Murder in Murray Hill (Gaslight Mystery)

by Victoria Thompson

  Broghan was frowning. “How do you know she went to his house?”

  “She ran off when we went in to search Neth’s place. It’s only a theory that she killed Pendergast, but I do know that Andy tried to blackmail Neth. Joanna told us she saw the letter.”

  “So maybe this Neth killed him. You said he went to see Pendergast right before he died.”

  “But Grace Livingston said Pendergast was still alive when Neth left.”

  “So she does remember what happened!”

  “Parts of it,” Frank hedged. “So if Joanna killed Pendergast and saw the letter from Andy saying he knew who the killer was, she went to meet him and killed him, too.”

  “How do you know what the letter said?”

  “One of the other men Andy tried to blackmail told me.”

  Broghan frowned. “Is there anybody in New York you didn’t see?”

  Frank bit back a smile. “A few people.”

  “And who’s this third person? And don’t say Neth, because you already told me he didn’t do it.”

  “No, not Neth. Grace Livingston.”

  Broghan swore. “You already convinced me she didn’t do it! I would’ve arrested her days ago!”

  “I . . . well, I’ve come to think that maybe she’s hiding something when she says she can’t remember.”

  This seemed to make Broghan very happy. “Well now, I guess you don’t know everything, do you?”

  Frank took the insult with good humor, because of course he did know everything. “I never claimed to.”

  “So now that you’ve made a muck of this, what do you expect me to do?”

  Frank tried very hard to look sincere or at least not like he was lying through his teeth. “I think if you bring these women in and question them—scare them a little—and tell them what you think happened and how each one did it, the guilty one will break down and confess.”

  14

  Frank convinced Broghan to leave the Black Maria they’d brought to Neth’s house down the street, out of sight, when they went to get Joanna. She hadn’t been too happy the last time he’d locked her in one, and she’d probably run for sure if she saw it now.

  Joanna answered their knock. She wore her maid’s outfit and a scowl. “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Neth,” Frank said. This was, of course, probably the only reason they could give in order to get inside.

  “And if he’s not here?”

  “We’ll wait,” Broghan said.

  Joanna turned her scowl on him. “And I see you’ve brought your little copper friend with you this time.”

  Broghan opened his mouth to reply, but Frank said, “If Neth’s not here, tell us where he is, and we’ll go find him.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Showing up at his club to embarrass him,” she said. “Well, he’s here, but he doesn’t know anything more than he did the last time you talked to him. When are you going to leave us be?”

  “Just one or two things we need to ask him,” Frank said cheerfully.

  She didn’t look like she believed him, but she let them in and escorted them upstairs. Neth was in the back parlor, the less formal room where the residents of the house would spend most of their time.

  He looked up when Joanna came in and jumped to his feet when she announced them. “What the devil? What are you doing here again, Malloy?”

  Frank thought he might have to ask Joanna to stay, but she wasn’t really a maid, so she didn’t leave. Instead she went over and stood by Neth. Maybe she thought she could protect him somehow. Maybe she thought she could kill Frank and Broghan like she’d killed Pendergast and Andy. The thought made the hairs on his arms stand up.

  “I need to talk to Joanna,” he said.

  Neth looked at her, but she was staring at Frank. “Me? What for?”

  “We want to ask you some questions about when you were with Pendergast.”

  She didn’t believe it. Frank could see it in her eyes. “All right. Go ahead and ask me.”

  “Not here. We need to take you to Police Headquarters so it’s official.”

  “See here,” Neth said, “there’s no reason to take her anywhere. You can ask her whatever it is right now.”

  “No, it’s all right,” she said. “They’re just trying to scare me into telling them something, but I don’t know anything to tell them, so it won’t work. You want me to go to Police Headquarters, you say?”

  “Yes. We’ve brought a wagon.”

  “I know about your wagons,” she sniffed in disgust. “I need to change my clothes. I can’t go looking like this.” She gestured toward her maid uniform.

  “I’ll go with you, then,” Frank said.

  She stiffened at that, and Neth said, “You can’t do that!”

  “If she goes off somewhere, how do we know she won’t try to run away?” Broghan asked.

  “I’ll give her privacy while she changes,” Frank said, “but I’ll be right outside the room.”

  “All right, then,” she said with a toss of her head, “but if you think you can look in through the keyhole, I’ll poke your eye out.”

  She stalked out.

  “Stay with him,” he told Broghan, and followed her out.

  Conscious of what Joanna had endured from Pendergast, Frank followed at a distance, staying just close enough that he could catch up to her if she tried to run. She went up the stairs and into one of the bedrooms without even looking back at him, closing the door behind her with a decisive click.

  Frank heard the key turning in the lock, and he noticed she didn’t remove it. She must really think he might look through the keyhole. He stopped outside her door and leaned against the wall opposite. The wait seemed long, but Frank recalled that waiting for a woman always seemed long. Their clothes, he knew, were much more complicated than a man’s, and they had to fix their hair and such. Still, Joanna seemed to be taking an exceptionally long time considering she was dressing to be questioned by the police and not to attend a fancy dress ball.

