notice if my cup was still full when I left.”
“I think she would’ve noticed.”
“Actually, she was so insistent, I had to tell her. She got very upset. That’s how we ended up on the floor.”
Malloy ran a hand over his face. “How does this keep happening?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He turned to the door. “Mrs. Spratt-Williams, you need to open the door, or I’m going to have to kick it in.”
At Sarah’s surprise, he shrugged, “It frightened the maid. I thought it might scare her into opening it.”
But it didn’t, and they had to wait until the maid came running back with a large ring of keys. After some fumbling, she found the right one and handed the ring to Malloy. He unlocked the door and shoved it open.
Malloy went first, and Sarah followed, leaving the maid out in the hallway, wringing her hands. Mrs. Spratt- Williams lay on her chaise. She turned her head to look at them when they entered the room but made no other move.
“I’m going to have to take you down to Police Headquarters,” he told her.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said, her voice flat and defeated. “By the time you get me there, I’ll be dead.”
Sarah pushed past Malloy and went to her. Three empty bottles of laudanum sat on the table beside the chaise. “Did you drink all of this?”
“Yes, three times as much as I gave Vivian and Amy and . . . and you. I’ll be asleep in a few more moments, I think.”
“Call a doctor,” Malloy shouted at the maid. She darted away.
“I’ll probably be dead before he gets here,” she said calmly. She looked up at Sarah. “I thought I wanted to live. I thought if Harold were dead, people would forget what he’d done and everything would be like it was before. He was the first, you know. I think he was glad to go, though. He was so miserable. But people didn’t forget, and they didn’t forgive. Even though I was completely innocent, they kept punishing me.” Tears flooded her eyes, but Sarah couldn’t feel sorry for her.
Malloy shook his head in wonder. “Did you really kill Mrs. Van Orner just because she was going to tell the COS you gave them false names?”
“I couldn’t let her take away my last remaining purpose for living,” she said. Her eyes were growing heavy, her speech slurred.
“And Amy was going to blackmail you,” Sarah said, watching her eyes close. “And she was afraid I would figure out what she’d done and tell the COS myself,” she added to Malloy.
Malloy stared down at the sleeping woman in dismay. “Shouldn’t you do something for her?”
“Why? So she can spend the rest of her life in prison?”
“Yes,” he said. “She killed three people, and she tried to kill you.”
This last, Sarah realized, was the real source of his outrage. Touched, she laid a hand on his arm. “I couldn’t save her, no matter what I did. She took too much.”
Mrs. Spratt-Williams was unconscious now, her breath slow and labored. Soon it would stop altogether.
“Let’s wait downstairs,” she said.
They did.
15
WHEN SARAH FINALLY GOT HOME THAT NIGHT, SHE WAS summoned to a birth. When she returned from that, she had some business to take care of, so several days passed before she had an opportunity to find out how Malloy had fared with Mr. Van Orner. He finally found her at home on Friday evening. They’d just put Catherine to bed. Sarah assumed he’d waited until late to call because she wouldn’t want the child to overhear them talking about the case.
She, Maeve, and Malloy had no more than gotten settled around the kitchen table than a knock at the back door told them Mrs. Ellsworth had noted Malloy’s arrival.
“Please excuse the lateness of the hour,” she said, breathless from her rush to get there. “I just thought I’d save Mrs. Brandt the trouble of having to tell me the whole story again tomorrow. Mr. Malloy, how very nice to see you. How is that darling little boy of yours?”
Sarah noticed that Malloy covered his mouth to hide a smile. She invited her neighbor in, hurrying to shut the door against the cold night air, and in a few minutes, everyone had been served some coffee and the cookies Mrs. Ellsworth had helped the girls bake that afternoon.
Malloy told them about Amy’s kidnapping and death at Mrs. Walker’s house, then Sarah told them about her visit to Mrs. Spratt-Williams’s house.
“Good heavens,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “I can’t believe a woman like that could just start killing people for no good reason.”
“Oh, she thought her reasons were very good,” Sarah said. “I think she probably convinced herself that her husband was better off dead since his reputation had been ruined.”
“She was better off with him dead, too,” Malloy said. “Or at least she thought she’d be.”
“But people still remembered what he’d done,” Maeve concluded. “People are like that.”
“Yes, they are,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “But Mrs. Van Orner wasn’t. She’d remained faithful to her old friend in spite of everything.”
Sarah shook her head in dismay. “The trouble with friendships like that, where one person is indebted to the other, is that the person who is indebted gets very tired of being grateful.”
“Especially if she didn’t feel like she did anything wrong in the first place,” Maeve said.
“And Mrs. Spratt-Williams didn’t. She thought it was unfair for people to punish her for what her husband had done.”
Maeve nodded. “And then she saw a chance to make it up to Amy for what her husband had done to her family, and Mrs. Van Orner wouldn’t let her.”
Mrs. Ellsworth sniffed. “I can’t blame Mrs. Van Orner for not wanting to help her husband’s mistress.”
“But it was mean of her to punish Mrs. Spratt-Williams by reporting what she’d done with the names,” Maeve argued.
“I have to agree with Maeve,” Sarah said. “I think I would’ve sent them false names, too. I even told Mrs. Spratt-Williams I agreed with her, but I don’t think she believed me.”
“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me, Mrs. Brandt,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “I don’t understand why she tried to poison you.”
“I’ve been trying to remember exactly how the conversation went that day. I think she must have been testing me, trying to find out what I knew and what I remembered. She didn’t pour the tea until she was satisfied that I knew enough to be a danger to her.”
“How did she manage to get the poison into your cup, though?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked.
“I remember thinking it odd that she had three of everything on the tray—three cups, three saucers, three spoons. I think she must have told the maid to set the tray for three people so she’d have an extra cup. The cups were stacked, and apparently, she’d put the laudanum in the bottom cup. I think—and this is only my guess—that if I’d satisfied her that I didn’t know anything about her fight with Mrs. Van Orner, she would have poured my tea into the middle cup and saved the poison for . . . for whatever else she needed.”
“But you didn’t,” Malloy said, not at all happy. “You had to tell her the truth.”
“I didn’t know she was the killer,” she protested.
“At least you didn’t drink the poison,” Maeve reminded her. “But why not?”
“Just luck or perhaps divine providence. All I know is that the tea tasted awful. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying I didn’t like it, so I just pretended to drink.”
“God forbid you should hurt her feelings,” Malloy grumbled.
“She got off too easy,” Maeve said.
“Do you think dying was too easy?” Sarah asked.
