“I can’t stay,” he says. “But I brought you something.” He hands her a pork bun for herself, and some milk for the baby.

“It’s not too late, husband,” Emily says, though until this moment, she’d thought it was—much, much, much too late. “It’s not too late. Stay in Chek Keng and rest. Violet and Ting-Yan are here. You’re sick. The three of us will help you get better. Stay.”

“Stay?” he says. He feels very warm, and a little sweaty. The sea air is getting to him. “Eat the pork bun. Give the baby some milk. I have to go.”

He flees the chapel and rushes back to the waiting boat.

Emily, astonished by the visit, astonished by the conversation, stares after him for a long time.

The boat departs the harbour and goes out to the open sea.

When the afternoon grows late and the chapel begins to get cool, Emily realizes she is hungry. She gives some of the milk to the baby. She eats the pork bun. She closes her eyes.

That is how I imagine them, and that was how we found them, eyes closed, mouths foaming.

“Em, Em! Wake up!” I was beside myself with panic.

“What’s wrong with them?” said Auntie Siu-Wai.

I checked Emily’s pulse. She still had one, thank goodness. It was very slow and thick, but it was still there. I checked Raymond’s. The same.

“Poison,” said Auntie Siu-Wai.

With thumb and index finger, I forced one of Emily’s eyes open. Her pupil was dilated wide. “Morphine poisoning,” I said. “Maybe strychnine too. How could that happen?”

“I saw a boat dock,” Courchene said. “And then depart a short while later.”

“Tak-Wing,” I said. I remembered then the case that nearly bankrupted my father, years ago, when I was a little girl. Old Cheung’s father had died like this. In my doctor’s bag, I’d had the antidote, but it had gone down with the Oolong. “Ting-Yan, do you have any potassium permanganate?”

“What’s that?”

“A white powder—” I began to explain. “No pharmacist at Chek Keng, I suppose. No medical supplies?”

“The chapel might have something,” she said. “Maybe in the priest’s room.”

She opened the door to the little private space where Padre Arcuri stayed when he was visiting Chek Keng. There was a small cabinet against the wall. I opened it. It was pretty bare—a little tooth powder, a rusty razor, a bottle of iodine.