He tipped his hat sarcastically at her.
“Was Aunt Clove upset about the party last night?” Grace asked, turning to Lillie.
“Livid,” Lillie said.
They left the bustling streets surrounding the fairgrounds and drove to a place called Scab Row. The sunlight was weaker here, the smells stronger. The streets seemed glazed with something sticky and wet. It was not a part of St. Louis Grace had ever been to before.
There was a small, almost-hidden sign outside the building.THE EVENING DISPENSARY FOR WOMEN.
Earnest eyed the street. “Are you certain you’ll be safe here?” he asked, frowning as he helped Lillie from the carriage.
“We’ll be fine,” Lillie assured him. “We’ll hail a cab for the way back.”
Earnest turned to help Grace from the carriage. He gripped her arm perhaps a little tighter than necessary, fixing his blue eyes on her.
When she stepped to the ground, he drew her in close.
“It’s true. I remember now. I did order a drink for Harriet that night,” he said roughly, his voice low. “But I was having a conversation with someone before I could give the glass to Oliver. If someone put something in it, it was probably then.”
He dropped Grace’s arm and climbed back into the carriage. He shut the door, giving two smart raps on the carriage’s ceiling, without looking at her again. Grace fought an unsettled feeling as the driver pulled away.
She followed Lillie, climbing the brick stairs lined with rusting wrought iron, and Lillie knocked on the door. Grace covered the rumble of hunger pains in her stomach by feigning a cough.
“Dr. May and Dr. Baker opened this. They were two of the first female physicians in the state of Missouri,” Lillie said as they waited on the stoop. “Remind me to tell you later how Dr. May tricked the all-male St. Louis Medical Society into letting her in by submitting her name with only a first initial.”
“Lillie,” a woman said warmly, opening the door to them. Her hair was pulled up into a chestnut bun streaked with the beginnings of silver. Her eyes were overlarge and soulful, and though her face was lined with wrinkles, something about her appeared strangely youthful.
“Dr. May! This is my cousin, Grace Covington,” Lillie said. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us. I know how busy you are.”
“Of course, my dear,” Dr. May said. “Come in.”
Dr. May ushered them inside the clinic. It was dim, with the drapes pulled closed, but sparkling clean. They sat on worn chairs, surrounded by bookcases and glass cases of medicines and plants. There was a faint smell of woody tea and iodine.
“Dr. May opened the Emmaus House for young women who come to the fairgrounds and work long days with little or no family,” Lillie said as the doctor disappeared into the small kitchen. “She’s made her career seeing mostly working women and”—she dropped her voice—“prostitutes.”
Grace looked around the room and took out her small notebook.
“Does she treat addicts?” Grace asked.
At least the murder had something Grace could grasp and get her hands around. It was information and clues and motives, and she would get down in the dirt of it all, feeling the grime of it beneath herfingernails. It felt good, to chase down an enemy she could take on for Oliver. Because it was something outside of him.
Not inside. Not something that became intertwined with himself that she couldn’t kill the monster of it without hurting him too.
“What would you like to discuss?” Dr. May said, appearing with a tray of tea.
Lillie accepted a steaming cup. “Thank you for your concern about my brother Oliver. We’re not convinced we have the full story, and we’re looking into it a little ourselves. We’d like to hear more about the kind of poison that was revealed in Harriet Forbes’s autopsy.”
Dr. May’s face was serious. “Go on.”
Lillie nodded at Grace, who took out an ink pen and cleared her throat.
“Strychnine,” she began. “We’re wondering, what does it look like, and how would it be administered?”
“Yes. Let’s see. Well, strychnine is sourced from the seeds of theStrychnos nux-vomicatree,” Dr. May explained. She stood and pulled a book from the shelf, flipping through its pages. “It’s a neurotoxin, a white powder that is odorless, and quite bitter.” She paused on a page. “In fact, I’m surprised that Miss Forbes would have consumed it without noticing it, unless it was administered in a very strong drink.”
Grace and Lillie immediately looked at each other. “Dubonnet,” Lillie said, her eyes wide with horror. “Oliver had recently begun drinking Dubonnet.”
The intensely bitter drink was another detail not in Oliver’s favor.
