“But you can’t—”
“Sarah, I think you’d better leave now. You’ve caused enough trouble for one day. And if I hear a word of these lies about Alicia being spread about, I’ll know who’s responsible. I can see to it that you are never again received by any respectable family in the city!”
It was a threat designed to terrify, one that would most certainly have terrified Mina, and Sarah didn’t have the heart to tell her that she hadn’t been received by any of those families for years already. Still cursed by her good breeding, she said instead, “I’m sorry to have upset you, Mina. I know this is a painful ordeal for you. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me know. My address is on my card.”
Somewhat mollified by Sarah’s apology, Mina nodded stiffly. “I’m sure I can count on your discretion about all this, can’t I?”
“Of course.” At least Sarah had no intention of gossiping about Alicia.
Satisfied that she had done all she could, Sarah rose to leave, but just as she reached the door, Mina called after her.
“I don’t suppose the police found her jewelry, did they? She had several very lovely pieces. One of them was a family heirloom.”
“I’m sure if they had, they would have returned them to you,” Sarah said, sure of no such thing. If the jewels had been in Alicia’s room when she was found, an underpaid police officer might well have slipped them into his pocket. But they could also have been stolen by Alicia’s killer. Tracing them might help solve the case. She would have to make sure Detective Malloy at least knew they were missing. “But if she needed money to live on, she might have already sold them.”
“She probably did,” Mina mused. “But perhaps we could offer a reward to have them returned.”
Sarah saw no reason to reply and let herself out, wondering what insanity had persuaded her that coming here would be a good idea. She’d really taken no pleasure in hurting Mina, regardless of how much she might have deserved it, and now she had to accept the fact that Mina cared more for her social standing and the missing jewelry than for finding out who killed her sister.
None of this should have come as a surprise to her, of course. She’d lived with people just like Mina most of her life. Her own sister had died because of people like Mina. Which of course didn’t make her any more kindly disposed toward them. Alicia may well have been just like Mina, too, and unworthy of Sarah’s concern. But Sarah couldn’t believe that, not when she remembered the haunted look in the young girl’s eyes that night before she died.
Alicia had been young and terrified and alone and pregnant, and someone had choked the life out of her, murdering not only her but her unborn child as well. Even if Alicia hadn’t been worthy of Sarah’s concern, the innocent child certainly was, and she couldn’t stand the thought that someone could snuff out two lives and never be held accountable. Sarah might have to deal with injustice every day, but she didn’t have to like it. And if she could possibly defeat it, just this once, then she would.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realize that someone had been watching her as she descended the ornately carved staircase into the front hallway.
“Sarah?”
Startled, she looked up to find Cornelius VanDamm standing in the foyer below. He looked, she noticed with some relief, like a man who had just lost a child. His face was pale and his eyes haunted, although his clothing was immaculate and remarkably free of creases, as if he’d only just now put it on.
“Mr. VanDamm, I’m so very sorry about Alicia.”
“It really is you, isn’t it? Sarah Decker? I could hardly credit it when Alfred told me.”
“I’m Sarah Brandt now.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I thought I remembered that you’d married. I don’t think I know your husband, though.”
Of course he didn’t. Tom hadn’t wasted his time with society. Sarah decided not to mention that, though, or to explain that she was now a widow, either. The man had enough death on his mind at the moment. “I stopped by to pay my respects to Mina.”
“Is it true you saw Alicia the night she died?”
“No, it was the night before, or rather, early the morning before. I’m a midwife, you see, and—”
“A midwife?” he echoed her, but without the contempt Mina had shown. He was merely puzzled. “How odd that your father would permit such a thing.”
“My father has no say in the matter, I’m afraid,” Sarah informed him, shocking him thoroughly. Before he could pursue the subject further, she said, “I already told Mina that I didn’t really speak with Alicia that night. I didn’t even know who she was until... Well, the police asked my help in going through her things, and I found her name embroidered in her jacket.”
