Murder on Astor Place

by Victoria Thompson

  Mrs. Hightower sniffed derisively. “Everybody knew it. She wrote in it all the time. For a girl who never went anywhere or did anything except ride that mare of hers, she sure found a lot to write about, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Did you ever read what she wrote?”

  “Of course not!” She was thoroughly outraged at the very suggestion. “Nobody would do a thing like that.”

  “Not even her personal maid? Maybe Lizzie knows what it said. Maybe Lizzie knows where it is.”

  “Not likely,” Mrs. Hightower insisted, “but I guess we won’t see the back of you until we ask her, now will we?”

  Frank merely smiled expectantly until Mrs. Hightower finally admitted him.

  This time she put him in a small front room where he waited until Lizzie had been summoned.

  “Mr. Detective,” the maid said in dismay when she saw him. “Have you found out who killed Miss Alicia yet?” She was wringing her hands in her apron and looked on the verge of tears.

  “Not yet,” Frank said, trying to sound kind while knowing he wasn’t being very reassuring, “but I’m hoping you can give me some help. Do you know where Miss Alicia kept her diary?”

  “Oh, cor, she kept it locked up, nice and safe, because she didn’t want anybody never to read it but her, but it ain’t there now.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because they sent me to look for it right after she disappeared.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “Why, Mrs. Hightower, who else?”

  Who else, indeed. Frank could think of many possibilities, but the truth was probably that Mrs. Hightower would only have acted on orders from the VanDamms. This meant they knew what the diary must contain, and that would explain why they’d ordered Sylvester Mattingly to find it. Now if only Frank could find out what it said, too.

  “Can you show me where she kept it?” Frank asked.

  “I can, but only if Mrs. Hightower says it’s all right,” she said, glancing nervously toward the door, at which Mrs. Hightower might well be listening.

  Mrs. Hightower seemed willing to do anything if it would get Frank closer to leaving, so Lizzie escorted him upstairs to Alicia’s room. She showed him a small chest which he’d searched on his last visit. It held mementos of Alicia’s childhood, awards won in school, some trinkets that had probably held some sentimental value, but nothing that could remotely be called a diary.

  By now Lizzie was openly weeping, not making a sound but allowing the tears to flow freely down her face. Frank felt a twinge of guilt and wondered when he had become so sentimental. In other days, he would have been jubilant at the sight of those tears, knowing they would make the person he was questioning more open and forthcoming.

  “Lizzie, Mrs. Hightower said Miss Alicia wrote in her diary a lot. Do you know what she wrote about?”

  The girl shook her head in silent despair. “Sure and I don’t. She wouldn’t let me see it, not ever. I couldn’t’ve read it, even if she did, of course, but I’d never of wanted to. She wrote in it all the time, and sometimes she cried. I don’t want to know what made her cry. If she had secrets, she should be allowed to keep them, don’t you think?”

  Frank didn’t think, so he ignored the question. “Did she have any other place she hid her diary?”

  “Oh, no, sir. This was the place. She could lock it up, and she carried the key around her neck so nobody could find it accidental. But when she disappeared, the chest was open and the key was on the table there.” She pointed to the dressing table. “She must’ve took her diary with her. That’s the only other place it could be.”

  Frank sincerely doubted this, since Ham Fisher hadn’t found it when he searched her room at the Higgins house, either. He started to ask her if there was anyone else who might know or to whom she might have entrusted her diary when he realized he didn’t have to ask. He already knew: the groom, Harvey.

  The stables were dim and strangely silent when Frank entered. He gave himself a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight outside. The familiar and comforting scent of horses and straw and manure assailed him, swamping his senses at first so that he didn’t notice it. But the silence was too great, too complete. Oh, he could hear the horses shuffling in their stalls and the hum of swarming insects and the scurry of rodents in the hay, but something was missing. The place was too still, as if its life force had been sucked out. As if it was empty of human habitation.

