Murder on Lenox Hill

by Victoria Thompson

  “Don’t be so bashful,” Mrs. Upchurch ordered them with an odd glint in her dark eyes. “Tell Mrs. Brandt what it is that draws you here, fellows. You aren’t ashamed, are you?”

  Behind Sarah, Mrs. Evans made a disapproving sound, but the youngest boy in the group, the one who had come in with Percy just now, piped up. “We come for Mr. Upchurch. He teaches us things.”

  One of the older boys gave him an elbow to silence him, earning a black look, and Mrs. Evans decided she had had enough. “Of course they come because of Reverend Upchurch,” she said in exasperation. “He cares about them, and he takes care of them. You should be proud to have such a fine man as your husband,” she informed Mrs. Upchurch.

  “ ‘Pride goeth before a fall,’ ” Mrs. Upchurch quoted, taking great delight in turning away the implied criticism with a scripture verse. “I’m sure my husband wouldn’t want me to sin, would you, Oliver?”

  Oliver didn’t have time to say, because she turned with a swish of her skirts and left the room, leaving everyone gaping.

  Reverend Upchurch was the first to recover. “Well, boys, we’ll let you get back to your game now.” He touched Sarah lightly on the elbow, to indicate she should leave. She was only too happy to oblige. Mrs. Evans remained behind a moment to speak to Percy and the other boys.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Brandt,” Upchurch was saying softly. “My wife is a very troubled woman.”

  Sarah looked around, half-expecting Mrs. Upchurch to be lying in wait to confront her husband and challenge his assessment of her character, but she didn’t see the minister’s wife. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said as neutrally as she could.

  “Some women can accept not having children, but Rachel isn’t one of them. I think she’s angry at God, and she takes it out on me.”

  Sarah found this a rather personal observation to make to a virtual stranger, especially from a man whose profession demanded discretion. She could only conclude that he wanted her to know this about his wife. What she couldn’t figure out was why.

  “Thank you for your time, Reverend Upchurch,” Sarah said, not wanting to invite any more intimate revelations. “You seem to be having great success, at least with those particular boys.”

  “We do what we can, Mrs. Brandt, and hope for the best. With children, you can never be certain how they’ll turn out, though, can you?”

  “No, I suppose you can’t,” she had to agree, a little disappointed that he didn’t have more confidence in his efforts.

  Mercifully, Mrs. Evans caught up with them then. Sarah thanked her for her help, and Upchurch fetched Sarah’s cape. In a few moments she was standing on the sidewalk outside the church, trying to decide if she had accomplished anything at all with her visit.

  “Mrs. Brandt!” a voice called, and Sarah looked up to see Rachel Upchurch walking toward her. Her cheeks were rosy, in spite of the thick wool cape she wore with its hood pulled tightly around her face. She must have been waiting out here in the cold for Sarah to emerge.

  “Hello again,” Sarah said.

  “Is it true, what you said? Are you really interested in Oliver’s work with those boys?” she asked, startling Sarah with her frankness. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she said she always spoke the truth.

  “Yes, I am.”

  Mrs. Upchurch’s thin lips turned up in a sly smile. “Then call on me some afternoon, and I’ll be glad to tell you more about it.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a calling card with her address printed on it. “I just live around the corner, and don’t worry about privacy. No one ever calls on me. They find it too disturbing, but I think you may be made of sterner stuff than most. Are you, Mrs. Brandt?”

  “I believe I am,” Sarah replied, thoroughly intrigued. She took the extended card.

  “Then I shall look forward to seeing you very soon.” With that, Rachel Upchurch turned and strolled away.

  FRANK HAD HEARD ABOUT SIGMUND FREUD. HE WAS some quack doctor over in Europe who thought he’d figured out why people go insane. He also thought he could talk them back into their right minds again. That was the part that didn’t make any sense. Frank had always believed that too much talk was what drove people crazy in the first place. He knew that’s how his mother sometimes made him feel. Frank didn’t believe for a moment that anyone could cure a person from insanity, but he did want to know more about Tom Brandt’s four female patients. From what Sarah had said about her late husband, he wasn’t the type of man who’d take advantage of deluded women for his own pleasure. On the other hand, the wife was usually the last person to know if her husband had a sexual perversion he purposely kept secret.

