Now Gino would find out just how good he was at this detecting business.
“How long have you worked for Mr. Oakes, Mr. Zeller?” Gino asked.
“Just Zeller, please. I’ve been here almost twenty-one years.”
“Then you know the family pretty well.”
“I suppose I do.”
“I think Mr. Oakes told you that his son was poisoned. We believe it was arsenic.” Zeller flinched at this, but didn’t lower his gaze. He felt no obvious guilt then. Gino decided to get right to the point. “First of all, I need to know where you keep the arsenic.”
Zeller blinked in surprise. “We don’t keep it at all.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we don’t . . . Actually, as long as I’ve worked here, we’ve never kept poison of any kind in the house.”
“Not even for rats?”
“Mrs. Oakes, Mrs. Prudence Oakes, that is, would never allow it in the house. Ever since she became mistress of the house years ago, she has forbidden it. Since I’ve been here, we’ve used traps for rats when the need arose.”
That was very interesting. It meant that whoever had killed Charles had made a special effort to acquire the poison. If they could find out who had done that . . . But that would have to wait until later. “I need to know everything that happened from the time he got sick until he died.”
“I wasn’t with him the entire time, of course, but I can tell you what I do know.”
“That’ll be good enough. So let’s start with when Mr. Oakes first got sick. When was the first you knew about that?”
“The first I knew that he didn’t feel well was when he came home Saturday evening, two days before the day he died.”
“So he was fine when he left that morning?”
“As far as I know, yes. He usually dresses himself unless it’s a formal occasion, so I don’t see him until he comes downstairs. That morning he seemed well.”
“Where did he go that day?”
“I am not in the habit of asking Mr. Charles his plans.”
“Can you give me an idea of some of the places he might have gone?”
“He might have gone to his office or his club. You will have to confirm that with the people there, though.”
“And was he already not feeling well when he got home or did that happen after supper?”
“He told me he’d become ill that afternoon. He thought perhaps he’d eaten something at noon that didn’t agree with him.”
“And did he eat supper with the rest of the family?”
“He sat down with them, but I don’t believe he ate very much.”
“And did he get better or worse that evening?”
“He seemed to recover somewhat, although he didn’t attend church with the family the next morning.”
“Was he all right the rest of that day?”
“He seemed to be recovering, and on Monday morning, he went out again as usual.”
“To his office?”
“So I assume, although he might have gone to his club or someplace else.”
“And when did he come back?”
“In the middle of the afternoon. This time he was quite ill and went straight to bed.”
“When you say he was quite ill, what do you mean?”
“Really, it’s very unpleasant to discuss this.”
“I’m sure it is, but it’s important that I know exactly what happened.”
“He was . . . vomiting and his bowels were . . . Well, he had no control over them. Mrs. Oakes, his mother, had us put him in one of the guest rooms.”
“Instead of his own room? Why was that?”
For the first time, Zeller’s gaze flickered away. “So as not to disturb his wife.”
Gino made a mental note to follow up on this piece of information. “Who was taking care of him?”
“Uh . . . some of the maids. Several, in fact.”
“Not his wife? Or his mother?”
“His mother was there, but his wife . . . she was afraid of contagion.” Once again his gaze had flickered away.
“Which maids?”
“Well, probably all of them, at one time or another. There was laundry and we changed the bed linen several times and—”
“Which ones?” Gino said in the voice he used to use to intimidate people.
It didn’t seem to work on Zeller, but he said, “Daisy was there the most. He . . . Mr. Charles asked for her in particular.”
Ah, Gino thought. This might be the older woman Mrs. Brandt had seen by the casket.
“This Daisy, she’s been with the family for a long time?”
“No. As a matter of fact, she’s only been with us a few months.”
So Mrs. Decker had been right about the Oakeses not keeping their staff—at least the maids—for years. Daisy was new, and yet Charles Oakes had asked for her to care for him in his dying agonies and this man had tried to avoid mentioning her by name in what appeared to be an effort to protect her from Gino’s suspicion.
“Tell me about the glass of milk that Charles requested.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. He said his throat was burning and asked for some warm milk to soothe it.”
“Who brought it up?”
“One of the girls. I couldn’t tell you which one.”
“Could it have been Daisy?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think she would have left him.”
“Would she have been in the room with him when he drank it?”
“I couldn’t say for sure. I wasn’t there myself, you see.”
And he didn’t want to implicate Daisy any more than necessary either. “Who decided to call the doctor?”
“Mrs. Oakes did. Mr. Charles became violent and the girls couldn’t control him anymore, so I went to help them, and she sent for the doctor.”
“And this happened after he drank the milk?”
