Murder in Little Italy gm-8

by Victoria Thompson

  For a moment, she feared she’d misjudged her, but then Maria said, “Please, Mama. What will people think if we put her out tonight? I’ll look after them until . . . until they’re strong enough to go.” Her voice broke on a sob, and she looked longingly down at the baby, sleeping angelically in his cradle.

  Mrs. Ruocco muttered something in Italian and threw up her hands in disgust. “Do what you want, Maria, but I do not want to see this one’s face again. When Mrs. Brandt say, they must go. Both of them.”

  Maria’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Grazie, Mama.”

  “Yeah, thanks for being so generous,” Mrs. O’Hara echoed acidly. “You’ll regret this, you’ll see. My girl ain’t no liar, and your boy don’t get out of his responsibility so easy. They was married in the church, for life.”

  Mrs. Ruocco ignored her. “Mrs. Brandt, I am sorry you see this. It is not right. Come downstairs. You will eat before you go. I will fix you special meal.”

  “Oh, that really isn’t necessary,” Sarah said politely, longing for the peace and quiet of her own home with her own tiny family. But then her stomach growled audibly.

  “You will eat,” Mrs. Ruocco decreed, and left the room.

  No one spoke until they heard the stairway door close behind her. Then Mrs. O’Hara turned back to Nainsi.

  “You stupid cow!” she snapped. “I told you them dagos is nothing but trouble! I guess you think you can come back home with me and I’ll take care of you and your baby.”

  Now that her mother-in-law was gone, Nainsi’s confidence returned. She drew herself up and smoothed the covers across her lap. “Don’t worry about that. I won’t be needing any help from you.”

  “You got some other plans I don’t know about?” Mrs.

  O’Hara scoffed.

  “No, I’m staying right here,” Nainsi said.

  “How you figure that?” her mother asked in amazement.

  “She won’t throw me out. You’ll see,” Nainsi replied smugly.

  “Stupid, stupid cow,” Mrs. O’Hara lamented. “Didn’t you hear a word she said?”

  “I heard every word, but she didn’t hear any from me.

  She will, though, and then you’ll see. Now I’m tired. You can go along home, Mommy, so I can get some rest.”

  “Who’s gonna look out for you if I leave?” Mrs. O’Hara asked in disgust. “Nobody here’s got any love for you.”

  “Maria will look after me, won’t you, Maria.” Nainsi seemed to take great delight in the prospect of having her sister-in-law waiting on her, although Sarah couldn’t imagine Maria would treat her very kindly.

  “Yes,” Maria confirmed mildly. “I will take good care of her and the baby. Tomorrow, you come back when she is feeling better and the baby is awake.”

  “And be sure and tell Brigit I had my baby and that he’s a boy,” Nainsi said. “Go to her flat and leave her a note so she’ll see it as soon as she gets home. I want her to tell all my friends. Don’t forget!”

  Mrs. O’Hara nodded absently. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t argue about leaving. Sarah was sure she found the prospect of spending any more time in the Ruocco house thoroughly distasteful. She walked over to get a last look at the baby. “Sure looks like a little dago, don’t he?” she remarked.

  No one replied.

  Mrs. O’Hara sighed. “I’ll be back to see you tomorrow, girl. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your mouth shut, and not make things any worse. I wouldn’t put it past this bunch to slit your throat for you.”

  Nainsi just smiled serenely as she watched her mother walk away.

  Sarah slept poorly that night. She kept thinking about the innocent little baby and wondering what would become of him. Obviously, Nainsi couldn’t hope for help from the baby’s real father, or she would never have seduced Antonio into marrying her in the first place. She wasn’t the first girl to have done such a thing, and she might even have gotten away with it if her baby had been small or sickly. Or even if she’d married a man with no mother to catch her out and expose her lie. But she hadn’t, and now she was going to have to suffer for failing to plan more carefully.

  Finally giving up on sleep, she got out of bed before dawn and made herself some breakfast. Maeve and Aggie were still sleeping soundly. Sarah decided she’d make her usual follow-up visit to the new mother first thing and then be back in time to enjoy the whole morning with the girls.