He nodded and looked away, his face carefully expressionless—men of his class considered any display of emotion vulgar—but his eyes were haunted with a pain Sarah could only imagine.
“Mr. VanDamm, I hate to mention this, but I spoke with the detective who is investigating Alicia’s death, and... Well, perhaps you aren’t aware of it, but the police don’t usually exert themselves to solve cases unless they stand to gain something from it.”
His gaze swung back to her, the pain in his eyes replaced by the kind of amazement he might have expressed if his gardener had suddenly presumed to offer him advice.
Before he could stop her, Sarah hurried on, knowing she wouldn’t have another chance like this one to state her case. “I don’t know how capable this Detective Malloy is, but I’m sure he won’t bother to find Alicia’s killer unless he is compensated in some way. Even if he is, there’s no guarantee he has the resources to succeed, either, so you might want to consider hiring a private investigator of your own to make sure the case is solved.”
There. Mina might think finding Alicia’s killer was a waste of time, but she didn’t make the decisions here. Cornelius VanDamm was the master of this house, and now he understood just what he had to do to ensure his daughter’s killer was brought to justice.
Sarah would have felt better if he wasn’t staring at her as if she’d just grown a second head. Most likely no female had ever presumed to advise him on anything, most certainly not on the handling of criminal investigations. She was awfully glad she hadn’t mentioned that Alicia was pregnant. VanDamm probably would have had her thrown bodily from the house for being so shameless. Well, he’d find out soon enough, probably from Mina, but certainly from the authorities. If even they would dare reveal it to him. Or if he didn’t already know.
“Thank you for the information, Sarah,” VanDamm said. He had withdrawn completely, shutting off any indication of his true emotions, a trick she’d seen her father use when he no longer wanted to discuss something particularly painful. Like Maggie. “And thank you for stopping by. I’m sure Mina appreciated it.”
Sarah could have contradicted him, but she decided to leave instead. Being in this house with these people was bringing back too many unpleasant memories. After murmuring the appropriate condolences, she made her escape out into the street.
What had ever made her think she could do any good in that house? If Cornelius VanDamm wanted his daughter’s murder solved, it would be solved, even if that meant the police superintendent himself had to handle the case. And if he didn’t want it solved... Well, there was nothing Sarah Brandt or anyone else could do about it. She’d already done all she could. Now she would just have to wait and see.
“BABY KILLER! BABY killer!”
The cry from the small boys in the street told Frank that the woman he sought must be approaching. He’d been sitting on the stoop of the comfortable house on Gramercy Park for almost an hour, using the time to mull over the facts in the case of Alicia VanDamm’s murder. He hadn’t reached any enlightening conclusions, but perhaps the woman for whom he was waiting would be able to help.
Emma Petrovka was a middle-aged woman of substantial girth who made her way laboriously down the street using a silver-headed cane for support. Such canes h
ad come into fashion when Queen Victoria started using one in her old age, but Frank suspected Mrs. Petrovka didn’t use one because it was stylish. More likely, her knees had given out under the strain of supporting her enormous weight, and she needed the extra support.
At first Frank thought her hearing must have gone, too, because she seemed oblivious to the chanting of the hoard of street Arabs who descended upon her. They were the filthy, ragged, barefoot urchins who sold newspapers or shoe shines to earn their daily bread and who slept in culverts and alleys because their own families had turned them out to fend for themselves.
“Baby killer! Baby killer!” they cried.
They had, it seemed, found someone lower than themselves whom they were free to torment. Because in spite of her rich gown, which she held up in the typically feminine “skirt clutch” with her free hand to protect it from the dirt of the street, and her luxurious home, Emma Petrovka was socially no better than these homeless waifs.
