Thirty-one

I fussed and fumed as my transportation crawled back to the Upper East Side, driven by my anger and a sense of urgency. Was there a cure for thallium poisoning? Would the doctor believe me and would he know how to treat her if he did? And would Daniel have received my message yet? I now realized we were dealing with a cold-blooded and ruthless killer who was even prepared to kill the girl he professed to love. I hoped that Emily’s door had a strong lock on it and that we could hold out until Daniel got there. I ran all the way from the El station. I was gasping for breath by the time I had climbed all those flights of stairs. I went to tap on Emily’s door and it swung silently open. The room was in complete darkness with the heavy drapes drawn. I could make out the figure of a man bending low over the bed.

“Oh, Doctor,” I said breathlessly, “I’m sorry, I wanted to be here when you arrived but—”

The man started at the sound of my voice and straightened up. Then I saw that it wasn’t a strange doctor at all. It was Ned. In a flash I also saw the pillow he had been holding over Emily’s face. I rushed at the bed, and the pillow fell to the floor. Emily gave a mighty gasp and started coughing.

“You—you animal!” I screamed at him. “You pretended to love her and you do this? You couldn’t even wait for her to die slowly.” I lifted Emily’s head and gave her a sip of water. “You’re going to be all right,” I said. “Lie still.”

“Molly, he—he,” she started to say.

“I know. I know everything.”

Ned had backed away from me and was now standing by the door. At first I thought he was going to make a run for it, but then I watched him turn the key in the lock and give me a triumphant smile. “You’re right,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when I found out that her best friend was my own half sister. How perfect a chance. But Emily was too smart for her own good. No good ever comes of educating women. She should have kept her nose out of my business. And so should you. Now you’ve sealed your own fate.”

I actually laughed. “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Emily might be lying sick in bed and easy to smother, but in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a strong, healthy woman. And what’s more, a doctor is due here any second, and my young man, Captain Sullivan of the New York police, has been testing that face cream and will be here any moment as well.”

“No problem,” Ned said, reaching into his pocket. “It will only take me a moment to get rid of you.” I was half expecting a gun, and I heaved a sigh of relief when I saw instead that he had brought out a small glass bottle. He opened it and a sweet, sickly smell filled the room. Suddenly I knew what that smell was. It was chloroform. As I watched, fascinated like a rabbit confronted by a snake, he reached into the other pocket and produced a gauze pad.

“And where do you think you’d go if you kill us?” I demanded. “They’re going to find you soon enough. They already know you put the poison in the cream and that you killed Fanny Poindexter. You can’t get away, you know.”

“Yes, I can. I will.” But there was a hint of desperation in his voice. “There are ships leaving New York every hour. With my knowledge and experience they’d take me on as a ship’s doctor, no questions asked. And I’ll spend a few years in the Orient, or even on the West Coast, then come back with a new name and a new look when the hue and cry has died down.”

“You’d leave your mother to face the music?” I said, trying to appear calm and in control. “Hasn’t she suffered enough for you?”

“I did this for her,” he said angrily. “In revenge for what that brute made her go through. I went to my father. I thought he might see how well I’d turned out and recognize me as his son. But he chased me away. He told me if I ever came near him again he’d call the police. So I paid him back.”

“Only he wasn’t your father,” I said.

“What do you mean?” His dark eyes flashed with anger. “Of course he was.”

“I’ve just been to see your mother. She said you’d latched on to the idea of Mr. Bradley as your father and she hadn’t had the heart to disillusion you.”

“No,” he said. “That’s rubbish.” But I heard the hesitancy in his voice.

“It’s true. She never really knew who your father was. It could have been any of the men who paid her for the pleasure.”

His face twisted into a snarling rage. “You dirty vile little—”

He flung himself at me. I brought up my arm suddenly to defend myself and the bottle went flying. Drops of chloroform splashed over both of us. My head started singing as the vapors got to me. Ned was now trying to get his hands around my throat, but the vapors must have been affecting him too because he staggered. We went down together. He was now panting like a wild beast as he tried to pin me down. I fought him off with all my strength even as the world around me started fading to blackness. Then a figure loomed over us, there was a loud thump, a groan, and Ned slumped across me.

Emily stood there, breathing heavily, holding a cast-iron frying pan. “I didn’t know whether I’d have the strength to do it,” she said, gasping. Then she sank to her knees beside us.

At that moment there came a loud knocking at the door. I crawled across to open it. The doctor had arrived with Daniel, two police constables, and hospital workers hot on his heels.

“What the deuce?” the doctor demanded as Daniel pushed past him into the room.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

I nodded as he helped me to my feet. “That’s the man you want,” I said. “He admitted to killing Fanny Poindexter. He was trying to kill us too.”

“And obviously was no match for you,” Daniel said dryly, kicking at the prostrate form on the carpet.

“That was Emily. She hit him with the frying pan,” I said.

The hospital workers were already lifting her up to the nearest chair. “We’ve come to take you to the hospital, miss,” one of them said.

