Friday afternoon, March 3, 1882
O’Farrell Street Boardinghouse
Caro Sutton sent Annie a telegram this morning, telling her that she would be coming to the boardinghouse at twelve-thirty, after her last morning class. All the boarders were out for the day, including Mrs. Stein, so Annie told Kathleen that she would have lunch with Miss Sutton in the dining room.
Meanwhile, she was starting to work on the report detailing the reasons she was recommending certain investments to the board of the Chinese Mission so she could get it in the afternoon post. She had already posted letters to Mrs. Stone, the president of the Pacific Dispensary’s board of directors, asking if she could meet her at the dispensary on Monday. If she got a positive response from Mrs. Stone tomorrow morning, she would then send a letter to Dr. Bucknell, the third attending physician who lived in Oakland, asking if she could join them.
She would leave it up to these two women whether or not the immediate financial problem of paying the pharmacist bill and the next month’s rent warranted sending a telegram to Dr. Brown and Dr. Wanzer. She wasn’t sure if she was going to bring up the other issues about Richard Truscott, Dr. Skerry, or the Chronicle article. That depended a bit on what Caro Sutton’s reaction was to her request about testing the bottles and what Nate found out from his journalist friend Tim.
On the purely financial front, Annie was feeling a tad more optimistic because of a conversation she had over breakfast with Esther Stein. She explained the immediate financial difficulties that Richard Truscott’s failure to pay his bills was causing, on top of a possible attempt by this homeopathic doctor, Skerry, to ruin the dispensary’s reputation. Annie’s motive had been simply to explain to Mrs. Stein why her activities, running back and forth between home and the dispensary, were so important.
Unexpectedly, Esther didn’t use the occasion to lecture her again about over-doing things. Instead, she had said that hearing about the good work of the dispensary she thought she would suggest to her oldest daughter that they take a tour of the place.
Esther said, “It’s time for her to start doing something for the community. All of her children are in school, she has an excellent staff that runs her home beautifully, and I can tell she’s bored with filling the middle of her days with shopping. She’s also getting testy about her husband’s long hours at work, which aren’t going to change.”
Esther had looked pointedly at Annie, who just smiled back at her but couldn’t help wonder if the Steins had heard any part of her heated conversation with Nate last night. Well, it wouldn’t be the first argument they had overheard. What this did mean, however, was that if Esther’s daughter did take an interest in the dispensary and got some of her wealthy friends to join, this could prove to be a welcome infusion of new money for the institution.
A soft gurgle turned Annie’s attention to Abigail, who was sitting happily in her nest of cushions under Nate’s desk, slowly picking up blocks and throwing them, an activity that appeared to give her great pleasure. Once all the blocks were beyond her daughter’s reach, Annie would lean over, gather them up, and place them in a row in front of Abigail, who would start the game all over again.
Watching her daughter today, Annie thought about the scene she’d witnessed last night…Nate standing at the window, holding their daughter. She regretted letting her anger get the better of her earlier. But she didn’t regret telling him how unhappy she’d been with the pattern their marriage had settled into for the past year. How unhappy she was with his decision to sacrifice time with her and Abigail in some mistaken belief that he was doing her a favor by working so hard, so she wouldn’t have to work at all.
It wouldn’t be the first time they had argued over these sorts of issues and probably wouldn’t be the last. But one of the things that she loved about Nate was that he would listen to her, and he was willing to change his mind and his behavior. Even if it meant changing an occasional dirty diaper.
Fifteen minutes later, Annie heard the doorbell and quickly put her papers away and picked up Abigail. Kathleen had offered to take Abigail down to the kitchen to feed her when Miss Sutton arrived, so Annie could have an uninterrupted meal with Caro. Probably a good idea, given Annie’s impression that Caro wouldn’t be particularly interested in the antics of a small infant. Laura told Annie that her friend had been upset when one of her medical professors had asked why she wasn’t taking the course on Eruptive Diseases of Children this term. She’d been offended that he assumed that, because she was a woman, she would specialize in one of the disciplines that focused on children’s health.
As Annie walked into the front hall to hand Abigail over to Kathleen, she was surprised to see that Caro Sutton was accompanied by Martin Mitchell.
