In a Gilded Cage - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,96

you put the poison in the cream and that you killed Fanny Poindexter. You can’t get away, you know.”

“Yes, I can. I will.” But there was a hint of desperation in his voice. “There are ships leaving New York every hour. With my knowledge and experience they’d take me on as a ship’s doctor, no questions asked. And I’ll spend a few years in the Orient, or even on the West Coast, then come back with a new name and a new look when the hue and cry has died down.”

“You’d leave your mother to face the music?” I said, trying to appear calm and in control. “Hasn’t she suffered enough for you?”

“I did this for her,” he said angrily. “In revenge for what that brute made her go through. I went to my father. I thought he might see how well I’d turned out and recognize me as his son. But he chased me away. He told me if I ever came near him again he’d call the police. So I paid him back.”

“Only he wasn’t your father,” I said.

“What do you mean?” His dark eyes flashed with anger. “Of course he was.”

“I’ve just been to see your mother. She said you’d latched on to the idea of Mr. Bradley as your father and she hadn’t had the heart to disillusion you.”

“No,” he said. “That’s rubbish.” But I heard the hesitancy in his voice.

“It’s true. She never really knew who your father was. It could have been any of the men who paid her for the pleasure.”

His face twisted into a snarling rage. “You dirty vile little—”

He flung himself at me. I brought up my arm suddenly to defend myself and the bottle went flying. Drops of chloroform splashed over both of us. My head started singing as the vapors got to me. Ned was now trying to get his hands around my throat, but the vapors must have been affecting him too because he staggered. We went down together. He was now panting like a wild beast as he tried to pin me down. I fought him off with all my strength even as the world around me started fading to blackness. Then a figure loomed over us, there was a loud thump, a groan, and Ned slumped across me.

Emily stood there, breathing heavily, holding a cast-iron frying pan. “I didn’t know whether I’d have the strength to do it,” she said, gasping. Then she sank to her knees beside us.

At that moment there came a loud knocking at the door. I crawled across to open it. The doctor had arrived with Daniel, two police constables, and hospital workers hot on his heels.

“What the deuce?” the doctor demanded as Daniel pushed past him into the room.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

I nodded as he helped me to my feet. “That’s the man you want,” I said. “He admitted to killing Fanny Poindexter. He was trying to kill us too.”

“And obviously was no match for you,” Daniel said dryly, kicking at the prostrate form on the carpet.

“That was Emily. She hit him with the frying pan,” I said.

The hospital workers were already lifting her up to the nearest chair. “We’ve come to take you to the hospital, miss,” one of them said.

“Would somebody explain to me what is going on here?” the doctor asked.

An hour or so later Emily was safely in a hospital bed, being treated with Prussian blue and charcoal, which we were told were the only effective countermeasures against thallium. Since she had had the thallium in her system for three days now, her chances were not good, but at least she was getting the best care possible.

Daniel and I left her sleeping quietly. On the way home I insisted on stopping at Mr. Horace Lynch’s house and telling him that Emily was in the hospital and might not survive. After that it was up to him to decide whether to visit her or not.

“Another case concluded,” I said. We were sitting side by side in the darkness of a hansom cab. For some reason I had just begun to feel shaky, as one often does after the danger is safely past, and I nestled close to Daniel, feeling the comforting warmth of his presence.

“The same for me,” Daniel said. “Another case concluded, thanks, in part, to you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You gave me the names of the missionary societies. We apprehended a certain Mr. Hatcher as he was about to sail for Shanghai. He was