“Abigail, I’m feeling faint,” Mrs. Spratt-Williams said to the maid. “Could you get me some salts?”
The maid, whose hysteria had turned to shock, nodded and fled the room.
Sarah took a breath, realizing she felt a little faint herself and sank down into a chair. For just a moment, Malloy glanced at her. In that one second of inattention, Mrs. Spratt-Williams grabbed up her skirts and ran from the room.
Malloy cursed and started after her, but she pulled the door shut behind her, costing him precious seconds. He threw the door open and bolted out after her, racing to the stairs and down, to catch her before she reached the front door.
Sarah was right behind him, and she happened to glance up as Malloy ran down and saw Mrs. Spratt-Williams’s figure disappearing down the upstairs hall.
“She’s gone upstairs!” she called to Malloy and ran after her.
Just as she reached the top of the stairs, she heard a door slam.
The maid came running up the stairs, clutching a vial of smelling salts in one hand.
“Which one is her room?” Sarah asked the girl as Malloy came bounding up the stairs behind them, taking them two at a time.
The maid pointed at one of the closed doors.
Sarah strode over and tried the handle, but it was locked. “Mrs. Spratt-Williams,” she called through the door. “It’s no use trying to hide.”
“Get out of the way,” Malloy gasped. “I’ll kick it down.”
“No!” the maid cried. “Please wait! I’ll get the key!”
She scurried away, leaving Sarah and Malloy staring at the locked door.
“Are you sure you didn’t eat or drink anything?” he asked again.
“I’m positive, except for a sip of the tea. It tasted awful, so I just pretended to drink it, figuring she’d never 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.”