Murder on Amsterdam Avenue

by Victoria Thompson

  “If she was, I couldn’t tell it,” Maeve said. “She didn’t give any of them secret looks or whisper to them or do anything to show she preferred one over the others. Which made me think none of them was special to her. But she sure enjoyed all the attention they were paying her, and she did everything she could to encourage it.”

  “So maybe she poisoned her husband so she could be free to find someone else,” Sarah said.

  “That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” her father said. “She may have been enjoying the attention of those men, but how can you imagine she would murder her husband just so she could flirt a bit?”

  “And she could flirt all she wanted while Charles was alive,” Mrs. Decker said, “just as long as she didn’t do any more than flirt.”

  Realizing they had reached an impasse on Charles’s widow, Frank said, “What about the rest of the family? Did anyone notice anything unusual?”

  “I noticed Jenny had been crying, at least,” Mrs. Decker said. “She didn’t shed more than a few tears at the service, but I could see her eyes were swollen even though she’d tried very hard to cover the traces.”

  “She wouldn’t want to lose her composure in public,” Sarah explained. “But I’m relieved to know she was mourning her son. She seemed so cold and unfeeling when we called on her.”

  “But did you notice hardly anybody spoke to her after the service?” Maeve said. “A few ladies came over and spoke to her, but you’d think her friends would’ve gathered around her or something.”

  “Jenny has always been . . . reserved,” Mrs. Decker said. “She’s never been close friends with other society women.”

  “Is she shy?” Sarah asked. “She didn’t seem shy when I met her.”

  “I think she’s just sensitive about her background,” Mrs. Decker said. “Many people were rude to her when she came to the city, even after Gerald came home and the war was over.”

  “For some people, the war was never over,” Mr. Decker said. “If you lost a son or a brother, it was hard to forgive.”

  “But Mrs. Oakes was just a young girl during the war,” Maeve said. “Why would people blame her?”

  “I’m not sure they did, not exactly,” Mrs. Decker said. “If Jenny had been different . . . If she’d had some of that famous Southern charm and had tried to win people over, I think they would have eventually accepted her, but she always held herself a little apart.”

  “Gerald was angry about it,” Mr. Decker said, surprising them all.

  “He was?” his wife asked.

  “Yes, he told me more than once how grateful he was that we’d befriended her. He never thought for a minute that it was any of her doing that people didn’t like her, though. He thought they were just mean to her because she was from the South.”

  “Mr. Oakes drinks a lot.”

  Everyone looked at Gino in surprise.

  “I thought you didn’t notice anything,” Frank said with some amusement.

  He glanced at Maeve again. “I wanted to let Maeve go first.” She shot him a glare which he ignored. “He’d been drinking before the funeral started.”

  “How do you know that?” Frank asked.

  “I could smell it on him when we got there. I shook his hand and told him and his wife we knew his son from the hospital and what a good job he did there and all of that. He thanked me and I could smell his breath.”

  “It wouldn’t be surprising if a man took a drink to fortify himself on the day he buried his only son,” Mr. Decker said.

  If Decker had meant to chasten Gino, it didn’t work. “It wasn’t just today. That he was drinking, I mean. I could tell from his face. Did you notice how red it was?”

  “I did,” Frank said. “I thought he’d been crying.”

  “I’ve seen that a lot at Police Headquarters. Well, not there exactly, but the men who work there. The ones who drink a lot, their faces get red like that, and they stay red.”

  Frank frowned, a little annoyed. “The Irishmen, you mean.”

  Gino managed not to grin. “The ones with fair skin. Gerald Oakes isn’t Irish, but he has fair skin.”

  “He does drink,” Mr. Decker said with obvious reluctance. “More than most, I suppose, but he’s not a . . . a belligerent drunk. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him drunk.”

  That was interesting, a man who drank heavily but didn’t show the effects, which meant he was very used to it. Why did Gerald Oakes drink so much? Of course, a man didn’t need a reason to drink, but in Frank’s experience, he usually at least pretended to have one.

  “What about the old woman, the grandmother?” he asked.

  “What about her?” Mrs. Decker asked.

  “What do we know about her? How was she acting today?”

  “I only exchanged a few words with her today, so I can’t say much about that, but she never liked Jenny,” Mrs. Decker said. “I already told you that.”

  “And they’ve both lived together in that house all these years?” Maeve asked in wonder.

  Mrs. Decker smiled kindly at the girl. “Women often don’t get along with their mother-in-law, and yet they can live together for years.”

  Maeve glanced at Sarah, who grinned knowingly. Frank’s mother would be living with them when they got married.

  “When you’re a family, you make the best of it and at least learn to tolerate each other,” Sarah said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter to us if Gerald’s mother hated Jenny or not. We’re looking for someone who hated Charles, or at least had a reason to want him dead.”

  “Maybe she hated Charles because he was Jenny’s son,” Gino said.

  “But he was Gerald’s son, too, and her grandson,” Sarah said.

  “What if he wasn’t, though.” Everyone looked at Maeve in surprise. “I know it’s not a nice thing to say, but it could be true. Even if it wasn’t, the grandmother might’ve believed it was. Maybe she didn’t want Charles to inherit everything.”

