The mention of another dead kid, coming in a town and a house like that, had me ready to dive through the sitting room window, get onto the buckboard, and whip our little Morgan until we were all the way back to New York. But Miss Howard never flinched.

“I see,” she said, in a low but firm tone. “I think you ought to know, Mrs. Muhlenberg, that Assistant District Attorney Picton is preparing an indictment against the woman you knew as Libby Fraser for murder-the murder of her own children.”

That brought another one of those pitiable gasps from behind the fan, and one foot at the end of the divan began to shake noticeably. “Her own-” The foot suddenly grew still. “When? Where?”

“Three years ago-in Ballston Spa.”

Still another gasp floated our way. “Not the shooting-the one they said was a Negro?”

“Yes,” Miss Howard answered. “You know about it?”

“We heard rumors,” Mrs. Muhlenberg said. “And a party of men searched the town. Those were Libby’s children?”

“They were. And we believe she killed them. Along with several others in New York City.”

A different sort of sound now came from behind the fan; and after a few seconds I made it out as hoarse sobbing. “But why should I be shocked?” Mrs. Muhlenberg finally said quietly. “If any woman could do such a thing, it would be Libby.”

Leaning forward, Miss Howard put all the sympathy she was capable of-which was a very great deal, especially when she was dealing with a member of her own _sex-into her next question: “Can you tell me what happened here, Mrs. Muhlenberg? It may help us in our effort to prosecute her.”

There was another pause, and then the soft sobbing stopped; but the foot started twitching again. “Will she be executed?”

Miss Howard nodded. “It’s very possible.”

Mrs. Muhlenberg’s voice now filled with a kind of relief, maybe even excitement. “If she can die-if you can bring that about-then yes, Miss Howard. I’ll tell you what happened.”

Very quietly and carefully, Miss Howard produced a pad and a pencil, ready to take notes. As Mrs. Muhlenberg launched into her tale, the old black woman left the room shaking her head, as if listening to the story was more than she could stand.

“It was a long time ago,” Mrs. Muhlenberg began. “Or maybe it wasn’t, to most people’s way of thinking. The late summer-1886. That’s when she came to us. My husband’s family owned one of the mills here in town. We moved into the house next door right after our marriage. It had been his grandmother’s. Oh, it was a beautiful place, with wonderful gardens leading down to the river… The caretaker of the estate lived in this house then. That summer our first child was born. Our only child. I was unable to nurse him, and we advertised for a wet nurse. Libby Fraser was the first applicant, and we both found her charming.” The small gasp of a dead laugh punctuated the statement. “Charming… I always thought, to tell you the truth, that my husband found her a little too charming. But she was desperate for the work, desperate to please-desperate in every way. And I sympathized with that. I sympathized…”

After a long pause, Miss Howard gambled a question: “And how soon did your son begin to have problems with his health?”

Mrs. Muhlenberg nodded her head again, slowly. “So. You do know about Libby… Yes, he got sick. Colicky, we all thought at first, nothing more than that. I could calm him, and did, as much as possible-but I couldn’t feed him, and being with Libby always seemed to make him worse. Hour after hour of crying, for days on end… But we didn’t want to let the girl go-she really had been so desperate for the work, and she was trying so hard. But before long there was no choice. Michael-my son-just didn’t respond to her care. We decided that we had to find someone else.”

“How did Libby take the news?” Miss Howard asked.

“If only she had taken the news!” Mrs. Muhlenberg answered, her voice still soft, but passionate and heartbroken, too. “If only we’d made her take it, and forced her to go… But she was so crushed when we told her, and begged so earnestly for one more chance, that we couldn’t help giving it to her. And things did change, after that. Things did change… Michael’s health took a turn-for the better, we thought at first. His fits of crying and colic calmed, and it seemed as if he was accepting Libby’s care. But it was an evil calm-a sign of illness, not happiness. A slow, wasting illness. He lost color and weight, and Libby’s milk passed through him like water. But it wasn’t water. It wasn’t water…”

Things were quiet for so long that I thought that maybe Mrs. Muhlenberg had fallen asleep. Finally, Miss Howard glanced at me with a question in her face, but all I could do was shrug, in a way what I hoped showed her how much I wanted to get the hell out of that house. Miss Howard was after something, though, and I knew we weren’t going anywhere ’til she got it.

“Mrs. Muhlenberg?” she said quietly.

“Mmm? Yes?” the woman answered.

“You were saying…”

“I was saying?”

“You were saying that it wasn’t water-Libby’s milk.”

“No. Not water.” We heard another sigh. “Poison …”

I shifted in my chair nervously at the word, but Miss Howard just kept pressing: “Poison?”

The dark head rocked up and down. “We had the doctor in many times, but he couldn’t explain what was happening. Michael was ill-terribly ill. And then Libby’s health began to suffer, too. That made the doctor think it must’ve been a fever, some kind of infectious illness that my son had passed on to her. How could we have guessed…” Her foot started to move nervously again. “I was suspicious. Call it a mother’s instinct, but I couldn’t believe that my son was infecting Libby. No-I was convinced that she was doing something to him. My husband said that I was so careworn I was becoming unbalanced. He said that Libby was exposing herself to danger to help Michael. He made her sound heroic, and the doctor did, too. But I grew more convinced every day. I didn’t know how she was doing it. I didn’t know why. But I began to sit with them when she fed him, and soon I refused to leave him alone with her-ever. But he never got any stronger. The illness grew worse. He was wasting away, and she was getting weaker, too…

“Finally, I went into her room one day when she was out taking the air. I found two packets in her dresser. The first contained a white powder, the second a black one. I didn’t know what they might be, but I took them to my husband. He didn’t know what the black powder was, but he had no doubts about the other.” Mrs. Muhlenberg seemed scared to go on, but finally she got the word out: “Arsenic.”

Miss Howard seemed to guess that I was ready to bolt, and she put a hand to my arm to hold me where I was.

“Arsenic?” she said. “Was she feeding it to your son?”

“If you know about Libby,” Mrs. Muhlenberg said with a small hiss, “you know that she’s too smart to’ve done anything so bold as give it to him directly. And I was watching her whenever she was with him. Whenever she was with him-but not when she was alone. And that was my mistake… My husband asked Libby why she had the arsenic. She said that she’d been woken one night by a rat in her room. As if we ever had rats… But we couldn’t think of any other explanation.” Trying to hold down more sobs, Mrs. Muhlenberg gasped out, “Michael died soon after that. Libby played at being grief-stricken very well, and for days. It was only when we were burying my son that the truth came to me. Libby was standing there weeping, and I realized that her own health was returning. Suddenly, I saw everything clearly-so clearly… She had poisoned him-she’d eaten the arsenic herself, and it had passed to him through her milk. Not enough to kill a grown woman, but enough to kill a baby. Satan himself couldn’t have been more clever.”