  Dr. Quinn’s office was located on a quiet side street on the Upper West Side, identified only by a discreet brass plaque bearing his name. The door was locked, so Frank tried ringing the bell. After a minute or two, he rang it again and was just about to give up and come back another time when he heard footsteps inside. A disheveled young man answered the door. Frank guessed he hadn’t seen thirty yet. He’d buttoned his collar too hastily, and his tie was crooked. He was still straightening his suit coat, and his hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it.

  “Did you have an appointment?” he asked Frank with a puzzled frown. Apparently, Frank didn’t look like his usual clients.

  “No, I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy, with the police. I’d like to ask you a few questions about a case I’m working on.”

  “Does it involve one of my patients?” he asked in alarm.

  “No, or not that I know of, anyway,” Frank assured him. “Dr. Newton sent me. He said you’d be able to explain some things I need to understand about dementia praecox and hysteria.”

  Quinn blinked a few times in surprise. “Dr. Newton, you say? Well, I’ll help you if I can. Come in, come in.”

  The doctor let him into the foyer of a modest house. The doors along the hallway were all closed, and Frank figured the good doctor lived here and saw his patients here, too. Quinn pushed open the first door on the right and motioned Frank inside.

  The room was small and simply furnished, with a desk and a glass-fronted bookcase at one end. At the other sat a few comfortable chairs and a reclining couch of some kind.

  “Would you like to lie down?” Dr. Quinn asked, leading Frank toward the couch.

  “Why would I want to lay down?”

  “Well, because . . . that is, some people feel more comfortable that way, especially when they are talking about difficult things.”

  “I’m usually fine sitting up, no matter what I’m talking about,” Frank informed him.

  Dr. Quinn smiled magnanimously. “Very well, then, please have a seat.”

  Frank took the chair he indicated, and Quinn sat in another one, facing him.

  “Did you say Dr. Newton sent you?” he asked.

  “Yes. He doesn’t know much about insanity, but he said you could answer my questions. He said you’d studied with Freud.”

  “That’s right,” Quinn said proudly. “Dr. Freud is a genius. The things he’s discovered about the human mind are astonishing.”

  Frank figured he knew a few astonishing things about the human mind that could curl Dr. Quinn’s messy hair, but he refrained from saying so. “What can you tell me about dementia praecox and hysteria?” he asked to move the conversation along.

  “Quite a bit, so perhaps you should tell me exactly why you need to know. Then I’ll be better able to judge what information you need.”

  “A doctor had four patients, all women. They were all in love with him, and they all thought he was in love with them, too. They even said he’d seduced them.”

  “Have these women accused him of rape? Is that why you’re investigating?”

  “No, he’s dead. Somebody killed him, and I think it was because of this.”

  “Oh, my,” Dr. Quinn said in dismay. “You think one of the women? . . .”

  “No, the killer was a man, probably a father.”
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  “But not a husband. I’m guessing none of them is married.”

  “That’s right,” Frank said. “How did you know?”

  “The condition you’re describing is sometimes called ‘Old Maid’s disease,’ because the women who suffer from it are usually unmarried.”

  “And it’s also called hysteria?”

  “Sometimes doctors use the term hysteria to describe a condition in a female they don’t understand. It isn’t exactly an accurate diagnosis.”

  “Then what can you tell me about this ‘Old Maid’s disease’?”

  “It’s been recognized for centuries. A Frenchman wrote a treatise about it in the early sixteen hundreds, and even Hippocrates referred to it in his writings.” Frank wasn’t sure who that was, but he nodded wisely as if he did. “Simply, it’s a form of mental disease in which the sufferer imagines herself in a love affair with a man who has no feelings for her at all and may hardly even know her. Usually the man is someone prominent or sometimes just someone who has been kind to her. You said the murdered man was a doctor. Because of the nature of their work, doctors are often the love objects for these women.”

