The butler nodded curtly, conveying his disapproval with every ounce of his being without uttering a sound.

"Is anyone else here that you haven't seen fit to tell me about?" Frank asked with marked sarcasm.

The butler's lips paled as he squeezed the blood out of them in his impotent fury. "Mr. Potter is in the study," he said with obvious reluctance.

Good, Frank thought. Maybe Potter could give him some more information about Blackwell's son, who was rapidly becoming his prime suspect.

When Frank entered the study, he found Potter staring uncertainly at the desk where Blackwell's body had lain. The desk had been cleared, and all traces of the crime had been scrubbed away, except for an ugly stain in the carpet. Hearing Frank enter, Potter looked up with what Frank thought might have been alarm, but he quickly recovered himself.

"Detective, you startled me," he said, self-consciously straightening his vest. "Have you located young Calvin yet?"

Frank shook his head. "It would help if you had an idea where to begin looking. There are hundreds of cheap lodging houses in the city." He'd instructed some officers to begin making inquiries, but they weren't having much success.

"If he's even still here." Potter sighed. "In his place, I'd have fled immediately. And Edmund was going to give him some money, you know. He could be anywhere by now, of course, but you should probably check with his mother to see if she might know his whereabouts."

"Where can I find her?" Frank asked, annoyed that Potter hadn't suggested this yesterday.

Potter frowned, obviously trying to remember. "It's a small town in Virginia someplace. I'm not even certain I ever heard the name. Oh, dear, I guess I'm not being very much help to you."

Frank had to agree. If Calvin Brown had indeed fled the city, no one would ever find him. "Did you remember anything else about Brown that might help?"

"I'm afraid not. But surely you have informants who can assist you," Potter suggested hopefully.

"Only if I'm dealing with known criminals," Frank said, trying to be patient. "Someone like Calvin Brown probably wouldn't have been noticed by anyone in particular. He wasn't here that long, and he wouldn't have gotten into any trouble."

"Ah, yes, you're probably right. It's only been a week or so since he first contacted Edmund. It's my understanding that he saw an advertisement for one of Edmund's lectures and recognized his picture."

"You already told me about the lectures, but I'm not sure I understand why he had to give them. Couldn't he just advertise that he was a doctor? Hang up a sign or something?"

"He was a healer," Potter corrected him primly. "His treatments were quite revolutionary, not something the average person would easily understand, so he would give lectures explaining his successes in order to educate the public."

Educate and dupe them into coming to him for treatment, Frank thought, but he said, "Who came to these lectures?"

"All sorts of people. There was no admission charge, of course. Edmund didn't want fame or fortune for himself, but he felt it was selfish of him not to share his knowledge with those he could help."

"He helped his wife, I understand."

"Yes, Letitia was a complete invalid when her father called on Edmund for help. No doctor had been able to do a thing for her."

"She must have been very grateful," Frank suggested, not missing the fact that Potter had called Mrs. Blackwell by her given name.

"So grateful that she insisted on giving a personal testimonial at Edmund's lectures. Her story brought him to the public eye and convinced many people to try Edmund's services. Her family is quite socially prominent, you know."

"So I gathered from meeting Mr. Symington. What was wrong with Mrs. Blackwell in the first place?"

Potter seemed shocked at the question. "I told you, she was an invalid."

"You said it was a riding accident. Was she paralyzed? Crippled? Broken bones?"

"She was injured. She was in severe pain for almost a year, so severe she couldn't rise from her bed. With only a few treatments, Edmund was able to relieve that pain so she could live a normal life again."

Frank remembered what Sarah had said about most people getting well if they wanted to. Perhaps Blackwell's true gift was being able to make people want to get better. He noted that Potter hadn't told him exactly what Mrs. Blackwell's injuries had been. Probably he didn't know. For an instant Frank had an errant thought of asking Sarah Brandt to find out, but he quickly caught himself. If he truly wanted to keep her from getting involved in the investigation, that was exactly the wrong thing to do.

OUTSIDE MRS. BLACKWELL'S bedroom door, Sarah paused to take a deep breath. Venting the fury she felt at the woman would accomplish nothing. When she had mastered her feelings, she knocked on the door and entered without waiting for a reply.

Mrs. Blackwell appeared to be dozing, although still propped up on her mountain of pillows. She blinked uncertainly, obviously not recognizing Sarah at first.

"Oh, Mrs. Brandt," she finally realized. Then she listened for a moment. "The baby, he stopped crying. Is he...?"

"He's sleeping," Sarah said. "The laudanum relieved him."

She sighed and closed her eyes. Sarah thought she probably didn't want to face her problems, and Sarah couldn't really blame her. They must seem overwhelming at the moment, especially to a person who needed morphine to deal with a normal day.

After a moment Mrs. Blackwell opened her eyes again. They were clouded and full of anguish. "I never meant to hurt the baby. You must believe me."

This was the opening Sarah had been waiting for. She stepped closer to the bed. "You were right not to stop taking the morphine. If you had, you most certainly would have lost the baby."