But if Frank thought she couldn’t hear the taunts, he was wrong. She was simply ignoring them. As she reached the house, she stopped, patiently opened her purse and withdrew something in her clenched fist. For an instant, Frank thought she meant to harm her tormentors, although what she could have thrown at them to hurt them, he couldn’t imagine. But when she cocked her arm and threw, she released a shower of pennies that clattered musically onto the cobblestones.
In an instant the guttersnipes were scrambling and pushing and shoving, trying to snatch up as many coins as they could before their fellows got to them. Forgotten, Emma Petrovka turned and started up her front steps.
Only then did she notice Frank, who rose to meet her.
“That only encourages them to taunt you again,” he pointed out mildly.
“No, it prevents them from doing even worse,” she said, heaving her weight up first one step and then another. “Who are you and what do you want? I don’t talk to no newspaper reporters, so if that’s who you are—”
“I’m with the police,” Frank said, showing her his badge. “I’m Detective Sergeant Malloy.”
If she was afraid—as well she might have been, since her profession was patently illegal—she gave no indication. Instead she sniffed in derision. “I pay my protection money every month. You ask the captain. He will tell you not to bother me.”
“I’m not here to bother you. I want to ask you some questions. About a girl you may have seen.”
“I have seen many girls, Mr. Detective Sergeant. That is the nature of my profession.” She had reached the front door, her sheer bulk forcing Malloy to step aside, and she was fitting a key into the lock.
“This girl was murdered.”
Emma Petrovka looked up at him. Her eyes were the color of mud, peering out like two dull marbles from the folds of fat that made up her face. She had a large mole on her cheek with several long hairs growing out of it, and her small mouth was pursed into a frown. “If a girl dies after one of my procedures, that is not murder,” she informed him, and returned to the task of unlocking her front door.
“That’s not how she died. Someone strangled her. But we know she was going to have a baby and an abortionist visited her the night she was killed.”
Emma Petrovka pushed open her front door, then gave Frank a pitying look. “Do you think I killed this girl?”
Plainly, such a thing was impossible, so Frank didn’t even consider replying. “I think whoever sent you there killed her. Her name was Alicia VanDamm.”
She raised her bushy, black eyebrows but gave no other indication that she recognized the name. “I do not know this person, Mr. Detective Sergeant. I cannot help you.”
Before Frank could pose another question, Emma Petrovka had passed through the doorway, and now she slammed the door shut in his face. For an instant he stood staring at the lace curtains swinging on the other side of the glass and considered forcing his way inside. Except he wasn’t really that interested in talking to her anymore. She was an ugly, unpleasant old woman. If he wanted to talk to an ugly, unpleasant old woman, he’d go home.
Sighing wearily, he turned and sauntered down her steps. The boys who had been tormenting her were gone now, scattered after cleaning the coins from the street to find other sources of amusement. Frank reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the list of names he had culled from various sources. The list was surprisingly short. He would have thought a city the size of New York could provide work for hundreds of abortionists, and he would have thought they’d all be willing to cooperate with the police on any matter. He would’ve been wrong on both counts. The half dozen women he had visited today had all been as tight-lipped as Emma Petrovka.
He was wasting his time, of course. No one was going to admit having attempted an illegal procedure on a girl who was later murdered. But as thin as this thread was, it was the only one he had. Checking the next address on the list, he headed off downtown.
SARAH WAS PLEASED to see that the “Room for Rent” sign was gone from the front window of the Higgins’s house. Several of the Higgins children were playing on the front stoop. Sarah greeted them by name.
“How do you like your new baby brother?” she asked them.
“He sleeps all the time,” Mary Grace informed her disdainfully. As the eldest, Mary Grace apparently felt it was her responsibility to speak first. Her brown eyes were large in her delicate face and much too serious for a girl who had only known ten summers.
“He’s too little to play,” Robert complained. Robert was only five but much sturdier than his slender sister.
“He’ll grow,” Sarah said. “But he’ll never catch up with you. You’ll always be bigger than he is.”
“I will?” Plainly, this idea delighted Robert.
