Murder on Astor Place

by Victoria Thompson

  Her mother looked away, as if unwilling to meet Sarah’s gaze.

  “You know something, don’t you?” Sarah asked.

  Her mother bit her lip and sighed. “Not really, but I can think of one possible explanation, although it does no one credit, not even me.”

  “Mother, what are you talking about?”

  Mrs. Decker sighed again. “I feel like the lowest gossip to even think such a thing, but it wouldn’t be the first time it happened.” Her mother turned back to her, her eyes bleak with despair and remembered loss. “We sent Maggie to France when it happened to us, or at least we tried to.”

  As Sarah met her mother’s tortured gaze, all the awful memories came flooding back. Maggie angry and defiant, refusing to bend to her father’s will, refusing to be hidden away until her baby was born. Maggie, pale and dying, making Sarah promise to take care of the child who was already dead. The pain of her loss was still raw, and she saw her mother felt it, too. Her eyes had filled with tears, and she held herself stiffly, as if the slightest movement might shatter her.

  That was when the question formed in Sarah’s mind, the one she’d never allowed herself to consider, the one she would never have dared to ask all those years ago. “What would you have done with Maggie’s child if she’d gone to France the way you’d planned?”

  Even though Mrs. Decker resolutely refused to blink, still one tear escaped and cascaded down her pale cheek. “I wish I had thought...” she whispered, her voice ragged with the agony of her losses.

  “You wish you had thought what?” Sarah demanded, clutching tight to her fury because she knew she’d never be able to endure the pain if she allowed herself to feel it.

  “I wish I had thought to pretend I was with child myself. I could have gone with her. We could have brought the baby back and...”

  “And pretended it was our baby sister,” Sarah said, finishing the thought her mother couldn’t.

  Her mother covered her mouth to hold back the cry of anguish propriety forbade her to utter.

  Sarah felt as if someone had clawed her heart out. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Was that what had driven her to flee? The thought of having her child torn from her, taken away, never to be seen again? No wonder she had been so desperate. Sarah had blamed it on passion, but she hadn’t understood that Maggie had made the only choice she could if she wanted to keep her child.

  Mrs. Decker drew a ragged breath and turned back to Sarah. “I would have done it. I would have done anything to save her. You must believe that, Sarah.”

  Anything except let her marry the man she loved, Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it. Recriminations wouldn’t bring Maggie back, and in all fairness, her mother hadn’t been the one who decided what would become of Maggie and her child. Someday she would have to face the person who had, but not today. Today, she had to comfort her mother and herself.

  “I believe you, Mother. Any woman would, to protect her child.”

  Even a woman as shallow and self-centered as Francisca VanDamm, she realized as she watched her mother’s lovely face crumble beneath the weight of her grief.

  FRANK DOVE FOR the body, grabbing the dangling legs and lifting, relieving the pressure of the rope around the neck, but even as he did so, he knew he was too late. The body was already stiffening, and he could feel the chill of death even through the man’s clothes. After a moment, he let go and stepped back in defeat, looking up into the face of death.

  Harvey had not gone peacefully. Frank could see the scratch marks on his throat where he had clawed at it while it choked the life out of him. The reaction was instinctive, no matter how much someone might want to die. No matter that he had been despondent enough to make a noose and tie it securely and mount the stool and slip the rope around his neck. Still, when the stool tipped over and the rope cut into the living flesh, the will to live overtook the will to die for at least a few seconds, no matter how futile the effort.

  Frank wanted to cut him down. That was always the first thing anyone wanted to do, and Frank felt the urge especially strong when he remembered Harvey was a man his own age, a good man whose only sin had been trying to help a girl he loved. But Frank knew that before he cut Harvey down and afforded his body some measure of dignity, he had to look at everything first to make sure it was as it should be.