  He waited some more, starting to think something might be wrong. In fact, he hadn’t heard any sounds of movement from the room in some time.

  Then he saw the smoke curling up from under the door.

  • • •

  Sarah met Grace and ROSE at Daughters of Hope Mission, just down Mulberry Street from Police Headquarters. The plan was that Frank would send word as soon as he and Broghan arrived at Headquarters with Joanna. Broghan thought they’d be dropping Joanna off and going after the other two women, but they were going to appear voluntarily. Frank and Sarah had agreed there was no reason to subject them to a ride in a Black Maria in police custody. He’d just explain that Sarah had convinced them to come in of their own accord.

  She could tell the two women were tense, and who could blame them? Knowing they would soon be questioned by the police and confess to murder was a daunting prospect at best.

  “I’ve read about these missions,” Rose said when they were seated in the parlor. The room in the large, old house was furnished with a hodgepodge of furniture that people had discarded, but it was spotlessly clean. “What kind of work do they do here?”

  “It’s a refuge for girls who don’t have homes or families or whose families have turned them out,” Sarah explained. “We teach them to read and write if they don’t know how, and how to operate a sewing machine and cook and how to conduct themselves.”

  “How did you get involved with it, Mrs. Brandt?” Grace asked.

  Sarah smiled, not wanting to tell the whole unpleasant story. “Oh, you know how women get asked to do things by their friends.”

  Mrs. Keller, the matron, bustled in. “Mrs. Brandt, how nice to see you.”

  Sarah introduced her to Grace and Rose. “I hope you don’t mind. We’re meeting Mr. Malloy later, and this was
a convenient spot to wait.”

  “Not at all. After all you’ve done for the Mission, you’re always welcome here. Can I get you some refreshment? It’ll be good practice for the girls to serve you tea.”

  Sarah readily agreed, and several of the older girls nearly tripped over themselves in their eagerness to serve their guests. Grace and Rose seemed to enjoy their attention, and Sarah sensed them relaxing a bit as they drank their tea and ate the cake the girls brought them.

  Waiting was difficult, of course, and time passed so slowly, but when Sarah checked the watch pinned to her jacket, she couldn’t believe how long they’d actually been there. Surely, Malloy could have collected Joanna by now. What was taking so long?

  • • •

  Frank started shouting for Broghan the instant he saw the smoke. The room was on fire, of that he was sure, even though it made no sense. Why would she set the room on fire?

  To kill herself, you fool, an inner voice said, but his common sense rebelled. Nobody would choose to burn themselves alive.

  He tried the knob, but of course it was still locked. The knob was cool, though, so he raised his foot and kicked the door as hard as he could. By then he could hear Broghan and Neth running up the stairs.

  Frank kicked the door again.

  “What are you doing?” Neth demanded.

  “She’s set the place on fire!”

  He kicked again, and this time the door splintered. Broghan put his shoulder to it, and it gave. Smoke filled the room, and Frank saw with a quick glance that the heavy curtains were on fire, although the fabric was smoldering more that flaming, even fanned by the breeze from the open window.

  But more importantly, Joanna was gone.

  “Where is she?” Neth cried. “What have you done with her?”

  Broghan had the presence of mind to tear down the curtains and begin stamping on them. After a moment, Neth joined him. Frank stuck his head out the window, but all he saw was the roof over the back porch, a little over a story below. Could she have risked it? Of course she could have, if the alternative was prison.

  “She escaped,” Frank said to no one in particular, and headed out the door and down the hallway as fast as he could run.

  He took the stairs two and three at a time, nearly falling more than once, until he reached the ground floor, and tore through the house until he found the kitchen. He ran out the back door. The yard was empty, the gate hanging open. Frank ran through it into the back alley. Scanning the area in both directions, he saw no sign of her. She could have ducked into another yard to hide, but Frank figured she’d want to get as far away as possible. But which way would she have run?

  Right seemed right, so he raced down the alley in that direction, emerging on the side street where they’d left the Maria. He shouted to the driver.

  “She got away! Did you see a woman come out of this alley?”

  “No! Nobody’s come out of there while I’ve been here.”

  “Come with me.”

  The driver hopped down and loped after Frank as he ran back down the alley.

  “Check in all these yards to see if she’s hiding anywhere,” he told the man, then headed down the alley in the opposite direction.

  As he ran, he tried to calculate how long she might have been gone before the smoke had alerted him. Long enough that she’d had time to get out of sight, he decided when he reached the other end of the alley and saw no trace of her in either direction.

  Where would she go? The train station, maybe, if she really wanted to get away, although she could probably disappear just as effectively in the city itself if she chose to. By the time he got back to the house, Broghan was on the back porch waiting for him.

  “No sign of her?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve got Murphy searching the yards, but I doubt she’d bother hiding. She’s long gone. What about the fire?”

  “We got it out. She didn’t do a very good job with it.”

  “She didn’t want to burn the house down, just slow us up a bit, I figure.”

  “It worked well enough, then. I’m thinking you can forget about the other two females,” Broghan said with a grim smile. “This one’s your killer.”

