“Do you happen to know who might have a telephone near here? One that I could use for a matter of great urgency?”
“As I said, I have no interest in these ridiculous contraptions. Now, if you will excuse me, I have orders waiting to be filled.” And he went back to his work.
I felt angry, frustrated, and so tense that I might explode any minute. I now knew that thallium was the ingredient that made hair fall out and that it was a deadly poison. I wondered how hard it would be to detect whether thallium had been added to that face cream. I jumped back on the Broadway trolley and rode it, fuming with impatience as it stopped at the corner of every city block, all the way down Broadway, until I was at police headquarters.
“I need to speak to Captain Sullivan. It’s very urgent,” I told the constable who was manning the front desk.
“I’m sorry, miss, but the captain is out on a case. Can I see what other detectives are here at the moment?”
“No. That won’t do at all,” I said. “If you can find me some paper and a pen, I’ll write the captain a note.”
“Is this to report some kind of crime?” he asked. “Or is the note of a personal nature?” His smirk implied that young women were prone to chase after Captain Sullivan. I thought about setting him straight on this, but instead I kept strictly to business.
“A crime.” I gave him a cold stare. “A case of poisoning.”
He went and produced a sheet of paper and an inkwell. I wrote,
Daniel. The poison was thallium. This jar of cream needs to be tested immediately. Emily Boswell is very sick. I’m summoning a doctor but he may not know how to treat a poison. If you know of a poisons expert, please send him immediately to Emily.
And I wrote down her address. “Please come yourself as soon as you can,” I added. Then I handed the note and the jar of cream to the policeman at the desk. “Captain Sullivan is to see these the moment he comes back. Will you keep them down here or take them up to his office?”
He looked rather surprised at the forceful way I was speaking, also that I knew where his office was. “I’ll take them to his office, miss. Don’t worry. I’ll see he gets them.”
When I came out of police headquarters, I was unsure what to do next. Find a doctor for Emily, I supposed. Would any doctor believe me if I told him she was suffering from thallium poisoning, and would he have any idea how to treat it if he did believe me? I took the El this time, knowing it to be quicker than the trolley. As I watched the second-floor windows of the buildings pass us by, some only a few feet away, I tried to make sense of everything that had happened. Someone must have bribed Ned to poison that face cream. But why kill Dorcas? And what about the opera singer Honoria? How did she come into this?
Then I thought I saw what might have happened. The poisoned face cream could have been intended only for Fanny. But Fanny had sung its praises to her friends. What if she had passed along the jar to Dorcas? And what if Dorcas had let her friend Honoria try it when she came to visit? It seemed more likely than somebody deliberately killing Dorcas and Honoria, didn’t it?
Fifi, Bella, Anson. I toyed with each of the names. How did they discover Ned, assuming that Ned had added the poison to the face creams he made. Anson might have had contact with McPherson’s drugstore, because Fanny liked the stomach mixture they made up. And Bella learned about it from Fanny. But what would induce Anson or Bella to think that Ned could be bribed to kill someone and that he would not go to the police? Unless . . .