  The stool was there, turned over just as it would be if he’d kicked it. The rope was tied securely to a hook on the wall, then dropped over an exposed beam. The bloated face and bulging eyes told of death by strangulation. Frank could even imagine a motive or two. Harvey might have blamed himself for Alicia’s death and been unable to bear the guilt any longer. Or perhaps he and Sarah Brandt had been wrong, and Harvey really was the father of Alicia’s child. Perhaps he was even her killer, although Frank was almost certain he wasn’t. Still, he’d been wrong before, and any one of those explanations would have accounted for Harvey taking his own life.

  Except he hadn’t taken his own life.

  A less skilled investigator might not have known that, of course. A less skilled detective, someone who would be investigating a death in the country for example, might have missed it completely. But Frank saw it at once, the first clue that didn’t fit. The rope mark on Harvey’s throat. The rope mark that went straight around his neck, the way it would if someone came up behind him and put a garrote around it and twisted and twisted until he was dead. The rope from which he was hanging would have left a completely different mark at a completely different angle, and Frank was willing to bet that when he cut Harvey down, he would discover no mark at all underneath it, because Harvey had already been dead when he’d been hoisted up over that beam. And when he turned the stool upright and set it beneath Harvey’s feet, he was certain of it, because there was a good six inches between Harvey’s dangling toes and the stool he had supposedly stood on when he put the noose around his neck.

  Frank spent most of the next hour summoning the other servants, questioning them about what they had seen and heard, and sending someone to fetch the local police, such as they were. Frank figured his own investigation would be the deciding factor in the case, since the local authorities might have never encountered a murder, so he made it as thorough as he could. None of the servants had seen or heard anything untoward, but one of the gardeners had noticed a young man riding by earlier in the day. Why he thought it was a young man he couldn’t rightly say, except that was the impression he got. All he could really be certain of was that it was a man. Since Frank had already decided Harvey’s killer was a man, this was hardly startling news.

  When he’d finished with the servants and laid Harvey’s body out decently, Frank remembered his original reason for wanting to see the groom in the first place. He could no longer question Harvey about Alicia VanDamm’s diary, but he could at least search the man’s room to see if his theory was true.

  Harvey slept in a room adjacent to the stable. It was remarkably neat, just as the stables themselves. Harvey’s meager possessions were hung and stacked and stored, each in its proper place, and his bed was tightly made, blankets tucked just so. Searching the place was the work of a few minutes, since the furnishings were so sparse. And just as Frank had suspected, Harvey hadn’t been very imaginative about selecting a hiding place. A loose floorboard underneath the bed came up when Frank pried it with his pocket knife, and beneath it he found the book that Sylvester Mattingly had hired Ham Fisher to find.

  It was a slender volume, bound in red leather with gilt edges. Frank only had time to open it and recognize the girlish penmanship inside when he heard the local police arriving outside. He hastily slipped the book into his coat pocket and went out to meet them.

  WHEN SHE STEPPED out of her mother’s house onto Fifty-Seventh Street, Sarah was surprised to see how late it was. She’d wasted most of the afternoon taking tea with her mother’s friends, and then she’d spent the rest of it salving old wounds with her mother. At least she finally felt at peace with one of her parents. She hadn’t been a
ble to ease her mother’s grief at Maggie’s death, but they’d been able to share it for the first time without recriminations, something they’d never done before.

  If she felt better about her own family’s relationships, she was more confused than ever about the VanDamms’. Sarah had known instinctively that her mother would be able to understand Francisca VanDamm. They had been born and bred in the same world, so their values and beliefs would be similar. What Sarah hadn’t counted on was having her mother suggest such a horrible possibility for Alicia’s existence.

  As she reached the corner, Sarah looked for oncoming traffic, and only then did she notice how dark the sky had become, much darker than it should have been for this time of day. As she marveled, she heard the rumble of distant thunder. A storm was brewing off the ocean. Mrs. Elsworth had been right, and here was Sarah, on the other end of town with no umbrella and an even bigger mystery to solve than she’d had this morning.

