Murder in the Bowery

by Victoria Thompson

  “And a correct one, too. What else would you call it? She goes gallivanting off at all hours of the day and night to meet her lovers.”

  “Did you think Norman Tufts was her lover?”

  “Norman?” he scoffed. “I don’t think there’s a drop of man’s blood in his whole body. Penny leached it out of him long ago. No, he wouldn’t know what to do with a woman. Estelle just used him until she didn’t need him anymore.”

  “Do you know where Norman took her?”

  “Tom said they went to the Bowery. I had him follow them once.”

  Tom hadn’t mentioned that to Frank, but he probably hadn’t wanted to tell Frank he’d spied on poor Estelle and then betrayed her to the old man. Frank couldn’t blame him.

  “It was maybe the second or third time Estelle left here dressed in men’s clothing.” Longacre continued, rubbing a hand over his face. Frank realized he looked even paler than usual. Questioning him like this was probably cruel, but Frank had no choice if he wanted to find out who killed Estelle and Freddie. “I can see who comes and goes from that window.” He jerked a thumb at the large window, now heavily draped, that faced the street. “The first time, I saw Norman arrive. He visited Estelle a lot, probably because Penny made him. She wanted them to get married, that witch. She couldn’t see that nobody was ever going to marry Norman.”

  “So Norman arrived,” Frank prodded.

  “Yes. He didn’t stay long, and when he left, there was another man with him. I didn’t recognize him and I’d never seen him come in, so I thought it was odd. I sent for Estelle to ask her about him, but Marie said she’d gone out with Norman. That’s when I figured out she’d dressed in men’s clothes to go wherever they were going.”

  “That must have concerned you,” Frank said, trying not to sound too sarcastic.

  “It made me mad as the devil, I can tell you. I don’t know when she got home that night, but the next day I told her I knew and that she was forbidden to leave the house like that again.”

  Frank raised his eyebrows to show his amazement. “She must have misunderstood you.”

  “She laughed at me, that little tart! Said she’d do whatever she wanted or she’d . . . Well, she’d do what she wanted. And I guess she did.”

  “Didn’t you tell your servants to lock her in her room?”

  “They don’t pay any attention to me, as you know. So I told Norman he couldn’t come here anymore. The servants weren’t to let him in the house. That didn’t stop him calling for her, though. And she’d go off with him. At least, she did a few more times. And then I thought it had stopped, because Norman didn’t come anymore.”

  “But it hadn’t stopped.”

  “Oh no. She just went out alone, during the day. She’d found someone. A man. You could see it. She was different somehow. And when I told her she was a fool, she laughed at me again.” His face pinched up with pain.

  “You must’ve been awfully jealous.”

  Longacre’s head jerked up at that. “Jealous?”

  “That she’d taken a lover.”

  “Why would I be jealous?” he asked, suddenly wary.

  “Because you wanted her all to yourself, just the way it has always been. Well, maybe not always. How old was she when you took her the first time?”

  Alarm brought life to his bloodshot eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know what I’m talking about. Sexually violating a child is an ugly thing, Mr. Longacre, and when it’s your own child, it’s unspeakable.”

  “You don’t know anything about it!”

  “I think I do. That’s why you didn’t allow any young men to court Estelle, isn’t it? You didn’t want to lose her.”

  “Who told you that? It was Penny, wasn’t it? She thinks she’s so clever, but she won’t get another dime from me, not now!”

  “Are you saying your sister knew and didn’t do anything about it?” Frank asked in disgust.

  Longacre gaped at him, his eyes owlish. “It wasn’t Penny?”

  “No, it was Black Jack Robinson who told me. Estelle confided in him, you see.”

  “She was lying,” he tried, nearly frantic now. “She lied about everything.”

  “But she wasn’t lying about being pregnant, was she? And she was already pregnant when Norman took her to the Bowery the first time. Who could have done that to her?” Frank asked with all the venom he felt. “Not one of her suitors, because you wouldn’t let anyone court her. Not Norman, because you already said he wouldn’t know what to do with a woman.”

