headaches.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “I am sorry.”

“And if this is going to happen with regularity, Miss Boswell will be looking for a new position,” came Mr. McPherson’s harsh voice from the back room.

“Come on now, sir,” Ned said. “She’s not often sick, you know that. And she works like a trooper when she’s here.”

“Poor Emily,” I said. “She spent yesterday afternoon with you and your mother, didn’t she? Was she well then?”

“Oh, absolutely blooming and we had a most pleasant time together. She was her charming self and bucked poor Mother up no end.”

“Your mother has not been well?” I asked.

“Frankly, Miss Murphy, she gets lonely out there in Brooklyn on her own and she broods,” Ned said. “I’d bring her into the city to live with me, but my apartment’s not big enough to swing a cat. She’s had a hard life raising me. I only wish I could do more for her, but I’m doing all I can.”

“I’m sure you are, Ned. And I’m sure your turn will come soon.”

“Thank you, Miss Murphy. I very much hope so.”

“I shouldn’t keep you any longer,” I said, conscious of Mr. McPherson listening in from the back room. “I’ll go and visit Emily and see if there’s anything I can do for her.”

“I’d leave her be if I were you,” Ned said. “When she gets one of these bad headaches then sleep is really the only cure. We’ve tried making various headache remedies for her but nothing seems to do the trick.”

“Very well,” I said. “Good-bye then.”

I came out of the shop and walked a few steps, not quite sure what to do next. If Emily was suffering with one of her terrible headaches then I probably should leave her in peace, as Ned had suggested. On the other hand, it might be easier to extract a confession from her if she wasn’t feeling her best. And if she turned out to be innocent, then my news about her parentage should cheer her up. I turned onto her street, went up the stairs to her room, and tapped gently on her door.

“Emily, it’s Molly,” I said in a soft voice through the crack in the door. “I’ve come to see if there’s anything I can do for you.”

After a while I heard slow footsteps shuffling toward the door. It opened. Emily stood there in her dressing gown, breathing heavily. One look at her told me that she was not suffering from a simple headache. I had witnessed one of these before and her face had been pale and her forehead creased in pain. Today her face was flushed, her eyes hollow.

“Molly,” she said in a cracked whisper. “How good of you to come. I really feel most unwell.”

“When did this start?” I asked her anxiously.

“In the middle of the night. I felt fine yesterday, as you know, because you saw me in the morning. I had a lovely time at Ned’s mother’s in the afternoon and then when I went to bed I felt overwhelmingly tired and headachy. I woke in the night drenched in sweat, aching all over, and I’ve been vomiting.”

I led her back to her bed, my heart now pounding. “Lie down,” I said. “Now tell me, what can I get you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t feel like anything at all, thank you.”

“You should take something to keep your strength up. I’ll go and get some veal bones from the butcher and make you some broth. And some barley for barley water. Oh, and I can go to your drugstore and see if they can make up something for you?”

She shook her head. “It’s the flu, I’m afraid. I’ve finally succumbed and all I can do is to ride it out.”

She lay back with a sigh. I went over to her sink and dipped a washcloth in water to sponge her face. She really did look very ill. “I’m sure you could sip a little broth,” I said.

She gave a tired smile. “I’ve only the one gas ring and a small saucepan.”

“Then I’ll go to a restaurant and buy some broth for you.”

“You’re very kind,” she said in a voice that was little more than a whisper, “but I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“Danger?” I asked, my senses suddenly sharp again. “What kind of danger?”

“If it’s the same malady that killed my friends, I don’t want you to risk catching it.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. If it’s the flu, then I’ve just had it and they say you can’t catch it twice. And if it’s something else, then I’ve already visited Fanny and Dorcas and come away safely. So lie down and I’ll be back.”

I ran down the stairs and back to Broadway. There I found a delicatessen where they were serving chicken soup with matzo balls, a Jewish dish I had come to enjoy when I worked in a garment factory. I persuaded them to give me a big basin of it, and left a hefty deposit for the return of the basin. Then I carried it back to Emily’s room with great care.

As I walked up the stairs, I tried to harness my racing thoughts. As usual it looked as if I had got it wrong again and Emily was victim rather than killer. What if Emily was genuinely worried and suspicious about her best friend’s death? What if Anson, maybe aided and abetted by Bella, had found some kind of clever poison and thought he was safe until Emily started poking around, asking questions? Emily, who was known to be a bright young woman and who worked with a druggist? Did Anson fear that she would put two and two together and decide that she had to go? In which case had I also sealed my own fate by visiting him this morning?

This is rubbish, I muttered out loud, and the words echoed through the high stairwell of the building. Anson had been charming this morning. Charming and distressed by the death of his wife. Surely such a man could not be a cold-blooded killer? Bella, on the other hand—she struck me as more the reckless and gutsy type. If she was behind this I could actually see her slipping in to visit her poor sick friend and tipping a dose of goodness knows what into the drinking glass.

I opened Emily’s door and tiptoed in. She was lying with her eyes closed and there was now the smell of vomit in the room. But her eyes opened as she heard me.

“Emily,” I said, “have you received any visitors at all? We went together to Dorcas’s family yesterday and then you went straight to Ned’s mother?”

She nodded.

“So Bella hasn’t been to see you recently?”

“Bella?” She frowned. “I hardly know Bella. I’ve met her a couple of times at Fanny’s house. Why do you want to know?”

“I’m worried that someone is trying to poison you,” I said. “You look very much the way Dorcas did last week.”

“Don’t say that!” She tried to sit up. “But that can’t be right. I’ve seen nobody. I’ve only eaten food at that little café where I always take my lunch, or an egg I boiled myself here, or with Ned and his mother. Nobody could have slipped in here and poisoned anything. It just isn’t possible.”

I smoothed back her hair. “You may be right and maybe I’m overreacting again. Perhaps it is just a nasty flu. Here, the broth is still warm. Can I feed you a little?”

She sighed. “All right. I’ll try, I suppose.” She attempted to sit up. I put my hand behind her head and helped her. She managed a couple of sips, then turned her head away. “I really don’t feel like anything,” she said. “Why don’t you go? I do worry about you. Catching what I have.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Really, I’ll stay if you need me.”

She lay back and closed her eyes. “Molly,” she asked after a while, “do you think we were right about our suppositions? Do you think that Anson killed Fanny, and then Dorcas, and now he’s trying to kill me?”

“It hardly seems possible,” I said. “I met him this morning and he seemed such an affable sort of man. But I understand that some murderers are extremely pleasant in their manner. And he has now achieved what he wanted, hasn’t he? Fanny’s money and his freedom.”

“So it would seem. But if he’s tried to poison me, how did he do it? He hasn’t been anywhere near me and I keep my room locked when I’m out.”

“A challenge, to be sure. Look, Emily, I think you should see a doctor—a good doctor—and tell him what you suspect.”

“He’d think I was an hysterical female.”

“I could ask Daniel for you. I know they have physicians who work with the police and he would certainly know how to test for poisons.”

“But what could it be?” She asked. “The symptoms resemble nothing I can think of. The gastric upset and the flushed skin might indicate arsenic, but we know that Fanny’s hair tested negative and she didn’t look at all flushed in the end, did she?”

“I’ll go and seek out Daniel,” I said. “I’ll make him listen to me and then I’ll be back.”

“All right.” She lay back and closed her eyes. “I think I’ll just sleep a little,” she whispered.

I closed the door quietly behind me and tiptoed down the stairs. As I came out of that dark stairwell into the sunlight I looked down at my arm and noticed something: my light beige costume had black hairs all over it.