Twenty-eight

The next morning I took the El to the Upper West Side, precariously balancing a jug of barley water and a pot of broth. I managed to bring both of them successfully to Emily’s room. She looked no worse than the day before and I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw her.

“Molly, this is so good of you,” she said, lying back onto her pillows, “but I’m afraid you’ve gone to so much trouble for nothing. I have barely taken a sip of the broth you brought me yesterday, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this.”

“You should finish that first, so that I can take them their bowl back,” I suggested. “Shall I heat some up for you?”

“I don’t think I could manage it.” She shuddered. “But maybe the barley water. My throat is so dry.”

I sat with her while she took a few sips, then I transferred the rest of the barley water to a glass jug she had and tipped the rest of the chicken broth from the delicatessen into my jug and her saucepan. “I’d better take this back. And I’m going to see your Mr. McPherson. He might be able to make you up some medicine to take down your fever and ease your stomach. And I’m going to ask him to recommend a good doctor for you.”

“But I can’t afford doctors.” She attempted to sit up.

“Nonsense, I’m paying. You owe me my fee, remember? Besides, I rather think that you’ll soon have the money to pay for things without worrying.”

“You’ve really found out the truth?” she looked up at me. “You know who my parents are?”

“I do indeed.”

“And am I an heiress?”

“Maybe.”

She reached out and grabbed my arm, her fingers digging into me. “So tell me my parents’ names.”

“Your mother was a lovely, fun-loving young woman who married the wrong man.” I paused. “Her name was Lydia.”

“Like my aunt? Wait.” Her eyes opened wide again. “Do you mean my aunt Lydia?”

“The very same.”

“Don’t tell me that Horace Lynch was my father,” she said angrily. “No father ever treated his child as I was treated.”

“You’re right. He wasn’t your father. Hence his bitterness to you and your mother.”

“Then who was my father?”

“A charming and handsome Italian gardener. Your mother was a young girl at the time. She fell madly in love with him, but she was married to Horace Lynch.”

“I see.” She lay there, eyes closed, contemplating this. “She couldn’t run off with the gardener, could she? She was stuck with Horace.”

“He agreed not to turn her out onto the street, but said the baby had to go. She fought for you, Emily. He agreed that they would keep you but not as their own child.”

She lay silently again, thinking, then she said, “You know it’s funny, isn’t it, but small children know. I said to her once, ‘I wish you were my mother’ and she had this funny, sad smile on her face and she said, ‘No mother could love you more than I.’ But she died soon after that.”

I nodded.

“How did you find this out?”

“I’m a detective. I went to Lydia’s birthplace and talked to people.”

“Does Horace Lynch know you’ve found out?”

“I extracted the full story from him.”

“But he still wants nothing to do with me?”

“I did point out to him that legally he is your father and things could be very embarrassing for him should this come to the courts. I also suggested that you might be quite content with a small allowance, rather than going after your mother’s entire fortune.”

“Molly! You didn’t say that!”

“I most certainly did.”

“Didn’t he shout at you most horribly? He’s terrifying when he’s angry.”

“No, I think I had shocked him into silence by that time.”

She laughed. “Amazing.” The laugh turned into a racking cough. When it finally subsided there were beads of sweat over her forehead.

“We must get you well again,” I said. “I should go now and I’ll come back with a doctor.”

She touched my arm again. “Molly, do you think I’m going to die?”

“I won’t let you die,” I said. “If I can conquer Horace Lynch, I’m not going to let your illness win, either.”

She smiled sadly. I took the china basin I had borrowed from the delicatessen then hurried down the stairs and out onto the street. I had promised Emily she wasn’t going to die, but I knew that Fanny and Dorcas had had the best care and attention available and they had both died just the same. Worry clutched at the pit of my stomach. I had dropped off the basin and was just about to enter McPherson’s drugstore when something in the window caught my eye. The display in the corner.

COMPLEXION CREAM FOR THE FINEST, WHITEST SKIN. AS USED BY LADIES IN PARIS.

