on her, though. She used those peppermints, and they fooled most people, I suppose, but not those of us who knew.”
“And who else knew?” Because, Sarah realized, only someone who knew about the flask would have thought to poison it.
Mrs. Spratt-Williams stiffened at the question, offended in some way Sarah certainly hadn’t intended. “I thought you said everyone knew.”
Lying always got her in trouble. “I was guessing. As far as I know, only one other person knew.”
“Poor Vivian. She’d be mortified to know people were talking about her this way. What difference could that possibly make now anyway?”
Malloy would be furious, but Sarah knew instinctively that she must tell Mrs. Spratt-Williams the truth if she hoped to get any more useful information out of her. “Because Mrs. Van Orner didn’t die of shock or apoplexy or heart failure. She was poisoned.”
“Poisoned!” The hand Mrs. Spratt-Williams lifted to her heart trembled. “How on earth could she have been poisoned?”
“Someone put the poison in her flask, and when she got into her carriage, she took a drink from it, as she often did when she was upset. By the time she arrived home, she was dead.”
Mrs. Spratt-Williams went white to her lips and her eyes rolled back in her head. Sarah was beside her at once, chaffing her wrists and lightly slapping her cheeks to keep her from losing consciousness.
“Some . . . brandy . . .” the poor woman managed, indicting a sideboard.
Sarah hurried over, found the right bottle, and poured her a medicinal dose. She held the glass to Mrs. Spratt-Williams’s lips, and after a few sips and a round of coughing, the woman no longer looked as if she was going to faint.
“I’m very sorry,” Sarah said. “I shouldn’t have been so blunt, but we need your help if we’re going to find out who killed Mrs. Van Orner.”
This only distressed her more. “Who is this ‘we’ you’re talking about?”
“The police. They’re investigating. I’ve helped them before, and we thought it would be more acceptable to you to answer questions from me than from them.”
“It may be more acceptable, but I can hardly imagine it being any more
“But you can see how important it is to find out who knew about Mrs. Van Orner’s flask. Only someone who did could have killed her.”
Mrs. Spratt-Williams considered this very carefully, leaning back in her chair and watching Sarah closely as she thought it over. Finally, she said, “It was a well-guarded secret, as you can imagine. Only two others knew of it—her husband and Tamar Yingling.”
9
FRANK WAITED A FEW MINUTES LONGER AT THE COFFEE shop before heading out to visit the two gentlemen. The police didn’t have to worry about formal visiting times, and he thought the closer to dinner he arrived, the more likely he was to find them at home. From Sarah’s description, they sounded as if they didn’t need to work, but they might have other reasons to be out of the house during the day.
He went to Mr. Quimby’s first. He lived in one of those apartment buildings on Marble Row, a section of Fifth Avenue where all the buildings were fronted with marble. The doorman didn’t want a policeman to enter the building, so Frank had to threaten to come back with a gang of uniformed cops to search the place. After that, the doorman decided Mr. Quimby would be happy to see Frank.
Mr. Quimby had not been consulted, however, and he was actually somewhat less than happy.
“I can’t imagine why the police are involved in this. Does Mr. Van Orner know you’re questioning his wife’s friends?”
They were sitting in a large room with twelve-foot ceilings. Windows stretched up two walls, giving a magnificent view of the city in all its tawdry beauty. The furnishings were heavy and masculine, mostly leather and brass in shades of brown and gold. Frank determined from this that Quimby was a bachelor. He wondered idly if Quimby had ever used a prostitute. He decided not to ask.
“Mr. Van Orner has asked me to investigate his wife’s death,” Frank said, surprising Quimby. “He believes foul play might be involved.”
“Foul play! Miss Yingling’s note gave no indication of any such thing.”
“Did you think a perfectly healthy woman just dropped over dead for no reason?” Frank asked curiously.
Quimby found the question offensive. He was the sort of man who was easily offended, dignified and quietly respectable, well-groomed and well-mannered. “Of course not. I assumed she had taken ill or that she’d had some sort of attack.”
“She died in her carriage on the way home from the rescue house yesterday.”
“Then Miss Yingling will know what happened.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they were always together. Vivian never went anywhere without that girl. I always said I thought she knew more about Vivian’s business than Vivian did.”
“Miss Yingling wasn’t with her.”
“She wasn’t? That’s odd. Where was Mrs. Van Orner going?”
“Home, I understand.”
“Then that doesn’t make any sense at all. Miss Yingling lived with the Van Orners. Why wouldn’t she have gone home with Vivian?”
“Miss Yingling said Mrs. Van Orner was upset and left without her.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That Mrs. Van Orner would leave without her?”
“No, that Mrs. Van Orner would be upset. I’ve known her for ten years, and I’ve never seen her anything other than completely calm and in control of her emotions.”
“She’d had a conversation with that woman Amy, the one with the baby that you rescued a few weeks ago, and another with Mrs. Spratt-Williams. Can you think of anything she might have talked to them about that would have upset her?”
“Of course not. Well, I can’t actually speak for the girl, I’m afraid. I only saw her very briefly the day we rescued her from that house where she worked. I haven’t seen her since, although Mrs. Spratt-Williams mentioned the other day when I saw her at church that she wasn’t doing very well. Many of them don’t, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Frank said. “Why is that?”
“I’ve never understood it myself,” he admitted. “You’d think they’d be so glad to be freed from their horrible bondage that they’d be grateful for whatever they received. Not all of them are, though. They don’t like wearing cast-off clothes, and they get bored with the simple pleasures of ordinary life. Some of them are addicted to drink or opiates, and they get surly when we don’t allow them to indulge anymore. But the worst trouble comes when we tell them they must find a job and learn to support themselves.”
“Are they lazy?”
“Oh, no, it’s not that. They just can’t be satisfied with the frugal lives they must lead. Jobs for women don’t pay very well, I’m afraid. Most employers assume the girls live with their families and are just helping out until they find husbands. As soon as they marry, they have to quit their jobs and make room for the next batch of girls. No one expects them to support themselves on what they can earn in a factory, but these girls have to.”
“I see. That would be discouraging.”
“You have no idea. The work is hard, too, which is another deterrent. After a few months, many of the girls are back on the street, trying to supplement their meager incomes. Word always gets back to their employers, and they lose the factory job, and then . . . Well, they must go back to their old lives or starve. I don’t know what the answer is.”
“Better-paying jobs for women would help,” Frank said.
Quimby must not have heard him. “So you see, Vivian was used to the girls at the house complaining. She
