Murder on Astor Place

by Victoria Thompson

  She would have darted off to fetch it, but Sarah stopped her. “I’ll only be gone a short while,” she assured the old woman with a meaningful glance at the clear sky. “That storm must still be a long way off.”

  “Just take care that you’re home before it starts,” Mrs. Elsworth warned. “It’s going to be a bad one.”

  Sarah was still shaking her head when she reached the comer.

  But as she paused on the VanDamm doorstep nearly an hour later, she couldn’t help giving the sky one last look. Still no hint of impending doom. Mrs. Elsworth’s candle-wick must have just gotten wet.

  As usual, Alfred answered the VanDamm’s door. His eyes were still sad, and he now moved as if he carried the weight of the world with him.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brandt, but Miss Mina isn’t at home today,” he told her before she even asked.

  Sarah wanted to curse with frustration, but she knew that would shock Alfred so much he’d probably never admit her again. Instead, she chose to simply bend one of the rules of decorum instead of smashing it entirely. “Is Miss Mina really away from home, or is she just not receiving me?”

  Alfred was visibly shocked at such a breach of etiquette. No one in the VanDamm’s social circle would dream of making such an inquiry and certainly not of a servant. If one were being snubbed, one would eventually surmise it and just stop calling. Sarah didn’t have the time or the patience for any more fruitless trips uptown if she had been banned from the VanDamm home, however, so she had to ask.

  “I’m sure I don’t know to what you might be referring, Mrs. Brandt,” he informed her stiffly.

  Sarah resisted the urge to shake him. “Can you just tell me if she’s really away from home?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, as if trying to decide if she were demented or not. Or perhaps he was determining whether she was worthy of this information. Finally, he said, “She’s visiting friends in the country.”

  Hiding her relief, Sarah was about to thank him and be on her way, when she remembered that another female lived in this house, one upon whom she might also pay a call, or at least try. “Is Mrs. VanDamm at home, by any chance?”

  Now Alfred really was shocked. “Mrs. VanDamm is an invalid, and she doesn’t receive callers.”

  That probably meant she only received a few of her nearest and dearest friends, and probably her doctors, too. Sarah did not fit into those categories, but she was also beyond caring if she shocked Alfred any further. “Would you ask her if she would receive me? Give her my card, and ... does she know I saw Alicia the night before she died?”

  Alfred’s face seemed frozen in shock. “I’m sure I couldn’t say what Mrs. VanDamm does and does not know.”

  “If she doesn’t, then please inform her. Tell her I’d like to talk to her about how Alicia looked that night.”

  She thrust her card at Alfred, the one that announced her as a midwife, after folding down the corner to announce she was paying her respects. He took it as gingerly as if she were handing him a live snake.

  “I feel I must inform you again, Mrs. VanDamm does not receive visitors,” he reminded her almost desperately.

  “I’ll wait in my usual place,” she said, undeterred.

  Alfred was gone for quite a while, so long in fact that Sarah began to fear something might have happened to him. Could he have gotten lost or fallen ill? But surely, Alfred knew his way around the house, and she would have heard some disturbance if he had been found prone someplace. So she tried to believe the wait was good news. A simple refusal would have been given instantly, and she would have been sent on her way. The delay indicated that at least her visit was being considered.

  At last Alfred reappeared, looking even more disturbed than he had before. “Mrs. VanDamm will receive you in her rooms,” he said, unable to hide his amazement. “Bridget will show you.”

  The maid had come halfway down the steps and was looking at Sarah as if she were a rare specimen in a zoo.

  “Thank you,” she said to Alfred, then hesitated when he looked as if he wanted to say something more.

  “Mrs. VanDamm hasn’t been well for ... for some time,” he said, each word sounding as if it were being dragged from his throat. Most likely it was, since he was breaking every unwritten rule of discretion by speaking of this at all. “She’s ... Miss Alicia’s death was a shock to her.”

  Sarah nodded, understanding the implied warning, although she wasn’t quite certain what the warning was for. She supposed she would find out soon enough.