The cream was in pretty white jars with blue lids. What’s more, I had seen one of those jars recently. On Dorcas’s dressing table. And I remembered the conversation at Fanny’s house. She praised the cream that Ned made and told Emily she needed more of it. I stood staring for a moment, then I turned and ran back to Emily’s room.

“Emily. That face cream. The jar with the blue lid.” The words came out as a gasp, as I was out of breath from running up six flights of stairs.

“The one Ned makes?” she asked. “I have one here on the shelf. Do you want to try it? It’s wonderful.”

I went over to the shelf above her sink and took down the small white jar. I opened it. It was full.

“Ned gave me a new one on Friday,” she said. “He told me he’d improved it even more and asked me to show it to my lady friends.”

“And have you used any yet?”

“Oh, yes. I used it right away.”

“Emily, I know nothing about poisons,” I said. “Is it possible that some element could have been added to a face cream and that a poison could be absorbed through the skin?”

She looked horrified. “But Ned gave this to me himself.”

“Tell me this. I remember Fanny saying she was out of the fabulous complexion cream and asking for more. Did you take her another jar?”

“Yes, I did. Right before she—”

She tried to sit up, open-mouthed.

“Right before she fell ill,” I said. “And I saw a jar on Dorcas’s dressing table, too.”

“But if it’s possible to poison face cream, who could have done this?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“The person who made the cream would be the obvious suspect.”

“Ned? My Ned? But he doesn’t even know Fanny or Dorcas.”

“Is it possible someone paid him to kill them?”

She looked horrified. “Ned is an ethical person. He would never stoop to that.”

“Even though he needs money badly? Even though he is ambitious and a large sum of money could set him up in his own business?”

She hesitated for a second. “Never,” she said. “Ned would never do that. And besides, he wouldn’t want to risk harming me, would he?”

“Is it possible that someone could have tampered with the cream then?”

She frowned. “I suppose that someone could have tampered with Fanny’s cream, but not with mine. Ned himself handed it to me.” Then she shook her head vehemently. “You must be wrong. There is no poison in the cream.”

“It is the only thing that links the three of you together,” I said. “I’m taking this jar to Daniel to be tested this very minute. I hope I’m wrong, but we need to know, don’t we?”

“But Ned gave it to me,” she said again. “There can’t be anything the matter with it.”

Something occurred to me. “When we gave those hairs to Ned to be tested, he said there was no arsenic present. But there must have been. There was arsenic in the stomach mixture Mr. McPherson made up for Fanny, so a trace would have shown up in her hair. That must mean either that Ned didn’t test the hair properly or . . .”

“Or that he lied, and said there was no arsenic so that nobody pursued this.” Her face was absolutely devastated. “But that can’t be right, Molly. My Ned can’t have wanted to kill anybody. He’s gentle. He would never have . . .”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get this cream tested, then we’ll know for sure. I really hope that I am wrong and that Ned has nothing to do this.”

“Yes, get it tested as quickly as possible,” she said. “I won’t be able to rest until I know.”

I poured a fresh glass of barley water for her, then I hurried down those stairs again. Now my heart was really thumping. The obvious answer was that Ned had deliberately poisoned those face creams, but why? If he didn’t know Fanny or Dorcas, the motive could only be money. Someone had bribed him to kill Fanny, and maybe Dorcas. Anson Poindexter, or even Bella. Or perhaps it was Mademoiselle Fifi, who thought at that stage that Anson might marry her if his wife was out of the way. But it seemed rather sophisticated for someone like Fifi. More likely to be Bella, who was well educated and moved in society.

I wondered if I dared pay a visit to Bella and drop hints about face cream and see her reaction—mentioning of course that I had sent a jar to my intended, a captain of police, to be tested. She was hardly likely to throttle me in her living room, was she? Then I thought about Emily. Even if Ned had been paid well to kill Fanny and Dorcas, surely he would not have agreed to harm Emily. And yet he had given her the face cream on Friday. To me this could only mean one thing . . . he wanted her out of the way as well.