In a Gilded Cage - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,55

already tugging at my arm. “Can you come with me to see Dorcas now?” she whispered. “Mr. McPherson won’t know how long this ceremony has taken, so I can probably be away for another half an hour. And Dorcas’s house is on the way.”

I no longer knew what to think. I still didn’t have Emily’s overwhelming conviction that her friend had been murdered or that Dorcas was now in grave danger. As I tried to look at it logically I could see that Anson Poindexter did have a strong motive for wanting Fanny dead. If she had divorced him, he would have lost her money and his current, very pleasant, lifestyle. But I couldn’t see why he would want to kill Dorcas, unless she had discovered something at Fanny’s house that made her suspect him. In any case, in was better to know the truth and to ease Emily’s fears. And it was a lovely bright morning and I had nothing better to do.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll come with you—or would you rather that I went alone?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Didn’t it occur to you that both Fanny and Dorcas really might have caught this horrible influenza and you might not want to expose yourself to it again? I, on the other hand, have had it.”

Emily smiled. “My dear Molly. I work in a drugstore. Every day I serve people who are coughing and sputtering all over me. If I haven’t caught anything yet, I’m not going to. Besides, Dorcas is a friend from college. I have to do everything I can to save a Vassar sister.”

So we left the cemetery together and soon found ourselves on the east side of the park.

“I see that Dorcas married well too,” I said, as we passed one impressive mansion after another, some with carriages waiting outside and liveried footmen standing beside them. Crisply starched nannies pushed baby buggies and led well-scrubbed toddlers by the hand. I wondered if one of the passing buggies contained little Toodles, Dorcas’s baby son. “But I thought she married a professor.”

“She did,” Emily agreed, “but a professor from an old New York family. So she has the best of both worlds—an intelligent husband and the money to enjoy life.” She smiled, then went on, “Now that I recall, hers was a real love match. He was a student at Columbia, and they met at a dance. And they don’t own one of these mansions—they live with her in-laws.”

As we walked I noticed Emily suddenly quicken her pace, striding out and staring straight ahead. It took me a moment to register that we were passing her old home. Maybe soon I’d be able to settle her mind with the truth about her parents. We went up the front steps of a square, gray stone house and were admitted by a butler.

“Please wait here and I shall inquire if Mrs. Hochstetter Junior is feeling well enough to receive visitors,” he said.

We waited in an impressive entrance hall decorated with shields, swords, and various strange weapons brought back from foreign parts. It seemed that the Hochstetters were a much-traveled family. At last the butler reappeared. “She would be delighted to see you. Please follow me.”

He led us up a broad central staircase and ushered us into a grand but old-fashioned bedroom, liberally decorated with knickknacks. In the midst of china statues, brass vases, artificial flowers, and a cage containing a stuffed bird, Dorcas lay, propped up on several pillows. Her eyes were sunken and she looked flushed but she held out her hand to us.

“Emily, Molly. How very kind of you to come to see me.”

“We were at Fanny’s funeral when we heard that you had also been taken ill, so we felt we had to come immediately,” Emily said.

“Poor Fanny. I wanted so badly to attend, but of course I’m too weak to go anywhere. How was it?”

“Very moving,” Emily said.

“And a beautiful setting. The trees were all in blossom.”

“I know. It’s a delightful place, isn’t it? Our family also has a plot there.”

She gave a gentle sigh.

Emily perched on the bed beside her. “So how are you? I was so worried . . .”

“Feeling a little better, thank you,” Dorcas said. “I’ve had a horrible high fever and some nasty vomiting but today I’ve actually kept some barley water down, so one can hope that I’m on the mend.”

“That is good news,” Emily said. “Is there anything you’d like? Anything we can bring you?”

“No, thank you.”