gave me a new one on Friday,” she said. “He told me he’d improved it even more and asked me to show it to my lady friends.”
“And have you used any yet?”
“Oh, yes. I used it right away.”
“Emily, I know nothing about poisons,” I said. “Is it possible that some element could have been added to a face cream and that a poison could be absorbed through the skin?”
She looked horrified. “But Ned gave this to me himself.”
“Tell me this. I remember Fanny saying she was out of the fabulous complexion cream and asking for more. Did you take her another jar?”
“Yes, I did. Right before she—”
She tried to sit up, open-mouthed.
“Right before she fell ill,” I said. “And I saw a jar on Dorcas’s dressing table, too.”
“But if it’s possible to poison face cream, who could have done this?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“The person who made the cream would be the obvious suspect.”
“Ned? My Ned? But he doesn’t even know Fanny or Dorcas.”
“Is it possible someone paid him to kill them?”
She looked horrified. “Ned is an ethical person. He would never stoop to that.”
“Even though he needs money badly? Even though he is ambitious and a large sum of money could set him up in his own business?”
She hesitated for a second. “Never,” she said. “Ned would never do that. And besides, he wouldn’t want to risk harming me, would he?”
“Is it possible that someone could have tampered with the cream then?”
She frowned. “I suppose that someone could have tampered with Fanny’s cream, but not with mine. Ned himself handed it to me.” Then she shook her head vehemently. “You must be wrong. There is no poison in the cream.”
“It is the only thing that links the three of you together,” I said. “I’m taking this jar to Daniel to be tested this very minute. I hope I’m wrong, but we need to know, don’t we?”
“But Ned gave it to me,” she said again. “There can’t be anything the matter with it.”
Something occurred to me. “When we gave those hairs to Ned to be tested, he said there was no arsenic present. But there must have been. There was arsenic in the stomach mixture Mr. McPherson made up for Fanny, so a trace would have shown up in her hair. That must mean either that Ned didn’t test the hair properly or . . .”
“Or that he lied, and said there was no arsenic so that nobody pursued this.” Her face was absolutely devastated. “But that can’t be right, Molly. My Ned can’t have wanted to kill anybody. He’s gentle. He would never have . . .”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get this cream tested, then we’ll know for sure. I really hope that I am wrong and that Ned has nothing to do this.”
“Yes, get it tested as quickly as possible,” she said. “I won’t be able to rest until I know.”
I poured a fresh glass of barley water for her, then I hurried down those stairs again. Now my heart was really thumping. The obvious answer was that Ned had deliberately poisoned those face creams, but why? If he didn’t know Fanny or Dorcas, the motive could only be money. Someone had bribed him to kill Fanny, and maybe Dorcas. Anson Poindexter, or even Bella. Or perhaps it was Mademoiselle Fifi, who thought at that stage that Anson might marry her if his wife was out of the way. But it seemed rather sophisticated for someone like Fifi. More likely to be Bella, who was well educated and moved in society.
I wondered if I dared pay a visit to Bella and drop hints about face cream and see her reaction—mentioning of course that I had sent a jar to my intended, a captain of police, to be tested. She was hardly likely to throttle me in her living room, was she? Then I thought about Emily. Even if Ned had been paid well to kill Fanny and Dorcas, surely he would not have agreed to harm Emily. And yet he had given her the face cream on Friday. To me this could only mean one thing . . . he wanted her out of the way as well.
Twenty-nine
I stood irresolute at the curb, wondering what to do next. The jar of cream should go to Daniel to be tested. And Emily needed medicine and a doctor. Nothing else would matter if Emily died, but obviously a doctor would need to know what