“And how much was sufficient for Mr. Dalby?”
The older man’s jaw clenched.
Dr. Finch added, “I came looking for you to ask you about it and to make sure Miss Loveday was all right. I had just reached the side door when someone struck me from behind. I guess now we know that was you.”
Dr. Marsland’s face darkened, then he exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “Why couldn’t you two leave well enough alone? If you had, I might have let you live, but now, you give me no choice.”
“Of course you have a choice,” Anne said. “We always have a choice. No one can force you to do wrong. You can choose to do the right thing now and beg forgiveness for the past.”
“Your speech comes a bit late, Miss Loveday, considering my recent actions, but thank you for caring about my eternal soul.”
“I suppose it was you who poisoned Lady Celia?” Dr. Finch said.
“No. Not ... directly, no.”
“Why are you doing all this?” Anne asked. “Lady Celia, Mr. Dalby, and now us?”
Dr. Marsland paused and looked up as though struck by what she’d said.
“Us,” he repeated. “Such a lovely little word. Yet there was nousfor me. Lady Celia saw to that. She put an end to our courtship. Forbade her daughter to accept my offer of marriage. Discouraged her from spending time with me, even as her physician. And after Finch came, she insisted he alone attend her daughter. Mr. Dalby persuaded me that if her mother was no longer here to hinder us, we would be together at last.
“The poison was his idea, but he didn’t know how to go about it. When the soup and digitalis failed, he came to me for something more reliable. He wanted it to appear natural, to go undetected, not cause overmuch pain, and be fast acting. He wanted her to die before she revised her will, or at least before she’d signed it. Either way, the sooner she died, the sooner he would receive whatever inheritance was coming to him, and he needed money desperately.
“At first I refused. Told him I was a physician who healed and not harmed. Took the Oath of Hippocrates, after all. But he wore me down. Knew of my utter, undying devotion to his cousin. The endless torment of being kept from her. So I agreed to help him, but I refused to administer anything poisonous myself. I worried he might turn on me and deny all knowledge of the plot. So I prepared it, and he took it to her room and administered it. In her tea or straight down her gullet, I don’t know. Opium with poison hemlock—used for centuries to put people quickly and painlessly to death. And I consoled my conscience with the realization that she was old and ill and would die eventually anyway.”
Anne threw up her hands. “That’s no excuse. We will all die eventually!”
“Sadly true, and imminent in this case.”
“That explains why Lady Celia died,” Ernest said. “What about Mr. Dalby?”
“That was not part of the original plan. He brought it on himself. A few nights after Lady Celia died, Katherine asked me to stay for dinner. You two as well. I happily accepted, foolishly hopeful for our future. When I left, I forgot my bag, so I returned, letting myself in through the side door, as usual. I thought I might find Katherine alone, offer a comforting shoulder, assurance of my regard and support in her time of need.
“Instead, I found Dalby wooingmyKatherine, trying to convince her to marryhim. She always had a soft spot for him—she and her mother both—and he used that to try to get his hands on her money. Women find him hard to resist, as your relatives both learned from painful experience. He had a strange power over females and used people for his own ends.
“And the snake had used me. Took advantage of my desperate, lovelorn state to repair his desperate financial state. I was stunned, betrayed, furious. I had risked my profession, my good name, my very freedom to free her for myself. Certainly not for a rake like him. I left and began making plans to have my revenge.”
“You should have lingered a bit longer,” Anne said. “You would have heard her refuse him in no uncertain terms.”
“Truly? Then perhaps there is hope for us yet.”
With an incredulous puff of laughter, Anne shook her head.
“How did you poison him?” Ernest asked, perhaps trying to keep the man talking and delay whatever end he had planned for them.
Marsland lifted an unconcerned shoulder. “Easy enough to do. Man always had a drink in his hand. I left him a note guaranteed to lure him from the house. The arrow in the neck was an afterthought. To move the focus away from any signs of poisoning.”
So Rosa did not write that note, Anne realized with faint relief, glad now she had taken it.
Dr. Marsland glanced at his young partner, whose eyes now glinted with disgust.
“I was relieved when Ernest began showing a preference for you, Miss Loveday. For he had briefly turned Katherine’s head as well—or at least she enjoyed his attentions. I hated that she preferred him to call on her instead of me. Him touching her pale white throat, looking into her deep brown eyes, listening to her heart.... For a time I thought I might have to sever our partnership straightaway.”
He gazed upon the younger man, his expression regretful. “And now, I suppose, I will have to anyway, in a manner of speaking. It’s a pity. I really did admire your father.”
“Let us go, Marsland,” Dr. Finch said. “We can’t prove anything. It will only be our word against yours.”
“Perhaps, but as there are two of you, I don’t like my chances.”