  Except the other servants had told him Harvey was in the stables. No one had seen him come out, and he didn’t appear to be anywhere else, so he had to be here. Except Frank knew he wasn’t.

  “Harvey!” he called into the void. A horse knickered, but no one else responded.

  Frank’s nerves tingled as his body prepared instinctively for whatever he encountered. “Harvey!” he tried again, making his way farther into the stable. He glanced into each stall as he passed, seeing nothing amiss. Everything was as it should be except for the oppressive silence that seemed to muffle even his own footsteps. The little mare that Alicia had ridden peeked out at him, blinking her sad, brown eyes. A bay gelding stamped his hoof in the next stall but offered Frank no comment as he walked by.

  One by one, he passed each stall until he came to the last one, and that’s where he found Harvey, hanging by his neck from the rafter.

  SARAH SHOULD HAVE expected her mother to be entertaining at this time of the day, but she never would have imagined the scene she encountered. The maid hadn’t seemed surprised to see her this time and conducted her to the dining room without even being asked. When she saw who was there, she realized the girl must have simply thought she was another invited guest to the elaborate formal tea party her mother was hosting.

  The group of ladies sitting around her mother’s enormous table represented some of the oldest families in New York, and all of them had known Sarah since she was a babe. If that wasn’t bad enough, she saw Mrs. Astor—Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Jr., matriarch of the Astor clan and designated as “the” Mrs. Astor to distinguish her from the less important Mrs. Astors in the family.

  Every instinct warned her to flee, but it was already too late. She was well and truly caught, and couldn’t leave without embarrassing her mother.

  “Sarah, dear, what a surprise,” Mrs. Decker said, hurrying to meet her. She did her best to conceal her shock, but only partially succeeded.

  “Sarah, is that you?” Mrs. Astor asked. “How delightful to see you! Elizabeth didn’t tell us you were coming.”

  “She didn’t know,” Sarah said, smiling as graciously as she could while grinding her teeth in frustration. She needed to speak to her mother alone, not spend hours in meaningless small talk with a group of ladies whose interests were limited to the weather and the foibles of their neighbors.

  By then, her mother had reached her and was staring at her anxiously, obviously sensing her agitation. “What is it, dear?” she asked in a near whisper. “Has something happened?”

  “No, nothing,” she assured her just as quietly. “I just needed your advice on something.”

  Her mother’s lovely eyes lit with surprise and pleasure, but she kept her voice even when she said, “Won’t you join us for tea? I think you know everyone.” Sending Sarah a silent apology that reminded her that her family’s lives were still bound by strict social conventions, her mother reminded her of everyone’s name as the maids brought another chair and laid a place for her with the gold-edged china.

  “Tea” was really a meal, served with pomp and ceremony on the best china and silver. The tea itself was poured from a large silver pot into dainty white and gold dinner teacups. Trays of sliced cold chicken garnished with nasturtium leaves, daintily cut slices of ham, and strips of tongue were passed. The bread was cut in thin strips and already buttered. Around the table stood small silver pots of preserves of strawberry and gooseberry and orange marmalade and honey in the comb. Silver baskets covered with lace held slices of golden sponge cake and rich, d
ark fruitcake, and on another silver tray stood Dresden china cups filled with custard and garnished with a generous amount of grated nutmeg.

  Sarah managed to sample each treat as it went by her, but she really wasn’t hungry. She just wanted all these people to be gone. Sarah was seated too far from her mother to even whisper anything about the purpose of her visit, but her mother knew what she was concerned about these days.

  After Mrs. Astor had held forth on the advisability of traveling abroad so early in the season—an inordinate number of icebergs had been spotted recently in the North Atlantic in spite of the unseasonably warm weather—Mrs. Decker brought up the subject nearest to Sarah’s heart.

  “What a tragedy about the youngest VanDamm girl,” she remarked with creditable nonchalance.

  “Oh, yes,” said one of the other ladies. “I heard Francisca is prostrate with grief.”

