Sunday afternoon, March 5, 1882
O’Farrell Street Boardinghouse
“Nate, could you pull the two easy chairs over and put them across from the settee?” Annie said, “And Laura, if you move one of the desk chairs over as well? We should have room for all five of us.”
Then, handing her daughter to Kathleen, Annie thanked her for agreeing to take Abigail down to the kitchen. Normally, Abigail would be due for a nap at this time, but for some reason, she’d fallen asleep right after lunch and was now wide awake.
Annie added, “Laura can answer the door when Miss Sutton and Mitchell arrive. But I do think we could use some tea and some small sandwiches in case they haven’t had time for lunch. So please ask Tilly to bring us some when you get down to the kitchen.”
Leaning over, she gave her daughter a quick kiss on the cheek and said, “There you go, darling. Be good for Kathleen.”
Her daughter waved her hands and grabbed at Kathleen’s ears, which had become one of her favorite parts of the human anatomy to explore. Annie had stopped wearing any earrings this past week, after several painful bouts of tug of war with her very persistent child.
The peal of the bell sent Laura following Kathleen out of the small parlor to the front hallway, and Annie soon heard Mitchell and Caro Sutton’s voices.
Caro came in and said hello to Seth and Nate before coming over to Annie to say quietly that she had asked her driver to wait outside, in case he was needed. Annie thanked her and agreed that was a good idea. She would send Kathleen out when she came up with the tea tray to ask if he wanted her to bring him a hot cup of coffee.
“Good afternoon, Nate, Mrs. Dawson. It’s good to see you again,” Mitchell said. Turning to Laura, he said, “Where’s Seth? Wasn’t he supposed to have Sunday dinner with you? Haven’t sent the man to perdition, have you? I keep telling him that if he keeps his nose in those law books, one of those flashy fraternity boys at the university is going to steal you away.”
Annie felt Caro stiffen beside her at his thoughtless remark. Surely Mitchell knows what happened to Laura and Caro last spring?
Laura only laughed and said, “You’re jealous, Mitchell, that you’re stuck eating those terrible Sunday dinners at your boardinghouse. You and Uncle Frank, the two confirmed old bachelors.”
Once everyone had been seated, and Kathleen and Tilly had brought up the tea tray, Annie said, “I must thank all of you for coming this afternoon. I know you are both busy. However, I felt that I needed advice on how to respond to the letter I got this morning from Dr. Blair.”
Soon after church, Kathleen had come up from the kitchen to say that a newsboy, one of Ian and Jamie’s friends, had appeared at the back door with a letter from Dr. Blair. Annie instructed that he be given something to eat, and as soon as she’d read the letter, she sent Tilly out to dispatch telegrams to both Caro and Mitchell, inviting them to come by the boardinghouse this afternoon. Caro had sent a telegram in reply, telling her she would bring Mitchell with her and would arrive at three.
Laura said, “Well, Annie, don’t leave us in suspense. What’s happened?”
“As planned, Dr. Blair went to the Truscotts’ early this morning to see if she could get in to see Phoebe Truscott, evaluate her condition,” Annie said. “However, Mr. Truscott had stayed at home, it appears for the very purpose of making sure no one from the dispensary was allowed to see his wife.”
Laura burst out, “What is he so afraid of? I think it’s terribly suspicious. Don’t you, Nate? What would you say about that kind of behavior if you were in court?”
Before Nate could say anything, Annie continued, “Yes, Laura, and what happened next certainly confirms that impression. As the man was threatening to call the police and have Dr. Blair evicted for trespassing, Phoebe Truscott appeared and told her husband that she wanted to see the doctor. Then she fainted.”
“Oh dear,” Caro said, looking over at Mitchell. “I’m afraid that the woman really might be in great danger. Mrs. Dawson, this morning we pretty much proved that the other bottle held aconite in enough strength to kill the rat we injected with it, and probably in a dose that could kill Phoebe if she was given it in a completely undiluted form.”
Mitchell added, “Even if the dose has been diluted, over time it could really be wreaking havoc with her digestive system.”
“Well, this makes what Dr. Blair is proposing to do even more necessary,” Annie said. “You see, although Richard Truscott prevented her from examining his wife…in fact he physically dragged her away and pushed her out of the house…Phoebe was first able to whisper to Dr. Blair that she feared for her life. She indicated that she would try to sneak out of the house at midnight and hoped that she would be there to help her.”
Annie gave everyone the chance to exclaim, although she noticed that Nate simply frowned, and she anticipated that he was going to be the one who was going to object to what Ella Blair proposed doing.
