Murder on Waverly Place

by Victoria Thompson

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Author’s Note

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Victoria Thompson

  MURDER ON ASTOR PLACE

  MURDER ON ST. MARK’S PLACE

  MURDER ON GRAMERCY PARK

  MURDER ON WASHINGTON SQUARE

  MURDER ON MULBERRY BEND

  MURDER ON MARBLE ROW

  MURDER ON LENOX HILL

  MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY

  MURDER IN CHINATOWN

  MURDER ON BANK STREET

  MURDER ON WAVERLY PLACE

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  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2009 by Victoria Thompson.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  eISBN : 978-1-101-05738-4

  1. Brandt, Sarah (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Midwives—Fiction. 3. Malloy, Frank

  (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 4. Police—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 5. New

  York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3570.H6442M88 2009

  813’.54—dc22

  2008054338

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Ryan,

  the very newest Thompson!

  1

  WITH A WEARY SIGH, SARAH BRANDT PUSHED OPEN THE front door of her house. She’d been awake for more than thirty-six hours, and she wanted nothing more than a quick bite to eat and a long night in the comfort of her own bed. But as she closed the door behind her, she heard a childish shriek of joy and all her fatigue fell away.

  She looked up to see her daughter, Catherine, clattering down the stairs to greet her. “Mama!” she cried in a voice that was almost normal and threw her small arms around Sarah’s legs.

  Sarah blinked back tears. When she’d found Catherine at the Prodigal Son Mission a few months ago, she wouldn’t speak at all. She’d appeared on the doorstep of the Mission one morning, and no one knew a thing about her life up until that moment except that something had frightened her into total silence. For months she’d remained mute, and only after coming to live with Sarah had she finally begun to speak again.

  “What have you and Maeve been doing while I was gone?” Sarah asked, setting her medical bag on the floor so she could hug Catherine back.

  The child looked up, her brown eyes wide with excitement. “Mrs. Decker is here!” she reported happily.

  Sarah looked up in surprise to see her mother coming down the stairs at a more sedate pace than Catherine had used. Elizabeth Decker wore a simple dress that gave no indication her husband was one of the wealthiest men in New York City.

  “Home at last,” Mrs. Decker said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Sarah thought her mother must have been worried about her.

  “It was a difficult case,” midwife Sarah Brandt explained apologetically, thinking of the breech birth that had taken forever, only to be followed by an unexpected twin sibling. The surprised parents had needed more than a little reassurance. “Have you been here long?”

  “All afternoon,” Mrs. Decker said. “But Catherine and Maeve kept me entertained.”

  “We played with my doll house,” Catherine reported. “I got new furniture for the nursery.”

  “Did you?” Sarah asked with a meaningful look at her mother.

  “Yes, she did,” Mrs. Decker confirmed without apology.

  “It’s beautiful,” Maeve added. The young woman who served as Catherine’s nursemaid had come down the steps behind Mrs. Decker.

  “I’m sure it is,” Sarah said.

  “We saved you some ham from supper,” Maeve said. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah said with heartfelt appreciation. “I’m starving.”

  “And you’re exhausted, too,” Mrs. Decker said with the slightest trace of disapproval. She didn’t like the idea of her daughter earning her own living, especially when she had a family who was more than able to support her in grand style.

  “Come see my new furniture,” Catherine begged, taking Sarah’s hand and tugging her toward the stairs.

  “Let your mama take off her things first,” Mrs. Decker said, and Catherine obediently dropped Sarah’s hand and waited with ill-disguised impatience while Sarah removed her hat and jacket.

  The next hour passed in a blur as Sarah went upstairs to admire the new doll house furniture, then ate the hearty supper Maeve had reheated for her while listening to a recounting of Catherine’s day. While Sarah was eating, her mother’s driver returned for her, but to Sarah’s surprise, she asked him to wait while she visited with Sarah a bit longer. Finally, Maeve took Catherine up to get her ready for bed, and Sarah had a chance to speak to her mother alone.

  “Won’t Father be wondering where you are?” Sarah asked as they sat across the kitchen table from each other.

  “He’s out of town on business,” she said, giving her another of those tense smiles. Only now did Sarah realize that the strain she’d sensed earlier in her mother went deeper than simple worry over Sarah’s safety.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, certain now that something must be. Why else would her mother ask her driver to keep the horses standing in the street? “Are you ill? Is Father ill?”

