Murder in the Bowery

by Victoria Thompson

Robinson sighed and drained the half-full glass of whiskey. “I’m sure Arburn told you he had her first.” He looked up, his dark eyes glittering with suppressed fury. “She wasn’t an angel, but there were reasons.”

  “I’m sure there were.”

  “She was desperately unhappy, and she was young. She didn’t understand the risks she was taking. Her cousin, that idiot, he had no business taking her to the Bowery no matter what she said she wanted.”

  Frank knew better than to offer an opinion. His silence invited confession, and Robinson was drunk enough to give it.

  “She wanted some excitement in her life. It made her feel alive, she said. That’s why she dressed up like a man and went on Will’s tour. Everybody knew she was a woman, though, and she enjoyed that, too. She’d never known anyone who wasn’t a member of society, and she thought Will was fascinating and dangerous. That’s why she went with him.”

  “But he wasn’t as dangerous as you,” Frank guessed.

  Another spasm twisted his face, and he poured himself another glass of whiskey. The maid knocked at the door just then and brought in Frank’s lemonade. He took a long swallow, wishing he wasn’t so strict with himself and could add a dollop of Robinson’s whiskey to it. This interview was going to be even more difficult than he’d imagined.

  “Will was using my rooms over the Den to meet Estelle. He hadn’t asked my permission, so I had no idea I might encounter anyone there. She was as surprised as I was, of course. She knew who I was, too, but she wasn’t afraid of me.”

  That fact seemed to still mystify him. He was probably so used to people fearing him that he didn’t know how to react when they didn’t. “So you took her away from Arburn.”

  But Robinson shook his head. “You make her sound like property. Will didn’t own her. She’d chosen to be with him, and then she changed her mind. That night, when I found her waiting for him, we just talked. I thought she was Will’s girl, and even though I was going to let him know what I thought of him using my place without permission, I wasn’t going to do it in front of her. I didn’t want to embarrass her, you see. She was so . . . so delicate.”

  That wasn’t a word Frank had heard anyone use about Estelle. “And you wanted to protect her,” he said.

  “Of course. She was a lady. You could see that right away. The way she carried herself and the way she spoke.”

  Ladies didn’t dress up like men and go slumming in the Bowery and give themselves to men like Will Arburn, but Frank decided not to mention that. “So you protected her from Arburn.”

  “When he finally showed up, he was pretty scared to find me there, but Estelle sent him on his way, so I couldn’t be too mad at him. If he hadn’t brought her there, I never would’ve met her.”

  “So she started seeing you there instead of Arburn.”

  “I know what you must think of her, but she wasn’t . . .” He took another swallow of whiskey. “I know what she did with Will, but she was still pretty innocent. She didn’t even know she could enjoy it. No one had ever really made love to her.”

  This was getting uncomfortably personal. Frank regretted even more his decision not to drink. “My wife said you wanted to marry Miss Longacre.”

  “I did. I wish I’d told her. In fact, I wish I’d just married her. She’d still be alive now.” He ran a hand over his face.

  He was probably right, but there was no reason to make him feel worse by saying so. “Did you know she was with child?”

  Plainly, he had not. “What? Are you sure? Who told you that?”

  “The coroner. He said she hadn’t been interfered with, but that she was expecting a baby and was about three months along.”

  “Three months? Can they know that for certain?”

  “He seemed pretty sure. I’m guessing it wasn’t yours then.”

  “No, three months ago . . . it couldn’t have been.” He’d gone ashen. Did he think she’d known and had been trying to trap him somehow?

  “That’s still very early, though. Girls like her are kept pretty ignorant about such things, so she might not have even known herself.”

  “Is that true?”

  “It’s what my wife told me, and she’s a midwife, so she should know.” He hadn’t really discussed it with Sarah, but he’d learned a thing or two about pregnancy since meeting her.

  This time Robinson sipped his whiskey slowly, thoughtfully. “Even Will hasn’t known her that long.”

  Which meant she was even less innocent than Robinson wanted to believe. “I’m going to find out who killed Freddie Bert, and I think he was killed because he knew something about what happened to Miss Longacre. I’ll understand if you don’t care anymore—”

  “Do you think I’d stop loving her because of that? It wouldn’t have mattered. In fact, it would’ve made her more likely to marry me if she was pregnant. She’d be grateful to me for saving her from disgrace, and I’d be grateful to her for making me respectable. That’s why I got this house, you know. Because I wanted to be respectable. One of my clients signed it over to me to satisfy his gambling debts. All I needed was the right wife. With Estelle by my side, we’d have ruled New York society.”

  Frank wasn’t going to explain it would take far more than someone like Estelle to make him socially acceptable to people like Sarah’s parents. “I just meant that you don’t have to hire me. I’m going to investigate anyway.”

  “As I told your wife, I want to know everything you find out, so I am going to hire you.”

  “And I’ll accept you as a client if you agree to share with me everything you know or find out, too.”

  “Of course!”

  “I mean it. If you find out who the killer is before I do, I don’t want you to throw him in the East River before I have a chance at him.”

