had formed for conversational purposes and looking for the Fitzgeralds. To her alarm, she found her quarry engaged in conversation with Calvin Brown!
Or at least Mrs. Fitzgerald was. Her husband was merely standing by, glaring in disapproval. Sarah slowly made her way through the crush of the crowd to the comer where they were standing.
“I knew you must be some relation to Dr. Blackwell,” Mrs. Fitzgerald was saying. “The resemblance is striking. How long have you been in the city?”
“A week or so,” Calvin mumbled, plainly awed by people of their social status and unsure whether to answer their questions or not.
“You must have been impressed to find your father living in such a grand house,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “Which room have you been staying in?”
“I… I ain’t been staying here,” he said, looking more and more uncomfortable.
Sarah excused herself and elbowed her way around the last person separating her from them.
“You weren’t staying with your father? Where on earth have you been staying, then?” Mrs. Fitzgerald asked, a little shocked.
“A lodging house on Essex Street,” he said.
“And Edmund allowed that?” Mrs. Fitzgerald couldn’t believe such a thing.
At last Sarah was close enough to intervene. “Calvin, there you are,” she said with a smile.
The look he gave her showed desperation. She offered him hope.
“I believe Mr. Malloy was looking for you,” she said, gesturing vaguely toward the dining-room door.
“Thank you, ma’ am,” he said, and made his escape with unseemly haste.
“Hello,” Sarah said to Mrs. Fitzgerald when he was safely away. “It was a lovely service, wasn’t it?”
Mrs. Fitzgerald looked surprised and a little annoyed that Sarah had sent the boy away, but she was too well- bred to be rude. “Oh, yes. I do wish they’d had a minister, though. It doesn’t seem like a funeral without a minister.” Sarah noticed that her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot and her nose was red on the tip, as if she’d cried quite a bit today.
“I know,” Sarah replied. “I wondered at that myself. Perhaps Dr. Blackwell didn’t hold with organized religion.”
As she’d hoped, Mr. Fitzgerald finally started drifting away, bored by what promised to be nothing more than female chitchat and looking for something more interesting to amuse himself.
“Oh, Dr. Blackwell was a deeply spiritual man, I know,” Mrs. Fitzgerald assured Sarah, apparently not caring where her husband went.
“I’m sure he was,” Sarah replied. “Were you one of his patients?”
“Yes, although he didn’t like to call us that. He preferred to call us clients. You see, he treated more than aches and pains. He wasn’t like an ordinary physician at all. Didn’t you know the doctor?” she asked, suddenly growing suspicious.
“Not very well,” Sarah said, stretching the truth a bit. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Blackwell’s, and I felt it was my duty to attend the service, since she couldn’t.”
“I see,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, suddenly cold. Sarah wondered if it was the mention of Mrs. Blackwell or the fact that she, Sarah, didn’t know the doctor that the woman had found offensive. The first was the far more intriguing possibility, but Sarah didn’t want to waste precious time finding out. She decided to win Mrs. Fitzgerald back immediately.
“My name is Sarah Brandt. My father is Felix Decker,” she said, knowing both that it would gain her instant respect with Mrs. Fitzgerald and how annoyed her father would be to have his name used to gather clues in a murder investigation. Fortunately, he would most likely never learn of it.
The Decker name had the desired effect on Mrs. Fitzgerald. The Deckers were one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city. Mrs. Fitzgerald need not know that Sarah had long ago turned her back on their way of life to become a common midwife.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Brandt,” the woman said, so obviously impressed at meeting her that Sarah was almost ashamed. Almost. “I’m Martha Fitzgerald. That’s my husband, Clarence,” she added, gesturing vaguely to where Clarence had formerly stood.
“Could you tell me more about Dr. Blackwell’s form of treatment and how it worked? I’m fascinated by what I’ve heard, but I can hardly credit the successes that are attributed to him.”
“You may believe whatever you have heard, Mrs. Brandt. Dr. Blackwell could perform veritable miracles. Surely you know what he was able to do for his own wife.”
“Yes, Letitia shared with me how he cured her, but I can’t help believing that was some sort of fluke. Perhaps she was ready to get well and would have recovered without any treatment at all.”
“I’m sure I can’t speak for Mrs. Blackwell’s case,” she said with just a hint of disapproval, “but I know about my own. I had suffered for many years and was growing worse. I had such pain I could sometimes hardly move from my bed. Most days I couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time. Some of the physicians who had treated me had the nerve to hint that my suffering was imaginary! Can you believe it?”
“Unfortunately I can,” Sarah said, knowing that many people’s pain and suffering were brought on by their own determination to be miserable. She didn’t dare suggest that she also believed this to be true of her companion, however, not if she wanted to hear what Mrs. Fitzgerald had to say.
“I think I would know the difference between real pain and imaginary pain, don’t you?” she asked indignantly.
“Absolutely,” Sarah agreed, less than truthfully.
“In any case, Dr. Blackwell took my case very seriously. He spent a long time discussing it with me, determining when the pain had started and exactly when and how often it occurred. None of the other doctors had cared to even ask such questions!”
Sarah was beginning to understand some of Blackwell’s appeal. He took time to listen to his patients. Or rather, his clients. And, most likely, to humor them as well. This must have been a form of therapy in and of itself. Remembering Dr. Blackwell’s tender care was bringing fresh tears to Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes.
“He sounds like a wonderful man,” Sarah tried.
“Oh, he was!” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “And so gentle…” She quickly pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her cheeks.
“I’m sure he would be touched by your grief,” Sarah went on. “You must have been very grateful to him. I couldn’t help overhearing your husband say that he owns this house and allowed Dr. Blackwell to live here rent- free.”
“Well, actually,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper and glancing around to see if anyone was listening,
She let Sarah guess the rest. It wasn’t difficult. Her only real question was why Mr. Fitzgerald had allowed it. Perhaps he hadn’t known until Blackwell died. “That was extremely generous of you. Dr. Blackwell must have been remarkably talented. Could you explain to me exactly what he did in his treatments that was different from other physicians? I can’t seem to understand it.”
“Oh, my, I can’t understand it either. In fact, I hardly remember most of it myself. The doctor speaks to you until you drift into a sort of sleep. Then he does things that feel absolutely wonderful, and when you come back to yourself, you feel like a new person. The pain is gone, and you can forget you ever had it!”
“Oh,” was all Sarah could think to say. Mrs. Fitzgerald was hardly enlightening, but Sarah had learned something valuable just the same: the true secret to Blackwell’s success! She couldn’t let on how excited she was without alarming Mrs. Fitzgerald, though. She had to change the subject. “Would your husband really put poor Letitia and the baby out at the end of the month?”
Mrs. Fitzgerald blinked in surprise at the abruptness of the topic change, and then her expression hardened. She didn’t like discussing Letitia. “Well, we’d heard nothing about a baby, of course,” she said, not quite answering the question. “Dear heavens, when did she have it?”
“The morning after Dr. Blackwell was killed.”
“I see. The shock must have brought it on, I suppose. I know I was prostrate myself when I heard the news. And then to learn today that Dr. Blackwell had not one but two sons! I had no idea he had been married before,
