Apparently, the schoolmaster had to carry her home and face her father. It must have been an ugly scene, especially with Letitia hurt the way she was.”
“What happened to the schoolmaster?”
“He was let go and no one saw him again. Mr. Symington probably had him fired and banished from the area, as any good father would do. In any case, he was long gone when Letitia finally met Dr. Blackwell.”
“Any possibility he got more than banished?” Malloy asked.
Sarah blinked at him in surprise. “You mean killed?”
“You told me once that men like Symington aren’t above doing something like that, and he did practically ruin Symington’s daughter. Eloping with her was bad enough, but he nearly crippled her for life, too.”
“I have no idea, but we could try to find out,” she mused, then realized, “That would make Symington a definite suspect in Blackwell’s death, wouldn’t it? If he already had a history of killing men who harmed his daughter in some way.”
“It’s something to think about,” Malloy allowed. “Anyway, so the schoolmaster, dead or alive, was out of the way when the good doctor shows up, and she turns her attentions to him instead.”
“Not exactly,” Sarah said. “From what I understand, Blackwell was quite a devil with the ladies, and Letitia certainly may have found him attractive. You know that she was speaking at his lectures, even though she was terrified of public speaking. That’s why she started taking the morphine again. She injects it, did I tell you that?”
“Injects it? With what?”
“A syringe.”
“She does that to herself?” he asked, horrified.
“People can do amazing things when the need is great enough,” she said. “I understand that injecting it increases the drug’s potency. She’s very badly addicted.”
Malloy grunted. Plainly, he had little sympathy for people who needed sedatives to cope with life. “All right, so she was speaking at the lectures and didn’t want to. How did that lead to them getting married?”
“When Letitia said she didn’t want to do the lectures anymore, Blackwell suddenly developed a passion for her. He began to pay her court.”
“What did her father think about this? If he didn’t want her running off with a schoolmaster, I can’t believe he’d be any happier to have some quack doctor for a son-in-law either.”
“Symington didn’t think Blackwell was a quack,” she reminded him. “He respected him and was grateful for all he’d done for Letitia. And Letitia wasn’t an innocent young girl, either. If people found out about her elopement, she would’ve been ruined, and she wouldn’t have had any chance to make a suitable marriage. If the schoolmaster had actually deflowered her, her chances were even worse.”
“So her father was glad to get her safely married to anybody at all, even a poor quack doctor,” Malloy said.
“I don’t think it was quite that bad. He must have been genuinely impressed with Blackwell if he allowed his daughter to marry him-no matter what the circumstances. He also spoke at Blackwell’s lectures, too, when Letitia couldn’t because of her pregnancy, which proves he believed in the man. Or at least that he didn’t disapprove.”
Malloy took another bite of her pot roast. He seemed to be enjoying it, although he didn’t say anything. “All right, so Letitia had a lover. What does he have to do with Blackwell’s murder?”
“I haven’t gotten to that part yet,” she assured him. “I told you Blackwell courted Letitia. He must have been very charming, and Letitia would have been vulnerable. She’d had the broken romance with the schoolmaster, and she’d been an invalid for a long time, probably thinking she’d never marry at all. Then Blackwell apparently falls madly in love with her and begs for her hand in marriage.”
“Sounds like a Sunday matinee,” Malloy remarked, frowning with distaste.
“Exactly,” she said. “She would have been flattered, but it appears that Blackwell’s sudden affection for her was all a ploy. She wanted to stop doing his lectures, but he needed her. If they were married, he’d have her in his power, and she’d have to keep appearing at them whether she wanted to or not.”
“Then you don’t think Blackwell cared for her?”
“He wasn’t in love with her, certainly,” she said. “In fact, as soon as they were married, he stopped paying attention to her at all. According to her maid, Letitia was extremely unhappy because her husband neglected her so badly.”
“If what Mrs. Ellsworth said about him was true, he was probably too busy with all his other lady friends,” Malloy said.
“That’s certainly possible, and if the grief expressed at his memorial service was any indication, it’s true,” she said.
Malloy mulled this over for a bit as he finished off his pot roast. “So Blackwell had an unhappy wife who used morphine. There’s still one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“I already asked you if you thought she was the kind of woman who could put a bullet in her husband’s brain, and you said no. Did you change your mind?”
“Well, no, but-”
“Now, if you told me that she had a lover after she got married, we might have something. They both would have a reason for getting rid of her husband, then, and the lover could’ve taken care of the nasty business of actually killing him. Any chance of that?”
It was Sarah’s turn to consider. “An unhappy woman is easy prey to seduction,” she mused. “Letitia had already been the victim of such a seduction twice, too, once with the schoolmaster and once with Blackwell. And she did go out every afternoon, supposedly visiting.”
“You think she was meeting a lover?” Malloy asked with interest.
Sarah frowned. “No, I think she went to an opium den.”
“Good God,” Malloy swore.
“Don’t be so shocked. Upper-class women go to them all the time. It’s the worst-kept secret in the city. Surely you already knew that.”
“I never gave it much thought,” he admitted. “I don’t have a lot of dealings with upper-class women. Or at least I didn’t used to.”
He was referring, of course, to the recent crimes they had solved together that had given him more contact than he’d wanted with such women.
“Well, it’s true,” Sarah said. “They veil themselves so no one will recognize them, but their clothing gives them away. Only wealthy women can dress so well.”
“All right, maybe Mrs. Blackwell met her lover at the opium den. Do you know which one she went to?”
“No, and I doubt she’d be willing to betray the place to me. She did mention a Mr. Fong, though. It sounded as if he was the one who sold her the morphine.”
“A Chinese?” Malloy’s interest was piqued again. “Does her baby look Chinese?”
“Malloy, really!”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?
“Not at all. He has red hair.”
“I guess Mr. Fong is no longer a suspect, then. But if we can find a redheaded morphine user…”
“Now you’re making fun of me,” she accused.
“No, I’m just thinking that maybe Mrs. Blackwell was unhappy, but that doesn’t prove she killed her husband. Find me her redheaded lover, though, either at the opium den or someplace else, and I might change my mind.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I’ll do my best, Malloy, but probably the Symingtons just have a family history of red hair and there’s no lover at all.”
“Or maybe the Brown family does, for all we know,” Malloy agreed. “I’ll ask Calvin when I see him again.”
When they’d finished their meal and Malloy had eaten two slices of Mrs. Ellsworth’s pie, Sarah conducted him back into her office and sat him down at the battered desk that had been Tom’s.
“The files are in alphabetical order, so there’s no way to know which patients he’d been working with most recently without going through each one. I’m sorry,” she said, laying a pile of folders in front of him.
