Murder on Astor Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “But you will try to find Alicia’s killer, won’t you?”

  Frank knew he shouldn’t make the promise, but he said, “I’ll find him.”

  And he wasn’t sure if he was terrified or grateful when he saw that Sarah Brandt believed him.

  CORNELIUS VANDAMM DID offer a reward for his daughter’s jewelry. When Frank explained that stolen goods could often be recovered this way, VanDamm was only too happy to oblige. The sapphire necklace had belonged to his mother, he said. Frank hadn’t mentioned that the trail of the pawned jewelry might also lead to Alicia’s killer. He didn’t want to ruin the deal, especially when VanDamm hadn’t mentioned anything about a reward for the killer yet and Frank wasn’t yet sure he even wanted the killer found.

  The pawnshop was on Catherine Street, amid the slums of the Bowery. All the pawnshops in the city were located in the Bowery. The shop was small and crowded with a strange assortment of goods, ranging from gold watches to eyeglasses. Overcoats hung along one wall, and musical instruments of various ages and stages of repair were piled in a comer. There was even a rack of umbrellas. People in need would sell anything for a few cents.

  The proprietor, a sly character known only as Slippery Joe, greeted him warmly. “Detective Malloy, as I live and breathe, and how are you this fine day?”

  It was gray and drizzling a bit outside, but Frank didn’t bother to mention this. “I’ve got a little problem, Joe, and I thought you might be able to help me with it.”

  “Anything I can do for the police, you know I always try to help.” Joe was a slender man of indeterminate age, with watery eyes and thinning gray hair and an ingratiating smile for detectives. Frank had no idea how he treated his customers since they always made themselves scarce when the coppers were around.

  “I’m trying to trace some jewelry. Would’ve been sold sometime in the last month.”

  “You know I don’t deal in stolen articles, Detective,” Joe reminded him unctuously. To give him credit, few pawnbrokers served as fences. The risks were too great, and besides, they made enough money already simply doing their regular work.

  Frank gave him a conspiratorial smile. “You probably didn’t know they were stolen. And I doubt the person who had them would’ve gone to a fence.” He was still going on the theory that Alicia VanDamm had sold the jewels herself to finance her escape. “They’re nice pieces, and there aren’t many places that would handle them. Not many other brokers would recognize the quality.”

  Joe had to agree. He rubbed this stubbled chin thoughtfully and nodded. “What did they look like?”

  Sarah Brandt had been right about the VanDamms having a paste copy of the jewelry. Frank pulled the imitation sapphire necklace from his pocket and laid it on the scratched counter. Joe’s eyes grew wide, and Frank had to agree, it was a shocking sight, so much beauty amid the squalor of the shop’s other contents.

  “Yes, I think I might have seen something like that come through here. I’d have to check my safe, of course. Is there a... a reward being offered for its return?”

  “Two hundred dollars.”

  A princely sum, to be sure, but only a fraction of what VanDamm had really offered. Frank wanted to leave some room for negotiation.

  Joe studied the necklace and nodded. “Yes, yes, I think I may have seen just this very piece.”

  “There were other pieces that may have been sold with it. I’ve got the description of them, too. The owner wants all of it back. There’s a pair of earrings, diamonds set in the shape of stars, and another pair that’s pearls. A pearl necklace, too, and a brooch shaped like a spider with a ruby in the center.”

  Joe nodded again. “So many beautiful things. I couldn’t possibly have given less than five hundred for them,” he assured Frank.

  Frank doubted this very much, but he was willing to dicker a bit to get what he wanted. “I’m sure the victim will go as high as three hundred, but that’s probably all. She’s a widow of limited means. The jewelry is all she has left in the world.”

  Plainly, Joe didn’t believe Frank any more than Frank believed him, but he said, “I’ll see if my memory is as good as it used to be. Please, make yourself at home, Detective, while I check my safe.”

