Murder on Lenox Hill

by Victoria Thompson

  She was still smiling when she opened the door. “Malloy,” she said by way of greeting. “Do you need some help on a case?”

  Malloy’s expression had been carefully neutral, but her question surprised him into almost smiling. She saw the flicker of it in his dark eyes before he caught himself. “No, I thought I’d stop by to see if you needed any help delivering babies,” he replied, deadpan, delighting her.

  “Then come inside so I can start your instructions,” she said, more pleased than she cared to admit to see him on her doorstep. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed his company.

  Before he had even cleared the doorway, Aggie and Maeve were coming down the stairs to greet him. Both had fond memories of him from the mission.

  “We knew you were coming, Mr. Malloy,” Maeve announced. “Aggie dropped a spoon.”

  “A spoon?” Malloy repeated, giving Sarah a puzzled glance.

  “Mrs. Ellsworth,” she offered in explanation.

  Malloy nodded in perfect understanding.

  “Didn’t you bring Brian?” Maeve asked. Sarah had once taken the girls to visit Malloy’s son, which they had all enjoyed.

  “Not today,” Malloy said, and something in his tone warned Sarah he wasn’t making a social call. Since he would probably cut off his own foot before willingly involving her in another murder investigation, what other business could have brought him here? She felt a small frisson of alarm.

  Malloy was picking Aggie up in response to her silent demands. “How do you like living here with Mrs. Brandt, Aggie?” he asked.

  Aggie didn’t answer, of course, but she smiled hugely.

  “Is Maeve taking good care of you?”

  Aggie nodded.

  “Maeve is an excellent helper,” Sarah reported, making the girl blush.

  She shrugged modestly. “I like it here. Would you like a piece of cake, Mr. Malloy? We made it just for you.”

  Malloy raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You shouldn’t tell fibs,” he teased her. “You didn’t know I was coming.”

  “Yes, we did, because Aggie dropped the spoon,” she reminded him smugly.

  The girls induced Malloy to accompany them to the kitchen and sample the cake, which he declared delicious, and Sarah made some coffee. He wasn’t used to socializing with young girls, but he managed to keep them amused. Sarah watched him in growing admiration. He truly was a remarkable man.

  When everyone had eaten and thoroughly spoiled their suppers, Sarah sent the girls back upstairs so she could talk to Malloy in private. Or rather, so he could talk to her and tell her why he’d come.

  When they were alone, neither spoke for several minutes. Sarah was surprised at this awkwardness between them, after all they’d been through together, but suddenly, his presence seemed somehow too real in the close confines of her kitchen. She couldn’t stop herself from recalling some of the more intimate moments of their relationship, moments when it seemed they might pass that invisible barrier from friendship to something more. Yet here they sat, still friends and not even comfortable with that, if Sarah’s tingling nerves and Malloy’s unease were any indication.

  “How have you been?” she said to break the silence.

  “Fine,” he said automatically.

  “How is Brian doing in school?”

  “He likes it a lot. My mother goes with him every day. She’s learning sign language, too.”

  “She is?” Sarah exclaimed in surprise. “I thought she was against the whole idea.”

  “She was, but then she realized that if he learned sign language, nobody at home would be able to talk to him. She knew I wasn’t going to learn it, so I guess she figured she’d have one up on me if she did.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Sarah said.

  “Don’t let her know you think so,” Malloy warned. “She might stop, just for spite.” Mrs. Malloy didn’t approve of Sarah’s friendship with her son, which reminded them both of the many barriers to any other kind of relationship.

  The awkward silence fell again.

  “I—”

  “What did—” They both spoke at once, then stopped in embarrassment.

  “You first,” he said.

  “I . . . I was just going to ask what brought you here today,” she said. “Unless you saw some omen that told you we’d made you a cake.”

  His lips curved in a quick smile that vanished instantly. “I was wondering if you’d let me look at your husband’s files again.”

  Now she was really surprised, and a knot of dread formed in her stomach, as it usually did when she thought of Tom’s death. “I thought you hadn’t found anything useful there.” He’d spent quite a few hours examining all of Tom’s medical files a few months back, when he’d thought he might find a clue to who had killed him.

  “I came across an old investigator’s report on his case, and it had some names in it. If those people were his patients, they might know something. It isn’t much,” he added hastily. “They might not even have been his patients, and if they were, they probably don’t know who killed him. But I thought it was worth a look.”

  “Then you don’t really have any new information about Tom’s death?”

  “Nothing important, like I said. Just a few names.”

  “Then certainly, you may check his files.” Memories of her dead husband thankfully served to stifle her awareness of Malloy as a man. She led him into the front-room office where Tom’s files were still located. “Do you need any help?”

  “No, it shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes.” He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and consulted it before opening a file drawer.

  “I’ll clean up the kitchen then,” she said, for some reason not wanting to watch.

  Clearing away the plates and cups took only a few minutes. She really should get started on supper, although she and the girls wouldn’t be hungry for a while after eating all that cake. Sarah couldn’t even begin to think of anything as mundane as supper while Malloy was in her front room, though. As if drawn by a magnet, she returned to the front office.

