Murder on Astor Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “That’s a lie! I told you, I wasn’t even there!” VanDamm insisted. “I have witnesses! Sarah’s father—”

  “And when you realized she was going to leave you and take the child with her,” Malloy continued, “you flew into a jealous rage and strangled her!”

  “No! No!” VanDamm was gasping again, clutching his chest. “I’d never hurt her! I swear it! How can you even think such a thing?”

  “Stop it!” Mina cried. “Can’t you see you’re killing him? Father, you must let me take you to your room. I’ll take care of you, just like I used to. You’ll see, it can be just like it was before! I won’t let them bother you anymore. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “The first thing you’ll need to take care of is finding out who killed Alicia,” Malloy reminded her. “A man went to the boardinghouse that night with Mrs. Petrovka, the abortionist. That man killed Alicia, and the same man killed Mrs. Petrovka and Harvey. If it wasn’t you, VanDamm, who was it? Someone you hired? Was it Mattingly? Or his man Fisher? Who was it? Don’t you want to see the person who killed her punished?”

  “Not if it would cause him embarrassment,” Mrs. VanDamm said from the staircase. “His good name is all he has left since he lost his soul the first time he used his baby daughter for his pleasure.”

  “Don’t listen to them, Father,” Mina said, reaching up to stroke his face. “They can’t make you say a thing. Come with me. I’ll make you forget she ever existed! I can be your little girl again just like it was before she came!”

  He stared at her for a long moment, and Sarah watched in amazement as his expression slowly changed from distaste to disbelief to horror. “It was you!” he said, his voice a hoarse croak. “You killed Alicia!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she scoffed, thoroughly offended. “You heard him. The witness said it was a man.”

  “It looked like a man. But it was you, wasn’t it, Mina?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’ve had a shock, Father. You aren’t yourself. Mother has a sedative that will help you—”

  “I know about you,” he said, silencing her.

  The two of them stared at each other as if they’d completely forgotten about the others, and in that moment, Sarah had a chance to figure it all out.

  “Mina was the man with Emma Petrovka!” she told Malloy, whose expression told her he doubted her sanity.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look at her!” Sarah said, pointing to where Mina stood beside her father, shorter by only a few inches and almost as tall as Malloy. Her body was sturdy and angular beneath the flounces of her dress. “If she were wearing men’s clothes, and it was dark, she could easily pass for a man.”

  Malloy couldn’t believe it. “Why would she want to—?”

  “For the freedom!” Sarah explained, unable to believe he couldn’t comprehend it at once. “As a man, she could go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted.”

  “And she did.”

  This time the voice came from behind them, from someone they’d completely forgotten was there. Alfred’s face was gray and slack, but his eyes burned with a righteousness Sarah would never have guessed he possessed.

  “Alfred, if you want to continue in our employ...” Mina began, but he simply shook his head.

  “No one will work for you when they know what you’ve done in this house.”

  “Stop it! Stop it right now!” Mina shrieked. “I won’t have it, I tell you!”

  “What do you mean, Alfred?” Malloy said, ignoring her outburst. “What did she do?”

  “She dressed like a man and went out at night. Been doing it for years. I don’t know everything she does, but someone saw her going into an opium den once, wearing her man’s clothes, or that’s what I heard.”

  “There were prostitutes, too,” her father said, his voice hollow. “Women she would pay for God knows what.”

  Distracted by the shock of it all, Sarah had lost track of what she should be surmising, but Malloy hadn’t.

  “You dressed like a man,” he said to Mina, “and hired Emma Petrovka to get rid of your sis—” He stopped himself and made the correction, “... of Alicia’s baby. And when Petrovka wouldn’t operate and left, you killed Alicia to get rid of both her and her child.”

  “Lies! It’s all lies! Father, don’t believe them!”

  But he did believe them. “You killed her,” he murmured incredulously. “You killed my darling girl!”

  On the staircase, Mrs. VanDamm cried out like a wounded animal.

  “No! No, I didn’t, I swear it!” Mina screamed.

  “How did she know where to find Alicia that night?” Malloy asked.

  “I didn’t! I couldn’t have!” Mina insisted.

  “The report,” VanDamm said. “Sylvester had sent it here to the house. We’d been trying to find her diary before we brought her back, and he had a man in the boardinghouse with her, looking for it. But I was out and didn’t see his report until the next morning. Mina could have read it, though. She would have known where to find Alicia that night.”

  “And when she realized Mrs. Petrovka could implicate her, she killed her, too,” Malloy reminded them.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about! I never saw this person!”

  “And poor Harvey,” Sarah remembered. “Did she kill him, too?”