  “Are you going to put him on trial?” Robinson scoffed. “Imagine what the newspapers would do with that.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do. It depends on who it is and why he killed them. But I want the chance to make that decision while the murderer is still alive.”

  Robinson didn’t like it, but he said, “All right. I agree.”

  Frank gave him a moment, waiting to see if he was going to squirm or otherwise indicate he didn’t really mean his promise. Seeing no betraying signs, he said, “Now tell me everything you know about Miss Longacre. You said she hated her family.”

  “Is that really necessary? What can it matter now?”

  “It might help me figure out who killed her. If she had another lover before Arburn, he might’ve killed her when he found out she was seeing you.”

  Robinson refilled his whiskey glass, draining the bottle, and took a fortifying sip. “I never met any of her family.”

  “I have,” Frank said. “I’ve met her father, her aunt Penelope, and Norman Tufts. Norman told me he and Estelle were supposed to be married.”

  Robinson was already shaking his head. “That was Penelope’s idea, and she’d been drilling it into Norman his entire life.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? The aunt is a little crazy, I think.”

  Penelope Longacre was many things, but not crazy. “Did Estelle’s father want them to get married?”

  “No. He and his sister didn’t get along. There was something about an inheritance when their father died. Penelope didn’t get anything or maybe not as much as she thought she had coming. But definitely, it was about money. Estelle thought she was pushing for the marriage so Norman could get his hands on all the money when the old man died and left it to Estelle.”

  “Norman told me he’s an orphan and the aunt took him to raise.”

  “Estelle didn’t talk about them much. She just called Norman her cousin, and I knew he lived with her maiden aunt.”

  “Do you think Norman might have fathered her child?”

  Robinson mad
e a rude noise. “Not with her consent. I told you, she hated all of them.”

  “Maybe she hated him because he’d raped her.”

  Plainly, Robinson hadn’t considered this. “I guess that’s possible, but he gave her up to Will without a fight. That doesn’t sound like a man willing to rape a woman to get her to marry him.”

  And Norman didn’t seem like the kind of man to rape a woman at all. “You’re probably right. Did she ever mention any other men?”

  Robinson smiled grimly at this. “To me?”

  No, Frank didn’t suppose she would’ve discussed her previous lovers with Black Jack Robinson. “You said she was desperately unhappy. Do you know why?”

  “Why is anybody unhappy?”

  “She was a rich girl. She lived in a big house and had plenty of clothes and she never went hungry. Thousands of people in this city live with far less than that and manage to be content.”

  Robinson didn’t like being challenged. “It was her father.”

  “What about him? Did he beat her or something?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t talk about him, but he was the reason she hated her life.”

  Frank remembered the sick old man. Living with him had to be unpleasant. And yet . . . “She had the freedom to go to the Bowery whenever she wanted.”

  “Norman brought her. She lied about where she was going.”

  “Did Norman keep bringing her when she started meeting Arburn? Did he bring her to meet you?”

  “No,” Robinson reluctantly admitted.

  “How did she get away, then? It’s not easy for an unmarried girl like her to go out. She has to protect her reputation. She has to be chaperoned.” Unless no one is paying attention, and who would have been, in that house? The aunt lived elsewhere, and her father was too sick and too selfish to even notice what his daughter was doing.

  “I didn’t think of that.” Probably because the other women he knew didn’t have reputations to protect.

  “Not to mention the danger for a lone female coming to the Bowery at night.”

  “She didn’t come at night, not after she started seeing me. I knew it was too dangerous. We’d meet in the afternoons. She could get a cab to bring her in the daylight, and I’d make sure she got one to take her home.”

  “But what about that last time? I thought you were meeting her in the evening.”

  “That was unusual. She’d sent me a message. She wanted to meet me at the Den that night.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t say, but it was a telegram, so she couldn’t say much.” He was right. Ten words that other people would also see made that impossible.

  “Where did she send it?”

  “Here, to my house. She knew where I lived, although we’d never met here. I didn’t want my neighbors to see her coming here before we were married.”

  How oddly considerate of him, but of course he wouldn’t want to give them reason to gossip about his wife if he was marrying her to gain respectability. “Had she ever contacted you here before?”

  “Once, when she couldn’t meet me as we’d planned. I thought it was strange she wanted to meet so late in the day . . . Well, it wasn’t really late—six o’clock—but much later than we usually met. But now that it’s summer, it’s daylight much later.”

  “But you didn’t meet her.”

  He drew an unsteady breath and the hand that reached for his whiskey glass trembled slightly. After he’d swallowed some more whiskey, he said. “I didn’t get the telegram in time. I was out of town on business all day, and it was almost nine o’clock by the time I got home. I went straight down to the Den then, but she wasn’t there. I figured she’d gotten tired of waiting and wanted to get home before dark.”

  “You didn’t notice anything unusual in the flat?”

  “I could tell she’d been there, if that’s what you mean. She’d opened the windows and moved some things around.”

  “Did you notice anything missing?” Frank asked, remembering Estelle’s body had been found hidden in a trunk.

  “You mean stolen? I don’t keep anything valuable there.”

  “No, I mean furniture, something that wasn’t where it should be.”