Once everyone quieted down, she said, “Dr. Blair’s plan is to bring a carriage to the alley behind the Truscotts’ house a little before midnight. Then, if Joan is successful in helping her mistress leave the house, the doctor will bring both of them to the dispensary. She requested that I ask Miss Sutton if she could lend her carriage and driver. She feared that if she hired a complete stranger to drive her, they might take exception to what was going on.”
Caro leaned forward and said eagerly, “That is an excellent idea. My driver Robertson is very trustworthy, but I have sensed he finds driving me to the City and County Hospital and back a rather boring job. I will definitely go up in his estimation if he gets to participate in a midnight rescue. Do you think I should come along?”
“No, I’ll go,” Mitchell said quickly. “I don’t work at the hospital this evening, and the fewer people involved the better. It’s possible that Mrs. Truscott may need to be carried to the carriage, not something Ella…Dr. Blair…can do.”
Laura, in turn, suggested that Mitchell get Seth’s help, saying that it might be better to have two men involved, just in case they had to push their way past Mr. Truscott or a male servant in the household.
Annie looked at her husband and said, “Nate, what do you think? I couldn’t help but wonder if it isn’t time to bring in the police rather than spirit Mrs. Truscott away. There are so many ways this scheme could go wrong.”
Nate looked at her, then around at the expectant faces of the others, and said, “If Miss Sutton and Mitchell hadn’t found traces of poison, I would be completely against this idea. First of all, even if the plan is successful, it leaves the dispensary open to all sorts of charges—including kidnapping—by the husband. The very opposite result from what Annie was hired to achieve.”
Laura said, “But, Nate, the woman is expecting Dr. Blair to be there. How could she not go?”
“I said if there wasn’t evidence that the poor woman was being poisoned I would be against it. So yes, I do think that Dr. Blair needs to see if she can get the woman out of her house. But I think it would be safer, legally, if they took her somewhere other than the dispensary, like some other hospital.”
Mitchell said, “Nate, I get that you want to keep the dispensary out of this, but there is no way that is going to happen if Ella Blair is involved. Frankly, I’m not sure that if she and I arrived at any of the other hospitals in town in the middle of the night they would let us admit Mrs. Truscott. If they did, they probably wouldn’t let Dr. Blair examine her. If she is suffering from the effects of poison, that could delay treatment, because I don’t see them accepting our word for that being the problem. It seems so far-fetched.”
“That’s why I wouldn’t advise we go to the police at this point, either,” said Nate. “I would be afraid that if I went to them with the evidence you have, even have Dr. Blair swear that Mrs. Truscott said she was being poisoned, the most that would happen is that tomorrow they would go to the house and ask to interview Mrs. Truscott. This would alert Mr. Truscott to his wife’s plans, and if he is involved, this could in fact be her death sentence.”
Annie watched everyone’s face fall, but she could see Nate was still thinking about options, so she put her hand on his arm and squeezed gently. He looked up at her and smiled.
He said, “All right, I do have a suggestion. Mitchell, I will go with you and Dr. Blair. I will have drafted a document for Mrs. Truscott to sign, witnessed by Caro’s driver, that states that she has left the house voluntarily and that she has asked to be taken to the dispensary.”
Annie said, “Are you sure this will protect the Pacific Dispensary, Nate?”
“I can’t guarantee that. What it will at least do is prevent the police, if they are called in by the husband, from doing anything precipitate, like drag her back to her home or put any of us in jail. I will also go and speak to Sergeant Thompson first thing in the morning, show him the document, and explain our reasons for our actions.”
“Would it help if Mitchell and Miss Sutton wrote up their findings about the poisons they found?” Annie asked.
Nate shrugged. “As I’ve said, since there is no proof that the bottles aren’t simply part of Dr. Skerry’s medical supplies, or that Mrs. Truscott ingested any of it, it wouldn’t really be admissible evidence in court. However, I sincerely hope that none of this goes to court. So yes, a document describing how they got the liquid, the tests they ran, and the conclusions they came to might help me convince the police that the actions we took were a reasonable precaution.”
Mitchell drained his tea and said briskly, “Miss Sutton, whenever you are ready, let’s go to the dispensary and see Dr. Blair. Make arrangements, and you can make sure your driver is going to be all right with the evening’s adventure. Then I suggest we work on this document that Nate wants.”
He turned to Nate and said, “Given that you live much closer to the Truscotts’ house, why don’t I go and pick up Dr. Blair first then come by here, say, around 11:30? Better to be early in case Mrs. Truscott tries to leave before then. Poor woman. I just hope we aren’t too late to save her from the long-term effects of being poisoned.”