  She thought of Francisca VanDamm and wondered if going back to question her again would be a waste of time. Most likely, especially because she probably wouldn’t admit Sarah again. The midwife in her had served the woman’s purpose in giving Mrs. VanDamm medical advice, so what possible interest could she have in seeing her again?

  But someone else in that house also knew what had happened sixteen years ago and how Alicia had come to be born. And that person probably also knew how Alicia herself had come to be in the same situation, the bastard child sent away to the country to bear her own bastard child in secret. Sarah was sure that if she could just find out how all of this had happened, she would know who had killed Alicia and why.

  As thunder rumbled overhead, Sarah turned her steps up Fifth Avenue, back to the VanDamms’s town house.

  FRANK WAITED ON the train station platform while the well-dressed passengers from the city disembarked. They carried newspapers and umbrellas and looked around for the carriages that were to meet them. Not many people were returning to the city at this time of day, so Frank had a car practically to himself, except for a couple of ragged, barefoot boys.

  “Candy, mister?” one of them asked, offering him an unappetizing bit of sweet. The boys boarded the train in the city, usually sneaking on without paying the fare, and sold candy to the wealthy men traveling to their homes in the country.

  Ordinarily, Frank would have refused. These boys were the worst guttersnipes, homeless ruffians who were always in trouble with the law. Frank certainly had no reason to show one of them a kindness. And he had absolutely no intention of eating anything they sold.

  But then he looked into the boy’s eyes, something he never allowed himself to do, and he saw the vacant hopelessness of a child abandoned by his family and tossed away like so much rubbish. Alicia VanDamm’s diary weighed heavily in his pocket, and perhaps that was what made him pull out a nickel and toss it to the boy. That and the memory of Harvey’s body hanging from the rafter.

  The boy gave him a gapped-tooth grin. “Thanks, mister,” he said, handing him a grimy sweet and scurrying away. The boys would probably curl up on an empty seat at the back of the car and sleep, enjoying the rare opportunity to be warm and dry and unmolested for however brief a time. Life on the streets seldom afforded them such a luxury.

  As he heard the two boys whispering at the rear of the car, Frank shook his head in wonder at his own generosity. Sarah Brandt would probably have given the boy her last penny. Her influence would ruin Frank if he wasn’t careful.

  The train started with a lurch, and the station house receded as the train moved forward into the growing twilight. Frank noticed a flicker of lightning on the horizon. A storm was moving in off the ocean, the perfect backdrop for the reading he had to do.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the book he had found beneath the floor in Harvey’s room. Just as he had suspected, it was Alicia VanDamm’s diary. She’d written her name in the front, along with the date, January 1, 1893. He checked the last entry. March 6, 1896, probably the day she’d run away.

  In between, she’d written sporadically. Some days she wrote only a line or two. Others she skipped altogether, but sometimes she went on for pages, and those were the ones marked with the blots of her tears. He remembered Lizzie telling him how she’d cry when she wrote in this book, and when Frank read her words, he wanted to weep, too, at least at first. But soon the rage took him, welling like a tidal wave of fury until he wanted to commit murder instead.

  As the rain began to lash the windows of the car, Alicia’s words began to lash Frank’s soul, and when he read her final entry, just as the train pulled into Grand Central Station, Frank knew the truth. He knew that Cornelius VanDamm had killed his own daughter, and even worse, he knew why.

  13

  BY THE TIME SARAH REACHED THE VANDAMMS’S porch, the thunder was louder, and the sky had turned an alarming shade of purple. While she waited for someone to answer her knock, the first fat raindrops began to fall, splatting rudely on the pavement.

  “Mrs. Brandt,” Alfred said in amazement. It was long past normal visiting hours, and she certainly had not been invited for supper. “I’m sorry, but—”

  Sarah never learned whether she could have convinced him with her charm to admit her because at that moment, a streak of lightning split the heavens, releasing a torrential downpour.

  Crying out in surprise, Sarah instinctively bolted for the safety of the house, and Alfred’s instinct to protect a lady in distress prevailed. He swept her inside and slammed the door against the terrifying onslaught of the storm.