  She followed the maid up the stairs and down the hallway to the proper door. Bridget knocked and slipped inside for a moment. Sarah heard her say, “Mrs. Brandt is here, ma’am,” and some murmured consent. Then Bridget admitted her.

  The room was dim and stuffy, the cheerful sunlight of this April morning held at bay by heavy velvet draperies drawn tightly over every window. In contrast, the furniture was light and elegant, if a bit ornate for Sarah’s taste. To her amazement, the bed was an enormous canopy sitting on a platform and surrounded by what Sarah could only call a fence, albeit a low and merely decorative one.

  Reminding herself she wasn’t here to critique the decor, she looked around and found Mrs. VanDamm reclining on a fainting couch by the fireplace, much as Mina had been the first time she’d called on her. Mrs. VanDamm looked much more natural in this position, however, probably because she’d had a lot more practice at playing the invalid. She wore a ruffled and flowered dressing gown, and her legs were draped with a crocheted coverlet in spite of the heat. The table beside her held an assortment of bottles and jars, and the room was redolent of the competing odors of camphor and lavender.

  “Sarah Decker?” Mrs. VanDamm asked, her voice at once feeble and intense. She looked remarkably unchanged since the last time Sarah had seen her years earlier. The lines of her face had deepened a bit, but her skin was still flawless and smooth, probably because she hadn’t seen the light of day in all those years. Her hair had silvered gracefully, and it was artfully arranged. This was probably what had caused the delay in Sarah being summoned to her.

  “Yes, Mrs. VanDamm,” Sarah said, going to the couch where she lay. She smiled her professional smile and took the slender hand the older woman offered. “Except I’m Sarah Brandt now.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember that you married. But something dreadful happened, didn’t it?” Her face creased into a delicate frown for a moment, and then she said, “I thought you had died.”

  “My sister Maggie passed away,” Sarah said, choosing not to take offense, as she would have if Mina had said the same thing. Mrs. VanDamm looked as if she might really be confused enough to make such a mistake. The pupils of her eyes seemed dilated, and a glance at the jars on the nearby table told her why. She saw Hood’s Pills and Buffalo Lithia Water and Ripley Brom-Lithia and Warner’s Safe Cure, among other brands of patent medicines. Some of these were harmless concoctions, but others contained generous dollops of morphine, which didn’t cure anything but usually made the sufferer less aware of her disease—and everything else, for that matter. If Mrs. VanDamm was taking these medications with any regularity, she would do well to remember her own name.

  “Your sister, yes,” she said vaguely. “I remember now. Tragic. And now we’ve lost our dear Alicia.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sarah said. Although she hadn’t been invited, she seated herself in the chair placed strategically near Mrs. VanDamm’s chaise, close enough that she didn’t have to let go of her hand. “I really hate to intrude on you at a time like this, but I did see Alicia right before ... well, the last night she was alive, and I thought you might like to hear that she seemed well.”

  “I couldn’t believe it when Bridget told me you’d seen her. I still don’t understand any of it, and Cornelius is no help. That policeman told us the strangest things, but when I ask Cornelius about it, he keeps saying it’s none of my concern, but how could that be? She was my child, after all. Everything about her is my concern, isn�
��t it?”

  Sarah nodded, although she couldn’t help thinking Mrs. VanDamm didn’t look as if she’d concerned herself with much of anything outside of this room in quite a while. “What don’t you understand? Maybe I could help.”

  Sarah figured that enlightening Mrs. VanDamm on any subject might earn her the wrath of the rest of the family, but she was willing to take the chance if she was able to get any information at all out of her. Besides, Mrs. VanDamm might not even remember her visit an hour from now.

  “I thought Alicia was at Greentree,” Mrs. VanDamm said plaintively. “That’s where we sent her. Or where Cornelius sent her, I should say. He didn’t consult me. He never does, not anymore. Alicia was always high strung, and lately she’d been very nervous. Crying for no reason, that sort of thing. I told him she was just at that age when young girls become emotional, but he thought she would do better away from the city, where things were quieter. She loved Greentree, and she had her horse there, so I saw no harm in it. But now they say she was living in some boardinghouse. I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it. Why would she go to a boardinghouse when she had two perfectly fine homes of her own?”