  He frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t think so.”

  That was strange, but maybe Robinson just wasn’t very observant. Or the trunk had come from someplace else. “Did you see Freddie that night?”

  “No. He would’ve made himself scarce if he saw Estelle there, and it was a nice night. He could’ve slept anywhere. But now that I think of it, it wasn’t even nine thirty when I got to the Den, so even if he intended to stay at the flat, he probably would have still been out with his friends. The boys like to go out to a show or to have some fun, especially on Saturday night.”

  What a strange thought, a bunch of newsboys attending a play. But they probably liked to be entertained, just like everyone else. “When did you realize Miss Longacre was missing?”

  “The next day. We usually met on Sunday afternoon. When she didn’t come, I thought maybe she was mad at me for not meeting her the night before. I sent Will out to see if Freddie had seen her on Saturday and if she’d said anything to him. I already knew nobody in the Den had seen her, because I’d asked that night.”

  “And when Will didn’t have any luck finding Freddie, he hired me.”

  Robinson nodded. “I also sent somebody to her house on Monday morning with a package addressed to her. I put a note in it, telling her why I hadn’t come on Saturday night, but she never responded. That’s when I started to get worried. By Thursday, when Will told me Freddie was dead, I was actually hoping she’d run off with another man.”

  If only she had. “Would you take me to your flat? I need to see it for myself.”

  “Now?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Robinson rubbed his face again. “I haven’t been back there since last Sunday. That’s where she was killed, wasn’t it?”

  “We don’t know for certain. You don’t have to go in if you don’t want to, though.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  * * *

  “This just doesn’t seem right,” Mrs. Ellsworth said as Velvet set the tray with a silver coffee service and a plate of coconut macaroons on the breakfast room table.

  “I expect your cookies are better than mine, Miz Ellsworth,” Velvet said. “But when you is here, you gotta expect to get waited on.”

  Sarah bit back a smile. Her cook was being modest only to spare her neighbor’s feelings. No one made better macaroons than Velvet.

  “I’m sure your cookies are better, Velvet,” Mrs. Ellsworth responded, prepared to be even more modest than the cook, “if only because I didn’t have to make them.”

  “I always find that’s true, ma’am,” Velvet said. “You enjoy these now.”

  Mrs. Ellsworth assured her that she would. When Velvet had returned to the kitchen, Mrs. Ellsworth said, “Did you find it hard to adjust to having servants again?”

  “I’d like to say I did, and that I really enjoyed doing everything myself all those years, but I’ve been only too happy to have someone to look after the house and prepare the meals. With so many of us living here now, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.” Sarah picked up the coffeepot and poured a cup for each of them. She knew better than to put cream or sugar into Mrs. Ellsworth’s cup for her. Mrs. Ellsworth was sure to point out that doing so would bring bad luck to her or Sarah or someone close to them. Just about everything brought either good luck or bad, according to her superstitious neighbor. Sarah placed the cup and saucer in front of Mrs. Ellsworth.

  “Oh my, bubbles in your cup, Mrs. Malloy,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, pointing. “That means money is coming.”

  Sarah saw there was indeed a row of bubbles floating along the rim of her cup. “T
hat’s always good news. How are the wedding plans coming along?”

  Mrs. Ellsworth’s son, Nelson, had recently become engaged. “Oh, the mother of the groom is hardly involved at all, as I’m sure you know. We are planning a small dinner for the wedding party and the families, but aside from that, my duties include wearing a dress that is slightly less attractive than the bride’s mother’s dress and showing up at the church on time.”

  “Malloy and I would like to have you and Nelson and his intended over for dinner one evening. We want to get to know her since she’ll be our neighbor as well.”

  “I’m sure they’d both be thrilled to be invited. After all you’ve done for Nelson . . . but of course Theda doesn’t know anything about that unfortunate incident.”

  “She certainly won’t hear about it from us either.”

  “Which reminds me, are you working on any interesting cases?”

  “Sadly, yes. A young woman was found murdered in the Bowery.”

  “That sounds like a police matter.” Mrs. Ellsworth chose a macaroon from the plate and examined it carefully before taking a bite.

  “It should be, of course, but it wasn’t what you’d think. The girl comes from an old New York family.”

  “What on earth was she doing in the Bowery, then?”

  “It seems she’d gone slumming.”

  “Slumming? Is that as bad as it sounds?”

  “I’m not sure how bad it sounds, but probably. For reasons I will never understand, wealthy young men enjoy hiring guides to take them on a tour of Bowery saloons and gambling dens and, uh, other places of ill repute.”

  “Good heavens! But you said young men do this, and that’s understandable. There’s no telling what trouble a young man will get himself into, but you said it was a young woman who was murdered.”

  “Yes, she had apparently dressed up like a man and gone on one of these tours. In fact, she’d gone on more than one. Then she’d taken the tour guide as her lover.”

  “A girl from a good family, you said? How shocking! It’s a wonder the newspapers haven’t reported it. This is just the type of story they love, although I suppose they very well might be reporting it and we’d never know because the newsboys aren’t selling the papers.”