She seemed relieved to hear this. "They said he would be fine, though. They said once he was born, he wouldn't need it the way I do."

"I'm sure they told you what you wanted to hear. It wasn't in their best interests for you to stop using morphine, now was it?"

Her eyes filled with tears, but this time Sarah knew they were genuine and not an attempt to gain her sympathy. "I haven't been able to stop taking the morphine, no matter how hard I try. How will he be able to stop? He's so tiny ..."

Her voice broke on a sob, and this time Sarah took one of her hands in both of hers. It was small and soft and icy cold. "I've seen this before," she said. "With a baby, it's possible to gradually decrease the amount you give him until he's not dependent on it anymore. We'll wait a few months, until he's stronger, and then we'll start weaning him off of it."

"But I've tried to stop so many times! The first time almost killed me, and I've never been able to do it again. The pain is unbearable." The tears were running down her cheeks unchecked now. Sarah felt her anger melting.

"We won't let your baby suffer, Mrs. Blackwell."

The younger woman looked at her with desperate eyes. "I know you're a midwife, but will you take care of him yourself? Will you come back and make sure he's all right and help wean him from that awful stuff?"

Sarah could not refuse. "Of course I will, if that's what you want. Tell me, though, how did you begin taking the morphine in the first place?"

She closed her eyes and seemed to shudder. "It was ... when I was hurt. I fell off a horse when I ... I hurt my back and my neck. The pain was horrible, and they gave me morphine. It was the only way I could bear it."

"Didn't you consult any physicians?"

Mrs. Blackwell stared at her in amazement. "Of course! My father called in every doctor he could find. There were dozens. None of them could do anything for me. They said I'd be an invalid for the rest of my life. I didn't leave my room for almost a year, and I hardly even left my bed. Walking was excruciating and I could only sit in a chair for a few minutes at a time. And then Edmund came."

"Your husband," Sarah said. "What did he do that the others didn't?"

Mrs. Blackwell's smooth brow furrowed as she struggled to explain. "He touched me. The others wouldn't touch me. It caused me too much pain. But Edmund told me he could make me well if he could just do some simple adjustments."

"What kind of adjustments?"

"To my spine. That's how he cures people. It's like a miracle. I felt better almost instantly. Within a few weeks my pain was completely gone."

"But you still needed the morphine," Sarah guessed.

Mrs. Blackwell closed her eyes again, and Sarah could only imagine the anguish these admissions cost her. "Edmund thought I shouldn't need the morphine anymore because my pain was gone. My father thought so, too. I didn't want to take it anymore, so I did what they told me and stopped taking it. I thought I was going to die."

"Stopping morphine is extremely difficult. Few people ever succeed," Sarah told her, not mentioning that some of the aids physicians sometimes used were even worse than the agony of withdrawal itself.

"But I did succeed!" she informed Sarah. "It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life, but I did it! I was finally free of both the pain and the morphine. I thought I could go back to my normal life again. That was all I wanted."

"But you didn't?"

Mrs. Blackwell sighed, and another tear slid down her cheek. "Edmund asked me to help him. He said he could cure many other people, just the way he'd cured me, but he couldn't unless those people knew his treatments worked. He was going to give a lecture in the city, explaining his techniques and how successful they were, but he needed someone to testify, someone he'd cured. He said ... I mean, after what Edmund had done for me, how could I refuse?" she asked, her eyes pleading for Sarah to confirm her decision.

"Of course," Sarah said, knowing she could only imagine the pressure he must have put on her. "You must have been very grateful. But how did your father feel about it?" Sarah couldn't imagine her own father allowing her to do such a thing as speak about her health problems at a public lecture.

"He didn't really think it was proper, but he was so grateful to Edmund that he couldn't refuse. I think he felt some sort of debt of honor to him. Edmund told me what to say. He wrote it out for me. All I had to do was read it, but I was so frightened! There were hundreds of people, and they were all looking at me. I was so terrified, I almost fainted. I don't even remember giving the speech, but Edmund was very pleased, and many people came to him for his treatments after that. So of course he wanted me to speak again."

Sarah was beginning to understand what had happened. "You must have been very frightened," she guessed.

"I was so frightened, I knew I wouldn't be able to get up on that stage again, but my father felt we owed Edmund for what he had done. Edmund hadn't even accepted any payment for treating me, even though he'd been practically penniless. He only wanted my help. What could I do?"

"You could have told Edmund and your father how terrified you were," Sarah suggested kindly.

"I did, but they couldn't understand. They kept saying I'd get over it, that I'd be fine, just as I was the first time. But I hadn't been fine the first time, and I couldn't explain that to them! They made me do it, but the only way I could get through it was to take some morphine. Just a little," she hastened to explain, lest Sarah think badly of her. "Just enough so I didn't feel afraid. I wasn't going to take it anymore after that, but ..."

"But you couldn't help yourself," Sarah guessed. She'd seen the power of the opiate to hold someone in its thrall.