  “I wasn’t . . . That isn’t true . . . about Norman, I mean. He wanted Estelle. He’s always wanted her. He must be the one who . . .”

  “Who what? Raped her? Forced her to submit to his lust? And then afterward she asked him to take her to the Bowery so she could find another lover? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Nothing that girl did made sense,” he insisted. “She was just trying to hurt me. To make me jealous.”

  At last! “How? By taking a lover? By trying to find a man who would rescue her from you?”

  “She didn’t need to be rescued! I loved her!”

  “You loved her so much, you forced her to submit to you, and that was the last straw for her, wasn’t it? She finally decided to do whatever she had to in order to get away.”

  “No, she didn’t. She couldn’t!”

  “She couldn’t what? Get away from you? Of course she could, if she found a man willing to marry her. But what was different about that time? Why did she suddenly decide to take action after so many years?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. And you raped her again just before she died, didn’t you? That’s why she left the house that night. She was going to tell Robinson what you’d done and ask him to take her away.”

  Frank glared at Longacre, expecting his sputtered denials and guilty excuses. Instead, Longacre just frowned in confusion. “But I didn’t . . . What do you mean? She didn’t leave the house that night because of me.”

  * * *

  Unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen was tidy and fairly clean. A very tall man rose from where he’d been sitting at the kitchen table shelling peas, to greet Sarah.

  “That’s Tom,” Marie said without looking at either of them. She disappeared into the pantry.

  “I’m Mrs. Malloy,” Sarah said.

  “Ah, so that’s who was at the door. Has Mr. Malloy gone on up to see Mr. Horace, then?”

  “Yes, he has.” Sarah sat down so Tom could, too.

  Marie emerged from the pantry with a brown crockery jug. “Chip off some ice, Tom.”

  While Sarah watched, Tom produced the ice and distributed it into three glasses, which Marie filled with a brown liquid. “Sassafras,” was all she said when she placed a glass in front of Sarah. The drink was delicious.

  “Mrs. Malloy is supposed to bother us while her husband annoys Longacre,” Marie informed Tom.

  “I thought Mr. Malloy found out everything he needed to know when he was here before,” Tom said.

  “Sometimes during an investigation, we find out something new and then need to go back and ask some more questions,” Sarah said.

  “Are you a detective too?” Marie asked with a doubtful frown.

  “Not officially, but sometimes I help out.”

  “I’m sure you’re a big help, Mrs. Malloy,” Tom said.

  Sarah expected to see the glitter of scorn in his gray eyes, but he seemed to be perfectly sincere in his compliment.

  “So you found out something new, and now you’re back,” Marie said. She turned to Tom. “I guess she found out about the baby.”

  Sarah didn’t even bother to hide her surprise. “You knew about Estelle’s baby?”

  “O
f course I did. I do the laundry. I knew right away when her monthly stopped.”

  “Marie, that’s not something you say to a lady like Mrs. Malloy.”

  “That’s all right,” Sarah said. “I’m a midwife, so I don’t shock easily. Do you think Estelle knew?”

  Marie shook her head. “That girl knew a lot, but she didn’t know about babies. How could she?”

  “So you told her,” Sarah guessed.

  “No, I didn’t! It ain’t my place to tell her something like that.”

  Sarah gaped at her. “You weren’t even going to warn her?”

  “I tried. I asked her about it, but she didn’t have no idea what it meant. She was just happy she wasn’t bleeding.”

  “So you let her go on in ignorance?”

  “I told you, it ain’t my place, but I did tell Miss Penelope.”

  Sarah couldn’t argue with that strategy. Penelope was Estelle’s nearest female relative, after all. “And did Miss Longacre tell her?”

  “I don’t have any idea. It’s none of my business, is it?”

