“And even still, you think she lied.”
“Not lied, exactly, but she didn’t tell me everything she knew. She didn’t want one of us to know whatever it was, but maybe it was Zeller she was hiding something from.”
“Maybe it was. And maybe it was both of you.”
“Is that somebody knocking on the door?” Gino asked.
Frank hadn’t been paying attention because he was always hearing pounding noises coming from somewhere in the house. This was more insistent, though. He really needed to get the doorbell fixed. He made his way to the front door, and when he opened it, he found Judith Burgun standing on the porch.
She looked harried and desperate, and she held Frank’s calling card tightly in one hand. “Oh, Mr. Malloy, thank heaven. I was about to give up!”
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s Mr. Adderly. He’s been poisoned!”
10
“Dead?” Jenny echoed stupidly. “How can Daisy be dead?”
Sarah had rushed to Zeller, and she took his arm. “You need to sit down.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t possibly,” he said, because the butler never sat down in the presence of the family, but Jenny took his other arm.
“Of course you can,” she said, and between the two of them, they got him down onto one of the chairs. The fact that he allowed this proved how distraught he was. “Now tell me what happened.”
“I went to the church, like you told me to,” he said. “It’s just a storefront,” he added to Sarah, who nodded her encouragement. The poor man looked poleaxed.
“Does the minister still live upstairs?” Jenny asked.
“Yes, he . . . he and his family. They were . . . When I got there, though, everybody was sick.”
“What do you mean, sick?” Sarah asked.
“Sick like Mr. Charles was,” he said, and a chill ran down Sarah’s back. “There were so many people there helping that at first nobody even noticed I’d come in. I had to grab one woman by the arm to stop her when she went hurrying past. I nearly scared her to death. She wanted to know why I was there and what did I want and was I a doctor? I told her I was looking for Daisy, and her face got all funny and she shouted out for the minister. Mr. Nicely is his name. He wasn’t sick, at least. He was in his shirtsleeves with the cuffs rolled up, and he looked like he’d been up all night.”
Zeller covered his face with both hands.
“It’s all right,” Sarah said. “Take your time.”
He lowered his hands and looked up at Sarah with haunted eyes. “It’s not all right, Mrs. Brandt. He told me . . . I asked him where was Daisy and was she still there, and he shook his head, but he says, ‘She’s here, but . . .’ and he can’t say any more because he’s crying. That’s when I got really scared, and one of the women, she says, ‘Who are you?’ so I told her my name and that I worked at the same house as Daisy, and I’d come to fetch her home. Then somebody called for Mr. Nicely to go back into the other room and he went. He didn’t even excuse himself. I asked the women what was going on, and one of them tells me that Mrs. Nicely was took sick yesterday and her daughter, too, and their friend Daisy.”
“So Daisy is only sick,” Jenny said, as if this was good news. “We’ll bring her straight home and get the doctor in to see her and . . .” Her voice trailed off when Zeller met her gaze.
“I told them I wanted to see Daisy, and they didn’t want me to, but I told them I’d come to take her home, so they took me back. The rooms they live in, there was the main room and Mr. Nicely and his wife had another, and their daughter had the other one. They took me in there. The daughter, she was in the bed, moaning, so I knew she was alive. Daisy was on the floor. They’d put some blankets down for her to lay on, and I thought she was asleep, she was so still. And then I saw how pale she was, and how her face was all twisted, like she was in pain except it didn’t move, not a bit. That’s when they told me she was dead.”
Jenny made a startled sound, almost like someone had stuck her with something sharp. She wrapped her arms around herself and swayed. Sarah grabbed her to keep her from falling and lowered her into another chair.
“You’re sure she was dead?” Sarah said to Zeller.
He nodded.
“What about the others?” she asked. “Mrs. Nicely and her daughter?”
“They were very sick but still alive when I left.”
“Had they called for a doctor?”
“I asked them that,” Zeller said, the color coming back into his face at the memory. “I wanted to know did they have a doctor for Daisy, but they said doctors won’t go to Coontown.”
Sarah felt the molten fury rising up in her. “Can you take me there? I’m a nurse. Maybe I can help.”
Zeller glanced at Jenny, who had yet to say a single thing after hearing Daisy was really dead. She still had her arms wrapped tightly, as if she were holding herself together by her own strength, and she rocked herself back and forth, as if hearing some secret lullaby. “Mrs. Gerald?” he said softly.
“Yes, go,” she said raggedly. “And bring Daisy back. Don’t leave her there.”
“Who should I call for you?” Sarah asked. “Your mother-in-law?”
“No!” she said sharply. “Gerald.”
Sarah went to the bellpull and yanked it sharply while Zeller pushed himself out of the chair and onto his feet. Then they waited for someone to come.
• • •
“What do you mean he’s been poisoned?” Frank asked.
“He’s been deathly sick all night long,” Mrs. Burgun said. “It started right after you left yesterday. I sent for the doctor, and he’s still with him, but Mr. Adderly, he told me to fetch you. He said you’d know what to do about Miss Adderly.”
Gino had joined them, and they exchanged a glance.
“I could get Dr. Wesley,” Gino said.
