Murder on Astor Place

by Victoria Thompson

  So now he knew one thing at least: Alicia VanDamm must have fled with a lover—or at least to a lover—be—cause she never would have simply run away from a place so utterly magnificent for any other reason.

  The driver waited, as Frank had previously arranged, since he couldn’t depend upon the VanDamm’s servants to provide him transportation back. Because this was an unsanctioned visit—Sarah Brandt had warned him not to ask VanDamm’s permission because he most likely would have refused or at the very least warned his servants against revealing anything—Frank was going to have to rely on his ability to either charm or intimidate. If it had to be the latter, he wanted a guaranteed method of escape if things got too unpleasant.

  Up close the house looked even more impressive. The carved oak door appeared solid enough to withstand an onslaught of armed barbarians. Through the spotless windows Frank could see the lace curtains which his mother had always told him only “quality” folks had. He’d have to get his mother some lace curtains just to prove her wrong.

  Frank didn’t have to knock. This was the country, and his approach had probably* been observed when he was still halfway down the lane. The front door swung open before he reached the top of the porch steps. A formidable looking woman glared out at him, probably ready to run him off. Her ample figure was encased in black, giving the impression of rigidly tucked upholstery. Frank wondered if she was in mourning or if she always wore black. Somehow, he thought it was the latter. Her hair was hidden beneath the white cap of a servant, but her face was set into an authoritative glare which told him she was no ordinary servant.

  “Good morning,” Frank said, trying out the manners he so seldom used. “I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy of the New York City Police.”

  If he’d thought to cow her, he failed miserably. She simply raised her chin another notch and looked down her hawklike nose at him. “Then what are you doing out here?” she demanded.

  “I’m trying to find out who killed Miss Alicia VanDamm,” he replied, hoping to strike some nerve.

  Her face tightened for an instant in what might have been a spasm of grief, but she gave no other sign of weakness. “You’d best go back to the city then, since that’s where she was killed. You won’t find no murderers here.”

  Frank hadn’t expected to, of course. “I was hoping to get some information about her. Maybe that will help me find who killed her.”

  “I’m sure nobody here will be gossiping about Miss Alicia, so if that’s what you’re hoping, you came a long way for nothing.”

  Frank figured she’d make certain none of the servants told any tales about Alicia. “I don’t want gossip. I need to know when she left and who she left with.”

  “We don’t know,” the housekeeper insisted, her broad, homely face reddening. “I already explained everything to Mr. VanDamm. We just woke up one morning, and she was gone. We don’t know nothing else. Leave us alone.”

  “Mr. VanDamm said I could search her room and question all the servants, just in case,” Frank lied.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said, her small eyes widening in alarm.

  “Do you want me to go back to the city and tell him you wouldn’t cooperate with my investigation?”

  He could see her inner struggle. She didn’t want to risk VanDamm’s disapproval, but she wasn’t certain which decision would bring it. Refusing Frank admittance seemed the sensible course, since VanDamm was most certainly not in the habit of having the police search his home and interrogate his servants. On the other hand, Alicia had been murdered, not a common state of affairs to be sure. Would this render all the usual rules null and void?

  “I’d have to be sure Mr. VanDamm gave you permission,” she hedged.

  Frank wasn’t about to let a little thing like that stop him. “I didn’t bring a letter of reference, if that’s what you’re after.”

  She sniffed derisively at him. “I’ll telephone to find out.”

  Damn. Frank had forgotten that they had a telephone here. “Go ahead,” he bluffed, “but be quick about it. I haven’t got all day.”

  The chances that VanDamm would be at home in the middle of the morning were probably small, and somehow he couldn’t imagine the mighty man stooping to speak to a servant on the telephone in any case. Of course, there was that snooty butler, but would he take it upon himself to withhold permission for Frank to do his duty?

  Left standing on the doorstep, Frank decided to make himself comfortable. Might as well let the old bat find him taking his ease like a regular guest, not holding his hat in his hand waiting anxiously for her return.

  When she returned, he was lounging quite comfortably, sitting on the steps with his legs out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and leaning back against one of the massive pillars, his hat tipped down over his eyes. As if he had all the time in the world and not a single worry that VanDamm was going to have him tossed out on his ear.

  She glared at him again, but she said, “Mr. VanDamm was out.”

  Frank managed not to betray the surge of relief he felt. “Are you going to keep me waiting here on the porch until he comes back in?” he inquired with all the annoyance he could muster.

  For an uncomfortable moment, he thought she was, so he took the really big gamble and rose to his feet, dusted off his seat and reached into his pocket, pulling out his notebook and pencil. “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  “Mrs. Hightower,” she replied, nonplussed.

  Frank nodded ominously and wrote it down. “I’ll be sure to tell Mr. VanDamm it was you wouldn’t let me in.”

  He was gratified to see a flash of fear in her close-set eyes. Fear always worked to his advantage.

  “You’re not to touch anything in her room,” she said, as if it had been her decision all along to allow him inside. “You can look around, but you’re to leave everything just as it is. That was Mr. VanDamm’s orders. Nobody is to touch anything.”

