“Of course! That’s why we…”
“Why you what?” Sarah asked when she hesitated.
“I couldn’t risk Edmund finding out, and it was the only place we could meet without being seen,” she said defensively.
“And where was that?”
“The… Mr. Fong’s establishment,” she admitted reluctantly.
“An opium den?” Sarah asked in surprise.
“They’re very discreet,” Letitia insisted.
“I’m sure they are,” Sarah said.
“After that…” Letitia began, but her voice broke again.
“I know you must have been very lonely and unhappy,” Sarah said, remembering what the nurse had told her. “I understand that Dr. Blackwell was very busy and was hardly ever at home.”
“It wasn’t that. He just never loved me,” she informed Sarah indignantly. “Not at all! He only married me so that I would have to keep speaking at his lectures.”
“He told you that?” Sarah asked in surprise.
“Not in so many words, but I’m not completely stupid. It was obvious. He never even… after the first few months he didn’t… I had my own room, you see, and he didn’t ever come to visit me…”
“I understand,” Sarah said, trying to imagine how a man could neglect a wife as lovely as Letitia. And there was one other thing she didn’t understand. “If that was the case, wasn’t he the least bit suspicious when he found out you were with child?”
Her face twisted with a grief Sarah could only imagine. “That’s what proves how little he cared for me! I was so frightened for him to find out. I was certain he would know the truth and that he would throw me out of the house in disgrace. But he didn’t even suspect! He had no idea how long it had been since he’d shared my bed or that he couldn’t possibly be the baby’s father. He was only annoyed because my condition would make it impossible for me to appear at the lectures for several months. That was the worst part of all! He never even dreamed I’d been unfaithful to him!”
Sarah found herself sympathizing with Letitia a little, although she knew many women who had far more unhappy lives and who still didn’t feel the need for either morphine or adultery to escape them. Sympathy would get her more information, however, so she allowed herself to feel it.
“Were you just going to allow Dr. Blackwell to believe the baby was his and go on as you had been, seeing Dudley secretly?” she asked doubtfully.
“I didn’t know what else to do!” she wailed, dissolving in tears again. “I was afraid Edmund wouldn’t divorce me. He still wanted me to speak at the lectures, and if he knew I wanted to leave him… Well, if we’d divorced, he could have kept the baby, even though he wasn’t the father. Or at least he would have used that threat to keep me from leaving him. I know he would, just to punish me and force me to do what he wanted.”
Sarah was very much afraid he might have. The law certainly allowed him to. A woman could be divorced and put out in the street, with nothing but the clothes on her back, and never allowed to see her children again. At the very least, Blackwell could have used the child as leverage to keep Letitia in line. He believed he needed her to promote his cures, and he wouldn’t have let her go easily.
Letitia was sobbing again, and Sarah didn’t have the heart to press her any further. She’d already learned what she needed to know anyway.
When the sobs died down to sniffles, Sarah asked, “Would you like me to call your maid?”
“No, I… Let me get myself under control first,” she said, dabbing at the last vestiges of her tears. “Oh, Mrs. Brandt, what am I going to do now?”
“Well, as you pointed out, you are no longer a married woman. You are free to do whatever you wish, and if you wish to marry Dudley, there is nothing to stop you.”
“But my father would never allow-”
“Your father really has no control over you anymore,” Sarah reminded her.
“But Peter is practically penniless,” she pointed out. “How could we live?”
Plainly, Letitia had grown more practical with the passage of time. She probably hadn’t even considered this the first time she’d eloped with Dudley. “I’m sure Dr. Blackwell must have left you some money,” Sarah said, managing to conceal her disapproval. How could Letitia even think about money? But perhaps she was only being critical of Letitia because she herself had turned her back on wealth and social position to marry a “penniless” doctor.
Clearly, Letitia hadn’t thought of having a possible legacy. “Of course! And there’s this house, too. I never liked it, and Peter and I won’t need anything so grand, in any case. I could sell it and buy something smaller.”
Sarah bit her tongue. No one had yet told Letitia that the house had merely been a loan from a grateful patient, a patient whose husband wanted the widow to vacate the property immediately. “You don’t need to make any decisions just yet,” Sarah said. “I believe Mr. Potter has been taking care of your husband’s business affairs. I’m sure he can tell you exactly what your situation is.” Better he than I, she added silently.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Potter is very capable,” Letitia recalled, and Sarah was glad Potter couldn’t see the indifference in her eyes when she spoke of him. “He’ll take care of everything, I’m sure. He always does.”
And meanwhile, Sarah would make sure Malloy took care of questioning Peter Dudley to find out if he had an alibi for the afternoon when Dr. Blackwell was murdered.
WHEN SARAH TURNED down Bank Street, she could see Mrs. Ellsworth sweeping her front stoop. She called out a greeting when she was close enough, and Mrs. Ellsworth pretended to be surprised to see her.
“Hello, Mrs. Brandt! Have you been delivering a baby?”
“Not today,” Sarah replied with a smile.
“That’s good,” she said as Sarah stopped beside her porch. “I dropped my scissors this morning, and they landed point down and stuck in the floor!”
“That’s too bad,” Sarah said. “I hope it didn’t leave a bad mark.”
“Oh, my, that’s the least of it! Don’t you know that when scissors stick in the floor, it’s an omen of death? Dear me, the last time I had an omen like that, some poor girl you knew died.”
Sarah remembered and shivered. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence,” she said, as much to convince herself as to reassure Mrs. Ellsworth. “In a city this size, people die every day, you know.”
“That’s true, of course,” Mrs. Ellsworth agreed. “And I’m always happy to be wrong about something like that. Are you and Mr. Malloy working on another case together? I saw him coming to visit you last night.”
“Yes, and he enjoyed your pie very much,” Sarah told her. “Actually, he’s trying to find out who killed my husband.”
“Is he?” she exclaimed, excitement lighting her wrinkled face. “Does he have new evidence?”
“I’m afraid not, but he’s looking through Tom’s old files to see if he can find someone who might have been angry with Tom or had a reason to want him out of the way.”
“I’m sure he won’t find anything like that,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “Dr. Brandt was such a fine man. How could anyone not wish him well?”
“That’s nice of you to say,” Sarah said, but she couldn’t help thinking that while Tom truly had been a fine man, he was also dead, and someone had killed him. It might have been a random act of violence. Such things happened in the city frequently. But if it was, then there was little possibility anyone would ever be brought to account for the crime. Sarah didn’t like to think herself vindictive, but she wanted someone to pay for having ended her husband’s life.
“That reminds me, did you see that article in the Sunday magazine?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked. “The one about that new photography called X ray? It made me wonder what Dr. Tom would have thought of such a thing.”
“Yes, I saw it. I’ve heard about it, too. I suppose it would be very helpful to be able to see inside someone’s body.” She thought about Brian Malloy’s foot and wondered what an X-ray photograph of it would show.