  “Alicia was living in a boardinghouse,” Sarah assured her. “That’s where I saw her, although I didn’t know who she was at the time. I noticed her because she looked so much like Mina did at that age.”

  “Oh, yes, she did. Alicia was the very image of Mina at the same age. Sometimes I even called her Mina by mistake. I know she didn’t like it, but she never let on. She was so sweet.” Her eyes filled with tears, and for a moment, Sarah regretted causing her such pain, but then she realized that Mrs. VanDamm was unable to hold onto that pain for more than a moment. Her watery gaze drifted, and along with it her attention. “Oh, I saw you admiring my bed. It’s Marie Antoinette’s.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Sarah asked, confused.

  “It’s an exact replica of Marie Antoinette’s bed. She used to receive her attendants while she was still in bed. It’s a French custom, don’t you know? But Marie wasn’t French and she didn’t like having all those people coming up to her bed, so she had them put up a fence to keep them from getting too close. Isn’t that clever?”

  Sarah had no idea if it was clever or not, but she nodded and smiled politely and tried to figure out how to turn the conversation back to Alicia. She need not have worried. Mrs. VanDamm might be vague, but she hadn’t slipped entirely away.

  “Please tell me, Sarah, how did Alicia come to be living at that boardinghouse?” she asked after a moment.

  “I believe she ran away from Greentree.”

  “That’s nonsense. Why would she run away? She had no reason.”

  Sarah knew Alicia had a very good reason, but she was fairly sure Mrs. VanDamm didn’t know it, and even if she did, would never admit it. “I believe she was upset by a marriage her father was arranging for her,” she tried.

  Mrs. VanDamm frowned as she considered this. “I had no idea she was upset. I didn’t think she even knew. Cornelius had talked about it, of course, but I couldn’t agree. I thought she was too young, although I wasn’t much older than she when I married Cornelius. I think marriage can be good for some girls, don’t you? Especially to an older man. Cornelius is twelve years my senior, and he helped me settle down. I remember how proud I was to be seen with him when I was a bride. He was so handsome and tall.”

  For a moment, she seemed lost in her memories of happier times, while Sarah tried to picture Mrs. VanDamm as a sixteen-year-old bride to her twenty-eight-year-old groom. Although it wasn’t the perfect picture, it was still a long way from Alicia and Sylvester Mattingly, who must be over sixty.

  “Do you know who the man was?” Sarah asked, hoping against hope Mrs. VanDamm could shed some light on the uneven match. “The man her father was planning for her to marry?”

  “Oh, yes, but I don’t think Cornelius would have gone through with it. He doted on Alicia too much to let her go just yet. And while I think the husband should always be older than the wife, the man Cornelius had in mind was much too old. Too young and too old, do you see? When I was young, many girls married at sixteen, but nowadays, that’s not done anymore. She hadn’t even made her debut. She would have missed so much.”

  And now she will miss everything, Sarah thought, but of course she didn’t say it. “Alicia must have thought her father would go through with it, or she wouldn’t have run away,” she pointed out instead.

  “That’s something I still don’t understand. How could she have gotten away? How would she have known where to go?”

  “Someone must have helped her,” Sarah offered, remembering Malloy’s pledge to keep the groom’s help a secret. “Perhaps a friend. Can you think of anyone who would have done that? A young man perhaps, someone her own age who might have been smitten with her.” Someone who could have gotten her with child, she added silently, praying it wasn’t Sylvester Mattingly, as she suspected. The thought was simply too awful to contemplate, although it would have explained Alicia’s flight perfectly.

  But Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head helplessly. “I can’t think of anyone. Our neighbors at Greentree had some boys, I think, but they’re away at school. I don’t believe Alicia knows them, either.”

  Plainly, all this thinking was too much for her. She lifted a hand to her head and closed her eyes as if in pain.

  “Are you all right? Can I get you something?” Sarah asked, instantly contrite. Morphine addict or not, Mrs. VanDamm was still a grieving mother.