“Would somebody explain to me what is going on here?” the doctor asked.

An hour or so later Emily was safely in a hospital bed, being treated with Prussian blue and charcoal, which we were told were the only effective countermeasures against thallium. Since she had had the thallium in her system for three days now, her chances were not good, but at least she was getting the best care possible.

Daniel and I left her sleeping quietly. On the way home I insisted on stopping at Mr. Horace Lynch’s house and telling him that Emily was in the hospital and might not survive. After that it was up to him to decide whether to visit her or not.

“Another case concluded,” I said. We were sitting side by side in the darkness of a hansom cab. For some reason I had just begun to feel shaky, as one often does after the danger is safely past, and I nestled close to Daniel, feeling the comforting warmth of his presence.

“The same for me,” Daniel said. “Another case concluded, thanks, in part, to you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You gave me the names of the missionary societies. We apprehended a certain Mr. Hatcher as he was about to sail for Shanghai. He was carrying trunks full of Bibles, but the trunks contained traces of the opium he had brought back in them. A nice little trade, don’t you think? Under the umbrella of the missionary society, he was making himself rich supplying the Chinese opium dens of New York City.”

“Mr. Hatcher,” I said. “But I met him. I gave you his name.”

“You did indeed.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders. “And you know what else? Our Mr. Hatcher was quite aware who you were. He knew someone was asking questions around the missionary societies, and he discovered your connection to me and was convinced that I had sent you to spy on him. He decided to frighten you off.”

“By trying to run me down with his carriage?”

“Precisely. Nasty piece of work, if you ask me.”

“And he must also have broken into my house.”

“He or one of his Chinese henchmen, if he had one who could read English.”

I shuddered.

“Don’t worry. He’s now safely behind bars and the opium trade will have to find another way to smuggle in the goods.”

“How about that,” I said. “I never took to him from the start. Too annoyingly effusive and much too nosy.”

“Well that was an eventful day,” Daniel said as we entered the calm of my little house. “Another of your nine lives gone, I fear.” He took off his hat and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “I wish you would stop living like this, Molly. I have enough worry in my life without wondering if you are going to find yourself in yet another dangerous situation every day. Being a detective is no job for a woman.”

“Oh,” I said frostily. “And who was it detected thallium poisoning when a doctor swore it was pneumonia? Who was it found the motive and cornered the murderer? And who helped you solve your two big cases?”

“I am not saying that your ability is any less than a man’s,” he said. “It is just that you are not built to take such risks and abuse. Any able man could overpower you.”

“Maybe if women could wear sensible bloomers and not these ridiculous tight clothes I’d be able to hold my own,” I retorted.

“You are not to go around wearing bloomers.” He took my hand. “Molly, I want you give up this life,” he said. “I love you. I don’t want to be weeping over your body.”

“You’d do that? You’d weep over me?”

“Of course I would,” he said. “I’ve loved you since I first set eyes on you on Ellis Island. Even though I thought you were married to another man, I still loved you. I don’t want to lose you. In fact, I want you to marry me.”

Then, to my intense astonishment, he got down on one knee. “Molly, this is not the time or the place that I had planned for this to happen, but seeing what we’ve just been through, it seems appropriate. Molly Murphy, will you marry me?”

Although I had seen it coming for ages, although we’d had what people called “an understanding” for a while, I was still speechless.

“You do love me, don’t you?” he asked when I said nothing.

“Yes, yes I do. And I do want to marry you, but only . . .”

“Only what?” I felt the pressure on my hand tighten.

“Only if you’ll let me be myself and not want to keep me shut up in a cage, stuck home all day like the good little wife.”

He chuckled. “I think it would take some pretty stout chains and bars to keep you anywhere you didn’t want to be.”

I looked up as there was a sharp knock at my front door. I broke away to answer it. Sid and Gus stood there. “We’re off to a planning meeting for the next suffragist rally,” Sid said. “We wondered if you wanted to come with us. We’re planning a march on the state capitol in Albany and we’re going to chain ourselves to the railings until the state legislature gives us the right to vote.”

“Sid has written a ripping piece and she’s sending it to the Times and the Herald,” Gus said. “She wants to show it to you. And I’ve designed us a banner. You have to see it. Sid thinks it’s most eye-catching.” She broke off and eyed me. “What’s the matter, is something wrong?”

“I’m sorry.” I started to laugh. “But Daniel was just in the middle of proposing to me.”

“And have you answered him yet?” Sid demanded.

I looked back at Daniel, who was regarding me with interest.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Well, for God’s sake get back in there and do it,” Sid commanded.

I turned back to Daniel. “Daniel, I accept,” I said.

“About time,” Gus turned to nod to Sid. “We couldn’t take much more of the tension, could we, Gus? So I suppose we can’t count on your support anymore for our rallies, and you won’t be coming along tonight?”

“Not tonight.” I looked back at my kitchen. “Tonight I think we need to be alone, although I don’t see why you think you can’t count on me in future.”

I thought I heard a heavy sigh from the kitchen.