  “So it happens a lot?”

  “More frequently than anyone would like, especially the unfortunate gentlemen who are the objects of this misplaced devotion. The woman will often make a nuisance of herself, paying inappropriate attention to the man, giving him gifts, following him, and sometimes even sneaking into his home because she imagines she is his wife and that she lives there with him.”

  “And sooner or later, the man takes advantage of her,” Frank guessed.

  “You mean because of the accusations of seduction?” Dr. Quinn asked. “No. Actually, the men involved are usually repulsed by the woman’s attentions, but nothing they say or do can discourage her. She interprets a simple tip of the hat or an impersonal greeting as a declaration of undying devotion, and sometimes the man is someone famous who has never even met the woman or had any contact with her at all. The seductions are almost always in the woman’s imagination. Even virgins will describe erotic encounters with the man they love, but rarely have these encounters actually happened.”

  “But why would a woman make up something like that? What would make her throw herself at a man who didn’t want her?”

  “We don’t know, Mr. Malloy, at least not yet. People do many things that the rest of us consider irrational and will never understand. This is what Dr. Freud’s work is all about. We’re trying to find out what makes some people’s minds malfunction to the point that they behave in a manner society calls insane.”

  “So what you’re talking about is dementia praecox?”

  “Oh, no, at least not always. Dementia praecox is a much more serious condition, and it afflicts men as well. The sufferers often hallucinate—see and hear things that aren’t there,” he explained. “They may develop an attachment to an individual as part of the illness, but they are seriously ill and unable to function normally. They must be confined for their own safety, while women suffering from Old Maid’s disease are usually normal in every other way.”

  “How do you cure a woman of this?”

  Dr. Quinn didn’t like the question. “Since the woman is irrational, at least on this one subject, it’s almost impossible to convince her anything is even wrong with her, so she isn’t likely to seek a cure. Sometimes the attachment simply fades with time. Other times the families succeed in controlling the woman so she cannot continue to humiliate herself. Rarely is the woman ‘cured’ the way you mean it, though.”

  Frank considered all of this information and tried to decide how it applied to Tom Brandt.

  “Have I helped you with your case, Mr. Malloy?”

  “I’m not sure. If a doctor had a patient who fell in love with him like this, why would he go out and try to find more women who had this illness and get them to fall in love with him, too?”

  Dr. Quinn’s young face creased into a frown. “I . . . I wouldn’t want to offer a conjecture without more information,” he hedged.

  “Oh, I think you could if you tried,” Frank replied, leaning forward in a slightly threatening manner. “From what you said, most men don’t like being pursued by these crazy women.”

  “We don’t use the word ‘crazy.’ ”

  “Whatever word you use, that’s what they are. So why would a man purposely go out looking for more of them?”

  “I can’t think of any logical reason,” Quinn tried.

  “Then how about one that isn’t logical?”

  Quinn swallowed. “I know what you’re trying to make me say, and I assure you, no reputable doctor would engage in that sort of behavior.”

  “But one that wasn’t reputable might,” Frank said. “A man with certain sexual appetites might. And he might decide he liked having a woman who was willing to do anything he wanted. He might like it so much that he went looking for more of them.”

  Dr. Quinn’s face went slack in despair. “I’m afraid I can’t think of any other explanation, either.”

  SARAH HAD LITTLE TIME IN THE NEXT THIRTY-SIX HOURS to think about what she had learned at the Church of the Good Shepherd. She arrived back home only to be summoned to a delivery, and afterwards she was able to get just a few hours sleep before being called to another. When she finally returned home early the following morning, she found a note from Mrs. Linton, asking her to call that afternoon.