“Have him do the tests first, if he hasn’t done them already,” Frank said. “I’ll go back with Mrs. Burgun. But stop at Mrs. Brandt’s house on the way and ask Maeve to come over to sit with the workmen.”
Mrs. Burgun had a cab waiting for her, so they climbed in for the ride up to Lenox Hill.
“What did the doctor say about Adderly’s illness?” he asked her when the cab had lurched into motion.
“He didn’t say much to me, I’m sure, but Mr. Adderly told him right away that Miss Adderly had put arsenic in his liquor bottles. The doctor gave him a purgative, which seemed odd to me since Mr. Adderly had been purging his bowels long before the doctor even got there. Then he did something to his stomach to wash it out, which also seemed odd because he’d been vomiting so much already.”
“Where’s Miss Adderly?”
“I had to lock her in her room. She got real upset when Mr. Adderly accused her of poisoning him, but by this morning, she was fine again. I wanted one of the maids to stay with her, but they’re all scared of her now. They think she’s going to kill them, too.”
“Adderly isn’t dead yet,” Frank reminded her.
“They think he will be, though, and of course they know that Mr. Oakes is already dead. They won’t be able to keep servants at all now.”
“What about you, Mrs. Burgun?” Frank asked. “Will you stay now that you know Miss Adderly is a murderer?”
“I don’t know no such thing, but I think Mr. Adderly will send her back to the Asylum now, so I’ll have to find myself some other work.”
“Do you know why Adderly brought his cousin home from the Asylum in the first place?”
Mrs. Burgun stiffened and turned away, as if she’d developed a sudden interest in the people they were passing on the sidewalk.
Frank waited, knowing how much people hated silence. They would often blurt out the most incriminating things just to fill it. He had just started to think he had finally met the one person in the city w
ho could outwait him when she turned back to him.
“She’s not cured, you know.”
“I know.”
“I don’t care what those people at the Asylum said. Mr. Adderly told me a doctor examined her. Well, he might’ve looked in her throat and listened to her heart, but he never talked to her, or if he did, he lied. Mr. Adderly must’ve paid him a lot of money to say she was cured to get her out of that place.”
“He probably just thought she’d be happier at home. Nobody wants somebody they love in a place like that.”
Mrs. Burgun sniffed derisively. “Mr. Adderly don’t love Miss Adderly. He don’t care a fig about her. In fact, if you was to tell me one of them would poison the other one, I’d’ve said it would be the other way around.”
“You think Adderly wants to kill his cousin?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I don’t think he’d mourn too long if she was to die.”
“And yet he brought her home and hired you to take care of her.”
She sniffed again. “She’s got a lot of money. Did you know?”
“She told me.”
“She tells me all the time. She owns the house, too. She owns everything.”
“But Adderly is her guardian.”
“Oh no. Some lawyer uptown is her guardian. Or was. I guess she don’t need one now that she’s sane,” she added with a touch of sarcasm.
“Why wasn’t Adderly her guardian?”
“Nobody tells me anything, you understand, but the servants talk. I don’t have time to sit with them of an evening, but I still hear things.”
“And what did you hear about Adderly?”
“I heard he’s been in some trouble. He got out of it somehow, but he didn’t want to get involved with judges and lawyers anymore. At least that’s what he says to his friends when they visit. So that’s why he didn’t ask the judge to make him Miss Adderly’s guardian. If you want to know what I think, I think he didn’t want some judge looking at him too close and deciding he shouldn’t be living in the house with her.”
“Do you think he might harm her?”
Mrs. Burgun gave him a pitying look. “You don’t kill the goose what lays the golden eggs, now, do you?”
“Not unless you’re going to inherit her eggs if she dies.”
“I don’t know, but I think if that’s the case, she’d be dead by now.”
Ah, so either someone else had a prior claim or Miss Adderly had a will that named someone else as her heir. That would narrow Adderly’s options. “Does Miss Adderly have any other family?”
“Not that I know of, but she doesn’t always talk sense, if you know what I mean, and Mr. Adderly doesn’t confide in me.”
“And yet you do know an awful lot about them.”
She shrugged.
Frank sighed and wondered what she didn’t know that he needed to find out. She might know one more thing that could help, though. “What’s the name of that lawyer who used to be her guardian?”
• • •
Jenny Oakes made them take her carriage, although Sarah felt sure she could have traveled more quickly if she’d taken the elevated train. They had to stop off at Bank Street so she could get her bag and some medical supplies. She also needed to check her late husband’s medical books for the treatments for arsenic poisoning. Maeve and Catherine weren’t at home, and Mrs. Ellsworth helpfully came over to tell her Malloy had asked them to go sit with the workmen while he and Mr. Donatelli went back to see Mr. Adderly.
Then Sarah and Zeller were on their way again to the small and ever-shrinking pocket of the city where Negroes were permitted to live. The landlords charged their unfortunate tenants exorbitant rents because, unlike their white neighbors, they couldn’t move to another part of the city to find cheaper lodgings. The landlords also let the buildings fall into disrepair because they knew colored people wouldn’t complain about living in squalor because they had no other choice.