Eight-year-old Sally looked up from rocking her rag doll and said, “But you’ll never be as big as me and Mary Grace. You’ll always be our baby brother.”
“I’m not a baby!” Robert cried in outrage and began to howl.
Sarah would have comforted him, but Mary Grace was apparently used to such outbursts and wrapped her frail arms around his husky body and patted his shoulder for a few seconds until he’d forgotten why he was crying and ran off to find something else to do.
“Is your mother staying in bed?” Sarah asked Mary Grace, figuring the girl would tell the truth while the mother might lie.
“Most of the time,” Mary Grace said. “I try to make her rest.”
“Remind her that if she gets sick she’ll make double work, because then the rest of you will have to take care of her on top of doing her work for her. Maybe that will help.”
Mary Grace nodded solemnly. “I’ll do that. Thank you, Mrs. Brandt.”
Sarah wished Mary Grace would smile. She looked far too old for her years. Just the way she remembered Alicia VanDamm. She knew why Mary Grace was so serious. Her mother was overwhelmed, and a lot of her burdens fell on the child. But Sarah couldn’t imagine why Alicia VanDamm, a child of wealth and privilege, had seemed so troubled. Now she might never find out.
Inside, in the cluttered family quarters, she discovered Mrs. Higgins in bed, just where she should have been, and looking better than the last time Sarah had seen her.
“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, you don’t know the trouble we’ve had. The police were here asking everybody questions and going door to door on the street, asking did anybody see or hear anything. As if they’d tell the police if they had! And then we packed up that poor girl’s things because we had to rent out her room—had to charge a dollar a week less because somebody was murdered there! Can you imagine?—and then a man came to collect her belongings. He was the strangest creature. So formal and polite. I asked was he a relative, but he said no, just an employee of the family. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Sending the hired help to collect her things? What kind of people are they? Everybody says they’re rich, that her father owns a bank or something. Could that be true? But why was she living here? I mean, she always paid her rent on time every week, but she
never went out or acted like she had anything extra to spend. If her family was rich, why was she on her own?”
“How’s the baby doing?” Sarah asked, determined not to spread any gossip about Alicia VanDamm and her sad history. The infant was sleeping on the bed beside his mother, and Sarah carefully unwrapped his blanket to examine him. She was pleased to note that he had filled out nicely. His little cheeks were rounding, and his arms and legs were growing plump. He stirred a little, his small mouth making sucking motions, as if he dreamed he was suckling, and Sarah quickly re-covered him before he could awaken. “He seems to be doing well,” she remarked. “Have you decided on a name?”
“Harry after Mr. Higgins’s father,” Mrs. Higgins said almost absently. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. That man—that employee—he wanted to know if we’d stolen Alicia’s jewels! Can you imagine? He practically accused us to our faces! This is a respectable house, I told him. If she had any jewels, I never knew anything about them, and if they’re gone missing, he’d do better to be asking the police about it.”
“I’m sure he didn’t really think you’d taken them,” Sarah soothed her. Sarah could just see the VanDamm’s butler looking down his nose at the Higginses and telling them they’d better turn over Alicia’s jewelry or else.
“If anybody took them, it was that Hamilton Fisher. From the day he moved in, he was always hanging around her room. Not that she ever left it, except to eat, mind you. I used to wonder what she found to do all alone up there all day. Just stared out the window, I expect. But whenever she did come out, he was right there, trying to make her talk to him. Or just notice him, I expect. Never saw a young man so taken with a girl. He’d sit at the table with her and say all kinds of wild things, trying to make her smile. She never did, though. I think she was a little afraid of him. And who could blame her? She just wanted to mind her own business, and there he was, bothering her all the time. But maybe it wasn’t her he was after at all. Maybe he really wanted to steal her things. Do you think that was it, Mrs. Brandt? Do you think he might’ve finally decided just to go into her room and take what he wanted, and when she put up a fuss, he—”
Murder on Astor Place Page 6