"Once I started again, I couldn't seem to stop, especially when Edmund asked me to go to other cities for lectures. My father went with us, of course. It was all very proper, but I was still terrified of the crowds. I hid the morphine from them, so neither of them knew I was taking it. It was awful, lying to both of them and trying to buy the morphine when they didn't know. They would have been so angry ... and so disappointed with me."

Sarah knew that morphine was readily available at any drugstore, but she also knew women of the upper classes had little freedom. An unmarried girl would have been chaperoned wherever she went. Mrs. Blackwell must have been clever indeed to manage to obtain her morphine without discovery.

"Then Edmund told me he'd fallen in love with me and asked me to marry him," she went on, so anxious to tell her story that she hardly seemed aware of Sarah's presence anymore. "I thought if he really loved me, he wouldn't make me do the lectures anymore, but I was wrong. Once we were married, he could take me anywhere he went without worrying about a chaperon anymore. I wanted to stop the morphine again, but I couldn'st, not unless I told Edmund that I was taking it and unless he would let me stop doing the lectures. I tried telling him I didn't want to do the lectures anymore, but he wouldn't hear of it. He told me I had no choice, because without the lectures, he wouldn't get new patients and he wouldn't be able to make a living. He was my husband. I had to help him, didn't I?"

Sarah chose not to answer that question. "I can understand that you wanted to do the right thing."

"I don't know what the right thing is anymore," she said with a weary sigh.

"Well, one thing is for certain, with your husband gone, you won't have to attend those lectures anymore. So if you'd like to try stopping the morphine again, I can help you when you're stronger," Sarah offered.

"I can't think about that now," she said wearily. "I can't think about anything now. I just want to sleep."

"That's certainly a good idea. I'll make sure no one bothers you."

"Especially my father," Mrs. Blackwell said when Sarah started to leave. "He came yesterday, and he made me cry, talking about Edmund. I don't want to cry anymore. Please tell him I'm not able to see him."

"Of course," Sarah agreed, wondering how she would explain this to Mrs. Blackwell's father. She left to check on the baby.

MALLOY WAITED IN the parlor for Sarah Brandt. She didn't even say hello when she came in.

"So, Malloy, when do you plan to arrest the killer?" she asked instead, trying to nettle him.

He didn't let on that she had succeeded. She was the only woman he knew who could look appealing while being infuriating. "I need to ask Mrs. Blackwell some questions. When can I see her?"

"My guess would be a few weeks," she told him without a hint that she was teasing him. "She asked me a few moments ago to tell her own father she was too ill to receive him, so she's certainly too ill to see you."

"Is she?"

"If she says she is, then she is," she informed him. "Would you dare impose yourself on a woman during her lying-in?"

Frank tried not to feel the irritation he was feeling, mostly because it wasn't entirely unpleasant. He actually enjoyed arguing with Sarah Brandt, as difficult as that was to understand. "I need to find out what she knows about her husband's death, and the sooner I do that, the better chance I have of finding the killer."

"I would be happy to question her for you if you'll just tell me what you need to know," she said, taking a seat on the sofa and making herself comfortable.

"You are not a member of the police force, and you are not involved in this investigation," he reminded her.

"Well, then, I suppose you won't be interested in the fact that Mrs. Blackwell uses morphine."

"What?" Although he hadn't intended to, he sat down in the chair opposite her.

"Mrs. Blackwell has used morphine for several years, except for a brief period," she said. "It seems she began using it when she was injured in a riding accident."

"That's the accident her husband cured her of, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is."

"What was wrong with her exactly?"

"She said her back and neck were injured."

Frank frowned. "He cured her of a broken neck?"

"I doubt it. More likely, she sprained her back or pulled something. Such injuries can be extremely painful, and there is no effective treatment except bed rest and opiates for the pain. Sometimes they get better, and sometimes they don't."

"Except Blackwell knew of a treatment for it," Frank reminded her.

"So it appears. From what his wife told me, I think Blackwell must have been a bonesetter."

"A bone-setter? You mean he set broken bones?"

"Not exactly. I suppose in the old days, that's what bonesetters did, back before the science of medicine was so advanced and doctors began setting bones themselves," she said, and Frank managed not to snort in derision. His opinion of medicine wasn't quite as high as hers. "Nowadays," she continued, "bonesetters perform manipulations on bones that make people feel better."

"What do you mean *manipulations'?"

"I mean they move the body around and somehow manage to make bones shift position, on the theory that they are somehow out of their proper position, which is what is causing the problems. I imagine that something in Mrs. Blackwell's spine or neck was somehow out of line from the accident, and Blackwell managed to realign it, thus relieving her pain."

"Is that possible?"

"Apparently. She said her pain was completely gone within a few weeks, after she'd been confined to her bed for almost a year."

"How did you find out she uses morphine?" Frank asked.

"Her baby became ill because he was no longer receiving the drug from his mother. I recognized the symptoms."