  “There wasn’t much to inherit,” Mr. Decker said. This time everyone looked at him. “Charles had taken the job at the hospital because the family fortunes were in serious decline. Gerald had been asking around, trying to find something for Charles even before he married. I understand his wife had some money her father settled on her, but not enough to restore the family to their former situation.”

  “What happened to their money?” Sarah asked.

  “The same thing that happens every time a family tries to rely on inherited money generation after generation without ever bothering to make any themselves. It only takes one wastrel in the bloodline to ruin everyone else’s prospects.”

  “So somebody spent it all?” Gino asked.

  “Gerald’s father was rather . . . irresponsible.”

  “He gambled, didn’t he?” Mrs. Decker asked.

  “And drank,” her husband said. “A dangerous combination.”

  “Did Charles drink a lot, too?” Frank asked.

  Mr. Decker frowned, plainly uncomfortable with the conversation. “I didn’t know him well. He wasn’t a member of the club, and we didn’t move in the same social circles.”

  “And we don’t like to speak ill of the dead,” Mrs. Decker added meaningfully.

  Frank took the hint and changed the subject. He could find out about Charles’s drinking habits from someone else. “Did anyone notice any of the mourners acting strangely?”

  “You mean besides flirting with the widow?” Maeve asked, earning a scowl from Gino.

  “Yes, besides that.”

  “It wasn’t a mourner,” Sarah said, “but I did see one strange thing. When I happened to go by the parlor while everyone was in the dining room eating. One of the maids was leaning over the casket.”

  “Paying her respects maybe,” Frank said. “Mr. Oakes said all the servants have been with them for
years.”

  “My goodness, did he really say that?” Mrs. Decker said in amazement.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Because if Jenny Oakes has been able to keep all her servants for years, she’s a miracle worker. It seems like I’m hiring a new maid at least once a month.”

  “Well, that’s what he said, so maybe this was someone who’d known Charles a long time.”

  “It seemed that way,” Sarah said. “She leaned over and touched him. I couldn’t see where, exactly, but it looked like she might have been stroking his face. Sort of the way a mother would her child.”

  “Was it one of the colored girls?” Frank asked.

  “All Jenny’s maids are colored,” Mrs. Decker said. “Most of mine are, too. It’s getting almost impossible to find a white girl who’ll go into service.”

  “She wasn’t a girl, though,” Sarah said. “If she had been, I might have suspected something romantic, but this woman was much older.”

  “Maybe she’d taken care of him when he was a child,” Mrs. Decker said.

  “That’s possible, I suppose,” Sarah said. “As I said, the way she touched him did look maternal. It made me very sad to see her grief.”

  “Would you know her if you saw her again?” Frank asked.

  “I didn’t get a very good look at her, but I think so.”

  “There can’t be too many servants that age in the house at any rate,” Mrs. Decker said. “You’ll probably find her easily when you question the servants.”

  They spent the next half hour discussing the other mourners. The Deckers knew almost all of them, and none had seemed to behave oddly except the men who had paid too much attention to Hannah Oakes.

  “What do we do now?” Gino asked Frank when they’d exhausted the subject of the mourners.

  “Tomorrow you and I go back to the Oakes house and start questioning the family and the servants.”

  “What about the rest of us?” Maeve asked.

  Frank smiled at her. “I thought you were supposed to be taking care of Catherine.”

  “And I thought you were supposed to be overseeing the workmen at your house,” she countered pertly.

  “Mrs. Brandt will be taking my place for a few days, so she’ll really need for you to watch Catherine,” he countered right back.

  “But you might need us to help you talk to the women,” she tried. He’d let her help on several other cases, and now he realized she had enjoyed it way too much.

  “If I do, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I think we should be heading home. It’s been a long day.”

  Mr. Decker summoned his carriage for them, and Frank had to admit it was nice to sit back and relax in comfort while the driver negotiated the crowded streets. Finding a cab was always challenging, and it was never this comfortable. Maybe he’d get a carriage, too. Of course, that meant a driver and a groom and heaven only knew who else to take care of the horses. Was it really as hard to keep servants as Mrs. Decker had said?

  “What are you frowning about?” Sarah asked.

  “Just thinking about servants.”

  “I wonder why it’s so hard to keep them,” Maeve said.

  “It’s hard work, for one thing,” Sarah said. “If you’re a maid, you have to be available at all hours, up early to clean and make the fires and then work all day scrubbing and dusting, and then you can’t go to bed until the family does, and they might have slept until noon that day. You hardly get any time to yourself and only one afternoon a month off. You also have to live in, which means if you marry, you have to be separated from your husband or leave your job. And if you have children, you’ll hardly ever get to see them. That’s why the maids don’t stay long. When they want to get married, they have to leave and find other work.”

  “If they can,” Gino said.

  Maeve frowned. “I thought girls didn’t have to work anymore when they got married.”

  “If they’re lucky,” Sarah said.

  “And white,” Gino added.

  “What do you mean, if they’re white?” Maeve asked.

