Murder on Lenox Hill

by Victoria Thompson

  Percy’s eyes grew very serious. “It’s the most important thing a man can be.”

  “Do you know that gentlemen always tell the truth, no matter how hard it is?”

  “I . . . I guess so,” the boy allowed.

  “Good, because I’m going to ask you to tell me about the things Upchurch told you gentlemen don’t discuss, because he was wrong about that. Men talk about those things all the time, even gentlemen. They don’t talk about it in front of women. That part was right. I think Upchurch just wanted to be sure you boys wouldn’t embarrass anybody by talking about it.”

  “Are you sure? Do men really talk about it?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Didn’t you and the other boys talk about it?” Frank asked, taking a chance.

  Percy’s young face flushed scarlet. “Not . . . not very much,” he hedged, confirming Frank’s suspicion.

  “It’s really all right,” Frank assured him, wishing that were true, wishing it really was going to be all right. “I need to make sure he did what I think he did.”

  “Oh, so he won’t be in trouble,” Percy guessed.

  Frank somehow managed not to wince. “Tell me about the things he taught you that you’re not supposed to talk about.”

  “Just the usual things,” Percy said with another shrug. “What a father teaches his son so he’ll know what to do when he loves a girl.”

  The ball of rage threatened to choke him, but Frank kept his voice calm. “Can you tell me exactly what he did?”

  Percy looked a bit annoyed. “You should already know. Didn’t you learn this stuff? Didn’t anybody ever show you?”

  Frank swallowed down hard. “Reverend Upchurch isn’t your real father, Percy. I need to know that he . . . that he told you the right things.”

  Percy looked up at the ceiling. “It feels strange to talk about it.”

  “You don’t have to look at me, if you don’t want to.”

  The boy sighed. “I know he taught us the right things.”

  “I’m probably a better judge of that than you are. Go ahead.”

  “You won’t laugh, will you? The older boys always teased me and Mark about it, because we’re younger. They thought they knew more than us.”

  “I won’t laugh, and I won’t tease you,” Frank promised, knowing he couldn’t possibly find any humor in it at all.

  Percy sighed. “All right. But Reverend Upchurch did say we should only do it with the girl we love. He said there’s some girls that will do it for money, but we should never use them.”

  “He’s right about that,” Frank said, feeling the sweat breaking out under his shirt. “Did he just explain what you were supposed to do?”

  “Oh, no,” Percy assured him. “He showed us, and then we had to practice.”

  “With him?” Frank’s throat felt like someone was tightening a noose around it.

  Percy nodded. “Because we don’t have fathers, he was doing what they would do.”

  Frank fought to keep his voice steady. “Just so I know for sure, can you tell me exactly what you did?”

  Reluctantly, he did, speaking in a normal, almost bored voice, as if he were telling Frank about the way Upchurch had taught him how to throw a baseball. Sarah had been too right. Upchurch had used the fatherless boys’ vulnerability to tell them the most horrible lies, convincing them he was only filling a father’s role in their lives.

  Frank thought about the boys he usually dealt with, boys whose families had turned them out when they’d been younger than Percy was now. Boys who’d lived on the street, scrounging for food and doing whatever they must to stay alive, knowing far too much about the evils of this world. Most people would say Percy was fortunate to have been raised in a good home with a loving family, but ironically, his good fortune had made him the perfect target for Upchurch’s perversion. No guttersnipe would have fallen for his lies.

  Eventually, Upchurch’s victims would come to understand what he had done to them, of course, as Isaiah obviously had. They’d be too ashamed to expose him, though, and like Isaiah, too angry and bitter even to help the younger boys.

  As instructed, Percy hadn’t looked at Frank during his explanation. When he was finished, he turned to him, and he must have seen the horror Frank couldn’t hide.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously.

  Everything, Frank thought, but he said, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Percy, but he lied to you. Upchurch lied to you about everything. Fathers don’t make you do those things.”

  The boy’s eyes were enormous and filled with incredulity. He didn’t know Frank and couldn’t trust him. “You’re lying!” he cried. “Reverend Upchurch tells the truth! He’s a preacher!”