  Of course it wasn’t, but Sarah figured Marie usually made everything her business. “Did Miss Estelle act like she knew?”

  Marie pouted at being challenged, but Tom said, “We don’t think she knew. If she did, would she still go off to meet her lover looking like she didn’t have a worry in the world?”

  She wouldn’t unless she thought Robinson was the father and would be happy and willing to marry her. But Sarah knew he wasn’t. “Who do you think fathered the child?”

  “It ain’t our place to wonder about things like that either,” Marie said, too quickly.

  “But it would be that man, wouldn’t it?” Tom said. “The one she went off to meet.”

  Sarah held Tom’s gaze for a moment and saw no deceit there. When she turned to Marie, however, she saw something completely different. “But it wasn’t that man, was it, Marie? She was pregnant before she ever met him.”

  “It ain’t my place—”

  “It may not be your place, but you couldn’t help noticing. You also know everything that goes on in this house, don’t you?”

  “That she does,” Tom said, earning a black look from his wife.

  “You know what happened. You know what’s been happening here for years.”

  “Not for years,” Marie snapped. “He’d stopped.”

  Sarah needed a moment to recover. “He’d stopped what?”

  “You know what. Bothering that poor girl. He never had a wife, not since the girl was born, so he used her instead, from the time she was little. But he’d stopped, finally.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Years. Three or four, at least. Maybe longer. She said he wasn’t interested in her now that she was grown.”

  “Oh, Marie.” Tom covered his face with both hands.

  “It’s true,” Marie insisted. “It ain’t my fault what he does.”

  “And then he suddenly did it again,” Sarah guessed.

  Marie gave a little shudder. “He was like a crazy man. Went into her room one day, and she was screaming and fighting, but he had his way. I went in, after. I expected she’d be crying, and she was, but mostly she was angry. She told me she thought it was over, but now she knew it would never be over, and she had to get away from him for good. It was just a few weeks later that she went off with Mr. Norman dressed up like a man. I didn’t know what she was up to, but she wasn’t going to listen to me. And by then I knew about the baby, so I told Miss Penelope to see if she could help.”

  “I wonder what set him off that day,” Sarah mused.

  “The doctor,” Tom said, and both women turned to him. “The doctor told him he was going to die. I thought he’d be sad. That’s how I’d feel, I guess, but not him. He was mad, railing at God and the doctors and everything else he could think of.”

  “So he took out his fury on Estelle,” Sarah said. “And he did it again right before she died.”

  But Marie just stared back at her blankly. “Did he?”

  Suddenly, Sarah wasn’t so sure. Marie would know, wouldn’t she? “I thought . . . We know something happened the day she disappeared, because Miss Estelle made special, last-minute arrangements to meet Mr. Robinson that Saturday night. It must have been urgent, because she was already supposed to meet him the following afternoon. So what could have caused her to change their meeting time?”

  “Nothing that I know about,” Marie said. “The old man wasn’t doing anything that day except being cantankerous as usual.”

  “She did get a telegram,” Tom said.

  Once again, both women turned to him in surprise.

  “She did?” Marie demanded. “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “How could it not be important? She never got telegrams.”

  “Do you know what it said or who it was from?” Sarah asked.

  “Of course not,” Tom said, affronted by the very thought that he would read someone else’s telegram.

  “When did it arrive?” Sarah said, undaunted.

  “I don’t know exactly. Late afternoon, I think.”

  Which meant it was sent earlier in the day, perhaps even the morning, although Western Union did try to be prompt with their deliveries. “Do you suppose she kept it?” Sarah asked Marie.

  “I never saw nothing like that, but I ain’t touched her room since she’s been gone.”

  Marie hadn’t touched any of the rooms, Sarah was sure. “Will you allow me to go up to look for it?”

  “What good will it do now?” Tom asked.

  “I’m not sure, but it could be very important.”

  “I don’t expect it’ll do any harm if you look,” Marie allowed.

