Lethal Remedies

by M. Louisa Locke

  He had also discovered that none of this came from some secret knowledge his wife and Kathleen had, some mystery handed down from woman to woman. It was the result of simply spending time with this tiny person, who was developing her own personality.

  When the doctor finished her examination, and Annie had changed their daughter’s diaper, they went to sit in the chairs across from the doctor’s desk. This time it was Annie who held Abigail on her knees, leaning over her to try and take the ball away. Abigail squealed and waved the ball in the air, clearly seeing this as a game. Annie told the doctor she was afraid that her daughter wasn’t going to give up the ball very easily.

  Dr. Brown laughed and said, “Keep it. I’ve got a box of them. Seems the least I can do, given how much you and your husband have done for me and the Pacific Dispensary.”

  Annie said, “I gather you’ve heard about what happened with the McFadyn trial?”

  “Sergeant Thompson sent me a note this morning, and I was certainly relieved. Mrs. Stone and a number of the board members had been working diligently to impress upon the city’s newspaper editors that they shouldn’t sensationalize the trial. But how much better it will be now that the whole unfortunate incident will be relegated to a line in the weekly police report, with, we hope, no names used except for McFadyn’s. But, Mr. Dawson, how did you achieve this miracle?”

  Nate said quickly, “Oh, it wasn’t my doing, although I’m glad I was able to convince the district attorney in March not to charge either Dr. Blair or Dr. Mitchell with anything. In addition, Hilda Putki’s cooperation with the police really helped. Brave of the girl. This gave the police the information they needed to raid the place Tessa Wheeler ran and get enough evidence to charge her. That persuaded her to testify against McFadyn in return for a lighter sentence. McFadyn knew she would be a very damaging witness if his case came to trial. Suddenly, a two-year sentence looked a good deal better than a ten-year one.”

  Nate didn’t intend to go into the detail he’d shared with Mitchell about the role Chris Buckley’s threats had played in the outcome. What he said was, “We do owe a debt of gratitude to Sergeant Thompson. Not just for how he handled the McFadyn case, but for how quiet he kept the outcome of the investigation into Dr. Granger’s death. Looks like he was able to keep the dispensary completely out of the final report to the coroner.”

  Dr. Brown sighed. “You’re quite sure that Miss Prentise is the one who killed Dr. Granger? Seems impossible. Although I suppose the fact that she committed suicide when the police arrived was as good as a confession.”

  Annie said, “Actually, she was so upset about her nephew saying she had to move out, I don’t think it had even registered that the police were there to search the house.”

  Nate added, “The police aren’t even sure she intended to kill herself. The coroner said what she had taken was belladonna, not aconite, and not in a lethal dose. And she had sent for Dr. Skerry, who would have known what antidote to administer. Annie thinks this was a melodramatic gesture by Miss Prentise to get Richard to go back on his decision that she had to move out.”

  “But then how did she die?”

  Nate said, “Heart failure.”

  Dr. Brown nodded. “Ah, yes. Belladonna slows the heart, and particularly if there is some underlying cardiac problem, it can cause death. But if she didn’t commit suicide, how are they sure she, and not Richard or Dr. Skerry, was behind the poisonings or Dr. Granger’s death?”

  Annie said, “Thompson found more than enough evidence in her room to prove she was responsible for both. The tragedy is that it was Dr. Granger, himself, who told Miss Prentise that he’d been the doctor who attended her sister at Richard’s birth. It appears she didn’t know until then. Richard certainly didn’t. Dr. Granger sent Miss Prentise a letter the day after he and Dr. Blair had their confrontation with Richard Truscott and his aunt at the dispensary. The police found the letter from him in her room. Dr. Granger said in the letter that he’d had his suspicions that Richard Truscott was the infant son of the woman who’d died under his care back in Pennsylvania. But after having met her and learning her name was Ruby, he was sure of that connection. He said he would very much like to speak to her, and he asked her to come to his office that evening at seven-thirty. No doubt she was the ‘patient’ he put down in his book.”