  “Sometimes even preachers can be bad men.”

  “Coppers are bad men!” Percy insisted. “I know all about it. My friends told me. You beat people up and take them to jail for no reason! You take bribes and let guilty people go!”

  “I never did what Upchurch did. I never made a boy do anything he didn’t want to do,” Frank said, ignoring the accusations. “You didn’t want to do those things with Upchurch, did you? You knew they were wrong, but you didn’t want him to get mad at you, did you?”

  The color drained from Percy’s face, confirming Frank’s theory. “He loves me!” he insisted.

  “If he really loved you, he wouldn’t have done those things to you,” Frank said relentlessly. “He did what he wanted, not what you wanted.”

  “I don’t believe you!” Percy cried, his eyes red from un-shed tears, but Frank could see he was beginning to.

  Slowly, gently, and at times awkwardly, Frank told him why Upchurch had lied to him and the other boys and betrayed their trust and used them. He described the proper relationship between a father and son, and watched as the boy began to understand. The horror in his young eyes gave way to pain and anguish and rage and finally to despair. Although he tried not to cry, the tears rolled down his young cheeks just the same, even as he scrubbed at them furiously with his sleeve.

  Frank gave him a few minutes to collect himself, and when the boy could speak again, the first thing he said was, “Don’t tell my mother. Females aren’t supposed to know about these things, are they? And she’s not very well. She’ll get upset, and she might even die. They think I don’t know how sick she is, but I heard the doctor telling Grandmother. I don’t want her to die because of me.”

  The boy’s pain was so raw, Frank felt the sting of tears in his own eyes, even though he’d thought his heart had hardened beyond hope. He had to remind himself that he couldn’t let Percy’s pain affect his judgment. “We’ll have to tell someone,” he said reasonably, “So we can protect you from Upchurch.”

  “What will he do to me?” Percy asked in alarm.

  “Nothing,” Frank assured him. “Not anymore. I mean we need to make sure he can’t use you like that anymore. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “Oh, I didn’t think . . . I mean . . . ,” he stammered uncomfortably. “No, I guess not.”

  “You probably won’t want to go to church there anymore. I don’t think your grandmother and mother would, either, if they knew, but if they don’t know, how will you explain why you don’t want to go?”

  He obviously hadn’t thought about this either. “I . . . I’ll just say I don’t feel good or something,” he tried in despair.

  “Every Sunday? And they’ll want to know why you don’t go to the church after school anymore. They’ll be mad at you. They’ll try to make you go because it’s good for you. They’ll think you’re being bad, and they’ll punish you.”

  He knew Frank was right. His eyes filled with tears again. “What can I do?”

  “We can tell your grandmother.”

  “But . . . but females . . . they aren’t supposed to know!” he protested, his voice breaking again.

  “That’s another lie,” Frank said as kindly as he could. “Your grandmother will understand. She’ll make sure you never have to see Upch
urch again.”

  He was crying now, as the reality became clear to him.

  His whole world was crumbling, and nothing would ever be the same again. “My friends,” he sobbed.

  “What about them?” Frank asked.

  “What . . . what will happen with them?” he asked brokenly.

  “That’s up to you.”

  He look up, his eyes wide with terror. “Why is it up to me?”

  “Do you want to stop him from hurting your friends, too?”

  “I . . . They’ll be mad, ’cause I told. They’ll hate me.”

  “Maybe they want it to stop, too, but they don’t know what to do.”

  “They’ll be mad,” he insisted. “Isaiah, he’ll be real mad. He doesn’t like me anyway.”

  “Why not?” Frank asked with a frown.

  “Because . . . because Reverend Upchurch likes us better than him.”

  “Who does he like better?”

  “Me and Mark.”

  “Why is that?”

  Percy shrugged. “Isaiah says because we’re younger.”

  If Upchurch preferred young boys, eventually the boys would get too old for his taste. Frank remembered Isaiah’s anger and bitterness, and he wondered if this was part of it. The whole thing made him sick, and the more he learned, the sicker he got. “I’ll talk to your grandmother, if you like, so you don’t have to. I can explain it to her.”