Caro said stiffly, “Mrs. Dawson, I do hope you don’t mind that I invited Dr. Mitchell along. He ran into me this morning at Toland Hall and asked if I had any news about the dispensary. I took the liberty of telling him about the telegram I received from you yesterday evening.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” Annie said, although she was rather surprised that Caro had invited Mitchell, having gotten the impression last Sunday that the young woman didn’t much like the young doctor. Since he worked at Toland Hall, he would have occasions to run into her. Maybe he’d been more pleasant to her now that he’d met her socially. On the other hand, she also wondered why Mitchell was taking such an interest in the dispensary and its problems.
Mitchell quickly said, “I don’t mean to impose, Mrs. Dawson. But I’ve worked these past ten years in my uncle’s pharmacy, and customers come in all the time with some old bottle where the label’s gone missing, wanting to know what it is. Therefore, when Miss Sutton asked about whether or not medical students could use the equipment in the laboratory, where I work, I told her I’d be glad to help.”
“I’m delighted to have you here; I am sure your knowledge will be very useful,” Annie said. “I hope you will both be able to stay for lunch with me.”
When neither objected, she handed Abigail over to Kathleen, who disappeared down the hallway. As Annie led Caro and Mitchell into the dining room, she thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have to deal with a cranky cook who would threaten to quit over a sudden addition for lunch. Instead, she knew Beatrice O’Rourke would be delighted to have another man to feed.
Once they were seated at the end of the long table, and Tilly had appeared to fill their water glasses, Annie said to the young maid, “Could you go upstairs and get the two small bottles that are sitting on my dresser? Be very careful with them, since I’m not entirely sure what they contain.”
Once Tilly left, she turned to her guests and said, “While we wait for Tilly to bring me the two bottles, I need to provide you with some background.”
She told them about what she had learned about Dr. Skerry from reading copies of her medical journal. She also reported on her husband’s dinner with Richard Truscott, which confirmed that Skerry was responsible for convincing him, and probably his aunt, that the dispensary was somehow to blame for Mrs. Truscott’s illness. She also told them about the oblique mention in the Chronicle and that Nate was going to try and see if anyone at the newspaper was working on a longer story about the dispensary.
She then said, “All of this is disturbing enough, but Joan Carpenter, Phoebe Truscott’s long-time maid, believes that her mistress is ill because someone has been poisoning her.”
“On purpose?” Caro asked.
“She believes so.”
Caro cocked her head and said, “Do you find this maid at all credible?”
“Enough so that I want to see if we can determine what is in the bottles she brought with her. Dr. Blair said the woman had been with her mistress daily during Phoebe Truscott’s convalescence at the dispensary, so the staff got to know her well. No one noticed any signs of irrationality, and she was calm and helpful during the anxious time when her mistress did show signs of infection.”
Mitchell frowned and said, “That’s interesting. If this servant was with Mrs. Truscott after the operation, she would have some idea of what the symptoms of fever would look like. Has her mistress exhibited any of them? Fever, racing pulse, abdominal pain?”
“Those are all the questions Dr. Blair asked Joan, who said there has been no fever, but that there have been several spells of vomiting, followed by weakness and tingling in the extremities. In addition, more recently she’s had some vision problems. Phoebe Truscott does have periodic cramping, but her maid insists that while there has been some bloating, there is no sign of the distended stomach that accompanied the build-up of fluid from the cysts.”
Caro looked at Mitchell and said, “I haven’t had the course in women’s diseases, but it sounds more like a gastric rather than a gynecological problem. What do you think, Dr. Mitchell?”
“I think that some of those symptoms could be found in anything from bad oysters to a diseased stomach…although the tingling in the extremities and the vision difficulties are odd. However, all these symptoms could also be caused by ingesting poison,” Mitchell said.
Tilly entered the dining room at that point, and Annie took the two clear glass bottles and thanked her. She handed the bottles to Mitchell, who examined what appeared to be clear liquid in both of them. He shook the bottles then examined them again.
“Well, that doesn’t tell me much of anything, except to rule out a couple of possibilities that would preclude the liquid being clear, with no discernible precipitate. But I have a couple of ideas about what substances to test.”
Kathleen and Tilly appeared and began to serve lunch, so Annie turned the conversation to subjects that would be less likely to dampen anyone’s appetite, since it would be a shame to ruin Beatrice’s fried chicken and potato dumplings.
Caro Sutton was glad to talk about the house she had bought up on Powell near the university’s medical school and the difficulties she was having finding a well-trained cook.
Mitchell, who had been concentrating on eating, put his head up and said in his joshing manner, “I would be glad to recommend Mrs. Randall, my boardinghouse cook. You would be doing me and everyone a great service if you lured her away with a splendid salary.”