  Dr. Brown said, “Oh, the dear man. Of course that’s what he’d do. He’d want to apologize in person. Perhaps he thought this incident from years ago was the reason she and her nephew were targeting the dispensary and hoped to persuade her to stop.”

  “The police don’t know if she intended to kill him, given the fact that the murder weapon was something she found at the scene,” Nate said. “But it certainly explains why she told Sergeant Thompson she was speaking with her nephew through his door at that time—which Truscott later said confused him because that hadn’t happened. She was establishing an alibi for herself, after the fact. However, there is ample evidence she had planned the murder of her brother-in-law and intended to kill Phoebe Truscott.”

  Annie said, “In her room was her case of homeopathic medicines, which did include both belladonna and aconite, in clear bottles. There was also a detailed guide that came with the case. Sergeant Thompson was scandalized. Said that it read like a book on how to poison people since it gave details on what would happen if you didn’t dilute each kind of medicine enough, what amount would be a fatal dose. Miss Prentise even wrote down in the guide how much aconite it had taken to kill her brother-in-law and how long he suffered before he expired.”

  “How horrible. And no one was suspicious about his death?” Dr. Brown said.

  “No,” Annie replied. “He’d had gastric problems, so Miss Prentise had no trouble persuading Dr. Skerry, who had treated him for these problems, to sign the death certificate, saying he’d died of natural causes.”

  Dr. Brown shook her head in disbelief and said, “Why do you think she killed her brother-in-law and attempted to kill Phoebe?”

  Annie jiggled Abigail on her knee and said, “I guess one could say motherly love.”

  Keeping silent for a moment, Nate personally believed the woman’s motive was financial—kill the brother-in-law and then Phoebe in order to get access to their wealth through control of her nephew.

  Annie continued, “She’d raised her nephew from infancy, considered him her son, and I believe that she became increasingly obsessive about him. Phoebe told me that her husband often fought with his father and that his aunt always took his side. Miss Prentise was particularly supportive of his dream to go to the university.”

  Nate added, “I think her brother-in-law signed his death warrant when he bought a life-insurance policy. Two thousand dollars in cash upon his death was just too tempting.”

  “It was more than enough to pay for her nephew’s four years at the university and get him started on his law degree. But then came his marriage to Phoebe Truscott,” Annie said. “Joan Carpenter says that Richard’s aunt was jealous of Phoebe from the beginning. I suspect Miss Prentise faced a dilemma at that point, how to respond to this new threat to her relationship with her nephew. Certainly the wealth that Phoebe brought into the marriage was welcome, and I think at first she tolerated the new wife because Phoebe was content to let her run the house.”

  Dr. Brown said, “What changed? Phoebe’s illness?”

  Annie said, “I think that might have been the start of it. Phoebe did mention to me that Richard postponed his plans to go to law school indefinitely, because of her illness. That wouldn’t have made his aunt very happy. On the other hand, while Phoebe was ill, she didn’t challenge his aunt’s position in the house.”

  Dr. Brown frowned and said, “I know that Dr. Granger was pretty honest about the chances that the cysts would eventually take Phoebe’s life if we did nothing.”

  Annie nodded. “I suspect Miss Prentise thought she could afford to wait and let nature take its course.”

  Dr. Brown said, “Oh, my.
The woman must have been disappointed when the operation I performed was successful and it looked like Phoebe’s health was returning. Is that when she started administering poison to Phoebe?”

  Nate said, “Thompson thinks so. The information in the homeopathic guide had dates and amounts written down, and it looked like she was initially giving Phoebe just enough to make her ill. He thinks Miss Prentise might have feared administering a fatal dose right away, the way she did with her brother-in-law. The care Phoebe got at the dispensary had been too effective; she was too healthy. So, she started first with the belladonna, which made Phoebe ill enough to justify calling in Dr. Skerry.”

  Annie added, “I think that the morning Miss Prentise died, she thought she could use the same dose of belladonna, or a little less, that she had first used on Phoebe. I suspect she thought it wouldn’t be enough to do any permanent damage, but enough to make her genuinely ill and garner her nephew’s sympathy. Of course, she had no idea she had a weak heart.”