  “She’ll be mad at me, too,” he said sadly.

  “No, she won’t. I’ll make sure she isn’t. This isn’t your fault, and she’ll know it.”

  “She loves Reverend Upchurch. She won’t want to hear anything bad about him.”

  “I’ll bet she loves you more.”

  Percy didn’t look convinced. “I could just stop going to the church after school. I could tell Reverend Upchurch I’m not allowed to anymore. Nobody has to know. My grandmother and my mother could keep going to church like always.”

  “What about the other boys?”

  Percy winced. “They can do what they want, can’t they?”

  “Even if all of you decide to stop going to see Upchurch, he’ll find other boys. He won’t stop. He’ll never stop unless you stop him, Percy. It’s up to you.”

  MRS. EVANS LOOKED AS IF SHE WERE CARVED IN STONE as Sarah and Malloy told her of the unspeakable horror that Upchurch had perpetrated on her family. She’d been shocked and incredulous at first, certain such a thing could never have happened, but they’d answered all of her questions as honestly and tactfully as they could, chipping away at her disbelief with the edges of their certainty. She’d endured the entire ordeal stoically. Sarah knew how many years of training and practice it had taken to allow her to sit, expressionless, as everything she’d once held sacred was ripped brutally from her.

  “This is . . . difficult to believe,” she said hoarsely when they had told her everything they could and answered all her questions.

  Sarah imagined it was. “You must be wondering how Mr. Malloy came to suspect Reverend Upchurch in the first place. Believe me, this is the last thing I expected to discover when I visited your church.”

  “What did you expect to discover, Mrs. Brandt?” she asked, her eyes narrowed with quiet rage. “You obviously had some purpose when you came snooping around, and don’t bother telling me that fairy tale about your work at some mission on the Lower East Side.”

  Stung, Sarah reminded herself that Mrs. Evans was extremely angry, and she would naturally lash out at her and Frank for being the ones to open this Pandora’s box of horrors. “I do volunteer at the Prodigal Son Mission, but the real reason I went to your church is that one of the girls at your church was raped, and her attacker is probably one of your members.”

  For a moment, Mrs. Evans’s stoicism broke. “Do you mean Grace Linton? Someone attacked that poor girl?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Don’t bother denying it,” Mrs. Evans snapped. “You didn’t know anyone in our church except the Lintons. It must be Grace.”

  “Her family doesn’t want anyone to know,” Sarah cautioned.

  “Of course they don’t. That poor girl. But didn’t Grace tell her parents who is responsible?”

  “She either can’t or won’t name the man.”

  “How awful for them. But how did you get involved, Mrs. Brandt?”

  “I . . .” she glanced at Malloy who was trying very hard not to remind her that he’d warned her against this very thing. “I thought an outsider might have a better chance of finding the guilty man. I thought it was possible someone had somehow convinced Grace not to tell. It would have to be someone she trusts completely. And then I visited Mrs. Upchurch and—”

  “That woman is evil! She’ll say anything to cause trouble for her husband,” Mrs. Evans said, her composure slipping badly. “Is she the one who told you these lies about him?”

  “No, Mrs. Evans,” Malloy said, startling Sarah. She’d almost forgotten he was there. “I already suspected something wasn’t right between him and those boys. Mrs. Upchurch told Mrs. Brandt some things that made her think he had seduced Grace Linton, and I questioned him about it. I was pretty sure he wasn’t guilty of that, but I still thought he was hiding something.”

  “He must have told his wife about Mr. Malloy’s visit,” Sarah added, “because in church on Sunday, Mrs. Upchurch told me I’d misunderstood her.”

  “I knew it!” Mrs. Evans cried. “She made up these terrible lies.”

  “She didn’t make up the things Percy told me,” Malloy reminded her. “She knew what was happening, and she wanted someone to stop it.”

  “If she knew, she should have done something sooner! How could she live with a secret like that?” she asked in outrage.

  “The same way the boys could,” Sarah said. “She didn’t think anyone would believe her, and I think she was right about that. Most people wouldn’t even believe a man could do those things to boys. They’d probably accuse the boys of lying, and Upchurch might even accuse his wife of being insane. She could end up in an asylum.”