  “If a man can earn enough to keep a wife and family, then his wife doesn’t have to work, but it’s not always easy to find work in the city, especially if you’re colored,” Gino said.

  “Or Italian,” Sarah said.

  Maeve’s gaze darted to Gino, who looked away.

  “Or even Irish,” Frank said. “Think about it. What jobs do you see colored men doing?”

  Maeve opened her mouth but nothing came out for a few seconds. “I just realized I hardly ever see a colored man working at all. Elevator operator. Shining shoes.”

  “Waiters sometimes, and bellmen,” Sarah said, “but not in the better hotels where they could make good money, because white men take those jobs. So women have to work, too, but it’s almost as difficult for a colored woman to find work as for her husband, except in service.”

  “And then we’re back to them not being able to live with their husbands and families,” Maeve said. She turned to Gino. “Do Italian women have to work?”

  Frank could see his face tighten. Was he worried about scaring Maeve off by making her think he couldn’t provide for a wife? “Some of them, but they do outwork.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They do piecework,” Sarah explained quickly, “but they do it in their homes instead of in a factory, so they can be with their children.”

  “I knew women did that, but I never thought about it. So why don’t the colored women do that, too?”

  “Because no one will give them the work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Sarah said, “they think the colored women aren’t trustworthy.”

  “Then why do they let them live and work in their houses?”

  “Don’t try to make sense of it,” Frank warned her. “That’s just the way things are.”

  Maeve glanced at Gino, who’d been watching her closely. “Why are you looking at me?”

  “Because I like to,” he said to Frank’s surprise.

  Well, now, Frank would never have thought to give a reply like that. Gino, however, obviously understood that charm would get him out of just about any jam with a pretty girl. Now Maeve was too flustered to ask any more questions that might lead her back to the difficulties Italian men faced in supporting a family.

  He could see that Sarah had also understood the ploy, so she took pity on Maeve and said, “Do you have Mr. Oakes’s permission to speak with Jenny and Hannah and old Mrs. Oakes?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the same as having their permission, is it?” he asked.

  “I’m sure if you explain that you’re investigating Charles’s death, they’ll help you in any way they can.”

  “Unless one of them killed him,” Gino said with a bland little grin.

  “His wife, maybe,” Maeve said, having recovered her composure. “I’ve seen too many women who’d happily put arsenic in their husband’s drink.” She gave Gino a long look that made him squirm. “But I can’t believe his mother would do it.”

  “She would have to have a very frightening reason,” Sarah agreed. “And if she does, she isn’t likely to confess it readily.”

  “Even still, not many mothers kill their sons for any reason at all,” Frank said. “Now the grandmother, as Maeve reminded us, may not think Charles was Gerald’s son.”

  “And if that’s true, is she likely to confess it to you?” Sarah asked.

  He tried glaring at her, but that never worked, and it didn’t work now, so he just said, “Somebody needs to be at our house while they’re working on it.”

  “But you know I’m available if you need me to speak with the women.”

  “And I suppose your mother is, too,” he said.

  That made her grin. “She’d like nothing better, I’m su
re, but I know Father would appreciate it if we could keep her out of it.”

  “I always want your father’s appreciation,” he said.

  “But he won’t care if I help,” Maeve said.

  Frank shook his head in wonder at her persistence. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  • • •

  The next morning was Saturday, and Frank’s mother answered the door when Gino arrived. Frank was still eating his breakfast in the newly finished kitchen.

  “It’s that Italian boy,” she informed him, pronouncing it Eye-talian. “I didn’t know he was home.”

  “He was discharged from the army a few days ago. Why didn’t you bring him back here?”

  She sniffed. “I didn’t think millionaires entertained visitors in their kitchens.”

  Frank knew better than to get into a discussion with her about proper behavior for millionaires. “He’s not a visitor. I’ve hired him to help me investigate a murder.”

  She pulled herself up to her full five-foot-nothing and said, “So you’re just going to go around the city butting into other people’s business now that you’re rich and don’t have anything else to do?”

  “I’ve been hired as a private investigator,” he said as patiently as he could manage. “Gino is working for me. I’m doing it as a favor for a friend of Mr. Decker.”

  “First you say you’ve been hired, and then you say you’re doing somebody a favor. Which is it?”

  “Both. If people don’t pay you, they don’t value your work, so I’m charging him, even though I don’t need the money.”

  “But this Gino needs the money if he’s just got out of the army and doesn’t have a job.”

  “That’s right, and I see I’ll have to go get him myself because you’re the mother of a millionaire and you don’t have to work either, I guess.”

  “Don’t be silly, Francis. Finish your breakfast.” She marched out of the kitchen, looking like a stylish andiron in the dress Sarah had helped her pick out at Macy’s so she’d have some fashionable clothes and wouldn’t shame him. So far she’d refused to see a dressmaker or wear anything except the unrelieved black she’d worn every day since his father had died, but at least she wasn’t resisting Sarah’s efforts. In fact, the two of them seemed to get along famously, which worried Frank a lot. In his experience, his mother didn’t get along with anyone.