“Good question,” I said. “He is working on a couple of big cases—one of them involving arsenic, by the way—and I’ve scarcely seen him in weeks. But I’ll leave a note for him at his apartment on my way home.”
“Thank you.” She reached out and took my hand. “I am so glad you’re going to take this on for me, Molly. If you have to put my own investigation on hold, I quite understand. Justice for poor Fanny is more important to me right now.”
I left her making her solitary way home and I took the El to Twenty-third Street and went straight to Daniel’s residence. When Mrs. O’Shea opened the door she looked more flustered than usual.
“Oh, Miss Murphy. The captain’s not at home again.”
“That’s all right, Mrs. O’Shea,” I said. “I just want to leave a message for him.”
“Do you mind if I don’t accompany you upstairs,” she said. “I’ve got sick children and frankly I’m run off my feet.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“You’re most kind, my dear, but I don’t want you catching anything. Go on up then, will you?”
I nodded and made my way up the stairs. At Daniel’s desk I found writing paper and asked him to call at Patchin Place at the earliest possible moment, as I had a matter of great urgency in which I needed his help. As I was writing I couldn’t help thinking of the last time I left a note for somebody, and couldn’t fight back the feelings of guilt that swept over me. If Anson Poindexter somehow got wind of the fact that Fanny had hired a detective to keep tabs on him, and that she was planning to divorce him, might I not have forced his hand? I remembered when I had seen him on Saturday afternoon—his grim face as he ran up to Fifi’s door and then left again. And then Fifi had left soon after him. Had he warned her to get out of town?
I felt quite sick as I went down the stairs again and made my way home. I was tempted to go to police headquarters and see if I could seek out Daniel there, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to be known as the annoying woman in Daniel’s life who wouldn’t leave him alone at work. So I waited patiently—or rather not too patiently—until that evening. When I had just decided to fix myself some supper, he showed up on my doorstep.
“Molly, are you all right?” he asked, bursting into my house with a look of concern on his face.
“I’m just fine, thank you,” I said.
“But your note. I got the feeling that something was horribly wrong.”
“Not to me,” I said, “but I have a case that I think might be a matter for the police.”
“Really?” He came into my kitchen. “My, but that smells good.”
“It’s only some neck of beef I’m making into a stew. There will be plenty, if you like to stay.”
“I’d like to but I should really get down to headquarters,” he said. He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down with a sigh of relief.
“Have they made you work all of Sunday again?”
“Actually, not today,” he said. “I went out to Westchester to see my mother.”
I told myself that I was a petty sort of person to feel jealous that he had wanted to spend his one day off with his mother again, rather than with me.
“That was nice of you,” I managed to say. “So how was she?”
“Not doing too well, as a matter of fact. Still grieving terribly for my father,” he said. “Those two were married for forty years, you know. It’s not going to be easy to adjust to life without him.”
“Forty years, fancy that.” I tried to picture myself and Daniel after forty years together. Did one not grow tired of the other person after all that time?
“Can you picture us after forty years together?” Daniel asked, echoing my sentiments. “We’ll probably have killed one another by then!”
“So about this case,” I said, hastily changing the subject. “It’s a suspicious death, possible poisoning.”
“Poisoning? How on earth did you get yourself involved with something like that?”
I told him the basic details of my dealings with Emily and Fanny Poindexter.
“And what grounds does your friend have for thinking this Mrs. Poindexter was poisoned by her husband?” Daniel asked.
“Intuition, mainly.”
“Intuition?” He uttered a disparaging bumpf. “I’d need more than that to call a death suspicious. And you tell me she came down with influenza and died of breathing complications?” He shook his head. “What has that to do with poisoning? Didn’t I tell you about the number of cases I’ve seen of healthy people dying from this flu?”
“You did,” I agreed, “but apparently she was having stomach troubles as well and Emily thought that Fanny’s husband might have taken the opportunity of her weakened condition to get rid of her.”
“And why would he want to do that?” Daniel asked.