  “No, no, don’t be silly,” Mrs. Decker said. �
�What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  “You came here to visit, but instead of going home at a decent hour, you’ve been waiting for me to come home, and . . . Well, I can see that something is bothering you. What is it, Mother?”

  Mrs. Decker smiled again, sadly this time. “I’m amazed at your powers of perception, Sarah. But nothing’s wrong, nothing at all, I assure you. I just . . . I wanted to ask a favor of you.”

  “A favor?” Sarah couldn’t think of a single favor a poor midwife could do for a society matron like her mother.

  “Yes, I . . . It’s difficult to explain, so please, Sarah, have an open mind and don’t judge me until you’ve heard me out.”

  “Don’t judge you?” Sarah echoed in dismay, wondering what her mother could have done to merit judgment. “When have I ever judged you?”

  “You can be quite uncharitable about other people’s . . . weaknesses, Sarah,” her mother said.

  Sarah gaped at her in astonishment. “I’m not uncharitable!” she insisted, stung by the accusation. “And what weaknesses could you possibly . . . ?” Her voice trailed off as she had a most horrifying thought. “Have you taken a lover?”

  Her mother gaped back at her in equal astonishment, and Sarah watched the emotions race across the familiar face—surprise, amazement, revulsion, and then amusement that finally dissolved into hysterical laughter. Elizabeth Decker, one of New York society’s four hundred most elite members, was suddenly howling with laughter at Sarah’s kitchen table.

  “I suppose this means I was wrong about the lover,” Sarah guessed wryly as her mother tried to compose herself.

  “Oh, dear me, yes,” Mrs. Decker assured her as she wiped the tears from her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief that cost more than Sarah earned in a month. “A lover! What on earth made you think of such a thing?”

  “You asked me not to judge you,” Sarah reminded her tartly. “And you said I was uncharitable. I tried to think of what you could have done that I would find unforgivable.”

  “And moral turpitude was the only thing that came to mind?”

  “It also had to be something you were embarrassed to tell me,” she said, realizing it for the first time herself. The strain she’d sensed in her mother was embarrassment, not worry.

  Mrs. Decker sobered. “Oh, yes, well, perhaps that is part of it. Not embarrassment, exactly, but a bit of . . . discomfort.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, just tell me,” Sarah said in exasperation. “It can’t be worse than what I was imagining.”

  Her mother straightened in her chair, as if gathering her courage, and drew a deep breath. “I . . . I would like for you to accompany me to a séance.”

  This was so far from anything Sarah had imagined that she needed a moment to make sense of it. “A séance?” she repeated stupidly. “You mean where they talk to ghosts and rap on tables?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what they do,” her mother said, no longer trying to hide her discomfort. “I’ve never attended one.”

  “Then why do you want to attend one now?”

  “A friend of mine, Mrs. Burke . . . Do you remember her? We were in school together.”

  “I think so,” Sarah said, remembering a gentle lady who had visited her mother from time to time.

  “Well, she . . . she lost her sister several years ago. They had been quarreling, and Kathy never had an opportunity to . . . to say good-bye or ask forgiveness. Then she heard about this medium . . .”

  “What’s a medium?” Sarah asked with a confused frown.

  “That’s what you call the spiritualist who conducts the séance. Kathy heard about this medium who is able to speak to the dead—”

  “Mother!” Sarah cried in dismay. “No one can speak to the dead.”

  “I knew you’d be judgmental. I asked you specifically—”

  “All right, all right,” Sarah said, lifting her hands in surrender. “Go on. She heard about this . . . this medium person.”

  “So she went to see her. Madame Serafina, that’s her name. She was able to contact Kathy’s sister.”

  This was all so ridiculous that Sarah didn’t even know where to begin. She drew a fortifying breath and tried not to be uncharitable on top of being judgmental. “Are you saying that this . . . this medium person—”

  “Madame Serafina,” her mother supplied.

  “Madame Serafina,” Sarah repeated dutifully. “That she was able to speak to Mrs. Burke’s dead sister?”

  “Well, not directly, you understand. She apparently has a spirit guide who speaks to those who have passed to the other side.”

  Sarah rubbed her forehead where a knifelike pain was pulsing. How she wished her mother had chosen to have this conversation on a day when Sarah had had a full night’s sleep beforehand. “Mother,” she tried patiently, “this isn’t possible. We can’t speak to the dead.”

  “Of course we can’t,” her mother readily agreed. “That’s why you need a spirit guide to do it for you.”