  Mrs. Evans pressed her fingertips to her temples and squeezed her eyes shut. “I just can’t . . . I don’t know what to do. What do you expect me to do?”

  “Help Percy stay away from him,” Sarah said. “He’s also worried about his mother finding out. He knows she’s very ill, and he’s afraid the shock will be too much for her.”

  Mrs. Evans looked up in surprise. “He said that? Oh, dear. We didn’t think he knew. Well, it doesn’t matter. She’ll have to be told. She’d never forgive me for keeping a secret like that. And, of course, we’ll keep him away. There’s no question of that. But I think Mr. Malloy wants more of us than that. He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”

  Sarah watched Malloy carefully consider his words. “Most people would want to keep this kind of thing quiet. The boys won’t want anyone to know what Upchurch did to them.”

  “Of course they won’t!” she agreed. “Neither do I!”

  “Thing is, that’s how he’s been able to get away with it all this time. We don’t know when he started, but we know he’s been doing it at least as long as he’s been here. Isaiah was probably one of his first victims, and now he’s too old, and Upchurch has moved on to younger boys. If the older boys had told someone in the beginning, we could have stopped him before he got to Percy. If we don’t stop him now, he’ll go on to other boys in the future.”

  Her eyes seemed to burn as she glared at Malloy. “You want us to announce that my grandson has been . . . violated ? You can’t expect me to publicly humiliate the boy I love more than my own life!”

  “Someone has to stop him, Mrs. Evans,” he said, making it sound perfectly reasonable.

  “Not your way, Mr. Malloy. I won’t destroy Percy.”

  “Then you’re going to let Upchurch keep abusing other boys?” he asked angrily.

  “No, I’m not. I’ll stop him.”

  “How?” he challenged.

  This time her ey
es did burn, with a hatred so intense, Sarah had to look away.

  “You’ll see,” was all she said. “But he’ll stop, I guarantee it.”

  11

  “WHAT IS YOUR MRS. EVANS GOING TO DO?” MALLOY asked Sarah when they’d found a coffee shop where they could sit, out of the cold, in relative privacy.

  “She’s not my Mrs. Evans, and I have no idea what she’s going to do,” Sarah replied tartly.

  They waited while the waitress served them cups of steaming coffee. Malloy ordered them each a slice of pie. Sarah wrapped her hands around the cup, warming her bloodless fingers. She wasn’t certain if she was so cold from the temperature outside or because of the horrors they had just been discussing.

  “You said you knew a way to punish Upchurch without sending him to jail,” Malloy reminded her. “What were you going to do?”

  “I told you before, gossip. It’s possible to ruin him without ever making a public accusation. In fact, it’s more powerful because you have no idea what people are saying about you, so how can you defend yourself?”

  “Mrs. Evans isn’t going to start gossip about what he did to Percy,” Malloy said.

  Sarah took a fortifying sip of her coffee. “I know. That’s why I have no idea what she’s planning. Maybe she’s hoping to remove him from his ministry somehow, although that isn’t likely to stop him from lusting after little boys.”

  The waitress had just returned with their pie, and she almost dropped Malloy’s into his lap in shock over what Sarah had just said. Malloy caught the plate just in time. He glared at Sarah, who smiled innocently at the waitress.

  “Thank you very much,” she said. “This looks delicious.”

  Her face still frozen in revulsion, the girl fled, probably to inform the rest of the staff what that respectable-looking lady at the corner table had been saying. Sarah sighed.

  “At least keep your voice down,” Malloy advised, taking an enormous bite of the pie. Apple, his favorite.

  “You did say Upchurch might commit suicide if he was exposed,” she remembered. “Do you think? . . .”

  “That a sweet little old lady like Mrs. Evans intends to drive a man to suicide? No, I don’t think that. She wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do it anyway, even if she could come up with an idea like that in the first place. Besides, Upchurch doesn’t strike me as the kind to kill himself. He likes himself too much, and he could just move someplace where they don’t know him and start over again.”