  Nate said, “And, as we know, Dr. Skerry had her own agenda, targeting Dr. Granger and yourself. As a result, Skerry encouraged Richard Truscott in the belief that his wife’s returning illness was the dispensary’s fault. Thompson said if Joan hadn’t kept her from eating the porridge that morning, Mrs. Truscott would most likely have died. There is little doubt that Dr. Skerry would have been glad to sign her death certificate as well.”

  Dr. Brown said sharply, “This is one of the very reasons I fought so hard not to have Imogen Skerry become a member of the California Medical Society, not because she was a homeopathic physician, but because I had seen that she put her own financial position above the health of her patients.”

  Nate, startled at her vehemence, said, “Well, Thompson said the police were going to keep an eye on Skerry from now on. The woman swears she had no idea that Ruby Prentise was using her to cover up her murderous plans. However, she knows that if the police had decided to pursue a case against her as an accessory to murder, it would have ruined her.”

  Dr. Brown said, “I hope she’s learned her lesson. But, Mrs. Dawson, you will not be surprised when I tell you that I heard that Mrs. Branting has joined the board of the local Female Homeopathy Dispensary, a board on which Dr. Skerry now serves as well. You always suspected there was a connection between the two women, and it looks as if you were right. As you might imagine, this move on the part of Mrs. Branting has ended any lingering doubts among our membership that Mrs. Stone was correct in asking her to resign from the board in March.”

  Nate repressed a smile at the look of satisfaction on his wife’s face. Annie did like it when a suspicion she had was confirmed.

  His wife said, “All in all, now that the McFadyn problem has been resolved, you can feel more confident that the dispensary is safe from being dragged through the news. I am glad for Dr. Blair’s sake, as well. I hated the thought that her move to set up her practice at Caro Sutton’s might be derailed by having to testify.”

  Dr. Brown said, “This is going to be such a relief for Hilda Putki. She and Mrs. Truscott can stop fretting about McFadyn being free to try and grab her little Harry again.”

  Nate knew that when it had been time for Hilda and her son to leave the dispensary at the end of March, Mrs. Truscott had invited the girl to move in with her and her husband. She said this way she could raise her son and get the training to be a lady’s maid. Annie said that Joan, Phoebe’s maid, had encouraged this, seeing how attached her mistress had become to both Hilda and little Harry. Nate couldn’t help wonder what Richard Truscott thought about the arrangement. However, he suspected the man was pretty much going to do anything he could to make Phoebe happy. Only right, given that Richard had been, albeit unwittingly, taking the side of a woman who had been trying to kill his wife.

  Annie broke into that thought, saying, “Nate, did you hear what Dr. Brown just said? Phoebe Truscott is pregnant! Soon there will be two children running around that house, bringing joy.”

  Dr. Brown, all smiles, said, “I had told the Truscotts when the operation was over, and I hadn’t had to remove both ovaries, that there was a possibility that she could conceive. Of course, we will have to monitor her closely. Thank heavens the aunt’s first attempts at poisoning her were only designed to make her sick, not kill her. Consequently, there shouldn’t be any harm to the baby. As you might imagine, Richard Truscott is now falling all over himself to shout the praises of the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children!”

  Nate, seeing how pleased his wife was at this news, wondered, not for the first time, if she had given any thought to having another child herself. He knew his own answer to this question, but he also had no desire, for the present, to add any more complications to his wife’s life.

  Not when she was finally returning to the woman he’d married, feisty and full of life.

  He’d been initially quite hesitant about his wife’s decision to take the job with the Pacific Dispensary, secretly agreeing with Mrs. Stein that Annie needed to accept the constraints that motherhood had placed upon her. He could now see that would have been a recipe for disaster, for Annie and for himself.

  Getting out of the house, engaging her mind, using all her formidable skills, had acted on Annie like a tonic. In addition, after the news spread of how she had helped the dispensary, she’d begun to acquire a whole new set of clients. This infusion of income, in turn, had let Nate begin to cut back on his caseload. As a result, he was spending more evenings and weekends at home, with his wife and daughter.

  He looked over at Abigail, who grinned and threw her ball at him, chuckling merrily.