  Hunched against the morning chill, Sarah made her way over to Little Italy. In earlier times, she would have taken a Hansom cab, but now she had to economize to provide for her new family. Even at this early hour, the streets and sidewalks were alive with traffic as people went to work or to shop. Housewives bartered with pushcart vendors over the price of their wares while draymen shouted at their horses as they fought their way through the crowded streets to deliver their loads.

  Mama’s Restaurant wasn’t open yet, but the family would already be up and about, shopping for fresh vegetables at the market and making the noodles and sauce they would serve later. Sarah hoped Nainsi and the baby had rested better than she had, and she wondered how long she could de-lay Nainsi’s departure from the Ruoccos’ home.

  The front door of the restaurant was locked, so Sarah knocked. She could hear movement inside, and soon Lorenzo, the middle brother, opened the door. He held a broom in one hand, and for a moment he didn’t recognize her.

  “I’m here to see Nainsi and the baby,” Sarah said, knowing he wouldn’t be happy at the reminder of the family crisis.

  “Oh, yes, please come in,” he said, stepping aside. He wasn’t quite as appealing as his brothers, she noticed. Joe had the winning smile and charming manner. Antonio was boyish and sweet. This brother was too mature to be boyish and too serious to be charming. Or maybe he simply wasn’t very happy that she was here.

  He’d just closed the door behind her when they heard a scream. It was the first in a series that continued, scream after scream after scream, as he raced to the stairway door, Sarah at his heels. Someone else was behind her, but she didn’t stop to see who. Fighting her skirts on the narrow staircase, she nearly fell more than once. Gratefully, she flung herself through the open door on the third floor through which Lorenzo had disappeared.

  Just as she’d feared, the screams were coming from Nainsi’s room. Lorenzo reached the doorway first, but he stopped dead. Sarah tried to see what was going on, and when he wouldn’t move, she shoved him aside and pushed her way in.

  The screams were coming from a slender young girl who stood just inside the door, paralyzed by what she saw on the bed. She just kept screaming and screaming with each new breath until Sarah took her by the shoulders and turned her around, shoving her into Lorenzo Ruocco’s arms.

  “Valentina!” he cried, wrapping his arms around her.

  “What is it?”

  She made a strangled sound and began to sob.

  Meanwhile, Sarah had seen the reason for her terror. Nainsi lay still on the bed, her eyes open wide and unseeing, her face a ghastly gray. Sarah knew before she even touched her that she was cold and a long time dead. Still, she checked her pulse just to make sure. The body was already beginning to stiffen.

  “Is she . . . dead?” Maria asked, peering wide-eyed around her brother-in-law’s shoulder.

  “I’m afraid so,” Sarah said.

  Valentina smothered another anguished cry against her brother’s chest, and Maria stared in horror, crossing herself.

  Then she also pushed her way past them into the room.

  “She died from having the baby?” she asked Sarah, staring mesmerized at Nainsi’s body, which looked like a doll that had been tossed carelessly aside. Her arms lay outstretched, as if she’d just flung herself down on the bed. Her legs were under the bedclothes, but the covers were slightly rumpled, as if she’d been tossing in her sleep.

  Before Sarah could answer, Maria suddenly realized her responsibilities. “Lorenzo, get Valentina out of here, and go find Mama.
She already left for the market, but she’ll be back soon.”

  “Come along, Valentina,” Lorenzo said gently.

  “The baby was crying,” the girl whimpered. “He was crying so long, I went to see what was the matter.”

  Both Sarah and Maria looked down at the cradle at the same time. The baby lay still, sobbing almost soundlessly, his little face scarlet and his dark hair damp and bedraggled.

  As Valentina had said, he’d been crying for a very long time, and now he lay exhausted, barely able to make a sound.

  Maria scooped him up into her arms.

  “He’s soaking wet,” Maria said in dismay. “Poor bambino.”

  “It’s all right,” Lorenzo was assuring Valentina. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  “But why did she die?” Valentina asked plaintively as she let her brother lead her away.

  “The baby is hungry,” Maria said with an edge of desperation in her voice as she tried to soothe him. “What can we do?”

  “We’ll have to get some bottles and milk,” Sarah said.

  “Can we send someone for them?”

  “Yes, Lorenzo will go, if you tell him what we need.”