  Sarah jumped to her feet before Marie could change her mind.

  * * *

  As Gino had expected, Will Arburn was still sound asleep when Gino arrived at the house on the corner of 6th Street and Second Avenue. Arburn’s grandmother wasn’t pleased to see him, but she let him in. Gino tried his charm again, and it served him well enough.

  “You know where he is,” the old woman said, and shuffled off back to wherever she’d been when he’d knocked on the door.

  Gino took the stairs two at a time and then pounded much more loudly than he needed to on the door.

  “Go away!” Arburn shouted.

  Since that meant Arburn was awake, Gino took the liberty of going on in. Arburn sat up at the intrusion and cursed Gino roundly. When he was finished, Gino closed the door behind him and grabbed the lone chair in the room. Dumping the clothes piled on it, he straddled it. “Sorry to bother you, but I have a few questions.”

  “But I don’t have any answers, so get out of here and leave me alone.”

  “It won’t take long and then you can go right back to sleep.”

  Arburn cursed again. “At least hand me my pants.” It appeared Arburn was naked under the sheet. His hair was tousled, and he hadn’t shaved in a couple days.

  “You won’t need them. I missed you at Freddie’s funeral yesterday.”

  “I don’t like funerals.”

  “The newsies had a lot of nice things to say about Freddie.”

  Arburn scratched his bare chest. “He was a good kid.”

  “Kid Blink pointed me and Mr. Malloy out to the crowd. He told them we’re trying to find Freddie’s killer and they should tell us anything they know about it.”

  Arburn’s eyes narrowed. “That was a good idea. Maybe one of them knows who did it.”

  “I expect the killer was smarter than that, but a few of the boys remembered that you were looking for Freddie the night he was killed.”

  “Why would I have been looking for him? You and Malloy had already found him.”

  “I know. That co
nfused me, so I figured I should just ask you about it. Did you go out that night looking for him?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Because lots of people saw you.” Gino didn’t know that for sure, but it was probably true.

  “I . . . Oh yeah, I forgot,” he said, not very convincingly. “I did go out that night. I figured if I could find the boy, you and Malloy wouldn’t have to, and I could stop paying you. Can’t blame me for wanting to save a few bucks, can you?”

  “No, I can’t,” Gino agreed. “But I don’t think that’s really why you were looking for Freddie.”

  “All right, I wasn’t trying to save money. I was trying to find Freddie as fast as I could. Black Jack was crazy to find Estelle, and he thought the boy might know what happened to her.”

  “And did you find him that night?”

  “No, I didn’t, but I wasn’t the only one looking for him.”

  “You mean me and Malloy?”

  “And Black Jack. He’d told me to find him, but it had been days. He probably got tired of waiting.”

  “Are you saying Robinson was out looking for the boy himself?”

  “I’m saying he’s the reason I was looking, so maybe he told some of his other men to look, too. Maybe one of them found him.”

  “Found him and killed him? Is that what you were supposed to do?”

  “Of course not! I was just supposed to bring him to Jack.”

  “And you think Jack sent someone else out to kill the boy?”

  Arburn groaned and rubbed both hands over his face. “No, you idiot! Jack . . . Jack just wanted to talk to him, but maybe somebody got a little excited or misunderstood and the boy ends up dead.”

  That was possible, of course, but Arburn was certainly lying about something. Gino just had to figure out what. Maybe he should try a little bluffing. “We know what happened to Estelle.”

  Arburn’s head jerked up. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’ve figured it out. See, she decided she needed to see Robinson that night, so she sent him a telegram, telling him to meet her. Unfortunately, he wasn’t home, so he didn’t get the telegram until late that night.”

  “What . . . ? What do you mean, Jack wasn’t home?”

  Arburn was surprised. Now wasn’t that interesting? “Just what I said. Jack didn’t get the message until late, and by the time he got to the flat, it was after nine o’clock and she was gone.”