In a Gilded Cage (17 page)

“Poor Dorcas,” Emily said.

“You know what I’m wondering.” Minnie leaned closer to us. “I’m wondering if Fanny wasn’t coming down with something when we were there and Dorcas caught it from her.”

“Fanny’s doctor says she died of complications of influenza,” I said, joining in this conversation for the first time, “and this strain of flu is supposed to be horribly virulent.”

“Then let’s hope the rest of us don’t follow suit,” Minnie said.

“I’m all right,” I said. “I went through it a month ago and I don’t think you can get it twice.”

As soon as she could, Emily dragged me aside. “We must visit Dorcas,” she whispered. “We must find out if Anson Poindexter came to see her.”

I frowned as I realized what was going through her head. “But even if it’s remotely possible that Anson killed his wife, what motive could he have for wanting to kill Dorcas?”

“Maybe she found out. I know she went to visit Fanny last week. What if she discovered something and came to Anson to share her suspicions?”

“I really think you’re going a little far,” I said. “We’ve heard from Ned that there was no trace of arsenic in Fanny’s hair. The doctor says he is convinced that he correctly diagnosed her illness and we know that her mother and only her mother ministered to her during her last days. What more do you want?”

Emily sighed. “I really don’t know. I guess you’re right and I’m just being silly.”

“Not silly,” I said with more enthusiasm than I felt. “But maybe overly concerned.”

I turned to look as the minister arrived and the mourners began to gather around the gravesite. I picked out Anson Poindexter, then I froze. Bella was standing beside him, her hand on his arm. As she looked up at him a momentary glance passed between them. I had seen that look before. It was a look exchanged by lovers.

Eighteen

N
ow I was really confused. Could I have made a mistake about Anson and Mademoiselle Fifi? Had his real mistress been right here, under my nose all the time? They moved apart instantly but I had seen enough to be sure. And Bella had been to visit her poor sick friend during the week. Perhaps she had brought something with her—some calves’ foot jelly, a special tonic? And taken the vessel back with her afterward? But then I shook my head. That was ridiculous. Why would Bella want Fanny dead? She wasn’t free to marry Anson.

The ceremony continued. I watched Fanny’s family—her mother hidden beneath her veil and yet her carriage proud and erect, her father staring out toward the Hudson, his face stoic. I felt for them—their beloved only child, with a life so full of promise ahead of her, taken from them. And all the money in the world couldn’t save her.

The final blessing was concluded, the coffin was carried into the vault, and the mourners drifted away.

Emily was already tugging at my arm. “Can you come with me to see Dorcas now?” she whispered. “Mr. McPherson won’t know how long this ceremony has taken, so I can probably be away for another half an hour. And Dorcas’s house is on the way.”

I no longer knew what to think. I still didn’t have Emily’s overwhelming conviction that her friend had been murdered or that Dorcas was now in grave danger. As I tried to look at it logically I could see that Anson Poindexter did have a strong motive for wanting Fanny dead. If she had divorced him, he would have lost her money and his current, very pleasant, lifestyle. But I couldn’t see why he would want to kill Dorcas, unless she had discovered something at Fanny’s house that made her suspect him. In any case, in was better to know the truth and to ease Emily’s fears. And it was a lovely bright morning and I had nothing better to do.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll come with you—or would you rather that I went alone?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Didn’t it occur to you that both Fanny and Dorcas really might have caught this horrible influenza and you might not want to expose yourself to it again? I, on the other hand, have had it.”

Emily smiled. “My dear Molly. I work in a drugstore. Every day I serve people who are coughing and sputtering all over me. If I haven’t caught anything yet, I’m not going to. Besides, Dorcas is a friend from college. I have to do everything I can to save a Vassar sister.”

So we left the cemetery together and soon found ourselves on the east side of the park.

“I see that Dorcas married well too,” I said, as we passed one impressive mansion after another, some with carriages waiting outside and liveried footmen standing beside them. Crisply starched nannies pushed baby buggies and led well-scrubbed toddlers by the hand. I wondered if one of the passing buggies contained little Toodles, Dorcas’s baby son. “But I thought she married a professor.”

