Murder on Gramercy Park

by Victoria Thompson

  “How do you know I just don’t want to make a purchase?” Frank asked, still pleasant.

  The fellow looked him over and shook his head. “Not likely.”

  “Well, then, how about if I tell you I want to speak to Mr. Fong?”

  “I’m Mr. Fong,” the fellow said belligerently.

  Frank shook his head, not fooled. “The Mr. Fong who owns the place.”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “I’ll wait, then. And maybe I’ll take a look around while I’m waiting, see who’s here and what they’re doing.”

  “You can’t come in unless I let you, and besides, nobody’s doing nothing illegal,” the fellow protested.

  “Then they won’t mind if I look around, will they?”

  “Michael, what’s going on?” an irritated voice called.

  “Some copper says he needs to see you,” the fellow who claimed to be Mr. Fong called back. He stepped aside so a much smaller man could take his place at the door.

  This man was clearly Chinese. He wore a blue silk robe with dragons all over it, and he kept his arms crossed and his hands tucked into the voluminous sleeves. His raven-black hair was long and braided down his back. He looked Frank over shrewdly with his dark, narrow eyes.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” he asked with far more courtesy than the first fellow had shown.

  “Are you Mr. Fong, the one who owns this place?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am, Mister ... ?”

  “Malloy,” Frank said. “Detective Sergeant Malloy. I need to speak with you. Privately. About one of your customers.”

  “I am sure if you speak to the captain, he will explain to you that we pay our protection directly to him. If you have any problems—”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with your arrangement with the captain,” Frank said, growing impatient. “Look, a man’s been murdered, and somebody we think might’ve done it is claiming to have been here when the man was killed. I’d like to come in peacefully and discuss this with you, unless you’d prefer that I come back with some other officers to help me force my way inside. Michael there looks like he’d welcome a fight.”

  Mr. Fong’s eyes glinted as he smiled politely. “My son is very fond of fights, but I am not. Please come in.”

  As he did, Frank tried to see some resemblance between Mr. Fong and the younger Mr. Fong, who was standing nearby and looking sulky. Michael was nearly twice the size of his father, and he wore his jet-black hair cut short, Western style. His tailored clothes were distinctly American. Except for the sallowness of his complexion and the distinctive slant of his eyes, he might have passed for the proprietor of a prosperous Irish bar.

  Frank noticed the sickly-sweet scent of the air inside the house. Incense or something else. The furnishings were rich and expensive, the rooms dark behind heavy draperies. Every detail spoke of opulence and excess.

  “This way, please, Mr. Malloy,” Fong said, and led Frank soundlessly into a room off the entrance hall that was furnished like a parlor. Another young man, even larger than Michael and with the same faintly Oriental features, stood just inside. “My other son,” Fong explained, nodding at the man. “You will excuse us, Sean.”

  “We’ll be right outside if you need anything, Father,” Sean said.

  Now Frank was very curious indeed. A Chinese man with sons named Michael and Sean?

  “My wife, like you, is Irish,” Fong explained, anticipating Frank’s question.

  “You’re married to a white woman?” Frank asked in surprise.

  Fong betrayed no hint of emotion, although he had every right to feel insulted. “Your country did not allow Chinese females to come here for many years,” he pointed out. “We had no choice but to marry American women.”

  Frank had known that Chinese women weren’t allowed into this country. The government didn’t want the Chinese to settle here and had assumed that without their women, the men would soon return to China. Instead they had made do by marrying American women and stayed anyway. Frank tried to recall if he’d ever seen a Chinese woman. He didn’t think he had. They must still be rare.

  “I need to ask you about some of your customers.”

  “Then please sit down, and let me get you some tea.”

  Frank took a seat on the chair Fong indicated. “Thanks, but I don’t need anything to drink. I won’t be here that long.”

  Fong took a seat in the richly upholstered chair opposite him. “You said a man was murdered. Is this man someone I am supposed to know?”

  “No, he’s never been here, but his wife is apparently a regular customer. Letitia Blackwell.”

  “No one ever tells me their real name, Mr. Malloy,” Fong explained kindly. “And even if they did, I would not remember it.”

  “You’ll remember this lady, though. She’s young and very pretty, with blond hair and blue eyes. She comes every day, in the afternoon, and meets her lover. The lover has red hair. And she was expecting a baby.”

  Fong didn’t bat an eye. “Even if I did know of such people, what do you want of me?” he asked. Frank wondered if he ever showed any emotion.

  “I need to know if they were here a week ago Wednesday, in the afternoon.”

  “And if they were?”

  “Then they’re innocent of murder.”

  Fong considered. “Mr. Malloy, you obviously do not understand how we do business here. People come and go. They do not tell us their names, and we do not ask. The women come veiled, and we may not even see their faces. They may meet someone here, and they may not. We take no notice. If they wish a private room and have the means to pay for it, we can provide one. In that case, we do not know who shares that room with them, when they come, or when they leave. One day is much like another here, and we keep no records or schedules. As much as I would like to help the police, I’m afraid that I cannot tell you if these people you described were here on that day or any other day because I make it my business not to know such things. I am sorry I cannot be of assistance to you.”