  Just as Frank had suspected, Joe had all the pieces he was looking for. This meant they’d probably been sold as a group. If his luck was good, this meant they’d all been stolen from Alicia’s room the night she was killed and pawned by her murderer. If his luck was bad, as he suspected it probably was, Alicia herself had pawned the pieces and lived on the proceeds for the past month.

  “When did these come in?” Frank asked.

  Joe consulted his ledger. “Five weeks ago.”

  Frank frowned. This was even before Alicia had disappeared. “Do you remember who brought them in?”

  “I have a name here,” Joe said with a small smile. “John Smith.”

  Well, maybe this wasn’t too bad. The fellow who sold Alicia’s jewelry was obviously in her confidence. Which also meant he was probably the father of her child. If Frank could identify the fellow, he’d be very close to finding her killer. “I might be able to get the victim to raise the reward an extra fifty dollars if you could possibly recall what this John Smith looked like,” Frank said.

  Joe pretended to consider. Probably, he knew exactly without making any effort at all. Merchandise like this rarely found its way into his shop, and the seller would have made an indelible impression.

  “If I recall correctly, he was a man about your age. Not a swell, you understand, but not someone from the neighborhood either. He had an air of quality about him, which is why I believed him when he said he was selling the jewels for a friend who’d fallen on hard times. I had no reason to doubt him, at least,” he added in his own defense, in case Frank was thinking about prosecuting him for dealing in stolen merchandise.

  “What did he look like?”

  This time Joe really did consider. “Tall and well built. Looked almost like a football player, he was so fit, but he didn’t look like no college boy, if you know what I mean. Black hair, very curly. Irish, I’m sure, but no accent. Oh, and he had a scar right here.” Joe drew a line along his jaw on the right side.

  That should make him easy to identify, Frank thought. Now all he had to do was locate the fellow out of the millions of men living in New York City.

  SARAH SMILED AS she laid the carefully wrapped infant in her mother’s arms. New life was always a cause for rejoicing, and this one especially. Dolly Yardley had lost two others before this one, even though she wasn’t yet twenty years old. Her labor had been long and difficult, but both mother and child appeared to be fine now, if a bit weary from their ordeal. Sarah was weary herself, having been up most of the night. She had never been able to figure out why the most difficult births always occurred at night.

  “Oh, look, Will, ain’t she beautiful?” the new mother demanded of her young husband, pulling the blanket back from the baby’s face so he could admire her.

  Will had spent the night drinking stale beer with his friends in the seedy bar located in the basement of their tenement, so he was hardly in any condition to judge. “Next time we’ll have a boy,” he said.

  Sarah glared at him until her disapproval penetrated his alcoholic haze, and she said, “The baby looks just like Dolly, doesn’t she?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Will agreed as hastily as he could, given his condition. “The spittin’ image. She’ll be a beauty just like her Ma.”

  Dolly smiled at that and nodded her approval.

  “Have you decided on a name for her yet?” Sarah asked.

  “I think I’ll call her Edith, after my ma,” Dolly said.

  “You ain’t naming her after that whore,” Will protested.

  Sarah wanted to jump to Dolly’s defense, but Dolly was more than capable of defending herself. “Edith Rose, after both our mothers,” she said, sticking out her chin defiantly.

  “Rose ain’t my mother. I told you that.”
<
br />   “Maybe you should discuss this later, when Dolly’s had some time to rest,” Sarah suggested as tactfully as she could.

  Will seemed perfectly willing to wait. The new father stared at his wife and child for a long moment, as if he couldn’t quite bring them into focus, but apparently he was not as drunk as Sarah had thought, because after a moment, he turned to her a little sheepishly and said, “About your fee, Mrs. Brandt. I ain’t had much work lately, and I was wondering, could I owe it to you until things is better?”

  Sarah knew exactly what kind of work Will Yardley did, and if there hadn’t been much of it lately, it was because he’d been too lazy to climb into someone’s window and relieve them of their valuables. Or else he’d simply spent all his money treating his friends tonight. She glanced around the comfortably furnished room and wondered how much of the furnishings had been carried down a fire escape in the middle of the night while the rightful owners were sleeping unawares.