“She did,” Emily agreed, “but a professor from an old New York family. So she has the best of both worlds—an intelligent husband and the money to enjoy life.” She smiled, then went on, “Now that I recall, hers was a real love match. He was a student at Columbia, and they met at a dance. And they don’t own one of these mansions—they live with her in-laws.”

As we walked I noticed Emily suddenly quicken her pace, striding out and staring straight ahead. It took me a moment to register that we were passing her old home. Maybe soon I’d be able to settle her mind with the truth about her parents. We went up the front steps of a square, gray stone house and were admitted by a butler.

“Please wait here and I shall inquire if Mrs. Hochstetter Junior is feeling well enough to receive visitors,” he said.

We waited in an impressive entrance hall decorated with shields, swords, and various strange weapons brought back from foreign parts. It seemed that the Hochstetters were a much-traveled family. At last the butler reappeared. “She would be delighted to see you. Please follow me.”

He led us up a broad central staircase and ushered us into a grand but old-fashioned bedroom, liberally decorated with knickknacks. In the midst of china statues, brass vases, artificial flowers, and a cage containing a stuffed bird, Dorcas lay, propped up on several pillows. Her eyes were sunken and she looked flushed but she held out her hand to us.

“Emily, Molly. How very kind of you to come to see me.”

“We were at Fanny’s funeral when we heard that you had also been taken ill, so we felt we had to come immediately,” Emily said.

“Poor Fanny. I wanted so badly to attend, but of course I’m too weak to go anywhere. How was it?”

“Very moving,” Emily said.

“And a beautiful setting. The trees were all in blossom.”

“I know. It’s a delightful place, isn’t it? Our family also has a plot there.”

She gave a gentle sigh.

Emily perched on the bed beside her. “So how are you? I was so worried . . .”

“Feeling a little better, thank you,” Dorcas said. “I’ve had a horrible high fever and some nasty vomiting but today I’ve actually kept some barley water down, so one can hope that I’m on the mend.”

“That is good news,” Emily said. “Is there anything you’d like? Anything we can bring you?”

“No, thank you.” She lay back and sighed. “My mother-in-law looks after me so well. I have everything I need and my friends have been most kind. Bella brought me those lovely grapes and Honoria was here and gave me those daffodils you see blooming on my windowsill. So cheering, don’t you think?”

“Honoria? Fancy that. I haven’t seen her in ages. Not since she became famous, anyway. How is she?”

“Flourishing,” Dorcas said. “When I’m well again we must go and see her perform.”

“Have you had any other visitors?” Emily asked, trying to sound casual.

Dorcas frowned. “Thomas’s aunt and cousins a few days ago. That’s about it. My mother-in-law has been trying to keep visitors away so that I have peace and quiet to recuperate. She’s out at the moment or she wouldn’t have allowed you two in to my room. She can be quite a tartar when she wants to.”

“Anson Poindexter didn’t come to see you, did he?” Emily asked.

Dorcas looked up in surprise. “Anson? Why would he come to see me? I hardly know him. I’ve met him at a couple of dinner parties with Fanny, that’s all.”

“Did Bella bring you anything else beside the grapes?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.

Dorcas looked surprised again. “Bella? No, she wasn’t actually allowed up to see me but the maid brought up the grapes from her.”

I couldn’t see any way to tamper with grapes but I had to make sure. “They look absolutely delicious,” I said. “And what a luxury at this time of year.”

“Please help yourself,” she said, as I had hoped she would. I picked off a couple and managed to put them into my pocket, while pretending to eat with expressions of delight.

“Presumably the doctor has been to see you,” Emily said, with a glance in my direction.

“Of course. Every day. He’s been giving me the most horrible medicine that he says is effective against influenza, but it tastes ghastly, and frankly I don’t think it’s been helping at all. Finally I told him I couldn’t keep it down and I wasn’t going to take it anymore.”

“So he definitely thinks this is influenza, does he?” I asked.

“Well, yes.”

“Even though stomach distress is not normally part of the flu?” I asked.

She paused, considering this. “I think he was slightly puzzled, but when he heard I visited Fanny last week he said it was obvious I had picked up the same microbe that caused her illness.”