  He did look genuinely sorry, but Frank wasn’t sorry at all. Letitia Blackwell and her lover had no alibi at all for the murder.

  FRANK WOULD HAVE preferred being at Sarah Brandt’s house that evening, eating something her neighbor Mrs. Ellsworth had baked, instead of standing on a gaslit street corner waiting for Peter Dudley to come out of the bank where he worked. A discreet inquiry had told him that the clerks would be finished at nine o’clock.

  The junior-level clerks in this establishment were scheduled to work in the mornings and then to return in late afternoon to count money and do the bookkeeping after closing. It was a schedule that left little time for amusements, Frank supposed, unless you spent your free afternoons in an opium den with someone else’s wife.

  A group of young men all dressed similarly in cheaply made suits and straw boaters came out of the building as the night watchman locked the doors behind them. They started off in the other direction, on their way someplace together, probably to have a few beers and some fun. Frank called Dudley’s name, and one of the men stopped and turned.

  “Who is it?” he asked in alarm. “Who’s there?”

  “I’d just like a word with you, Mr. Dudley. It’s about Mrs. Blackwell,” Frank said, knowing that would draw him.

  “Who’s Mrs. Blackwell?” someone asked with interest. “Some rich widow you’re romancing?”

  Others joined the teasing, hooting and making fun. Dudley didn’t even acknowledge them.

  “I’ll see you fellows tomorrow,” he said, leaving them and coming cautiously toward Frank.

  “Give Mrs. Blackwell our love,” one of them called, and the rest of them laughed uproariously as they went on their way.

  Dudley approached cautiously, drawn by the mention of Letitia but still concerned for his own safety. When he was close enough for his features to be seen, Frank stared in amazement. He’d expected someone traditionally handsome, a man who could easily attract the attention of a romantic s
choolgirl. Dudley was gangly and graceless, his face no more than ordinary. In the dim light, Frank couldn’t even make out the notorious red hair, which was mostly hidden under the straw boater.

  “Who are you?” Dudley demanded when he was close enough to speak quietly but still out of arm’s reach. His fear was palpable.

  “Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy,” he said. “I want to ask you some questions about Edmund Blackwell’s murder.”

  “I don’t know anything about Edmund Blackwell,” he said, not reassured. Policemen could be even more dangerous than crooks if they took a dislike to you. “I never even met the man. You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

  He started to turn away, but Frank stopped him with a word. “You know his wife pretty well, though, don’t you?”

  Dudley stopped and half turned back. “I don’t believe I do,” he tried, forgetting that it had been her name that drew him in the first place.

  “She’ll be mighty surprised to hear that,” Frank said. “What with her having that red-haired baby and all.”

  “Look, Mister ...” He gestured helplessly.

  “Malloy,” Frank supplied.

  “Malloy. I will admit that I know Mrs. Blackwell. We met years ago, when I was teaching school in her hometown.”

  “You more than know her, Dudley. She told me all about those visits to Mr. Fong’s opium den.”

  Dudley gasped, his face a sickly color in the gaslight. “She told you about that? I don’t believe it!”

  “I know everything except exactly how you killed Blackwell,” Malloy tried.

  “I didn’t kill him!” Dudley exclaimed. “Who told you I did? They’re a liar!”

  “No one had to tell me. You were the one with the most reason to want him out of the way. His wife, too. Did you plan it at the opium den? Tell me, did she talk you into it, or was it your own idea?”

  “I didn’st! I swear it!”

  “Are you saying you didn’t want him dead?” Frank asked in disbelief.

  “Of course I did! We both did. But we couldn’t kill him, no matter how much we might’ve wanted to. That’s a sin!”

  “Adultery is a sin, too, last I heard,” Frank said.

  Dudley was visibly trembling. “We couldn’t help ourselves. You don’t know what it was like. We’ve loved each other for years, long before she even met Blackwell. And he was a terrible man. He treated her very badly.”

  “He beat her, do you mean?” Frank was enjoying this. He hadn’t even had to lay hands on Dudley, and the man couldn’t tell him enough.

  “Well, no, not beat her,” Dudley admitted reluctantly, “but he ignored her. He never took her anywhere or even spoke to her most of the time.”

  “Some women would appreciate that in a husband,” Frank said wisely. “But not Mrs. Blackwell, I guess. It’s sure easy to see how she could be unhappy, though. Blackwell just made her live in that big fancy house, with servants to wait on her hand and foot, and gave her anything she wanted. And the only time she got out was to visit her lover every afternoon at an opium den.”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Dudley protested.

  “What was it like, then? Is there something I don’t know?” Malloy was more than willing to listen, although he doubted Dudley had anything of substance to add to his current knowledge.

  “He drove her to use the morphine again! He forced her to appear at those lectures of his so he could lure people into taking his treatments. All he thought about was money. He didn’t care that she was terrified of speaking in public. She begged him not to make her do it anymore, but he wouldn’t listen. The only way she could bear it was to use the morphine.”

  “And how about you? Did you use the morphine with her? Was that why you met her at the opium den?”