  “Will, I have a business proposition for you that will take care of whatever you owe me. Let’s step into the other room so Dolly and the baby can rest.”

  Will looked a little uncertain as he followed her out of the bedroom. They lived on the first floor in the front, the choicest location. No need to stumble up steep and dirty flights of stairs in the unlighted stairwells to a higher floor, and whatever fresh air was available would make its way into their front windows.

  Unfortunately, as in most tenements, only the front room of the apartment had windows, so the rear rooms were dim even on the sunniest days. Will pulled the bedroom door closed behind him, leaving Dolly and the baby in darkness except for the single gaslight on the wall. The kitchen, which was the middle room, was also dark except for the light coming in the other doorway. Sarah went through it into the front room, where she could see that the rain of the last few days had finally stopped and the sun was coming up strong and bright again.

  She turned to Will, who looked a little worried. “What kind of business proposition you got for me, Mrs. Brandt? I know people say things about me in the streets, but I want you to know, I’m an honest man. I never done none of the things—”

  “I just need some information, Will. I need to locate a person, and you might have the contacts to help me find him.”

  “What’s this person done?” Will asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing that I know of,” Sarah lied. Actually, he might be perfectly innocent, although an innocent man wasn’t likely to behave as this fellow had. “I’d just like to ask him some questions. About a friend of mine.”

  Will nodded wisely, as if he received requests like this all the time. “Who is this bugger you want to find?”

  “His name is Hamilton Fisher. He’s a tall fellow. Not very handsome. His hair is blond and his teeth stick out in front. I think he might be a cadet.”

  Will frowned. Plainly, he considered such work beneath him. “And you want me to bring him to you?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” Sarah assured him hastily. “I just need to know where he is. Then I’ll send someone to talk to him.”

  Will nodded, sure he’d figured it out. “I see it now. You’re trying to find some girl he recruited.”

  “Something like that,” Sarah agreed. She was getting far too good at lying.

  “And when I find him, I let you know, and we’re square?”

  “We’re square for this baby, and the next one, too. The boy you want so much,” Sarah added.

  Will scratched his chest absently as his gaze drifted toward the back of the flat where his wife and child slept. “Sure would like to get me a boy.”

  “Girls are nice, too. You’ll see. And you’ll find this fellow for me?”

  “I’ll find him.”

  Sarah hoped he could. Finding Hamilton Fisher would bring her one step closer to finding Alicia’s killer.

  In fact, it might bring her face to face with him.

  5

  FRANK COULDN’T BELIEVE HE WAS STILL IN THE same state as Manhattan. The wagon he’d hired at the train station in the picturesque little village of Mamoraneck had carried him down winding country lanes through lush fields rampant with wildflowers and past stately lawns that graced enormous mansions. When he thought of the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side and the dives of the Bowery, Frank wondered that they could exist in the same world as this place that looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  On the other hand, he knew that the rich must have a haven outside the city that the poor could never invade. In the city, no matter how wealthy you were, you couldn’t be very far from those who weren’t. Fifth Avenue had become home to the wealthy because it was as far as you could get from either of the island’s waterfronts and the slums and the vice found there. Even still, it was only a few short blocks away from that vice and could go no farther. Blocks that anyone, no matter how poor or depraved, could walk in a matter of minutes. Trapped on the tiny island of Manhattan, the rich could never hope to have a world completely unto themselves.

  This is why, for decades, the rich had been going north to where the land opened wide and could be purchased in huge parcels that would ensure no encroachment by the unworthy. They had come here to escape the unhealthy air and the unhealthy inhabitants of the city and to live in stately splendor.

  And here they could send their daughters when they wanted to hide them, as the VanDamms had wanted to hide Alicia.