  “Good heavens!” she gasped, astonished at how wet she had gotten in just those few seconds. Outside the storm roared with a ferocity that rattled the door.

  Alfred looked shaken himself, and he pressed a hand against the panel, as if assuring himself it was securely closed and would hold against the assault.

  “Alfred, what’s going on?”

  Sarah looked up to see Mina VanDamm emerging from the parlor. She stopped short when she saw Alfred was not alone.

  “Who’s there?” she demanded, squinting to make Sarah out in the darkness.

  “It’s Sarah Brandt, Mina,” she said, stepping into the light of the gas jet. She was unable to believe her good fortune. Mina must have just returned from her trip. She still wore her traveling suit. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I was walking back to the el from visiting my mother’s house when the storm broke. It came on so suddenly, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but seek refuge here, and Alfred was kind enough to let me in.” The best part of the story was that it was almost true.

  “This is extraordinary,” Mina exclaimed, far from pleased. “We’re in mourning, and we aren’t receiving visitors, Sarah. I must ask you to leave.”

  A gust of wind rattled the windows.

  “Miss Mina, the storm is frightful,” Alfred protested.

  For a second the room lit with a blinding flash as lightning split the sky again, and the crack of thunder followed almost immediately.

  Sarah saw Mina look up in alarm, but her reaction lasted for only a second. Then her expression hardened again. “Alfred, send for the carriage to take Mrs. Brandt home.”

  “They can’t take the horses out in this, Miss Mina,” Alfred said. “They’ll bolt for sure.”

  Surely, she could see Sarah had to stay here, at least until the storm had blown itself out. But she didn’t have to like it. “Well, I suppose we have no choice. Come into the parlor, Sarah, but don’t expect me to be much company. I’ve only just returned home, and I’m much too tired for conversation.”

  Without waiting for Sarah’s reply to the ungracious invitation, Mina turned and went back into the parlor. Feeling slightly less fortunate than she had a few moments ago, Sarah gave Alfred her thanks and followed Mina.

  The room looked even worse in the gloom of the storm than it had the last time Sarah had seen it in broad daylight. Now the heavy furniture seemed to loom forbiddingly, and the heavy draperies plunged the room into near dar
kness. Even the next flash of lightning could hardly penetrate their folds.

  Mina hadn’t turned on the gas jets, either, and the day had been much too warm for a fire, although the storm would probably change that. Mina waked to the fireplace and stood by the cold hearth, staring down at it as if she were watching an actual fire.

  “I called this afternoon, and Alfred said you were visiting friends,” Sarah tried, hoping to engage her sullen hostess in a conversation that she could somehow turn to the subject of Alicia’s parentage.

  “Alfred had no right to say anything about me at all,” Mina snapped, not bothering to conceal her anger or even spare Sarah so much as a glance.

  “I’m afraid I pestered him until he admitted you were away. I was afraid you’d just decided not to receive me anymore after my last visit.”

  Mina gave her a withering look that told Sarah she probably had, then turned her attention back to the fireplace.

  Mina hadn’t invited her to sit down, but Sarah took a seat on the nearest sofa, looking askance at the water spots on her new suit and hoping they’d dry without leaving marks. For a minute, she debated what to say next, deciding against asking how Mina had enjoyed her trip, figuring that would simply provoke her hostess needlessly. If she was going to provoke her, she could think of a much more productive approach.

  “I had a lovely visit with your mother this afternoon,” she said.

  “What?” Mina asked, whirling to face her. “You must be joking.”

  Sarah wasn’t sure if Mina thought she was joking about visiting her mother or about the visit being lovely. She chose not to inquire. “Not at all. She was most anxious to find out how Alicia had seemed that night before she died. I was able to reassure her that Alicia didn’t seem frightened or upset.”

  “You actually spoke to my mother?” Mina asked incredulously, as if she hadn’t heard anything else Sarah had said.