  Sarah stared at her mother in disbelief. Had she lost her senses? “Why on earth would you want to talk to the dead in any case?”

  “Because,” her mother said, and to Sarah’s horror, Mrs. Decker’s eyes filled with tears. “I want to talk to Maggie.”

  At the mention of her sister’s name, Sarah’s own eyes stung as a pain so great she could hardly bear it filled her chest. Of course. Why hadn’t she realized it immediately? “Oh, Mother,” Sarah said, reaching across the table to take her mother’s hand.

  “No,” Mrs. Decker said, snatching her hand away and blinking fiercely at her tears. “Don’t give me sympathy. I don’t deserve sympathy. I don’t deserve forgiveness either, but I want to ask for it anyway.”

  “Maggie forgave you long ago,” Sarah assured her.

  “No, she didn’t,” her mother insisted. “How could she? She died before she even knew I was sorry for what I did to her.”

  “Mother, listen to me—”

  “Kathy spoke to her sister,” Mrs. Decker insisted, the pain like a flame burning in her eyes. “She hadn’t been able to eat or sleep for months, and then she spoke to her sister and apologized, and her sister forgave her.”

  Sarah’s heart was breaking over her mother’s anguish. “Mother, these people who do this, they’re charlatans. They trick gullible people just to get their money.”

  “I know many of them are,” Mrs. Decker agreed too easily. “But not this one. Kathy said she knew things about her and her sister that no one else could have known. She’s done this for other people, too. She’s amazing, and she’s developing quite a following.”

  Sarah asked the only other question she could think of that might discourage her mother. “What does Father think of all this?”

  Mrs. Decker stiffened defensively. “He knows nothing about it, and there’s no reason he should.”

  “He would never allow you to go to a spiritualist,” Sarah reminded her.

  “He will never find out. Unless you tell him, of course,” she added.

  Sarah couldn’t imagine doing any such thing, and she was sure her mother knew it. She’d have to try a different tack. “Why have you started thinking about all this now?”

  “You mean why have I suddenly started thinking about Maggie?” she asked with a trace of sarcasm that Sarah hadn’t expected.

  “Well, yes,” Sarah admitted.

  Her mother’s lovely face twisted with the pain of loss that Sarah would have sworn she no longer felt. “I never stopped thinking about her, Sarah. She’s my daughter. I think about her every morning, when I wake up, in that one blissful moment when I emerge from the sweet oblivion of sleep, and for one second, one single second, I don’t remember that she’s dead. For that one second, there’s the possibility that she’s still in the world and I might see her happy for one more day. And then I remember. I remember that she’s dead and that I’ll never see her again, not in this life at least. And I feel that pain all over again, the pain of losing
her and knowing it was my fault that she died.”

  “It wasn’t your fault!” Sarah cried, tears streaming down her cheeks now.

  “Whom should we blame then?” her mother asked bitterly. “Your father?”

  Sarah had always blamed him the most, but she wasn’t going to say that now. “Mother, Maggie made her own choices—”

  “The only choices we left her,” Mrs. Decker reminded her. “And don’t think for one moment your father made any decisions without my approval. We are equally damned for what we did to her.”

  “Mother, please!” Sarah reached out again, alarmed to see that all the color had drained from her mother’s face. She looked as if she might faint.

  This time Mrs. Decker let Sarah take her hand, and she clasped it tightly, nearly bruising Sarah’s fingers. “I know it’s not possible to talk to the dead,” she said, shocking Sarah. “At least I’ve always believed it is, but suppose I’m wrong? Suppose we’re both wrong? Suppose someone can reach Maggie? Suppose it’s possible to make my peace with her here and now instead of waiting for some fragile hope of eternal forgiveness? I have to find out, Sarah. I have to at least try!”

  Sarah stared at her mother, reading the desperate hope and the anguished need. She’d suffered this guilt for years and suffered far more than Sarah could have imagined. How could she deny her mother this one chance to end it? “All right,” Sarah said, defeated. “If it’s so important to you, I won’t try to talk you out of it.”

  “And you’ll come with me?” she asked, her eyes lighting with renewed hope.

  “I can’t do that,” Sarah said without apology. “I don’t suppose they allow nonbelievers to attend in any case.”

  “But you have to go, Sarah. You must!”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . .” Mrs. Decker had to swallow the tears from her voice. “Because Maggie may not want to speak to me at all, but she’d speak to you. If she’ll come back for anyone, it will be you.”