“Was the progression very rapid?” I asked, trying not to sound overly interested.
“It must have been rapid,” he said. “You see, I was away from home on Friday night. I had to visit a client out of town. When I left on Friday morning Fanny was weak and feverish but seemed cheerful enough. I didn’t get back to the city until late last night. I arrived home to find the doctor here and Fanny’s mother in a terrible state. Fanny was close to death, her breath coming in rasping gasps. She only lasted an hour or two after that. It was horrible.” He paused and coughed again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I find this too painful a subject to discuss at this moment.”
Emily stepped forward. “Might we just see her, to say good-bye?” she asked. “She was my dearest friend, you know.”
“Of course.” He nodded solemnly and walked toward the bedroom door. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t come into the room with you. I simply can’t—” He left the rest of the sentence hanging.
We stepped into the darkened room. The heavy velvet drapes had been drawn, making it hard to see anything. I could dimly make out the white figure in a vast carved mahogany sleigh bed.
“I hope they won’t mind if I open the drapes for a minute,” Emily said. She went across to the window and pulled them back. Bright spring light flooded in. Pigeons rose, flapping in alarm from the balustrade of the balcony outside the window where they had been sunning themselves. The light fell directly on the figure who lay on the bed. She looked absolutely lovely, like a marble sculpture in an old church or medieval painting of the Virgin, her face serene and her glorious golden hair spread out across the pillow.
Emily gave a stifled sob and went over to her. “Fanny,” she whispered. “Oh, Fanny.”
I felt similarly upset but I reminded myself that I was here for a reason. I started to look around the room, seeing if there was any sort of unwashed coffee cup or medicine glass that I could spirit away for testing. There wasn’t. An impressive row of perfumes and jars of cream sat on her dressing table, along with a silver-backed brush set. I moved quickly to check the door at the far end of the room. It led to a dressing room with wardrobes around the walls, and that room in turn led to a bathroom. There was a glass on the marble table but it looked to be clean and unused. The bottle of mixture, labeled with the directions “One teaspoonful as needed to calm the stomach,” sat on a glass shelf. Apart from that there were few medical preparations: smelling salts, headache powders, liver pills. Mrs. Poindexter clearly had not been one to worry about her health. I was sorely tempted to take them with me but I couldn’t justify doing so. Besides, I didn’t want to make her husband in any way suspicious and spoil an official inquiry later.
I came back out again to a most touching scene. Emily sat on the bed with Fanny’s head cradled in her arms. “I can’t believe I’m saying good-bye to you,” she whispered. “We had such good times together, didn’t we? The happiest days of my life.”
Then she saw me standing there and lowered Fanny again to the pillow, before rising guiltily to her feet. “We should go, I suppose,” she said. “And I should close these drapes again.”
As she walked over to the window I noticed her jacket. “You should brush your jacket,” I said. “You have Fanny’s hairs all over you.”
“So I do,” she said. “I wonder if hair falls out after death?”
Instead of brushing the hairs to the floor, she picked them off, one by one. “I’m going to keep these, as a token to remind me of her,” she said. “Maybe I have enough here to weave into a ring or a brooch.”
I nodded. Darkness fell over the room again and we closed the door quietly behind us.
Fifteen
We took the elevator down to the ground floor.
“Well, what did you think?” Emily asked. “Did you find anything at all to arouse your suspicions?”
“Not in the way of used coffee cups or glasses,” I said. “There was the stomach mixture that came from Mr. McPherson, her smelling salts, and some liver pills. They should all be tested, I suppose.”
“The thing I found suspicious was that Anson was conveniently out of town until the moments before her death,” Emily said.
“Yes, I have to agree that was suspicious,” I said, still debating whether to tell her what I knew.
“So where do we go from here?” Emily asked.
“I think I should present the facts to Captain Sullivan and let him proceed. We should not interfere in case we spoil an official criminal investigation.”
“When can you see him?”