Sarah had often found it ironic that the Negroes lived in the worst buildings in the city and yet their homes were as neat and clean and well furnished as they could possibly make them. The Nicelys’ home was no exception. As Zeller had explained, the minister’s family lived on the second floor over an ordinary storefront. The only indication that it was any different from the other shops on the street was a hand-painted sign displaying a large yellow cross and the words HOLY REDEEMER CHURCH. A glance through the front window showed her rows of crudely made benches where the faithful would gather to worship.
A flight of rickety wooden stairs clung to the side of the building, and Zeller followed her up, carrying Sarah’s bag for her. The door stood open, probably to help disperse the terrible sickroom smells that assaulted her the instant she stepped inside.
“Hello?” she called into the eerie stillness. Zeller had found the rooms full of helpers earlier. The front room stood empty now.
After a moment, a woman stepped out of one of the back rooms, eyeing her warily. “Who are you?”
“I’m Sarah Brandt. I’m a nurse. I came to see if I could help.”
For a second, the woman looked as if she might object, but then she caught sight of Zeller. “You brought her, then?”
He nodded.
The woman sighed. “Not much you can do now. Miss Rose, she gone.”
“What about . . . ?” Sarah realized she didn’t know the names of either woman.
“Isabel. She . . . Mr. Nicely’s with her now.” She nodded toward the room she’d come from.
Sarah took her bag from Zeller. “See if you can get some milk.”
“What do you need milk for?” the woman asked.
“It coats the stomach and binds the arsenic,” Sarah said. At least Tom’s medical book had indicated that it might, although it hadn’t worked for Charles Oakes.
“Arsenic?” the woman echoed in horror. “What’s this about arsenic?”
“We think . . .” Oh dear, how could she explain that they suspected the women had been poisoned? It sounded far-fetched even to her. “It’s possible they accidentally . . .”
She cast Zeller a desperate glance.
“The man Daisy worked for died of arsenic poisoning,” he said, which sounded even less convincing.
“Milk won’t hurt in any case,” Sarah finished lamely and walked around the woman to get to the sickroom.
The room smelled of vomit and feces, although Sarah could see the basin by the bed had been emptied. A young woman lay motionless in a narrow bed against one wall. An older man sat on a wooden chair beside the bed, holding one of her hands in both of his. His face looked ravaged, and he didn’t even seem aware of Sarah’s presence.
“Reverend Nicely?” Sarah said.
He looked up at last, his eyes full of pain. “Yes?”
“I’m Sarah Brandt. I’m a nurse. Mrs. Gerald Oakes sent me to see if I could help.”
“It’s too late, I’m afraid,” he said. “My wife . . . My wife is gone. And Sister Daisy, too.”
“Is this your daughter?” she asked, setting her bag down on the floor.
He nodded. He still held her hand.
Sarah could see the girl’s chest rising and falling, however slightly. “May I examine her? I might be able to help.”
“Help?”
“I’m a nurse,” she reminded him. “I think I know what made her sick. Please.”
With obvious reluctance, he released the girl’s hand and rose from his chair, stepping back to make room.
Sarah picked up her bag and set it on the now-empty chair. Rummaging through it, she pulled out the stethoscope and listened to the girl’s heart and lungs, then checked her pulse and looked in her eyes and mouth. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning were difficult to distinguish from many other ailments, and they could be completely wrong about what had afflicted these women, but t
he similarities of their illness with Charles Oakes’s was simply too much of a coincidence.
“Reverend Nicely, are you ill, too?”
The poor man was so haggard, he might well be. “Me? No, not at all.”
“Can you tell me how your wife and daughter and Daisy first became ill, then?”
“Not really, no. Everyone was fine after the church service. Rose, my wife, she had made Sunday dinner, and we invited Sister Daisy to join us. We hadn’t seen much of her since she moved uptown, and she was mourning the death of a young man she’d grown very fond of.”
“Charles Oakes.”
He seemed surprised she knew his name. “Yes, that’s right.”
“So you all had dinner together. Did you eat the same things everyone else did?”
“Yes, of course. My wife is a very good cook . . . I mean, she was . . .” His eyes filled with tears.
Sarah had to keep him on track. “Are you sure? You ate everything that was served?”
“Yes, I told you.”
“And how long after you ate did they become ill?”
“I . . . I don’t know. One of my parishioners is dying, and her family sent for me. They thought the end was very near, and she was asking for me.”
“How long were you gone?”
“Several hours, I think. I don’t know. I didn’t pay any attention, but when I got home, they were all three very sick. I gathered that Sister Daisy was the first to fall ill, but I didn’t . . . I couldn’t ask them many questions by then. I asked one of the neighbor ladies to help, and when the word spread, several of our parishioners came. They did all they could, but . . .” His voice broke and he began to sob.
Sarah put her arm around him and led him back to the front room. An overstuffed chair held a place of honor by the front window, and she took him to it and sat him down. Zeller and the woman were gone. Sarah hoped they were getting her some milk, for what little good that might do for poor Isabel Nicely. “I’ll do what I can for Isabel,” she said.
Murder on Amsterdam Avenue Page 17
