“I doubt it,” Molly said, sipping casually on her cold and bitter-tasting coffee. “I think they want to find out who’s been poisoning me.”
Uncle Willy’s cup slipped out of nerveless fingers and crashed back onto its saucer. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. “Well,” he said finally, his normally affected voice high-pitched and squeaky. “Well.”
Toby had already moved to her side, laying his soft, gentle hands on hers in tender concern. Hands so different from Patrick’s strong, demanding ones. She pulled away firmly. “This isn’t true, is it, Molly?” His voice was low and impassioned. “If it is, I swear to God I’ll kill him!”
“Now who do you think you’re talking about?” Mrs. Morse demanded in a blaze of firry, slamming down another pot and marching across the room, hands on her hips. “You have one hell of a lot of nerve, my boy, if you think you can come around here, playing up to your so-called best friend’s wife, and slander him behind his back. Patrick wouldn’t harm a hair on that girl’s head, and well she knows it!”
Apart from breaking her heart, she thought wryly. “Mrs. Morse is right, Toby,” she said aloud. “What’s between Patrick and me is no one else’s concern.”
Mrs. Morse nodded with grim approval. “You listen to her, young man. If I didn’t know better I’d get awfully suspicious of the way you’re trying to throw the blame on Patrick.”
“This is all nonsense.” Aunt Ermy spoke sternly from the kitchen door, her tiny, piglike eyes glistening avidly. “What’s all this about Molly being poisoned?” She looked at Molly with an expression of heavy solicitude that was almost believable. “That was a nasty blow you took on your head, and I think you must be suffering delusions of persecution along with your amnesia. Heavens, no one would want to poison you! Now, you just put that idea out of your head and we’ll call the police and tell them it was all a mistake.”
“I’d love to do just that, Aunt Ermy, if it weren’t for one simple thing,” Molly said in her calmest voice. “It’s Dr. Turner’s idea that I’m being poisoned, and it’s more than a stray fancy. There was arsenic in my bloodstream.”
“Then you took it yourself, for the attention it would bring you,” Ermy said flatly, the look in those tiny eyes hostile. “No one in this house would try to kill you. We all love you.”
Molly’s deadly calm turned into a slicing rage. “Of course you do,” she said bitterly. “You’re just dripping all over with concern, aren’t you? There’s something going on here, and if my memory wasn’t such a total blank I could figure it out. But I’ll remember. Sooner or later it’ll come back to me, and I’ll have the answers.”
Her words hung in the air like a palpable threat. And she found herself wondering if her angry words had just sealed her fate.
The police arrived a half an hour later. Molly had taken refuge in her bedroom, and when she heard a car pull up she ran to her window, hoping against all possible hope that it was Patrick. She felt more than a twinge of dismay as she recognized her old friend, Lieutenant Ryker, as he climbed out of the gray sedan.
She was downstairs in time to open the door for him. “You’re looking a lot better, Mrs. Winters,” he greeted her, stepping into the hall and looking around him with calm, professional detachment. That detachment made her uneasy.
“I’m feeling much better,” she said with deceptive politeness. “Why are you here? I would have thought the local police could have handled this.”
“I’m sure they could have,” he answered in his clipped, emotionless voice, “but they decided it was more my concern than theirs. And rightly so. Sergeant Stroup came along to represent their interests.”
Molly’s eyes flickered over the man standing behind him, recognizing the leering animosity with faint despair. It only needed this, she thought wearily.
“Is your husband here, Mrs. Winters?” Ryker continued smoothly. “I’d like to have a few words with him.”
“I’m afraid not. He doesn’t even know about this...this poison business. He left here before I woke and I don’t think he’s expected back until tomorrow.”
“And could you tell me where we could get in touch with him?” There was absolutely no reason for her to be bothered by the simple questions. But she was.
“I’m afraid I have no idea,” she finally answered, her voice stiff. “Perhaps Mrs. Morse might know. I assume you’ll want to talk with her?”
“All in good time, Mrs. Winters, all in good time,” he said in that chilling tone. “Suppose you take me to a nice quiet place where we can talk, and we’ll get this business over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.”
He didn’t appear to be the kind of man who wished to avoid causing pain, but there weren’t really any options. She led him to Patrick’s office to begin one of the most harrowing half hours in her life.
Every answer she gave to his sharply barked out questions, every statement she made, was pulled apart and delved into as if she were on the witness stand. He patently believed not one word she said, yet Dr. Turner’s evidence was impossible to refute. Through it all she was conscious of Stroup’s smirking, leering presence, his damp, slightly bloodshot eyes lingering over the leather chair she sat in and the antique desk with the same covetous intensity that he directed at her.
She answered Ryker’s tersely worded questions calmly and rationally, keeping her voice level, and in the end he was forced to concede defeat. He hadn’t been able to make her cry, as he’d all too obviously wanted, and blurt out the truths of all her so-called crimes. She stared across the desk stonily.
“All right, that will be all for now, Mrs. Winters.” He leaned back in Patrick’s chair affably. “But I suggest you stay close to home for the time being.”
“It seems to me that home is about the most dangerous place for me right now,” she said in a cool voice. “But I suppose I really have no choice in the matter.”
“No, I suppose you don’t,” he answered. “Could you ask William Winters to come next please, Stroup? I don’t think we’ll be bothering Mrs. Winters any more today.”
Thank God for that, she thought as she left the room, brushing unshed tears of anger and humiliation from her eyes. The only consolation in the miserable affair was that Willy and Ermy would have to go through the same thing. Though there was always the chance Ryker would behave toward them with at least a trace of charm.
She saw him before he left, his arms full of little bottles and packages, Stroup’s beefy arms similarly encumbered. “We’ll be leaving now, Mrs. Winters,” he said coolly, his colorless eyes distant and unfathomable.
“What are all those?”