  “I’ll make the baby a sugar teat in the meantime, and we’ll give him a little water. He’s probably dehydrated.”

  Maria’s eyes widened again. “Does that mean he will die?”

  “Oh, no, it just means he needs some liquid.” She grabbed up a handful of diapers and a clean blanket from the dressing table and started to usher Maria out of the room. Then she stopped, remembering the girl lying dead. Quickly, she went back and pulled the covers over Nainsi’s ashen face.

  Maria stood in the doorway, cradling the baby and watching with glistening eyes. Sarah gently guided her out into the hallway, closing the door behind them. No one would disturb Nainsi’s body, Sarah was sure. No one in this house had wanted to be near her even when she was alive.

  Downstairs they found Valentina sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes red and her face white. Lorenzo was trying to get her to sip some brandy. The large room where meals for a hundred could easily be prepared was redolent of garlic and onions and a dozen magnificent spices that made Sarah’s mouth water even though she’d eaten only an hour earlier.

  Maria told Lorenzo to go out and get the things Sarah wrote down that they would need for the baby. Then she changed the boy while Sarah made a sugar teat by wrapping a spoonful of sugar in a clean cloth and tying it off with string to make a ghost-shaped object. Then she wet the ghost’s head and gave it to the baby to suck. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was wet and tasted good, so he kept after it. The apprehension in Maria’s eyes began to fade.

  “He will be all right?” she asked.

  Sarah didn’t want to make any rash promises. “He won’t die from this, if that’s what you mean, and he seems to be very healthy and strong. Feeding a baby with bottles is dangerous, though. Sometimes they do fine, and other times . . .

  Other times, they don’t.”

  He wouldn’t be Maria’s problem anyway, Sarah couldn’t help thinking, but she didn’t bother to say it. She was too grateful that someone here cared about him.

  “He’d be better off dead,” Valentina said with an air of authority.

  Maria and Sarah gaped at her.

  “Well, he would,” she insisted righteously, the color returning to her cheeks. “His mother’s dead, and he doesn’t have anybody to take care of him.”

  “You are a wicked girl,” Maria told her angrily.

  “I don’t care what you think,” Valentina said with a haughty toss of her long, dark braids. “I don’t care what anybody thinks. I never wanted that nasty little baby around here anyway, or his mother either. Nainsi O’Hara thought she was better than us, just because we’re Italian, but she was only dirty Shanty Irish. She never had a new dress in her life, and she had to work in a factory before she married Antonio. She should’ve been grateful when he brought her here, but she wasn’t. She was mean to him and to all of us.”

  “Valentina, have a little respect for the dead,” Maria said wearily.

  “Why? She never had any respect for me.”

  “You don’t deserve any,” Maria snapped. “Go away and leave us alone.”

  With a sniff, Valentina rose and left the room.

  Maria sighed. “I’m sorry. She is just a child, and she is very spoiled. Because she’s the baby and the only girl.”

  “Of course,” Sarah said politely and started some water to boil in preparation for the supplies Lorenzo would bring.

  When Lorenzo returned, Sarah warmed some of the milk and prepared a bottle. Maria offered it, and the baby took to it right away. He gulped down almost all of the milk before falling into an exhausted sleep in Maria’s arms.

  “He is so beautiful,” Maria marveled, gazing down at him lovingly, like an adoring Madonna.

  Sarah took the bottle so Maria would have both hands free to cradle him, and once again she considered how unfair life was. If only Maria had given birth to this boy, he would have been welcomed and adored.

  “I should put him to bed so he can rest,” Maria said after a few moments.

  “We’ll need his cradle,” Sarah said and watched Maria’s face fall as they both remembered where his cradle was and what had happened in that room.

  Maria looked over to the corner where Lorenzo had with-drawn after returning from the store with the baby bottles.

  He sat, forearms resting on his knees, watching Maria and the baby intently.

  A silent communication passed between him and Maria, an understanding that surpassed words. “I will go,” he said, as if responding to a spoken request. Still, he rose reluctantly, unable to conceal his aversion to returning to the room where Nainsi’s body lay.

