“She told me he searched her rooms,” Sarah remembered, “so she couldn’t keep any in the house. That’s why she had to go to the opium den.”
“She was worried about the baby,” he said.
“She had a right to be. Her baby could have died,” Sarah said, feeling the outrage all over again.
“No, not that. Mr. Fong said the baby would be fine. She was afraid… when the baby came…” His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes again. The morphine had begun its work.
Sarah stood there a moment, watching him to make sure he wouldn’t awaken again while she tried to think of what else Letitia might have been afraid. When the baby came, he’d said. What more could she have feared? Dying in childbirth? It was an understandable fear. Or maybe she was afraid that Blackwell would realize he wasn’t the baby’s father.
Sarah heard footsteps in the hallway. Someone was moving quietly toward Dudley’s room, but no one could move silently in this house because of the squeaky boards in the old flooring. It must be Malloy, at last, and she could show him what she’d found. She’d just set the bottle of morphine on the bureau as the door opened.
But her visitor wasn’t Frank Malloy.
Amos Potter stared back at her, even more surprised than she.
“What the…?” he began, and then he saw Dudley lying on the bed. “He’s not dead!” he cried. He turned on Sarah, furious. “Malloy lied! He’s still alive!”
“No thanks to you,” Sarah said. “I found your key, the one from your watch fob. You must have lost it in the struggle.” The one she’d seen him fiddling with time and again.
“Where is it? Give it to me!” He started looking around frantically, and Sarah instinctively felt her pocket where she’d put it for safekeeping.
Seeing the gesture, he lunged for her, but she was too quick for him, knocking over the chair as she dodged. He stumbled over it but managed to catch her arm.
“It’s too late!” she cried, struggling to break free. “Malloy already knows!”
“No, he doesn’st! He has no idea, or he never would’ve let me go tonight!” He caught her other wrist, and for a moment they grappled, Sarah scratching and clawing, Potter trying to reach the pocket of her skirt where she’d hidden the Phi Beta Kappa key.
Finally, it occurred to her to scream, so she did, as loudly as she could.
Potter started, but she’d only distracted him for a moment. He released one of her hands and grabbed for her pocket, but she drew back her free hand and boxed his ear. The pain, she knew from her medical training, was excruciating and could even cause deafness. Potter howled, flinching and releasing her other hand in reaction.
This time she lurched for the door, wondering vaguely why no one had yet come to her rescue. She’d taken only one step, however, when she came up short. Potter had grabbed her skirt. She heard the stitches at her waistband starting to pop. In another moment the fabric would give, but he might well overpower her before that. Then she saw the broom leaning against the wall where she’d left it. With one burst of strength, she threw herself at it. She felt her skirt giving at the waist and heard the rending of the fabric, and then her hands were on the broom.
Taking no time to think or to aim, she simply swung it as hard and as fast as she could. The wooden handle struck solid flesh, and Potter grunted, but he was on her again, too close for swinging. Almost without thinking, she drew the broom handle back and lunged toward Potter as he lunged toward her, meeting him with the handle aimed squarely at his midsection.
His gasp told her she had struck home. He went down in a heap, his face working furiously as he struggled, in vain, for breath. She only had a moment, she knew, so she gave him one more whack on the side of the head, just for good measure. If he was stunned, she’d have a bit of extra time.
As Potter lay poleaxed in a heap on the floor, Sarah snatched up her medical bag and dug down for a roll of bandages. In a matter of moments she’d tied Potter’s hands behind his back, and by the time he finally succeeded in drawing a full breath, she was binding his ankles just as securely.
“You… tried… to kill… me!” he said breathlessly.
“That’s funny coming from someone who’s killed two men and tried to kill a third,” Sarah said, using her considerable skill at bandaging to make sure Amos Potter wouldn’t be able to work himself free before Malloy turned up. “I only knocked the wind out of you. There’s a place right here,” she said, giving him a playful punch that made him whimper. “It’s called the solar plexus. It drives the breath right out of you. You think you’re dying, but you aren’t really hurt at all.”
“I didn’t kill… two men…” he gasped.
“You’re wasting your time, Mr. Potter,” Sarah told him cheerfully. “It’s plain as day. You killed Dr. Blackwell for heaven only knows what reason, probably something to do with his wife, and then you tried to convince Mr. Malloy that young Calvin had done it and killed himself out of remorse. Except you botched the suicide note-”
“But Malloy didn’t find the note!” he exclaimed.
Sarah smiled. “Malloy said only the killer would know about the note,” she told him triumphantly.
Potter moaned, but whether from pain or despair, Sarah couldn’t tell.
“And then you tried to kill poor Dudley because you didn’t want Letitia marrying him after you’d gone to so much trouble to make sure she was free,” Sarah concluded.
“You’re wrong,” Potter warned her. “About everything. You’ll never prove a thing.”
Sarah didn’t bother to reply. She got to her feet and tried to examine the damage to her skirt. “I’m going to have to send you my dressmaker’s bill, Mr. Potter,” she said as she tucked the damaged garment up as best she could. “You’ve seriously damaged my gown.”
This time he didn’t reply, although his glare was rather eloquent.
She righted the chair and sat down to wait for Malloy. She knew they wouldn’t have to prove Potter had committed the murders. By the time Malloy was finished with him, he would gratefully confess to everything. She almost felt sorry for him until she remembered poor Calvin Brown, who had died so needlessly for another man’s stupid obsession.
Sarah listened to the silence in the house and realized that still no one had come to her aid. “Where is everyone?” she asked of no one in particular.
“They’re either out or they’re drunk,” Potter said in disgust. “How do you think I got in here without anyone seeing me?”
And how else could he have attacked Dudley without drawing any attention? she realized.
“I’m very uncomfortable,” Potter tried after a few minutes.
“It could be a lot worse. Just be glad you aren’t dying of arsenic poisoning,” she said sweetly.
After that, he didn’t say a word until Malloy finally clumped up the stairs nearly an hour later. He actually swore when he saw Potter lying trussed on the floor of the tiny room. Then he looked around before finally settling on Sarah again.
“Where’s Moran?”
“I sent him to find you.”
He seemed relieved. “So he was the one who did this,” he determined, indicating Potter lying on the floor.
“Oh, no,” Sarah assured him. “I figured out Mr. Potter was the killer, and I sent Officer Moran to find you. Then Mr. Potter came back to find his key and-”
“At least tell me Dudley helped you,” he begged.
“Mr. Dudley is hardly in any condition to exert himself,” she pointed out. “Besides, I didn’t need any help. Mr. Potter really doesn’t have much imagination as an adversary, although he did tear my skirt,” she added, remembering.
Malloy looked like he might tear something of Potter’s. “He laid hands on you?” he demanded, outraged.
“He was trying to get this away from me,” she said, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the key she had found under Dudley’s bed. “I found it when I was cleaning up. He must have lost it in the struggle with Dudley.”