she just slipped away from us.”
“So tragic,” I muttered, feeling like a hypocrite. “I wondered whether anything she had eaten might have made her condition worse.”
“Eaten?” she demanded sharply. “The poor woman couldn’t keep any food down. She took nothing except for barley water and a few sips of broth.”
I couldn’t think of a way to ask if the servants were trustworthy and the cook had prepared these items herself. “I expect her friends came to visit as we did and brought her all kinds of lovely foods she couldn’t eat,” I said. Even as I said it I had to agree that it sounded strange.
“I gave strict orders that she was to be allowed no visitors as soon as I saw how weak she had become,” she said firmly.
“Of course.” I nodded.
“Mrs. Hochstetter, might it be possible to say our final farewell to Dorcas?” I asked. “Her body has not been taken away yet, has it?”
“She still lies in her marriage bed,” Mrs. Hochstettter said. “I have not allowed anybody in there, on account of the virulence of the sickness. Anything that can kill a healthy woman in a few days should be given a wide berth and certainly not allowed to spread.”
“Of course not,” I said. “But as it happens I have recently recovered from the same influenza and I understand that one cannot catch it twice. And Emily works in a drugstore and deals with sick people every day.”
Mrs. Hochstetter was still regarding us with a quizzical stare. “If you insist, then I suppose you know what you are doing.”
“She was my Vassar sister,” Emily said.
“Very well.” Mrs. Hochstetter smoothed down her black skirt before ringing a little bell on the side table. “Soames. These young women wish to say their farewells to Mrs. Hochstetter Junior,” she said. “Please escort them to her room.”
“Very well, madam.” The butler indicated we should follow him. Up the stairs we went, along a hallway that was bathed in gloom and made the statues in niches look like disembodied heads glaring down at us. He opened the door to Dorcas’s bedroom with obvious reluctance.
“Mrs. Hochstetter Junior is at repose in here.”
We stepped into a room that was as dark as the hallway had been. The odor of death came to greet us and we both recoiled a little, Emily giving me an alarmed glance.
“Are you young ladies sure you wish to go inside?” he asked.
“Vassar would expect it of me,” Emily said. “May we turn on an electric light?”
“Certainly not. This house is in mourning,” Soames said.
“I really would like to take one last look at my friend,” Emily said. I was impressed she could be so persistent. Soames was quite an intimidating figure. “May I then open the drapes just a little?”
I thought he was going to say no to that too, but he sighed. “I will open them a crack for you, if you really insist, but it is highly improper.”
He held open the curtains just an inch or two, sending a thin stripe of bright sunlight across the darkness.
“Thank you.” Emily went to stand by Dorcas’s bed. The body was covered in a white sheet. Emily pulled back the sheets and let out an audible gasp. “Poor Dorcas,” she whispered. “Poor, dear Dorcas. She was the brightest of us all.”
She bent down and kissed the dead cheek before pulling up the sheet again.
While she had been occupied at the bed, I had tried to observe everything in the room. Given the almost complete darkness and the clutter of stuffed birds, artificial flowers, and every other kind of knickknack, it was hard to see anything. I didn’t know what I should be looking for anyway. There was hardly likely to be a bottle of poison sitting on the bedside table. But as my eye moved over Dorcas’s dressing table I felt I was looking at something I had seen somewhere else before. I looked again and couldn’t for the life of me decide what that was.
“I think you should depart now,” Soames said, letting the drapes fall into place again and plunging us into complete darkness.
We did as he requested and walked in silence down the stairs. We encountered nobody in the front hall and stood blinking in the blinding light of the street.
“Well?” Emily said. “What do you think?”
“I don’t see how she could have been poisoned,” I said. “Her mother-in-law guarded her fiercely. You heard her yourself. She was allowed no visitors during the last days and