Fatal as a Fallen Woman (28 page)

She had been up late into the night, making plans to move everyone back into the Elmira. After the others had retired, she and Ben had spent another hour discussing her father's murder. They'd gone round and round and were not one bit further ahead. The only decision they'd made was to accept a dinner invitation from the owner of the mercantile, who claimed he'd been a good friend of her father's.

Diana still liked Miranda as a suspect, but unless they could figure out how the merry widow had been able to plant that bloodstained glove in Elmira's suite, she despaired of ever proving Miranda's guilt. Accusing each of the other girls in turn did not seem like a viable plan. Besides, when she'd first questioned them, back in Denver, they'd all denied knowing anything about the glove. Diana had believed them. She still did.   When Jane had dressed and left the room, Katie opened one eye. "Thank the Lord that's over with!"

"Don't you believe in healthful exercise?"

"I get plenty of exercise at night. No need to exert myself first thing in the morning." She grinned, unrepentant.

Very faintly, Diana heard the sound of voices from the next room, occupied by Maybelle and Chastity. She wondered if Jane had stopped in to see if anyone else was ready for breakfast.

Bright sunshine flooded in through the sheer curtains hung over floor to ceiling windows, picking out the flowers on the carpet and the bright-colored squares on the quilt Diana still had pulled up to her chin. "It's not exactly the crack of dawn."

"Close enough. It's not noon yet, is it?"

One on each side, they rolled out of bed. Diana dressed rapidly, pulling on her comfortable old blue standby, and turned to find Katie wearing only lace-trimmed drawers and a cambric corset cover. She held a strand of her fiery red hair in front of her eyes, frowning at it.

"What's wrong?"

"I need to dye my hair again. It's getting dull." Catching Diana's involuntary reaction, she chuckled. "I like bright colors."

"What color was your hair before you dyed it?"

"Oh, it was red, but a very ordinary shade. Like a carrot. I wanted something people would remember."

Curious in spite of herself, Diana studied Katie's bountiful curls. "What do you use?"

"Alkanet boiled in baking soda water. Then, after I my hair dries, I do a second wash with lemon juice and vinegar."

Diana was at a loss for words. One ingredient alone should have been sufficient to change the color, but she supposed the combination accounted for that unique shade of red.

Leaving her to it, Diana went out into the corridor and rapped on the door opposite, the room assigned to Honeycomb, Big Nose Nellie, Strawberry Sue, and Maryam. When no one answered Diana's knock, she started to go on down the stairs to the hotel dining room. She changed her mind at the last minute and turned the knob instead. She told herself that had no particular reason to be worried about Nellie, but the young woman had experienced two close calls in the course of a week. Better safe than sorry.

A bulge showed beneath the covers of the far bed. One of the girls sleeping in. But an uneasy feeling crept over Diana, a premonition she could not ignore. She remembered what Nellie had said—she always slept sitting up.

She'd just see who it was, Diana decided, and go away again if it was one of the other girls. Feeling slightly foolish, she crept up to the side of the bed and tweaked the sheet away from the sleeper's face.

Nellie.

Her heart in her throat, Diana reached out and touched the young woman on her shoulder. Nellie's eyes fluttered open, but she didn't seem to recognize Diana.

"Go 'way." Her voice was slurred and the way she inhaled and exhaled sounded odd, as if she couldn't quite catch her breath.

Alarmed, Diana seized Nellie's wrist and felt for the pulse. It was rapid and irregular. Diana started for the door at a fast clip, intent on fetching Ben, but before she'd gotten halfway across the room, Nellie moaned.

"Gonna be sick," she whispered. "Help me."

Diana handed her the chamber pot just in time.

"Feel giddy," Nellie murmured after she'd emptied her stomach. "Sleepy, too."

Nellie's pulse had slowed, but Diana wasn't sure that was a good sign. The other woman's breathing wasn't so fast now, either, but it was noisy in a way that wasn't right.

"Hang on," Diana told her. "I'm going for help."

First she tried Ben's room at the far end of the hall, but it was empty. Then she bolted down the stairs to the dining room, where everyone had gathered except Katie and Nellie. Diana caught Ben's eye and jerked her head toward the second floor. A moment later he was racing up the stairs beside her. She was breathless by the time they got back to Nellie's room.