  He was adding a file to a small pile of them on her desk. “That’s all of them,” he said.

  “Then they were his patients,” she said, not sure if she should be pleased or not. She wanted Tom’s killer caught and punished. She’d wanted that for years, so why did she suddenly feel apprehensive? Maybe it was Malloy’s manner. He didn’t look the way he usually did when he was working on a case. He had no sense of eagerness or excitement, no feral gleam in his eye from the thrill of the hunt. Instead he seemed weary, almost sad.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” he warned gently. “It’s probably nothing important. And don’t even offer to help me,” he added with a glimmer of his old spirit.

  “I thought you were here to help me,” she reminded him, feeling a glimmer of spirit herself. “Are you ready to begin your midwife training?”

  “I don’t think I’d be as good at it as you are at detective work,” he said with a small smile. She loved that smile. “But if you ever have a crime with one of your babies, just let me know.”

  “Oh, my,” Sarah said in surprise, “I do have a crime to deal with. How could I have forgotten?”

  Malloy’s face creased into a frown. She didn’t love that frown. “It better not be a murder.”

  “Don’t be silly, of course it’s not a murder,” she said. “If it was, you’d probably already know about it. But I could use your advice. Do you have a few more minutes?”

  He was still frowning, but he followed her to the two overstuffed chairs that sat by the front window.

  When they were seated, he said, “What kind of a crime is it?”

  “A rape, I think,” she said, making him wince. He didn’t like to think of her even knowing about such things. That was one thing on which he and her family would agree. “It’s a seventeen-year-old girl in Lenox Hill. She’s expecting a child in about three months, and her parents just realized it. But as far as her parents can d
etermine, she’s never even been alone with a man.”

  “A seventeen-year-old girl can do a lot of things her parents don’t know about,” Malloy said. “Even one from Lenox Hill.”

  “Grace is seventeen physically, but mentally, she’s more like a five-year-old, and she probably always will be. She still plays will dolls, and she has absolutely no understanding of what happened to her or what is going to happen.”

  “Even a simpleton would remember being attacked,” Malloy said.

  “I questioned her very carefully, but she insists no one ever hurt her in her entire life. I even . . .” Sarah hated to admit this, although she and Malloy had dealt with this very situation. “I even asked if her father had ever done anything to her, but all he’s done is kiss her on the cheek.”

  “What about servants?”

  “All female, and she only leaves the house to attend church and go on visits with her mother to other women.”

  “Do you think it’s a miracle?” he asked with a hint of irony. “You’d need a priest for that, not a detective.”

  “Of course I don’t think it’s a miracle. Someone took advantage of this poor girl, and he shouldn’t get away with it.”

  “And what if you do find him? Will her family charge him?”

  “I doubt it,” she admitted. “Even if they would, Grace would be a poor witness.”

  “Why try to find him, then?”

  “There are other ways to punish someone besides putting him in jail,” Sarah said. “I’ve been thinking about this, and I realized that gossip can be a powerful tool of punishment. No one would ever believe a girl like Grace was involved in a romance of any kind. The man must have forced her. Most people would consider that despicable, and the word would pass very quickly in society. He’d never be welcomed at any respectable home again.”

  Malloy stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You never cease to amaze me, Mrs. Brandt. I suppose you’d be willing to use your social connections to help ruin this man’s reputation, too.”

  “Of course. What good is it being a member of one of the oldest families in New York if you can’t stomp out evil now and then?”

  “Just be sure you get the right man.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean don’t jump to conclusions. And don’t overlook the obvious.”

  “I haven’t been able to find anyone obvious,” she reminded him.

  He shook his head and gave her a pitying look. “You already told me there’s only one man who has contact with her.”

  “And I also told you her father isn’t responsible.”

  “Why? Because he’s a respectable man who lives in a respectable neighborhood and makes a good living? We both know incest can happen no matter how respectable the family is.”

  “I’d swear her father didn’t do this. You didn’t see him or talk to him, and you didn’t hear what Grace said. I know how to find out these things, Malloy. I’ve delivered a lot of babies to unmarried girls, enough to tell when a girl is hiding something from her father and when she’s hiding something about him, and enough to recognize when a father is outraged and when he’s feeling guilty. Grace’s father is outraged and heartbroken.”

  “If he didn’t do it, who could have?” Malloy asked.

  “I told you, nobody knows!”

  “The girl knows. You just didn’t ask her the right question.”

  Sarah wanted to smack him, but she knew he was right. “So what should I do now?”

  “Why do you have to do anything?”

  “What?”

  “I said, why do you have to do anything?” he repeated patiently. “This isn’t your daughter or your family, so you don’t have to do anything about it. If her family wants to find the man and punish him, they can go to the police or . . .” He put up his hand to stop her when she would have sputtered in outrage over the unlikelihood of the police solving a crime like this. “Or they could hire a Pinkerton to investigate quietly. They can do whatever they want, but you don’t have to do anything at all except take care of the girl and her baby.”