“I believe so, yes. I saw the glass on the bedside table.”
“Was it empty then?”
“Nearly so. I believe there was still a bit in the bottom.”
“Do you remember it getting knocked over?”
“No, but as I said, Mr. Charles became very violent, thrashing around. He couldn’t seem to understand what I was saying to him, and the things he said didn’t make any sense. In all the confusion, the glass was probably knocked to the floor and no one noticed.”
And if it hadn’t been, someone might have gotten away with murder. “I’ll need to speak with all the maids who were in the sick room that night, and I’d like to start with Daisy.”
• • •
Charles Oakes’s mother did not look like a woman who had recently lost her only child. She betrayed no emotion whatever as she accepted Frank’s apology for bothering her and took the chair her daughter-in-law had occupied earlier. She also sat erect, although she didn’t give the impression she wanted to flee so much as being annoyed at having to endure this.
“I’m very sorry about your son, Mrs. Oakes. It must have been a shock to find out he was poisoned.”
“No worse than the shock of having him die in the first place, Mr. Malloy.” She was, he noticed, still a very handsome woman except for the coldness in her eyes.
“Your daughter-in-law thinks one of your maids is responsible.”
Her lips tightened at this, her only discernible reaction. “Hannah is a foolish girl. You shouldn’t take her seriously.”
Frank had already come to that conclusion. “Why do you think she blames Daisy?”
“You will have to ask her that.”
“Daisy is new, isn’t she?”
“She hasn’t been with us very long, if that’s what you mean.”
Now Frank was curious. “How is that different from
being new?”
She was silent so long, Frank thought she wasn’t going to reply at all, no matter how much time he gave her, but his patience finally paid off. “You will probably hear this from someone else, so I suppose I should be the one to tell you first. I knew Daisy when . . . We grew up together in Georgia.”
Frank remembered her story well. “She was a slave on your plantation.”
“On my family’s plantation, yes.”
“How did she end up here, after all this time?”
Once again, she hesitated. Frank could see she wasn’t accustomed to sharing her private business with strangers, and she certainly wasn’t enjoying the opportunity. When she did begin to speak, she did so haltingly, as if choosing her words with care lest she betray something she would rather keep hidden. Frank wondered what that might be.
“I met my husband when he arrived with the Yankee troops to burn our home,” she said with an amazing lack of bitterness. “I escaped with a few of the house servants. The field hands had long since run off, and we were the only ones left.”
“What about the rest of your family?”
“The family was all dead, and I couldn’t stay there alone.”
“What about your neighbors?”
“They were in the same situation, Mr. Malloy. Houses burned, servants scattered, nothing to eat. So we followed the Yankee army. At least they fed us.”
“And Mr. Oakes fell in love with you.”
“Yes. We were married, and he sent me North, to his family.”
“And what about your . . . servants?” he asked, using the word she had chosen.
“I had to leave them behind. No one was giving Negroes safe passage to go North, and Gerald’s family certainly didn’t want them. They didn’t even want me.”
This time Frank caught the faintest trace of bitterness in her tone. “How did Daisy find you after all this time?”
“She remembered the name of the man I’d married, and she knew we lived in New York City. After the war, she tried to get here, but she had no money. Things were very bad in the South then, as you may know. She went as far as she could and finally settled in North Carolina. She married a man she met there. He died a few years ago, though, so she decided to try to find me again. She finally got to the city, like so many others before her, but she had no idea how enormous it was or how many people live here. It took her years to locate me, and then it was only because of the article in the newspaper about Charles’s appointment to the Manhattan State Hospital.”
“Were you happy to see her?”
“No, I was not, Mr. Malloy. She was a reminder of a terrible time in my life that I have tried very hard to forget.”
“But you hired her.”
“Of course I did. She’d had a very difficult life, and it had only become more difficult since she arrived in the city. Jobs are very scarce for Negroes here, and she is no longer young.”
“Your daughter-in-law claims she hasn’t seen Daisy do any work.”
“I can’t believe Hannah pays any attention to such things, but Daisy attends to my needs.”
Frank was remembering what Sarah had seen at the funeral, the older woman leaning over Charles’s casket. “I guess a lot of your servants are older since they’ve been with you for a long time.”
“Who told you that?”
“Your husband.”
She sighed with what sounded like disgust. “Zeller has been with us for years, and some of the maids may have been here as long as five years, but none longer, I’d guess.”
“Why would your husband tell me they’d all been with you for years?”
This time the coldness in her eyes could have frozen his blood. “Probably because he can’t tell one colored girl from another. He thinks they all look alike.”