  “She’s been prostrate with something for the past ten years,” Mrs. Astor said. “And I suppose anyone would expire if her parents were going to marry her off to Sylvester Mattingly.”

  “It’s true then?” Sarah couldn’t help asking. “They really intended such a match?”

  “Oh, I heard the same thing,” someone else offered. “Although I could hardly believe it. If they were in a hurry to marry her off, they should have sent her to England. My son-in-law, Lord Harpster has several quite eligible kinsmen who would be happy to make the acquaintance of an American heiress.”

  “Where she could buy herself a penniless nobleman?” another woman scoffed.

  While the women debated the merits of marrying off wealthy American girls to poverty-stricken English noble-men just to have a titled lady in the family—a practice that had become so widespread it had a name: Anglo-mania, Sarah considered what she had heard. Apparently, her mother was correct. The VanDamms really had considered marrying their daughter to the elderly attorney, and no one could quite understand why.

  After what seemed an eternity of clanking silver and china and meaningless conversation, her mother’s guests were finally forced to take their leave, albeit reluctantly. They obviously sensed Sarah had come for something important and were hoping to catch at least a hint of what that might be. In spite of their best efforts to draw her out, they left disappointed.

  When the last guest had gone, Sarah’s mother took her into the parlor, slid the pocket doors closed and turned to face her. “Now tell me what’s happened. Something has happened, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m not really sure, Mother,” she said as her mother sat down beside her on the sofa and took her hand. “I heard something today that upset me, and I’m wondering if it might be true.”

  “Something about our family... ?” she asked with a worried frown.

  “Oh, no, of course not,” she assured her hastily, and for a second wondered if her mother knew of something she might have heard. “It’s about Alicia VanDamm.”

  Her mother frowned in disapproval. “Oh, my, I was afraid you’d still be worrying yourself about that.”

  “I noticed you managed to confirm that rumor about Mattingly for me. Thank you.”

  Her mother frowned. “I’m not sure I should be encouraging you in this, and I’m sure I shouldn’t be helping you, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Now tell me, what have you learned?”

  “I went to see Mrs. VanDamm today.”

  Her mother didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “She received you? You heard Mrs. Astor, Francisca VanDamm hasn’t been out of her bedroom in a decade!”

  “She didn’t come out today, either. I think she agreed to see me because I’m a midwife, and she wanted some medical advice.”

  “She can’t think she’s with child!” her mother exclaimed. “She’s much too old for such a thing!”

  “Of course she is, but she thought I might be able to advise her on her various ailments, so she allowed me to see her. And while I was there, she told me something very disturbing. She said she hasn’t had marital relations with her husband since Mina was born.”

  Her mother gaped at her, as shocked as if Sarah had slapped her, and for a moment she didn’t even breathe. Finally, she managed to gasp, “Sarah, really, I can’t believe—”

  “Oh, mother, don’t be prudish,” Sarah said, impatient as her mother’s attempt at maidenly modesty. “I deliver babies for a living. Do you think I don’t know how they get made?”

  “I’m sure you do, but I simply can’t believe you would discuss such a thing in my parlor!”

  Sarah really had been gone too long from this world. She’d forgotten that women of her mother’s station in society might live their entire lives without ever acknowledging the intimacies between husbands and wives. Whatever had made her consider confiding such a thing to her mother, much less expect to receive counsel? And how could she have ever been so inconsiderate?

  “I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She rose, preparing to take her leave, ashamed of herself and anxious to be on her way. She knew now to whom she should have gone. Malloy would probably be just as shocked as her mother at her references to intimate relationships, but he wouldn’t let that stop him from helping her figure this out.

  But she’d underestimated her mother.

  “Don’t go!” she pleaded, capturing Sarah’s hand when she would have gone. “I didn’t mean ... I’m afraid I’m just having a little trouble thinking of you as a grown woman. You’re right, of course. I am being prudish. Please stay, and tell me what it is you need advice about, and I’ll try not to be shocked again.”