  “My salts,” she said, motioning vaguely toward the assortment of medicine bottles on the table.

  Sarah picked through the bottles, seeing Lydia Pink-ham’s Remedy, which claimed to cure all manner of female ills but which merely masked them with a morphine fog. After a moment, she located the bottle of smelling salts. Lifting the stopper, she passed the foul-smelling bottle under Mrs. VanDamm’s nose until her eyes popped open again and her color returned.

  “Oh, thank you, my dear. I get these spells where I get so weak and ...” Her voice trailed off as her unfocused gaze suddenly focused on Sarah. “Did Bridget tell me that you’re a midwife?”

  “Yes, that’s right. And a trained nurse, as well.”

  “Why didn’t I think of this before?” she asked of no one in particular. “I’ve been wasting my time with doctors. The doctors are all men. What do men know about female problems?”

  “Are you having female problems?” Sarah asked solicitously, thinking that she might gain Mrs. VanDamm’s confidence by giving her some medical advice. If she was consulting with Sarah, she would certainly welcome her back for another visit if Sarah needed more information later.

  “Oh, yes, for years now, and nothing helps. I have these spells when I feel weak and I can’t get my breath, and other times my head feels like it’s coming off my body. And sometimes, if I’m very still and quiet, I can actually hear my heart beating. That isn’t natural, is it, to hear one’s own heart beating?”

  Sarah thought it probably was if you were listening for it, but she chose to humor Mrs. VanDamm. Perhaps she did have some problem that Sarah’s training could help. Sarah began to question her about her symptoms, and Mrs. VanDamm was only too happy to describe them in great detail. Apparently, she had nothing more to occupy her time than to sit here alone in the semidarkness and concentrate on every sensation of her own body.

  She quickly learned that Mrs. VanDamm, who was not quite fifty, had completed menopause and was probably just experiencing the effects of it. “Do you find marital relations uncomfortable?” Sarah asked, ready to give Mrs. VanDamm some tips on how to alleviate that discomfort, but Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head.

  “Oh, dear, I always found marital relations uncomfortable,” she confessed, rolling her eyes. “I can’t imagine how other women manage. After Mina was born, I told Mr. VanDamm I couldn’t endure his attentions anymore, and to his credit, he hasn’t bothered me since. It’s been over thirty years now, and I haven�
��t missed it at all, I assure you.”

  Sarah was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even remember what they’d been discussing. She wasn’t shocked to learn that Mrs. VanDamm didn’t have intercourse with her husband. Many women of her class felt as she did, which was why so many men of her class kept mistresses. No, what shocked her was the realization that if Mrs. VanDamm hadn’t had sexual relations since Mina was born, she couldn’t possibly have been Alicia’s mother.

  12

  FRANK LOOKED AROUND THE VANDAMM ESTATE in Mamoraneck with new eyes. He thought of Alicia VanDamm and wondered if she had been violated in this very house. If what Sarah Brandt believed was true, and Sylvester Mattingly had raped her and gotten her with child, then it might well have happened here, far away from prying eyes and ears.

  Frank hesitated a moment before knocking on the front door, wondering if one reason he’d been taken off the case was because of his last, unauthorized visit here. But this time when the housekeeper opened the door, she looked more resigned than outraged at his presence.

  “Just like a bad penny, ain’t you?” she said. “You keep turning up.”

  “I’d like to look around Miss VanDamm’s room again,” he said, telling only a partial truth.

  “You already did that. What do you think, that she came back from the dead and put something there you couldn’t’ve found before?”

  “This time I know what I’m looking for,” he replied, concealing his surprise that she didn’t seem to be aware that VanDamm hadn’t authorized his previous visit. Could the woman have neglected to mention it to her employer?

  “And what would that be?” she asked skeptically.

  “A diary.”

  Mrs. Hightower’s eyes grew large in her homely face. “What would you be wanting with that?” she demanded.

  “I think it might give me some clues about the identity of her killer. You knew the girl kept a diary, I take it.”