  If he were honest, spending more time with his beloved wife and daughter was making him happier than he ever thought possible. Who would have guessed that, for Annie, more work was the remedy for what ailed her, while, in his case, the remedy was less work and more time with his family?

  * * *

  The End

  Author’s Notes

  Staying true to the mission of the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, which is to feature different occupations held by women in the late nineteenth century, I wanted this novel to be about women in the medical professions. Beyond that, as usual, I didn’t have a plot in mind when I started my research.

  The first source that I consulted was Regina Morantz-Sanchez’s Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (1985), which provided a good academic review of the topic, including the general changes in the medical profession, the development of competing medical theories, the difficulties women had in getting medical training, the rise of female-only medical schools, and the problems female physicians faced practicing their profession that led them to set up dispensaries (the nineteenth-century term for walk-in clinics and hospitals) where female doctors and nurses could get clinical experience.

  But the general source that I found most helpful was the collection of articles in “Send Us a Lady Physician:” Women Doctors in America, 1835-1920, edited by Ruth J. Abram in 1985. This collection became the source for much of the very specific historical information that I used in Lethal Remedies. It is this book that describes the tools found in a doctor’s medical bag, including obstetric instruments. It also discusses the rise of homeopathy in the nineteenth century as an alternative to “regular” medicine, providing detailed descriptions of the do-it-yourself homeopathic guides and kits that were popular among women in the mid-nineteenth century. As an aside, negative portrayals of homeopathic medicine in Lethal Remedies was due to certain plot necessities, not my personal opinion about homeopathy or any other alternative medical practices.

  For historical background, I also read the two major fictional depictions of women physicians published in the late nineteenth century. The first was Doctor Zay by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, written in 1882. This novel tells the story of the attempts by a young man to woo a successful homeopathic female physician who doesn’t want to give up her medical career for marriage. The second novel, A Country Doctor, written
in 1884 by Sarah Orne Jewett, describes a young woman who, under the mentorship of an old-fashioned small-town doctor, becomes a doctor herself.

  The next step in my research was to look for information on women practicing medicine in the far west at the end of the nineteenth century, since the secondary sources primarily concentrated on women practicing medicine in the Northeast. Unfortunately, the sources in this area were very limited.

  However, I found some short biographical sketches on a few female physicians, including Dr. Lucy Wanzer, the first woman to graduate from the University of California’s medical school, and Dr. Charlotte Blake Brown, whom I had introduced briefly in Scholarly Pursuits as Annie’s physician during her pregnancy.

  The information on Drs. Wanzer and Brown was primarily about the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children, the institution they, along with Dr. Maria Bucknell, founded in 1876. This dovetailed with what I had learned about the importance of dispensaries that were run by women, and that led me to decide that the Pacific Dispensary would be the perfect setting for my upcoming novel.

  By 1882, the Pacific Dispensary had become both a walk-in clinic and a hospital that served women and children. It was staffed by three female attending physicians, a single resident physician, and a matron and her assistant, and four nurses in training and assorted servants. I knew I would find my cast of characters among the dispensary’s female staff and patients and the wealthy women in the city who donated money to the institution and made up the dispensary’s Board of Trustees.

  Having established in previous stories that Annie provided audits and financial advice to female-run charities—see the short story “Mr. Wong Rights a Wrong”—I was able to get Annie involved in investigating crimes connected with the dispensary. I just needed to figure out what crimes she would be investigating, in other words, develop the mystery plot.

  Here, two academic works became very useful. The first, and probably more important, is Conduct Unbecoming a Woman: Medicine on Trial in Turn-of-the- Century Brooklyn (1999) by Regina Morantz-Sanchez. This is a fascinating study of the female physician Mary Dixon Jones and the dispensary she ran to provide clinical and hospital services to women in Brooklyn in the 1880s. A scandal involving the dispensary had erupted when a local newspaper accused Dixon of medical malpractice. This newspaper campaign first resulted in a trial against Dixon, in which she was found not guilty of manslaughter, and a subsequent trial against the newspaper for libel, in which the newspaper was found not guilty as well.