Certainly, as possibilities, many people.
Wolfe grunted impolitely. I asked, for another fact, what about the insinuations in the anonymous letters? The wrong medicine and the questionable afternoons? Bess Huddleston’s black eyes snapped at me. She knew nothing about those things. And anyway, they were irrelevant. The point was that some malicious person was trying to ruin her by spreading hints that she was blabbing guilty secrets about people, and whether the secrets happened to be true or not had nothing to do with it. Okay, I told her, forget about where Mrs. Rich Man spends her afternoons, maybe at the ball game, but as a matter of record did Mrs. Jervis Horrocks have a daughter, and had she been sick, and had Dr. Brady attended her? Yes, Bess Huddleston said impatiently, Mrs. Horrocks’ daughter had died a month ago and Dr. Brady had been her doctor. Died of what? Tetanus. How had she got tetanus? By scratching her arm on a nail in a riding-academy stable.
Wolfe muttered, “There is no wrong medicine—”
“It was terrible,” Bess Huddleston interrupted, “but it has nothing to do with this. I’m going to be late for my appointment with the Mayor. This is perfectly simple. Someone wanted to ruin me and conceived this filthy way of doing it, that’s all. It has to be stopped, and if you’re as smart as you’re supposed to be, you can stop it. Of course, I ought to tell you, I know who did it.”
I cocked my head at her. Wolfe’s eyes opened wide.
“What? You know?”
“Yes, I think I know. No, I do know.”
“Then why, madam, are you annoying me?”
“Because I can’t prove it. And she denies it.”
“Indeed.” Wolfe shot a sharp glance at her. “You seem to be less intelligent than you look. If, having no proof, you charged her with it.”