“Mr. Granger? It’s Mrs. Wilson. I’ve got Mrs. Brandt here, and she’s a nurse. She says she might be able to make you feel better. Can we come in?”

For a moment they heard nothing, and then a groan and a crash, as something fell and smashed on the floor.

Without waiting for permission, Mrs. Wilson pushed open the door and hurried in. Sarah was close behind her.

The room was sparsely furnished, and neat to the point of austerity, except for the unmade bed where Mr. Granger lay, wearing his trousers and an undershirt. He’d tried to get up and knocked a tray of food onto the floor.

“Good heavens, Granger,” Mrs. Wilson exclaimed. “Look at this mess. I’ll get one of the girls up here to clean this up. And you haven’t eaten a bite today, have you?” she added, examining the mess on the floor.

The food looked as if it had been sitting for several hours, and Granger’s face was pale and his eyes held the unfocused look of someone in pain.

Mrs. Wilson summoned one of the maids to clean up the spilled food and continued to chasten him for not taking better care of himself. Mr. Granger’s dignity was badly compromised in the process, but by the time everyone else had gone and the room restored to order, he seemed not even to care about that.

“I don’t need a nurse,” he told her crossly from the chair into which he’d moved during the commotion. He’d pulled on a shirt for the sake of decency, but hadn’t had the energy to button it.

“Perhaps you don’st,” Sarah said, not pointing out how haggard he looked or how sick he’d obviously been. “But I’m probably a better judge of that than you.”

Brooking no nonsense, she quickly examined him, asking a series of questions about his current condition.

“Were you here to see Mrs. Blackwell?” he asked with a worried frown when she was finished. “Is she ill?”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Sarah said, not mentioning that the lady of the house was actually receiving visitors at this very moment. “I really came to check on the baby.”

“This has been so hard on poor Mrs. Blackwell,” he said. “Finding her husband like that must have been a shock.” He put his hand to his head, as if the thought of Letitia’s grief was more than he could bear.

“Women are frequently much stronger than men give them credit for being,” Sarah said by way of comfort.

“Not Mrs. Blackwell,” he protested. “She’s one that needs protection. She tries to pretend she’s strong. The way she visits the sick and gives so much of her time to looking out for others not as fortunate as she is, it’s an inspiration. But she’s really as delicate as a flower. She needs somebody to look after her. I can’t tell you how many times she’s thanked me, right out like that, for doing little things for her.”

Sarah wanted to gag. What was it about Letitia Blackwell that made absolute fools of men? Even the butler was under her spell!

“It’s nice to hear a servant praising his mistress,” she said tactfully.

“Even that day her husband died, she thanked me for making sure all the servants left the house so he wouldn’t be disturbed. She wouldn’t leave herself until she was sure everyone else was gone, just like he wanted. She’s always thinking about other people first, that’s Mrs. Blackwell.”

Sarah could have destroyed his image of his mistress by revealing that instead of visiting the sick, as he believed, Mrs. Blackwell had spent her afternoons with a lover, using the money her husband gave her for charity on morphine. But he probably wouldn’t believe her. That was the nature of the spell women like Letitia cast.

“Mr. Granger,” she said instead, changing the subject to more pressing matters, “I believe you aren’t really seriously ill. I think you’re just suffering from a nervous stomach, probably because you’re under too much strain at the moment. This has been just as hard on you as it has on Mrs. Blackwell-”

“Oh, no!” he insisted. “It’s not the same at all! She should never have seen her husband’s body. I should have been here first. I should have found him. How will she ever recover from such a shock?”

“But she did find her husband’s body. You can’t change that,” Sarah pointed out, “and there’s no use blaming yourself either. You didn’t know the doctor was going to be murdered that afternoon, and you didn’t know Mrs. Blackwell would come home early either. If that’s what’s been causing you so much misery, you need to put it out of your mind, Mr. Granger. It’s making you ill, and you won’t get any better until you make up your mind about it.”

“Are you saying I worried myself sick?” he asked doubtfully.

“I’m fairly certain that’s true. The responsibilities of your position with the doctor dead have probably made things even more difficult, too. You can’t do much about that, but you can stop worrying about Mrs. Blackwell. She’ll recover and go on with her life. And if you’re sick, you won’t be any help to her, now will you? She shouldn’t have to be concerned about how the house is being managed with everything else she has to deal with,” she added, playing on his weakness.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he said.

“You should,” Sarah told him. “I’m going to give you some ideas to be kinder to your stomach, but the most important thing is to stop blaming yourself for things you couldn’t help. Do you think you can do that? For Mrs. Blackwell’s sake?” she tried when he looked unconvinced.

“I can do no less,” he said finally.

Sarah managed not to roll her eyes. “You should watch what you eat for the next few days,” she said, and gave him all the commonsense rules for someone with a bad stomach, along with a remedy to ease his digestive difficulties.

When she was satisfied that Granger had accepted her plan for his recovery, she went back downstairs, thinking she’d have to share this story with Malloy. If Letitia was able to inspire this sort of devotion in the hired help, it seemed very likely someone close to her would have happily murdered her husband to protect her. Perhaps that person was visiting her even now.

Just as Sarah reached the front hallway, eager to discover who Mrs. Blackwell’s caller might be, the maid was opening the door to yet another visitor: Amos Potter.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Potter,” Sarah said, setting her medical bag down on the floor near the parlor door.

“Mrs. Brandt, what brings you here?” he asked anxiously. “Nothing wrong with Mrs. Blackwell, I hope.”

Sarah managed not to groan. “As a matter of fact, I understand that Mrs. Blackwell is well enough to receive visitors today. I was just going in to see her. I’m sure she’d be delighted to receive you, too,” she lied without remorse.

As she had expected, Potter was thrilled at the prospect of meeting with Letitia at last. “I wonder if she would be up to speaking with me privately. There are matters of some delicacy I need to discuss with her as soon as possible.”

He was fairly trembling with anticipation of such an audience.

“I’m sure she needs to consult with you as well,” Sarah said shamelessly. “Shall we go in?”

“I should announce you, ma’am,” the maid said, wringing her hands as she obviously remembered the last time when she’d failed to do so, with such disastrous results.

“Nonsense,” Sarah said recklessly. “I don’t need an introduction, and Mr. Potter is practically a member of the family.”

Before the maid could protest again, Sarah pushed open the parlor doors.

It was difficult to say who was more surprised. Peter Dudley, who had been sitting on the sofa with Letitia, jumped to his feet. Letitia gasped aloud and nearly dropped her baby, whom she was holding gingerly. Amos Potter gasped, too, although Sarah wasn’t quite sure what had surprised him more-the presence of a strange man in Letitia’s parlor or the picturesque family tableau they made, with both father and son’s coppery hair glowing in the afternoon sunshine.