  Her mother looked almost desperate in her need to keep her there, and perhaps she was. Probably she thought that if Sarah left feeling her mother had failed her in some way, she would never return. Sarah didn’t want to believe herself so vindictive, but she had disappeared from her family’s life for years the last time, so perhaps her mother was right to want to keep her here now.

  Sarah sat down again, still holding her mother’s hand. “I’m afraid I forget that other people aren’t quite as ...” She searched for the proper word. “... as familiar with the more intimate acts of other people’s lives as I am. I’m very sorry that I shocked you, Mother, and hope you won’t take offense.”

  Her mother sighed her relief. “I’m really not so prudish as all that, really. It’s just... You are my little girl, you know, and always will be, no matter how old you get. Or how experienced. Now tell me, what is it you think I can help you with?”

  Sarah took a moment to gather her thoughts and re-phrase them in a way that would least offend her mother. “I’m sure you know women who, after they reach a certain age, no longer fulfill their marital obligations to their husbands.”

  Her mother nodded, determined not to take offense. “Many women find those duties... unpleasant,” she decided after some thought. “Or even uncomfortable. And others simply decide they don’t want any more children, and abstaining from... from intimacy is the only sure way to avoid having them.”

  “Mrs. VanDamm said she hadn’t had relations with her husband since Mina was born,” Sarah reminded her. “If that’s true, where did Alicia come from?”

  “Perhaps she was confused,” her mother suggested. “She would have been in her early thirties when Alicia was born. She married very young, if I recall. Conceiving Alicia so long after Mina would have been embarrassing. Indeed, I remember how surprised we all were at the time...”

  “What is it?” Sarah asked when her mother’s voice trailed off. “What are you thinking?”

  Her mother was staring at something across the room but not really seeing it, because her thoughts were far away. “I was just remembering what people were saying then. We all thought... I mean, when there were no other children after Mina and from what Francisca said... I believe we thought that what she told you was the truth, that she had stopped...” She gave Sarah a beseeching glance.

  “Sharing her husband’s bed?” Sarah offered.

  “Yes,” her mother agreed gratefully. �
�And she seemed so smug when she told us she was expecting another child, as if she were...” She shrugged helplessly, once again at a loss for words.

  “As if she were what?” Sarah prodded. “Guilty, perhaps? Do you think she’d taken a lover, and that’s how—?”

  “Heavens, no!” her mother scoffed. “Francisca was much too dull to even think of something like that. No, it was more as if she were sharing a delicious secret with us. She was delighted with herself and with us for being surprised. She thoroughly enjoyed all the attention she received from it, which is why I was surprised when she withdrew to the country shortly afterward. We didn’t see her again until after Alicia was born.”

  “I remember that,” Sarah said. “Mina went with her. They took her out of school so she could be company for her mother during her confinement. Mina was terribly angry about it at the time. I thought she was just embarrassed about her mother having a baby, and that perhaps she was a little jealous, too. She always resented Alicia, and I guess that’s why.”

  “How odd,” her mother said, considering.

  “Do you think so? I’d expect her to be resentful of the new baby who got all the attention, especially since she was just approaching womanhood herself. And for her parents to have produced offspring at that stage in their lives must have been mortifying to a girl her age.”

  “No, I mean how odd they took Mina out of school and sent her to the country with Francisca. You said Mina resented the new baby, and in any case, I’d think they’d want to shield a girl of that age from the ... the realities of her mother’s condition.”

  It took Sarah a moment to understand what her mother meant, and when she did, she had to agree. In a society where pregnancy was barely acknowledged, it seemed unlikely a family would force their adolescent daughter to confront the reality of it at close quarters when she could have been left at school and remained ignorant.

  “What could they have been thinking?” she asked aloud. “Could they have been trying to protect Mina from teasing or from being asked embarrassing questions?”