  The note was brief, revealing nothing about the reason for the request, and for a moment Sarah worried something might be wrong with Grace. But then she realized that an emergency would have been worded much differently and not asked for a formal call. Deciding she was too weary to wonder about it, she finally made her way to bed.

  By afternoon, Sarah was restored enough to spend some time with Aggie before setting out for Lenox Hill. The maid took her into the parlor to see Mrs. Linton at once.

  Claire Linton had been sitting alone, sewing, but she set her project aside when Sarah came in. Her expression was guarded as she greeted her visitor.

  “Is Grace all right?” Sarah asked as she took the offered seat.

  “She’s fine,” Mrs. Linton said stiffly. “Would you like some tea?”

  Sarah agreed, and Mrs. Linton sent the maid to fetch it.

  A few moments of silence followed the maid’s departure, and from the way Mrs. Linton was looking at her, Sarah began to feel like a schoolgirl who’d been caught cheating on a test.

  Finally, she could stand it no longer. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Mrs. Linton winced a bit, as if it pained her to speak. “Mrs. Brandt, I understand . . . that is, I’ve been told that . . . Well, that you went to our church the other day.”

  Sarah felt a pang of guilt, but only a small one. She hadn’t really been investigating Grace’s attack, and even if she had been, she hadn’t learned anything useful. “I was so impressed by what you’d said about your pastor and how much he’s done for the boys in your church, that I wanted to see for myself what he does. I’m not sure if I mentioned it or not, but I do some volunteer work down at a mission on the Lower East Side. We try to help homeless girls by giving them a safe place to live. I thought perhaps I might get some pointers from your minister that would help us in that work.”

  Mrs. Linton blinked a few times as she took in Sarah’s explanation. “Oh,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t . . . I mean, you hadn’t said . . . I thought . . .” Her hands fluttered in embarrassment.

  Sarah managed to look innocent and asked, “What did you think?”

  “Well, I . . . that is, I feel foolish now, but I was afraid . . . I know you were concerned about who might have . . . have hurt Grace,” she said, her voice showing the strain of her predicament. “I thought you might have gone there to ask questions or . . .”

  “I would never betray your confidence, Mrs. Linton,” Sarah assured her quite honestly. “I suppose you did mention that the church is one of the few places Grace goes, but I assure y
ou, I never even mentioned her name. I did see your friend, Mrs. Evans, there, and she was kind enough to introduce me to your minister when I told her why I had come.”

  “Yes, I know. She was the one who . . . who mentioned she’d seen you there. I couldn’t imagine what else might have brought you.” Mrs. Linton lifted a trembling hand to her cheek. “We’re just so worried about Grace . . .”

  Sarah felt a rush of relief that she hadn’t really done anything to cause this poor woman more concern. “I’m sure you are. Have you thought about what you will do when the baby comes?”

  Mrs. Linton covered her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “If we were younger,” she began and had to clear the tears out of her voice. “If we were younger, we would try to pass the child off as our own. I could go away to the country for a while with Grace and come back with it. People might suspect, but . . . but we’re not young enough for that.” She sighed.

  “Do you have family who could take the baby?”

  She shook her head. “Even if we did, who would want the child of a simpleton and a rapist?” Her voice broke on that, but the maid’s knock distracted her before she could dissolve into tears. Snatching a handkerchief from her sleeve, she dabbed at her tears and cleared her throat again. “Come in,” she called.

  If the maid noticed her mistress was on the verge of tears, she gave no indication of it. She set down the tea tray and discreetly disappeared.

  Sarah allowed Mrs. Linton to use the time she spent pouring tea for them to compose herself. She only wished she had some words of comfort to offer, but she was afraid Mrs. Linton was right about no one wanting the child.

  Sarah took the cup of tea Mrs. Linton offered her and stirred some sugar into it. The familiar ritual gave them both something to do while they tried to think of a safe topic. Finally Sarah came up with one.

  “I met Mrs. Upchurch while I was at the church,” she said, watching closely for Mrs. Linton’s reaction.