  “I’ll want to talk to the servants, too. All of them. Alone.” He didn’t want her intimidating them into lying to protect Alicia’s good name.

  “They don’t know anything. None of us knows anything.”

  “Then it’s my time that’s wasted, isn’t it?” Frank replied, tucking his notebook back into his pocket but giving it a little pat to remind her that he had her name if she thought about giving him any more trouble.

  She sniffed again and started into the house, surging ahead like a schooner at full mast. Frank had to assume she expected him to follow, which he did, but the instant he reached the doorway, she turned abruptly and snapped, “Wipe your feet before you come in here!”

  Cow, he thought, but he wiped his feet. Didn’t want her complaining to VanDamm about his manners. It would be bad enough when she complained about his visit.

  The interior of the house was dim, since the windows were all heavily draped. The sun faded fabrics, as his mother had told him time and again, and the VanDamms had a lot of fabric to fade. It hung in lavish folds around each window and was upholstered onto numerous pieces of furniture. This Frank glimpsed through a series of doorways during his hasty trip through the entrance hall to the long staircase at its opposite end. The hallway was paneled in dark wainscoting and wallpaper so elaborately patterned it made him dizzy to stare at it. An amazingly large crystal chandelier hung down from the second story. He knew exactly what Kathleen would’ve said: How in heaven’s name do they clean it?

  He followed the housekeeper up the stairs and remembered when he’d followed Sarah Brandt up a similar set of stairs. He’d been tempted to look at her ankles, but he wasn’t the least bit tempted to look at Mrs. Hightower’s.

  Upstairs, the hallway branched to the left and right, seeming to go on forever in each direction. She turned right, still surging along like a ship at full sail, never even glancing back to make sure he was behind her. A thick carpet muffled their footsteps, and Frank was struck by how silent the house was. Silent and forlorn, as if it were mourning the loss of t
he girl who had lived here. Or maybe it was just the result of the place being uninhabited, Frank thought, because no one really lived here even when they were here.

  A little astonished at such a profound thought, Frank almost didn’t realize the housekeeper had stopped in front of one of the closed doors. Her hand was on the knob, but she hesitated for a long moment. Frank thought she was just being obstinate, making him wait so she could show her power over him. But then he noticed she was blinking furiously as she stared resolutely at the panel of the door. Good God, she was trying not to weep. For all her coldness, she must have genuinely cared for the dead girl.

  Maybe Frank could use this to his advantage.

  After waiting respectfully for her to regain her composure, he remarked, “You must’ve known her a long time.”

  “Since the day she was born, right here in this house.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears, tears she was probably too proud to let Frank see.

  “Mr. VanDamm said she’d been here a little over a month. I guess she hadn’t been feeling too well.”

  Mrs. Hightower, fully recovered now, glared at him. “It was nerves, is all. That girl was never sick a day in her life.”

  “What did she have to be nervous about?”

  Her thin lips thinned down even more, obviously because she realized she’d already told him more than she’d intended. “I’m sure it’s not my place to know. Well-bred girls are all high strung.”

  “Like thoroughbred horses,” Frank suggested.

  Mrs. Hightower did not approve of his comparison. “Miss Alicia was sensitive. She let things upset her.”

  Now if Frank could only find out what those things were. “She was like her mother, then?” he suggested.

  “Her mother?” she echoed suspiciously.

  “Mrs. VanDamm,” Frank prodded, wondering if she could have actually forgotten her own mistress.

  Her expression pinched with disapproval. “She’s nothing like Mrs. VanDamm. She’s an angel.”

  Frank watched as she realized the irony of her assertion. Her strong face sagged with despair as the reality of her loss struck her anew.

  He gave her only a moment to absorb the impact before using her weakness to press his case. “Is the door locked?”

  She glanced at it in surprise, as if she’d only just realized where she was. “No, of course not. Why would it be locked?”

  “Then you can go about your work while I look around. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk to the servants.”

  For a second he thought she would refuse to leave, but then she glanced at the door again, and he could see how painful it was for her to even consider opening it. Just as he’d suspected it would be.

  After making him wait another few seconds, she nodded. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” And then a final, sharp, “Don’t disturb anything,” before she launched herself down the hallway again.

  Frank waited until she was on her way down the stairs before he opened the door. It was solid oak and moved silently on its hinges. No squeaking here. The interior of the room was dark like the rest of the house, the drapes drawn against the glare of the sun. Giving his eyes a chance to adjust, Frank looked around, getting his bearings. Then he went to one of the windows on the far wall and pulled back the draperies. He needed a minute to figure out how the chords worked for tying it back, and when he had it secured, he looked around again.

  The room was large, larger than his entire flat back in the city. And if he’d known nothing about Alicia VanDamm before, he would know everything about her from simply seeing this place. While her room at the boardinghouse had been stark and impersonal, this one was hers entirely. The furniture was white with gold leaf accents, everything curved and delicate and graceful and completely feminine. The drapes and the coverlet on the bed and the canopy over it were all a pale rose and of some kind of rich material. The wallpaper depicted scenes of young maidens frolicking gaily. In one corner sat a doll’s house. Frank walked over to examine it more closely, and he saw it was furnished with remarkable attention to detail, even to the curtains on the windows. Everything was all arranged, just so, and the tiny doll family were seated around the dining room table. They even had real china dishes and a maid to serve them. Next to the house stood a chest, and when Frank lifted the lid, he found toys inside. Some dolls, worn from years of playing, the paint of their faces almost rubbed off and their clothes ragged from use. A top. A life-sized tea set. Everything had a neglected air about it, as if it hadn’t been used in some time, but Frank couldn’t help noticing the things were still here, near at hand, as if their owner hadn’t quite been ready to part with them yet. As if the owner hadn’t been ready to leave her childhood just yet.