  • • •

  Sarah checked her watch again.

  “What time is it?” Rose asked.

  They’d long since finished their tea and cake. The girls had tried making polite conversation with them, as an exercise in deportment, Mrs. Keller explained, but the strain of waiting soon began to tell on Grace and Rose. Sarah dismissed the girls and sent Mrs. Keller back to her duties.

  “It’s been much too long. I’m going to walk down to Police Headquarters. The doorman there knows me. Maybe Mr. Malloy has sent word or something.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Grace said.

  Sarah didn’t know if it was a good idea to bring her two charges with her or not, but she decided it would be cruel to make them sit here with nothing to do but worry. She told Mrs. Keller they were going to check on Malloy, and they made their way to the front door.

  Just as they opened it, however, a cab stopped at the curb outside, and Frank Malloy stepped out.

  • • •

  Neth came out onto the back porch. HE had A streak of soot on his cheek, and he was flexing his right hand absently, as if it hurt him. “Where is she?”

  “Gone,” Frank said.

  “She can’t be gone. Why would she go anywhere?”

  “Because she killed Pendergast and that other fellow,” Broghan said, “and she knew I was going to arrest her for it.”

  Neth glared at Broghan in outrage. “Joanna couldn’t kill anyone.”

  Frank sighed. “Whether she did or not, she’s escaped. Broghan, I think she might go to the train station.”

  “Why would she do that?” Neth asked, still outraged.

  “To get away,” Frank said patiently.

  “But she can’t go anywhere. She doesn’t even have any money.”

  “Yes, she does,” Frank remembered. “Traynor told me he gave Andy two hundred dollars, but Andy didn’t have it when we found him.”

  “Ah,” said Broghan. “She took it, then. Smart girl.”

  “So maybe you can catch her before she gets on a train,” Frank said, still trying to be patient. “If you hurry,” he added, in case Broghan didn’t understand the urgency.

  “Oh, yeah. Murphy!” he called, heading down the back stairs toward the alley. “Come with me.”

  Neth watched him for a minute, looked at Frank, and then looked back at Broghan. “I’m going with you! I won’t have you mistreat her!”

  Frank stood on the porch until the three of them had disappeared down the alley in the direction of where they’d left the Maria. Then, with another sigh, he went back into the house.

  So much for their plan, although if Joanna really could get away and with Broghan convinced she was guilty, Grace and Rose wouldn’t have to worry about being arrested. Still, they’d never be able to completely forget about their ordeal, knowing Joanna was still out there somewhere.

  Frank closed the kitchen door, wondering if he should lock it. Neth had left in a hurry and might not have remembered to take his key. That’s when he remembered: the back door had been ajar when he’d gone chasing after Joanna.

  Why would the door have been open?

  He turned slowly, quietly, and looked around the room. Joanna kept her kitchen clean. Everything was in its proper place. He saw no cellar door. No, the cellar entrance was outside, he remembered. The only door in here led to a small pantry. That door had a latch that could only be opened from the outside. The door was closed almost completely, but not quite enough for the latch to catch.

  Slowly, carefully, hoping his shoes wouldn’t squeak, he moved toward the pantry door. Listening, straining, he thought he heard something, a
slight rustle, but maybe not. Oh no, he really heard nothing at all until he reached the door and took hold of the latch and in one swift motion threw open the door.

  She screamed in terror and surged to her feet, the knife clutched in both her hands, raised high to strike, then plunging downward, almost before he could register her intent. Instinctively, he grabbed for it, catching her wrists, wrestling her for the blade. Her strength doubled by desperation, she fought him, but he twisted and pulled, jerking her out of the narrow pantry and throwing her to the floor. She cried out as he wrested the knife from her, sending it clattering across the floor. She lay sobbing with fury.

  “Why did you stop me?” she demanded.

  “You don’t have to kill yourself, Joanna. We’ve got a plan that will save you.”

  • • •

  Malloy,” Sarah called. “What are you—?” She stopped when she saw Joanna emerge from the cab behind him. This wasn’t right. They were supposed to take Joanna to Police Headquarters, not here.

  Malloy took Joanna’s arm, and Sarah realized she was limping as they made their way across the sidewalk to the Mission’s front steps.

  “What is this place?” Joanna asked with a suspicious frown.

  “A refuge for homeless girls,” Malloy said with a trace of irony.

  Joanna rolled her eyes.

  “What happened?” Sarah asked. Behind her Grace and Rose stared down at Joanna in openmouthed wonder.

  “Joanna set the house on fire and escaped,” Malloy said.

  This couldn’t possibly be true, of course, since Joanna was standing right in front of them. Or, more accurately, was limping her way up the front steps. Sarah herded Rose and Grace back inside, and whispered, “I think we may have our chance to speak with Joanna after all.”

  Hearing the disturbance, Mrs. Keller and some of the girls came to see what was going on. “Mrs. Keller, perhaps Mr. Malloy and our new guest would like some refreshments,” Sarah said, sending her off to the kitchen while Malloy assisted Joanna inside and into the parlor.