  Sarah didn’t want to return either, but she needed to see the body again. She was anxious to discover the cause of Nainsi’s death. It was too soon for childbed fever to have developed, and the girl hadn’t been ill at all last night when Sarah left. A hemorrhage was a possibility, but she hadn’t had a chance to check for that. Sarah was mystified, and she needed to know she hadn’t missed anything that could have caused Nainsi’s death. If Sarah had been responsible . . .

  “I’ll go with you,” Sarah said.

  Surprise registered on Lorenzo’s face, but she also saw relief. “There’s no need,” he said perfunctorily.

  “No, not at all,” Maria confirmed, her own distaste evident.

  “Yes, there is,” Sarah replied, and started out of the room before either of them could protest again.

  Lorenzo followed her up the stairs this time, and both of them walked more slowly than they had earlier. No one was screaming, and they felt no urgency. Sarah didn’t wait for Lorenzo. She opened the door and went on in, steeling herself against the horror of such a tragic death. Not letting herself look at Nainsi’s body, she quickly gathered the rest of the baby things she saw stacked neatly on the dresser and placed them in the cradle.

  She heard Lorenzo’s footsteps stop just outside the doorway. When Sarah looked up, he was watching her, also carefully avoiding looking at the bed.

  “Go ahead and take it downstairs,” Sarah said, indicating the cradle.

  Still without so much as a glance at the dead girl, he quickly came in, picked up the cradle, and made his way out again. Sarah had expected him to bolt, but he hesitated when he realized Sarah wasn’t going with him.

  “Are you coming?” he asked.

  “In a minute. I just have to . . . I have to check something,” she said, managing a reassuring smile. She was getting very good at that.

  “I’ll stay then,” he said, even though she could see he hated the thought.

  “No, Maria needs the cradle. Go ahead. I’ll be fine. I’m a nurse,” she reminded him with another smile. “I’m used to death.”

  It was a lie, of course. She’d never get used to it, but he believed her. Or at least he pretended to and left.

  Sarah beg
an her examination, gingerly drawing back the covers to reveal the entire body. She found no pool of blood to indicate the girl had hemorrhaged. An infection wouldn’t have had time to work yet, and she’d seen no signs to indicate any kind of distress at all yesterday. Sometimes people just died, Sarah knew, but this death was simply too convenient. No one in this house had liked Nainsi even before they’d discovered how she’d tricked Antonio. Mrs. O’Hara had reminded them last night that Catholic marriages could not be easily dissolved. Antonio could have thrown Nainsi and the baby out, but divorce wasn’t an option, even if the baby wasn’t his, so he’d never be able to remarry without being banned from the church.

  Sarah started to examine the body more closely, looking for any signs of violence. She noticed that one of Nainsi’s fingernails was torn, the jagged end not completely ripped off.

  Gooseflesh rose on Sarah’s arms. Fingernails didn’t easily tear like that. She looked at Nainsi’s vacant eyes, still staring at nothing, and this time she saw something she had missed before. Red dots, like pinpricks in the whites of her eyes and on her face, too. Sarah wasn’t sure what that meant, but she’d never seen dots like that on a woman who’d died in childbirth. Carefully, Sarah closed the girl’s eyes.

  She was so engrossed in her work, she hadn’t noticed the sounds of someone coming down the hall until she heard a howl of anguish that made her jump. Mrs. O’Hara stood in the doorway, paralyzed with horror as Lorenzo had been this morning.

  “No, no, no,” she kept saying, over and over, as she stared at the body. “Not my Nainsi, it can’t be my Nainsi,” she insisted as the tears pooled in her eyes. “She’s all I’ve got, the only one left. Not my Nainsi!”

  Sarah hurried to comfort her, helping her to one of the chairs Sarah and Maria had brought in for themselves yesterday while they’d been waiting for the baby to arrive. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. O’Hara,” she murmured, hating the meaningless phrase but having nothing else to offer.

  Still in shock, Mrs. O’Hara continued to stare. “That bitch told me she was dead, but I thought she was lying. They’re devils, those dagos. They’ll say anything.” She drew a ragged breath. “I told Nainsi not to get mixed up with them, but she wouldn’t listen. She never listens.” Her voice broke on a sob, but she fought the tears, clinging to her anger. “What happened to her?” she demanded of Sarah. “She was fine last night!”