  Frank had been thinking of Alicia VanDamm as a young woman. She was pregnant, after all, so she most certainly had a lover, but now he was struck with how recently she had taken that step into adulthood. So recently that her toys were still here in her room, as if she wanted to be able to maintain her ties with the world of childhood while also trying her hand at being an adult.

  Frank glanced around again, trying to imagine what kind of a person Alicia VanDamm must have been. Her room spoke of innocence. And purity. Neither of which applied to Alicia VanDamm. Something was out of kilter here, and Frank needed to find out what.

  And more importantly, why.

  He started his search of the room and conducted it systematically, going through each drawer and cupboard carefully so as not to disturb the contents. Mrs. Hightower would probably know what he’d done, but at least she wouldn’t be able to complain he’d left things in a mess. And of course if he didn’t leave things in a mess, he could always deny he’d searched the room at all. He reached beneath the mattress and checked under the chair bottoms and behind each piece of furniture. Behind and under every drawer. He even took each of the books off the shelf and shook them out. Examining every possible hiding place. He had no idea what he was looking for, of course. A diary naming her killer would have been just the thing, but naturally, he didn’t find one.

  Nor did he find anything else. No love letters from the father of her child. No secret messages. Nothing. He’d looked in every possible hiding place, even checking beneath the rugs and tapping on the wall and floor for possible hidden compartments. But if what he failed to find disturbed him, what he did find disturbed him even more: The girl who had lived in this room was still in every way a child. The books on the shelf were mostly lesson books with a few volumes of nursery rhymes and stories. Even the clothes she’d left behind were decidedly juvenile. No scheming seductress had lived here, at least not from any evidence Frank could discover. If he hadn’t known about her condition, he might actually have believed Mrs. Hightower’s description of Alicia as having been an angel.

  But even angels fell, as he remembered from his catechism lessons. Now he’d have to find out how this one had.

  Mrs. Hightower had been more than reluctant for the other servants to leave their tasks, but once again Frank was able to intimidate her into accommodating him. He only hoped he wasn’t around when she found out VanDamm hadn’t given his permission for any of this.

  One by one the other servants paraded through the small back parlor she had given him to use. And one by one they insisted they knew nothing of why Miss Alicia had run away or even how she had accomplished it. Either Mrs. Hightower had instructed them or else they really had no knowledge. Frank was very much afraid it was the latter.

  But finally his patience was rewarded. When he’d gone through a half-dozen or so of the people who knew nothing, suddenly, he found a girl who knew everything. And even more than everything. She knew Alicia.

  She was a chambermaid, Mrs. Hightower informed him, a pretty girl with bright cinnamon-colored eyes and lots of auburn curls peeking out from beneath her cap. Her name, she told him, was Lizzie.

  “Short for Elizabeth, don’t you know? But nobody ever calls me that, now me Mum’s passed on. She only called it when she
was that mad at me, too. I always knowed when she was gonna give me a thrashing, ’cause she’d say, Miss Elizabeth, get yourself in here right now!”

  Frank had to bite his lip to keep from grinning in triumph. Instead, he settled back, ready to play his part. “Well, now, Lizzie, I’m trying to find out if anybody knows how Miss Alicia got away from the house the night she left.”

  For a moment, he thought she was going to be all right, but then her lower lip began to quiver and her eyes flooded with tears, and in the next instant, she was sobbing into her apron. Actually, Frank had been expecting this reaction from someone long before now. He’d been a little disturbed that the other servants had seemed so unmoved by Alicia’s death. This probably meant they hadn’t been very close to her, but this girl had. Her tears betrayed that closeness. He waited patiently, knowing his patience would be amply rewarded, until she had sniffled her way back to coherence again.

  “Oh, I’m that sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to cry thataway. Mrs. Hightower would have me hide, but when I think about poor Miss Alicia...”

  “You knew her well, I guess,” Frank ventured.

  “I was her maid for two years, her personal lady’s maid, but when she comes out here this time, Mrs. Hightower, she tells me, Lizzie, she says, Miss Alicia won’t be needing a maid anymore, so we’ll make you a chambermaid. A chambermaid! I’m a trained lady’s maid, I am, and now I have to empty chamber pots! Can you feature it?”

  Frank assured her he could not. “Why didn’t she need a maid?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know! Oh, Mrs. Hightower would do for her, help her get dressed and such, but she was the only one ever went near her. None of the rest of us could so much as speak to her, not even me, and I’d been with her for two years!”

  Frank had a pretty good idea why the servants were being kept away from Alicia, but he didn’t want to share his thoughts with Lizzie.