“I see,” I said. “I just wondered if you could have eaten something that disagreed with you, in addition to the flu, I mean.”

“Oh no,” she said. “I’ve hardly eaten a thing since I came down with this. I haven’t felt like food. I haven’t even touched those grapes yet. Literally barley water and a little chicken broth. That’s about it for days now. The only thing that has disagreed with me has been that disgusting influenza medicine.” She made a face. “I told him it tasted like arsenic and said was he trying to poison me.” She laughed. “He said it tasted like arsenic because it had arsenic in it and no, he wasn’t trying to poison me but to cure me.”

“I wonder if it was the same mixture we’ve been selling at the store,” Emily said.

“I wouldn’t know. I had my maid take it away,” Dorcas said.

“I’m afraid I have to get back to work,” Emily said. “My boss will make a frightful stink if I take too long. I had to really plead with him to go to the funeral in the first place.”

“It must be so hard for you to work for such a man,” Dorcas said. “I advise getting married as soon as possible and letting your husband face the outside world. I can truthfully say that with Thomas and little Toodles I am quite content.”

As we went to make our good-byes, Dorcas moved restlessly. “I seem to be slipping down again,” she said. “If you could just plump up my pillows for me again.”

Emily eased her into a sitting position while I plumped the pillows. As I replaced the top pillow I noticed something—it was liberally strewn with long, dark hairs.

“She doesn’t seem to be too bad, does she?” There was relief in Emily’s voice as we left the Hochstetter mansion. “I was so worried that we’d find her dying or dead like Fanny.”

“Yes, I know you were.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “So now perhaps we can put Dorcas’s illness down to coincidence and Fanny’s death down to pneumonia following the flu, and I can get on with solving your own little mystery.”

She smiled prettily. “Why, of course. What do you plan to do next?”

“Go to Massachusetts to the place where your Aunt Lydia was born,” I said. “If the family comes from around there, then someone will know something—a childhood playmate or an old servant. Someone always remembers.”

“I hope so,” Emily said. “I can’t tell you how painful it was to walk past my old home just then, even though it holds no particularly happy memories for me. But it did remind me that I now have no place to call my own, and it’s a distressing feeling.”

“I feel rather the same,” I said. “I had to flee from Ireland and can no longer go back there, so I, too, have no home.”

“But a family—you still have a family, don’t you?”

“I lost my father and my oldest brother. I still have two brothers alive. One is in exile with the Republican Brotherhood in France and the other has been taken in by a kind family. So I don’t know if or when I’ll ever see them again.”

“Oh Molly, I’m so sorry. You must miss them terribly.”

“Actually I found them annoying and ungrateful when I had to look after them, but it seems to be true about absence making the heart grow fonder.”

I looked at Emily and we shared a smile.

“I am concerned about my youngest brother, Malachy,” I said. “I don’t like the thought of his being raised by strangers, but I don’t quite know what to do about it. When I’m settled I would like to see if I can bring him to America, but I don’t know if he’d even want to come.”

Emily took my hand. “So we are both alone in the world. Then let us be sisters, linked with a common bond. I recognized you as a kindred spirit the moment I saw you in that parade.”

We parted company as she went across the park to the Upper West Side and I took the Third Avenue El to Grand Central Terminal to inquire about trains to Williamstown. I booked a ticket for early the next morning and started home to prepare for the journey. I was just crossing Greenwich Avenue toward Patchin Place when I heard the thunder of approaching horses’ hooves. A woman’s voice screamed, “Lookout!” I turned to see a carriage bearing down on me at great speed.

“Holy mother of—” I exclaimed. The vehicle showed no sign of slowing. I flung myself aside, tripped at the gutter, and would have gone sprawling had not passersby grabbed me and hauled me onto the sidewalk as the carriage passed, mud flying up from the hooves and wheels. I got an impression of a black, enclosed carriage of the type often seen around town, owned by the smarter families. From what I saw the driver was all in black, wearing no particular livery by which I could later identify him. But in truth the whole thing was a blur and my heart was beating so fast that it was all I could do to stand there, gasping for breath.