  Frank glanced at the fellow driving the wagon. He was dressed in rough clothes, obviously a farmer, except instead of being in the fields on this unseasonably warm spring day, he was driving Frank to the VanDamm’s summer home.

  “Do you farm?” Frank asked.

  The fellow looked over at him suspiciously. He was past middle years, his hair white where it straggled out beneath his farmer’s hat, and his face was as brown and withered as an old potato. “Used to,” he offered.

  “But you don’t anymore?” Frank said by way of encouragement.

  “I drive this wagon. Make more money carrying the swells from the train to their fancy houses than I ever did behind a plow.”

  This made sense to Frank. “Do you ever drive the VanDamms?”

  The fellow shrugged his powerful shoulders. “Sometimes. Mostly, they get their own carriage.”

  “Did you ever drive their daughter? The younger one, Alicia?”

  “Once or twice. She’s a sweet little thing. Not like the other one. That one’s got a tongue on her could raise a welt on a leather boot.”

  Frank thought this was probably true. “The VanDamm girl’s dead, you know.”

  He looked surprised. “Is she now? Can’t say I’m sorry.” He spit a stream of tobacco juice over the side of the wagon. “What happened? Did she try that razor tongue of hers on the wrong man?”

  “Not her,” Frank said. “The younger one, Alicia. She’s the one who’s dead.”

  “The hell you say!” the driver exclaimed. “And her so young. Hardly more’n a babe. She get sick or something?”

  Frank watched him carefully as he said, “No, someone murdered her.”

  The driver gaped at him, his shock almost painful to behold. For a long moment, the only sound was the clop, clop of the draft horse as he plodded on, but finally the driver was able to say, “What happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  The driver nodded wisely. “That’s it, then. I been wondering what a copper’s doing out here, asking for the VanDamm place.”

  Frank frowned. He hadn’t told the man his profession, so he must have been able to tell just by looking at him. He wondered what gave him away, but he didn’t ask. The man would only lie.

  “You didn’t, by chance, take her to the train station about a month ago, did you?” he tried. “She would’ve been alone, or maybe with a young man.”

  The driver shook his head. “Haven’t even seen her in a couple years. They keep ’em close once they start getting ripe.”

  It took Frank a minute
to figure out what he was saying. “They keep a close watch on the girls, you mean?”

  “Always afraid they’ll get in trouble. You know what young men’re like. It ain’t so long since you was one yourself.”

  Frank could hardly remember, but he nodded his agreement. “You ever hear of her getting in trouble? With a young man, I mean?”

  But the driver shook his head. “Never heard nothin’ about her at all. Like I say, they keep ’em pretty close.”

  Frank knew he shouldn’t be disappointed. The odds that this fellow had driven Alicia and her lover to the train when she’d run away were pretty slim. She would’ve been much more circumspect. Probably, she stole away in the middle of the night. Maybe she didn’t even take the train at all. It was a long carriage ride back to the city and the roads were poor, but she might not have wanted to risk being recognized on the train.

  “That’s it there,” the driver said, pointing with his chin.

  Frank looked up and gasped in surprise at the house sitting on a rise before him. It seemed enormous, large enough to accommodate the inhabitants of an entire block of tenements. Myriad windows glittered in the blinding sun and the red bricks glowed. The grounds rolled away gently on every side, the grass newly green in the warm spring sunshine. From a distance, everything looked perfectly peaceful and serene, and why shouldn’t it? The murder had taken place far from here, in that other world he’d left behind this morning when he’d boarded the train at Grand Central Station.

  This morning he’d imagined that he could come out here and learn more about Alicia VanDamm and why she had run away and with whom. Now, looking at the home from which she had fled, he couldn’t even imagine why she had done such a thing. Who in her right mind would leave this beautiful house for the uncertainty of a life alone, hiding in a strange place among people she didn’t know? To run away with a lover, that Frank could understand. He could still remember passion, although the memories were sadly dim. He could still remember love, no matter how much he wanted to forget. Without those motivations, Alicia VanDamm’s flight made no sense at all.