"What's wrong with her, Ben?" Even from the doorway, Diana could see that Nellie looked worse than she had a few minutes earlier. She seemed to be in a stupor.

He checked her pulse, looked at her eyes, then glanced around, checking the top of the night stand, the floor, and finally the bed itself. He found what he was looking for under Nellie's pillow.

"Laudanum. She's taken an overdose."

For a moment Diana was too stunned to move or speak, but the sound of footsteps on the stairs finally spurred her into action. She stepped all the way into the room and closed the door behind her, shutting out curious onlookers. "What can I do to help?"

"We've got to induce vomiting. That she's already been sick is a good sign."

The door opened and closed. "Laudanum poisoning?" Long Tall Linda

asked.

"Yes."

"I have mustard seed."

Ben glanced at Diana, a question in his eyes.

"Long Tall Linda has some experience with home remedies," Diana said.

"Get the mustard seed. Diana, I need warm water. Lots of it. And a feather to use to tickle her throat. Then go to my room for my bag. I have sulphate of zinc," he said to Long Tall Linda."

Diana did as she was told and helped where she could over the next half hour as they worked to empty Nellie's stomach of the poison.

"We aren't out of the woods yet," Ben said when he'd checked her heart rate yet again. "Now we need a strong stimulant. Coffee will do. Or brandy. And I want you to pour cold water over her head and the back of her neck."

"My ma always said to whip the skin with small cords or rods," Long Tall Linda offered. "Palms of the hands and soles of the feet."

"I don't think we need to go that far," Ben said, "but I'll keep it in mind."

In another hour, Nellie was sleeping normally and there was time at last to think about what had happened.

"You knew it was laudanum poisoning," Ben said, turning to Long Tall Linda with a suspicious look on his face. "How?"

"Made sense."

"Why? Was she addicted to the stuff?"

"Not so you'd notice, but we all keep some around. There are times you need it to sleep."

"That doesn't explain why she'd be taking it at mid-morning," Diana said, "or why she'd take too much."

Long Tall Linda shrugged. "She never did have a lick of sense. Poor cow. She's sure had a run of bad luck lately."

It was more than bad luck, Diana thought. A silent exchange of glances told her Ben thought so, too. This was the third attempt to harm Nellie. Any one of them might have killed her.

Diana stayed with Nellie all that day, as did Jane. When at last Nellie awoke, much improved and even hungry, the first thing Diana asked her was why she'd taken the laudanum.

"But I didn't," Nellie objected. "The only thing I took was my tonic."

Diana retrieved the bottle Ben had found. "Is this it?"

Nellie nodded. "Revitalizing tonic. Good for what ails you."

Diana looked at the bottle. It was clearly marked as containing laudanum. "You don't know how to read, do you?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Do you?"

"No." Nellie sulked. "Never went to school."

"If you'd like, I'll see that you are taught, but that's not the most important thing right now. Someone substituted a bottle of laudanum for your tonic. What would have been a normal dose of one was a dangerous amount of the other. That's what made you sick. Can you think how that could happen?"

Nellie shrugged. "Someone playing a joke?"

"A dangerous one. Is there any reason any of the others would want to hurt you?"

"You mean kill me?" As that idea sunk in, Nellie had the good sense to be scared.

"I think so."

"You're upsetting her for no reason," Jane interrupted. "Laudanum's not something anyone would use if they wanted her dead. They'd give her rat poison. Or Oil of Tansy. Always plenty of that around a whorehouse."

Tears rolled slowly down Nellie's cheeks. "What did I do to make someone hate me so much?"

"It has to be something you know without realizing its importance. It could be tied to my Father's death. If someone thinks you noticed more that night than you've said—"

"But I didn't see nothing!" Nellie wailed.

"No one coming out of my mother's suite? No one going in?"

"I wasn't anywhere
near
her rooms! Honest!"

"Nothing suspicious that night at all?"

"I'd tell you if there was. The only reason I remembered about the gloves was because I had a hankering to own a pair like that myself. I don't remember nothing else. Honest." Tears continued to stream down her face as an edge of hysteria came into her voice.

"All right, Nellie. All right. I believe you."