Frank blinked at the venom behind her words. He’d often heard this sentiment from other cops and countless other white people, but he’d never seen anyone angry about it. He’d also never imagined anyone would fail to recognize the faces of the people he saw every day in his own home, no matter what color they were, but here was proof it was possible.
And if Mrs. Oakes was bitter about it, how did the servants themselves feel? Did they even know? But of course they did. If he couldn’t tell them apart, how could he call them by name? And if they were bitter, too . . .
“Your daughter-in-law thinks Daisy is the one who poisoned your son. Can you think of any reason why she would have?”
“You mean as revenge against me for some ancient wrong I’d done her?” she scoffed. “More likely, she would help me try to save him, since she was grateful for the kindness I had recently shown her. And that, Mr. Malloy, is exactly what she did do.”
“She helped you try to save him?”
“Of course she did. She was with him all evening the night he died, holding his head while he vomited and changing his sheets when he lost control of his bodily functions.”
“Giving him the milk he asked for?”
“That I don’t know, but how could she? She never left his side, so someone else prepared it and carried it up from the kitchen. If she helped him drink it, she had no idea it was poisoned. I would swear to that.”
“And how can you be so sure? You might’ve grown up with this woman, but you haven’t seen her in what, thirty years? She could have changed.”
“Perhaps she has, but she loved Charles like he was—”
Frank waited but she didn’t finish her sentence. “Her own son?” he asked.
“Yes, like a son,” she said, but Frank wondered why she’d caught herself if she was so willing to say the words.
“You said you grew up with Daisy. I guess it’s hard for Northerners to understand what it was like in the South in those days.”
“Yes, it is, and I gave up trying to explain it years ago. But please understand that Daisy bore me no grudges because I had to leave her behind, and I was happy to give her a place here when she found me again. So don’t imagine some bad melodrama took place in this house. If someone really did poison Charles, it wasn’t Daisy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Would you help me understand when Charles first became sick? We need to figure out how he got the poison in the first place.”
“I thought you’d decided it was the milk. My husband told me it killed Hannah’s cat as well.”
“That was the final dose, but I understand he’d been sick several days before, too.”
“Yes, he said he had started feeling ill on Saturday, in the afternoon.”
“Where was he that day?”
“At his club, I assume.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“No, I don’t.”
“And you don’t know where he ate lunch that day?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But when he came home, not feeling well, did he suspect it was something he’d eaten?”
“I don’t know what he thought. I believe his father suggested that might have been it. We weren’t really aware that he was feeling ill until we sat down to eat supper, and he had no appetite.”
“And he didn’t get any sicker after he got home that night?”
“No. In fact, he said he was feeling better.”
“And yet he spent the night in his dressing room instead of with his wife.”
“She told you that?” Her lips were tight again.
“She said she didn’t know how he felt during the night because he slept in the dressing room so he wouldn’t disturb her.”
“I see.”
“What do you see, Mrs. Oakes?”
She sighed again. “My son had been sleeping in his dressing room for weeks because his wife didn’t want to be disturbed.”
Now it was Frank’s turn to say, “I see.” And he did. Charles Oakes’s marriage wasn’t par
ticularly happy, and his mother wanted him to know it. The question was, why? The obvious reason was to cast suspicion on Hannah for the murder. But was that because she really suspected Hannah, or because she wanted to divert suspicion from someone else?
“I understand that your son felt so much better on Monday morning that he went to his office.”
“I don’t know how much better he felt, but he had some business to attend to, I believe. He made the effort to go out, but he became ill again that afternoon and had to come home. By the time he got here, he was so bad, we put him right to bed.”
“In a guest room.”
“Hannah insisted,” she said. “She didn’t want him near her. She said she was afraid of catching whatever he had, but I believe she just didn’t want him being sick in her room.”
Frank could understand that, although it wasn’t very wifely, he supposed. He’d have to ask Sarah what she’d do in a situation like that. It might be a good idea to be prepared. “You said Daisy never left his side.”
“I told you, she’s very fond of him. Was. Was very fond of him,” she corrected herself, and Frank saw the first flicker of real grief cross her face. “He asked for her,” she added softly.
“And you were there, too?”
“Not the entire time. Several of the other girls were helping Daisy, and I was in their way. Besides, he seemed to be getting better.”
“I understand he asked for the milk?”
“That’s what I was told. I wasn’t there.”
“And you have no idea who prepared it and brought it up?”
“No, although they could tell you in the kitchen, I’m sure.”
“And after he drank the milk, he got much worse.”
“Yes, he started thrashing uncontrollably, and Daisy called for help.”
“Daisy did? Not one of the other girls?”
“What do you mean?”
Murder on Amsterdam Avenue Page 9