  She hated it when he was logical, and even more when he was right, so she fumed for a minute before she could say, “Would you go and talk to the parents?”

  “About what?” he asked suspiciously.

  “To encourage them to find out who attacked Grace. I’m afraid they’ll be so interested in protecting her that they won’t even try.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to try. Maybe they don’t want to know.”

  “But they should. Don’t you see?”

  “I see that you want this man punished, even if it’s just execution by gossip, but they’re probably more interested in protecting their daughter. And don’t forget, her father may be protecting himself, no matter what you think about him. If he is, he’ll never call in the police.”

  Sarah knew Mr. Linton was innocent, but she’d never convince Malloy of it until he saw for himself. “Will you talk to them or not?” she challenged.

  “Only if they ask to see me,” he said stubbornly. “I can’t just knock on their front door and tell them I heard their daughter had been attacked and I’m here to start investigating.”

  “But if I convince them to speak with you, you’ll do it?” she said.

  He gave a long-suffering sigh. “You know I will.” Then his mouth quirked at one corner and his dark eyes gleamed. “At least it’s not a murder.”

  FRANK TOOK TOM BRANDT’S PATIENT FILES HOME WITH him, and after Brian and his mother went to bed, he started reading them. He’d hoped that he wouldn’t find the four women’s files in Sarah’s office, but Felix Decker’s Pinkertons were the best money could buy. Of course they’d gotten that part right. They’d never seen the women’s medical files, though, of that he was certain.

  The four women seemed to have little in common except that they were all unmarried and all suffering from “hysteria.” Frank had seen many hysterical women in his time, but in his experience, it was a temporary condition brought on by anger or terror or some other strong emotion.

  One of the women also supposedly suffered from dementia praecox. Frank knew what dementia was. It meant she was crazy. She wasn’t in the crazy house, though. Her family had kept her at home, like the rest of them, which meant they must not be dangerous.

  Frank read through the reports carefully several times, struggling with Tom Brandt’s handwriting in places, until he was sure he understood as much as he was capable of understanding without medical training. One woman was thirty-four, one twenty-seven, another eighteen, and the demented one was twenty-two. Only the thirty-four-year-old had been Brandt’s patient before she got sick. The others were women with the same problem she’d had whom he’d found through other doctors.

  He’d obviously been seeking them out, too, visiting with their families to win their confidence before beginning his treatment of the “hysteric.” Except Frank couldn’t see that he’d actually treated any of them, if that meant doing something to make them better.

  The most disturbing part, however, was that the major symptom of their disease was an unnatural interest in sex, accompanied by a romantic devotion to an individual man. They were consumed by passion for the man and obsessed with him night and day, and from what he could make of it, the women were all in love with Tom Brandt.

  SARAH WAS CALLED OUT EARLY THE NEXT MORNING TO deliver a baby, so she couldn’t get to the Lintons’ house until late that afternoon. She wasn’t surprised to learn Mrs. Linton had other visitors, since this was the proper time for company to call. She only hoped she could outlast them for a few private moments with the family at the end of the visit.

  The maid showed her into the parlor where Mrs. Linton sat with two other ladies. When she saw Sarah, Mrs. Linton’s welcoming smile dimmed to concern, but Sarah smiled back reassuringly. “I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop in to say hello,” she lied.

  “I’m so glad you did,” Mrs. Linton repl
ied, still a bit uncertain of what to make of Sarah’s presence. “Please join us, Mrs. Brandt.”

  She introduced the other ladies as Mrs. Hazel York and her mother, Susannah Jessop Evans. Sarah remembered hearing Mrs. York’s name mentioned when she’d been here before.

  “Don’t forget to introduce Percy, Mama,” Grace’s voice called from the far end of the room.

  Sarah hadn’t noticed her sitting there, and when she turned, she saw Grace sharing a window seat with a boy. The boy rose to his feet, remembering his manners. His dark hair had been pomaded firmly against his well-shaped head but was fighting to get loose here and there, and he wore his visiting clothes with the air of one who couldn’t wait to throw them off in favor of knickers and a baseball bat. He sketched her a little bow.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Brandt,” he said in a voice that hadn’t quite changed yet. Sarah guessed him to be several years younger than Grace, for all his gangling height.

  “Mrs. Brandt is a nurse,” Grace announced proudly. “The kind that takes care of sick people, not the kind that takes care of babies.”

  “I’m sure Mrs. Brandt can speak for herself, Grace,” Mrs. Linton said uncomfortably. She was probably afraid Grace would say too much about Sarah’s visit the other day. “Why don’t you show Percy the sketches you did last week?”

  Easily distracted, Grace jumped up and fetched a sketchbook from a nearby cabinet. Sarah took the opportunity to study Percy more closely. His fond gaze followed Grace as she flitted across the room. She was a pretty girl, and he a boy on the brink of manhood. It would be only natural for him to notice her. Perhaps he even lusted after her in the awkward way boys did when they knew nothing definite about the mysteries of sex except that girls were involved.