In a Gilded Cage - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,56

She lay back and sighed. “My mother-in-law looks after me so well. I have everything I need and my friends have been most kind. Bella brought me those lovely grapes and Honoria was here and gave me those daffodils you see blooming on my windowsill. So cheering, don’t you think?”

“Honoria? Fancy that. I haven’t seen her in ages. Not since she became famous, anyway. How is she?”

“Flourishing,” Dorcas said. “When I’m well again we must go and see her perform.”

“Have you had any other visitors?” Emily asked, trying to sound casual.

Dorcas frowned. “Thomas’s aunt and cousins a few days ago. That’s about it. My mother-in-law has been trying to keep visitors away so that I have peace and quiet to recuperate. She’s out at the moment or she wouldn’t have allowed you two in to my room. She can be quite a tartar when she wants to.”

“Anson Poindexter didn’t come to see you, did he?” Emily asked.

Dorcas looked up in surprise. “Anson? Why would he come to see me? I hardly know him. I’ve met him at a couple of dinner parties with Fanny, that’s all.”

“Did Bella bring you anything else beside the grapes?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.

Dorcas looked surprised again. “Bella? No, she wasn’t actually allowed up to see me but the maid brought up the grapes from her.”

I couldn’t see any way to tamper with grapes but I had to make sure. “They look absolutely delicious,” I said. “And what a luxury at this time of year.”

“Please help yourself,” she said, as I had hoped she would. I picked off a couple and managed to put them into my pocket, while pretending to eat with expressions of delight.

“Presumably the doctor has been to see you,” Emily said, with a glance in my direction.

“Of course. Every day. He’s been giving me the most horrible medicine that he says is effective against influenza, but it tastes ghastly, and frankly I don’t think it’s been helping at all. Finally I told him I couldn’t keep it down and I wasn’t going to take it anymore.”

“So he definitely thinks this is influenza, does he?” I asked.

“Well, yes.”

“Even though stomach distress is not normally part of the flu?” I asked.

She paused, considering this. “I think he was slightly puzzled, but when he heard I visited Fanny last week he said it was obvious I had picked up the same microbe that caused her illness.”

“I see,” I said. “I just wondered if you could have eaten something that disagreed with you, in addition to the flu, I mean.”

“Oh no,” she said. “I’ve hardly eaten a thing since I came down with this. I haven’t felt like food. I haven’t even touched those grapes yet. Literally barley water and a little chicken broth. That’s about it for days now. The only thing that has disagreed with me has been that disgusting influenza medicine.” She made a face. “I told him it tasted like arsenic and said was he trying to poison me.” She laughed. “He said it tasted like arsenic because it had arsenic in it and no, he wasn’t trying to poison me but to cure me.”

“I wonder if it was the same mixture we’ve been selling at the store,” Emily said.

“I wouldn’t know. I had my maid take it away,” Dorcas said.

“I’m afraid I have to get back to work,” Emily said. “My boss will make a frightful stink if I take too long. I had to really plead with him to go to the funeral in the first place.”

“It must be so hard for you to work for such a man,” Dorcas said. “I advise getting married as soon as possible and letting your husband face the outside world. I can truthfully say that with Thomas and little Toodles I am quite content.”

As we went to make our good-byes, Dorcas moved restlessly. “I seem to be slipping down again,” she said. “If you could just plump up my pillows for me again.”

Emily eased her into a sitting position while I plumped the pillows. As I replaced the top pillow I noticed something—it was liberally strewn with long, dark hairs.

“She doesn’t seem to be too bad, does she?” There was relief in Emily’s voice as we left the Hochstetter mansion. “I was so worried that we’d find her dying or dead like Fanny.”

“Yes, I know you were.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “So now perhaps we can put Dorcas’s illness down to coincidence and Fanny’s death down to pneumonia