  “No! She wouldn’t let me. She’d gone through hell trying to stop using it the first time, and she didn’t want me to go through that, too. She made me swear I’d never touch that horrible stuff, and after seeing what it did to Letitia, I never wanted to.”

  “You expect me to believe that?” Frank scoffed. “You spend half your life in a place where you have to buy the stuff as the price of being there at all, and you never even try it?”

  “Letitia bought the morphine. No one there cared who used it,” Dudley explained frantically. He was sweating now, even though the evening was cool. “They never paid any attention to what we did at all!”

  “I guess when you pay for a private room and close the door, you can do anything you want, no matter how depraved or immoral it is. Tell me, Dudley, does the morphine make a woman more willing? Is that why you helped her get it?”

  “How dare you speak of Letitia that way!” he cried, outraged. “And I didn’t help her! She was already going to that place when I found her here. She couldn’t keep morphine at the house. Blackwell searched her rooms to make sure she wasn’t hiding it anywhere. She lived in constant terror of being found out.”

  “And how tragic it would be for a woman’s husband to insist that she stop using morphine. Blackwell must have been a monster to want his wife free of that poison.”

  “You can’t possibly understand! Letitia isn’t strong. She can’t bear things the way the rest of us can.”

  “Is that why you picked her, Dudley? Because you thought she was weak?” Frank asked contemptuously.

  “I didn’t pick her,” Dudley insisted. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean when you decided that you’d like to marry a woman with money so you wouldn’t have to work as a schoolmaster anymore. You saw pretty little Letitia Symington and figured if you seduced her, she’d have to marry you. Her father might not like it, but he’d come around once you were married and he didn’t have any other choice.”

  “I love Letitia! I never thought ... How could someone like you understand?” he asked, righteously indignant.

  “You’re right, I can’t understand how a man could take advantage of a young woman’s innocence to trick her into betraying her family and running away in the middle of the night like a criminal.”

  “She wanted to be with me! We were going to be married. That’s what she wanted. It was all her idea!”

  “Of course she wanted it, after you’d ruined her for any other man. How could she want anything else?”

  Dudley covered his face with his hands. If Frank hadn’t despised him so much, he might have felt sorry for him.

  “What do you want from me?” Dudley asked brokenly, his voice muffled behind his fingers.

  “I want you to tell me that you killed Edmund Blackwell so I can go back to investigating important crimes,” Frank said wearily.

  “But I didn’st!” he cried, looking up again. “I’m not sorry that he’s dead, but I certainly would never have murdered him. I could never do such a thing!”

  “Where were you the afternoon he died?” Frank asked.

  He thought for a moment. “I was with Letitia. We were at Mr. Fong’s. He’ll vouch for us!”

  “I already asked him. He never heard of you. He never heard of any of his clients. That’s how he stays in business.”

  “But we were there! If he knows we want him to tell you that, he will. He must!”

  “No, he doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t know if you were there or not. And even if you came in, he wouldn’t know how long you stayed or when you left. You could have gone out, killed Blackwell, and then come back.”

  “But I didn’st!”

  “I probably wouldn’t have been so annoyed with you for killing Blackwell if you hadn’t killed Calvin, too. That was stupid.”

  Something that might have been recognition flickered across his face, but Frank couldn’t be sure. “Calvin? Calvin who?” he asked in apparent confusion.

  “Calvin Brown,” Frank said, watching Dudley’s face closely in the lamplight for any more signs of recognition. “Eddie Brown’s son.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he said, defensive now. “What does this Calvin have
to do with Blackwell and Letitia?”

  “A lot, but I don’t think I have to tell you anything about it, do I?”

  “Not unless you want me to know what it’s all about. Who is Eddie Brown? Was he one of Blackwell’s patients?”

  Frank resisted the urge to remind him they were called “clients.” He doubted Dudley would find it amusing. “Let’s just say that he and Blackwell were very close, but I think you knew all about him, Dudley. I think that’s why you tried to make it look like Calvin had killed Blackwell.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he insisted again. “I’ve already told you everything I know. I have to go now. I have... an appointment. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you, Mr. Malloy.”

  “So am I, Dudley,” Frank said. “But that’s all right. I’m sure I’ll see you again real soon.”

  Dudley looked sickly again, but he didn’t let that slow him down. His long legs carried him quickly away, into the shadows of the night. He’d gotten off lucky, and he knew it. Frank could have slapped him around at the very least. At worst, he could have taken him to the station house and locked him up and given him the third degree until he was willing to confess to anything. In the past, Frank would have thought nothing of doing either of those things. In fact, he would have felt justified, whether he was convinced Dudley was the killer or not. But he no longer had the stomach for it. Now he was actually concerned about making a mistake and punishing an innocent person. If he’d been a little more certain that Dudley was the killer, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But he wasn’st, so he’d let Dudley walk away.

  He was right. Sarah Brandt was ruining him.

  12

  SARAH WAS TIRED AS SHE MADE HER WAY DOWN Bank Street back to her home the next afternoon. She’d had a difficult morning.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brandt!” her neighbor Mrs. Ellsworth called as she came out onto her front porch. She was dressed for the street, in her bonnet and gloves, and carrying a shopping bag. “Looks like summer is trying to come back. How are you this fine day?”