Annie laughed, but she did tell Caro she would be glad to ask Mrs. O’Rourke if she had any recommendations. Annie knew that Beatrice often acted as an informal employment agent when she heard about an opening for a servant.
She then asked Caro about her courses and was amused to listen to Caro and Mitchell debate the relative merits of two of the professors who ran the clinical courses on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Finally, as Tilly cleared away the empty plates and brought a fresh pot of coffee to the table, Annie turned the conversation back to the subject at hand by asking Mitchell what he thought the chances were of finding poison in the two bottles.
“I would be surprised if I found anything definitive,” he replied. “I assume that if Mrs. Truscott is currently under the care of this homeopathic doctor, Skerry, that she is being given drops from a good number of different bottles, because that is a homeopath’s stock in trade. But usually homeopathic practitioners are very careful to label the medicines they prescribe, name of substance, amount of dilution, and instructions for use. Conversely, if the medicine was bought at a homeopathic pharmacy, you would also see the name of the pharmacy.”
“That’s why Joan brought these bottles, because they were so different from the others she had seen in both Phoebe’s and the aunt’s rooms.”
Mitchell said, “Did this Joan try to find out where the bottles came from?”
“No, by the time she noticed them, she was afraid to let anyone know of her suspicions, so she just took them. The first one she took last week. No one remarked on its disappearance, which seemed rather strange. Then, yesterday morning, the second bottle appeared, just like the first, with no markings. That was when she decided to take it and bring it to Dr. Blair at the dispensary. She’s been afraid to leave her mistress alone, but she is also afraid that her mistress is getting weaker and weaker with each bout of vomiting and might not make it through another episode.”
“Besides these bottles appearing out of the blue, did the maid see any other pattern of behavior that was suspicious?” Caro asked.
“Joan said the first thing that bothered her was the fact that the day after the very first spell, instead of contacting Dr. Granger or someone from the dispensary, they sent for Dr. Skerry.”
Mitchell said, “Didn’t you say earlier that Ella…Dr. Blair…said she was told when she tried to visit Mrs. Truscott that Dr. Granger had been notified but never showed up?”
“Yes, and my husband said that Richard Truscott mentioned this specifically as one of the reasons they turned to Skerry. But Dr. Granger told Ella that he never got a note from the Truscotts, and I see no reason for Dr. Granger to lie about this. Joan says that her mistress asked several times for them to contact Dr. Granger, but she believes that the husband pretended to send a note but instead sent for Dr. Skerry, his aunt’s doctor. At the time, Joan said she didn’t mention her suspicion that they hadn’t done as her mistress requested because at first Phoebe did seem to get better under Dr. Skerry’s care.”
Mitchell shrugged. “Of course Dr. Skerry would say it was because of the medicine she had been giving Mrs. Truscott that she improved, even though everything I have read about homeopathic medicine is that the substances are so diluted that you are essentially being dosed with water.”
Annie saw Caro nod in agreement, and she said, “Joan wondered if somehow Skerry had convinced the aunt to give her mistress something that made her ill, just so Skerry could then be called in and act the savior. She said Richard Truscott’s aunt is always pushing one tonic or other on her nephew.”
“But Mrs. Truscott didn’t stay better, did she?” Mitchell said. “You mentioned several spells. Did the maid notice any particular pattern in terms of what medicine or food she was taking before each spell?”
“For example, if she got worse after a visit with Skerry? I asked her about that. She said that one evening after Dr. Skerry had been by to check on her mistress, Joan came into the room and found Mr. Truscott giving his wife a cup of tea. He said Dr. Skerry had recommended his wife take the tea with her evening drops. And that was when she discovered the strange bottle on the chest of drawers the next morning. That night her mistress had a particularly bad spell of vomiting.”
Mitchell said, “So she thought that the husband dosed the tea with something?” He looked at the bottles again and said, “The thing is, even if something from one of these bottles is what made the woman sick, it still could be an accident. The husband may have misunderstood the instructions, given her too many drops, and that is what made her sick.”
Caro, who had taken off her glasses and polished them thoughtfully while Mitchell and Annie talked, put the glasses back on and said, “The problem is that, even if it is accidental, or the goal was to make Mrs. Truscott ill enough to justify some campaign against the Pacific Dispensary, if the maid is correct, the young woman’s health appears to be deteriorating rapidly.”
“Exactly my thought,” Annie said. “Then there is the even more frightening possibility…that someone is actually trying to kill her.”