"I believe you, too," Jane said. "You didn't see anything." She turned to Diana. "You're making too much of this. She accidentally got hold of the wrong bottle. That's all it was."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But let's make sure everyone we can think of knows Nellie is no threat. That's the only way to be sure there won't be a fourth attempt to silence her."

Chapter Fourteen

"Hugh Crymble," the sheriff of Chaffee County said a few hours later, holding out a hand to Ben. He was a big, burly man in his early forties, hardened by years of mining in the mountains. Ben had already asked a few questions about him. Crymble was honest as the day was long, but he lived in Buena Vista. He took a personal interest in law and order in Torrence only when it was brought to his attention. Ben had sent him a telegram.

They shook, and Ben introduced himself, then took a chair at Crymble's table in the saloon. The place smelled of sawdust and spilled whiskey, tobacco smoke and the contents of the spittoons.

"What can I do for you, Dr. Northcote?"

"Someone took a shot at a young woman named Nellie DuBois yesterday afternoon, sheriff. And this morning she got an accidental overdose of laudanum that almost killed her."

"What's your interest in this Miss DuBois?"

"She's the friend of a friend of mine."

"That so?" said the sheriff.

Ben didn't know whether to try to clarify the situation, or let him think Diana was one of Big Nose Nellie's professional colleagues. It shouldn't matter, but he had a feeling it might.

"My friend is a young woman who lived here in Torrence for a few years, after her father founded the town."

"That so?" He took a swallow of his beer and contemplated Ben.

"Did you know William Torrence?"

There was caution now in the sheriff's eyes. He nodded. "Important man in these parts. Not well liked, though. Wasn't surprised to hear he got himself killed."

"Funny," Ben drawled, deliberately using more colloquial speech than usual. "That's what folks say about the murder of his daughter's husband, too. Fella named Spaulding. Happened a couple of years ago in Leadville."

"Not my county," Crymble said, but from the expression on Crymble's face, Ben thought that he recognized the name.

Since it was obvious the sheriff wasn't going to volunteer any information, Ben decided to take a risk. He'd helped out on criminal investigations often enough back home, being one of Bangor's coroners. He had some idea how the law worked, even in what Easterners thought of as the Wild West. "Let me tell you a little story," he said.

By the time he was through, Crymble had finished his beer and was staring into the dregs. "Bad business all around," he said. "Don't see how any of it's connected to Miss Nellie's troubles though."

"Maybe it's not, but it looks to me as if you've got three unsolved crimes—the shot at Nellie was a crime even if the laudanum turns out to have been an accident—and in each case the criminal got away without being identified."

"Coincidence, Doc."

"Is there a lot of unsolved crime in these parts?"

"In fact, there isn't. And murder?" He shook his head. "We do our best to solve murders, even if we don't always get the killer to trial. Let me tell
you
a little story, if you've time. And if you're willing to buy the next round."

Ben was.

"Had a murder a few miles from here just last month, at Granite. Some of the section hands that work for the Denver and Rio Grande and the Midland were in a saloon and a row broke out. Whites against dagos. Got nasty."

"I can imagine."

"Maybe you can, maybe you can't." The sheriff paused to take a long swallow of his beer. "The fight was broken up. Six dagos were ejected and quiet was restored. Then, around midnight, a fella named Casey left the saloon to go home. A friend warned him not to go out alone. Said the Italians were treacherous, and that they wanted revenge because their saloon was burned down last year. Casey ignored him. His body was found the next morning behind the freight house, about forty yards from the saloon. There was a trail of blood to show where he'd been dragged for about twenty-five feet after being stabbed in the windpipe. The murder took place within six feet of the tracks and the bunk car the dagos were in."

"Let me guess—you arrested an Italian section hand."

Crymble tapped his forehead. "There's a brain in here, Doc." He chuckled. "I'm smarter than I look. I had the whole of the dago quarters corralled and the boss called the roll-call and one dago was missing. Fella named Guiseppe Zolanso."

"Case solved?"

"Maybe. Some say his five friends helped him kill Casey. Guess we'll find out at the trial. Meanwhile I had to keep the good people of Granite from setting explosives under the bunk car and blowing up all the dagos in one blast."