“Mother, what are you doing?” Nelson asked, horrified.
“I’m going to do my Christian duty,” she replied.
“Mrs. Ellsworth,” Sarah began to protest, but the old woman cut her off.
“You’re right, Mrs. Brandt. No one should be left alone in a hospital, especially not someone who might hold a clue to clearing my son’s name. I’m not doing Nelson any good here, but I can at least do some good for that poor boy. And if he happens to say something useful, so much the better.”
“Mother, you won’t even get out the front door with all those reporters standing on the curb!”
“He’s right, Mrs. Ellsworth,” Sarah said.
Mrs. Ellsworth gave them both a pitying look. “I have no intention of going out the front door. But Mrs. Brandt will. She’ll take her time and keep them busy until I can get safely out the back door. I’ll wear a veil so I won’t be recognized once I’m clear of the house. Then I’ll meet you under the Sixth Avenue El at Twelfth,” she said to Sarah. “When we get to the hospital, you can show me what to do, and I’ll stay with him until… Well, as long as I need to.”
“You can’t do this,” Nelson declared. “It isn’t safe. I’ll go instead.”
“Nelson, my dear,’ ” his mother said kindly. “You couldn’t show your face without someone recognizing you. Or were you planning to dress like a woman?” she added wickedly.
Nelson started sputtering a protest, but his mother cut him off.
“I’m going to do this, Nelson. It’s not a bit dangerous, and it might even help. Besides, if I don’t get out of here soon, I shall go mad.”
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Sarah asked in concern.
This time Mrs. Ellsworth’s expression was contemptuous. “Are you serious? I haven’t felt this alive since I found out about that poor girl’s death. I’m going whether you help me or not, so unless you want a parade of reporters following us to the hospital, I suggest you go along with my plan to distract them.”
Sarah didn’t even need to think it over. “What do you want me to do?”
As they entered Bellevue Hospital, Sarah glanced down at her companion with admiration. Mrs. Ellsworth had swathed herself in a heavy veil that concealed every trace of her identity. She didn’t look particularly out of place, either, since women in mourning often went veiled, and her plan to escape the reporters’ notice had worked beautifully.
Sarah had endured another round of shouted questions when she left the Ellsworths’ house, and had successfully ignored them until the reporters got tired of following her and returned to their vigil. By the time she reached the appointed meeting place, Mrs. Ellsworth was waiting for her, the market basket hanging over her arm, filled with nutritious foods for Webster Prescott.
The two had taken the Sixth Avenue El up to Twenty-Sixth Street instead of walking over to Second Avenue in order to get off the street as quickly as possible. No one had even looked at them twice, though. They had arrived at their destination without incident.
When they reached the ward where Prescott lay, Sarah could see down the length of the room that a woman was sitting next to him, on the far side of his bed.
“It looks as if his aunt is already here,” Sarah said with some surprise.
“I thought you only sent her word this morning. How could she have gotten here so quickly?”
“I don’t… Oh, yes, it was in the newspaper this morning that he was attacked. Maybe she saw it and came over without being summoned. At any rate, we can certainly ask her,” Sarah pointed out, leading the way to where the woman sat beside Prescott’s bed.
Sarah noticed Prescott’s aunt was also veiled, although hers was shorter and much lighter than Mrs. Ellsworth’s. She was, Sarah knew, a widow, and she probably wore the veil all the time. Such elaborate mourning was a little excessive, but some women enjoyed flaunting their grief.
As they approached, she saw that the woman was trying to feed Prescott something, but he kept turning his head away.
He said something that sounded like, “Tastes bad,” and she could hear his aunt coaxing him softly, the way one did with ill-tempered sick people.
“Mrs. Beasley,” Sarah called when they were near enough.
Mrs. Beasley didn’t turn. She just kept coaxing Prescott to eat. She must, Sarah thought, be hard of hearing.
“Mrs. Beasley!” she called more loudly as they reached Prescott’s bed. “I’m Sarah Brandt, a friend of your nephew’s.”
Mrs. Beasley’s head came up in surprise, and she jumped to her feet, dropping the bowl from which she had been feeding her nephew. It spilled on the bed, all over Prescott, and Sarah and Mrs. Ellsworth instinctively reached to salvage what they could of the porridge.
“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” But when she looked up to reassure Mrs. Beasley, she saw only the woman’s back as she hurried away, nearly running in her fright.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, watching her disappear out the door. “She’s quite shy, isn’t she?”
“I certainly didn’t mean to frighten her. I should go after her and apologize,” Sarah said.
“No!” Prescott said, surprising both women.
“Mr. Prescott?” Sarah tried, wondering if he was talking to her. “How are you feeling?”
“No,” he said again, obviously not hearing her at all. “Too sweet… Tastes… bad.”
That’s what he’d been saying to his aunt. Sarah wondered what the woman had been feeding him that had caused such a reaction. She lifted the nearly empty bowl to her nose and took a sniff.
How odd, she thought, certain she must be mistaken. But when she dipped her finger in and took a taste, she cried out in alarm.
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Ellsworth exclaimed, but Sarah was calling for the nurse.
One of the nurses came rushing over. “Whatever is the matter?”
“That woman was trying to poison Mr. Prescott!” Sarah cried.
“Poison!” Mrs. Ellsworth was saying, over and over, but the nurse wasn’t as impressed.
“Who are you to know such a thing?” the nurse demanded skeptically.
“I’m a trained nurse, and if you don’t believe me, taste this for yourself.” She offered the bowl to the woman, who reared back in alarm.
“You want me to taste poison?” she asked, horrified.
“It’s opium,” Sarah said. “A very strong mixture.”
Instantly, the woman paled. “What on earth would she have been giving him that for?” she asked.
“Probably to kill him,” Sarah said impatiently. “Now hurry and find a doctor.”
“Is there a chance to save him?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked.
“He may have saved himself if he refused to eat very much of it,” Sarah said, rolling up her sleeves and getting ready to work on Prescott.
“Will he be all right, do you think?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked her later, after the doctor had finished examining Prescott. He lay peacefully on his pillow, but he looked awfully pale from being poked and prodded as the doctor checked to see if he showed any evidence of opium poisoning. He’d been very weak and ill to begin with, and now… Sarah simply didn’t know. At least the doctor had felt sure he hadn’t ingested very much of the opium. If the strain of being saved didn’t kill him, he’d probably recover.
The two women were keeping a vigil by his bed. They’d found the basket the woman had used to bring the poisoned porridge into the hospital. Unfortunately, the basket was the kind that was available at every market in the city, and it contained no clue as to who the woman might have been.
“Well,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, “I think we can be fairly certain that woman wasn’t his aunt.”
“She may have been the one who tried to kill him the first time, though,” Sarah said. “She could have seen the newspaper story, figured out where he would be, and decided to finish him off.”
“Did you see what she looked like?”