  “Yes. She was dressed like a man again,” Malloy said. “One of the servants saw her riding away. She must have come up behind him and strangled him with a piece of rope. He might have even known she was there. He wouldn’t have considered her a danger, so she could pretty much do whatever she wanted. Then she somehow got him up and hanging from a rafter. How did you do it, Miss VanDamm? You must be much stronger than you appear.”

  “Father, you can’t believe this... this bogtrotter over your own daughter!” Mina grabbed him by the lapels, clinging when he would have pulled away. “Have you forgotten Alicia left you? She ran away, but I stayed! I’ve stayed with you all these years! That must count for something. I love you, Father! You must love me, too. That’s what you said! That’s what you told me all those times when you—”

  “No!” VanDamm roared as thunder shook the house. “You killed my beautiful girl! Get out! Get out of my sight!”

  “Father, please!” she begged, but he tore her hands away from his coat and shoved her from him.

  “I’ll be glad to take her out of your sight,” Malloy said. “Would the women’s lockup be far enough?”

  The look Mina turned on him was pure venom, and Sarah took a step backward just from instinct. “Malloy, I wouldn’t try to—” she began, but Mina interrupted her.

  “You’ll never arrest a VanDamm,” she told him acidly. “Tell him, Father. You’d never allow it, would you? No matter what I’ve done or haven’t done.”

  Everyone looked at VanDamm, and for a moment, Sarah believed he would forbid Malloy to take her. As much as he might despise her for killing Alicia, he would have to risk losing everything he prized in life in order to see his daughter arrested and tried for murder. But to her surprise, his expression hardened. His dark mustache stood out boldly against his pale skin, and sweat dampened his forehead, but he held his head high as he said, “You killed Alicia. How can you think I would care what happened to you?”

  The sound she made was so anguished, it chilled Sarah’s blood, and for a moment she thought Mina might attack her own father out of sheer rage. But the balled fists struck his chest in frustration, not fury, and when he grabbed her wrists to hold her, she wrenched free, and with one last shriek, she picked up her skirts and ran.

  Malloy would have stopped her if she’d headed for the front door, but she went for the stairs instead, charging up them as if all the devils of hell pursued her, and she surely put Malloy into that category.

  She slammed past her mother, and for a second it looked as if Mrs. VanDamm might go toppling over the banister, but before anyone could think to cat
ch her, she’d grabbed hold and clung as Mina ran by her up the stairs.

  “Can she get out that way?” Malloy asked Alfred.

  “Not unless she jumps out a window,” the old butler replied.

  “Mr. VanDamm,” Sarah asked in alarm. “Are you really going to let Malloy arrest her?”

  “Of course not,” Mrs. VanDamm said unsteadily as she sank down onto one of the steps. “He was only trying to frighten her. They’d throw him out of his club if his daughter was hanged.”

  “Shut up, Francisca,” VanDamm said wearily. He was still rubbing his chest absently, as if the pain had vanished but he wanted to be ready in case it returned. Sarah could literally see him gathering the remnants of his pride and self-confidence around him again as he struggled to regain his dignity.

  Why this should be so important to him when she and Malloy now knew the filthiest secrets about him, she had no idea, but it was, as evidenced by the power he still seemed to believe he possessed.

  “You’ve done your job, Detective Sergeant,” he told Malloy. “You found Alicia’s murderer, and now you may go.”

  “I have to arrest her,” Malloy said, stubborn to the last. “She killed three people. No one who knows that is safe now, not even you.”

  Whether VanDamm believed him or not, they never learned, because the sound of running feet upstairs distracted them.

  “Mr. VanDamm!” a voice cried from abovestairs, and in another moment, a maid appeared on the landing. “Mr. VanDamm! Miss Mina went up on the roof! I tried to stop her. The storm’s that bad, I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. She just opened the door and...”

  By then Malloy was halfway up the stairs, taking them two at a time in determined leaps. Sarah started after him, but VanDamm almost knocked her over as he rushed past, pushing her out of the way. Outside, a flash of lightning lit the room as bright as day, illuminating Mrs. VanDamm’s fragile features. Sarah knew she would never forget the expression on that face.

  She would have expected fear or shock, or even horror and disbelief. Instead she saw pure, naked triumph as she raced up the stairs behind the men.

  14

  SARAH WAS CURSING THE TIGHTNESS OF HER CORSETS by the time she reached the dark, narrow stairway to the roof. Gasping for breath, she stared up at the gaping doorway above her. For an instant, another flash of lightning revealed the raging storm through the opening. The driving rain had washed halfway down the stairs, and the cold, damp air swept past her to invade the rest of the house.

  Thunder cracked, making her jump. Only a fool would go out into this.

  Then she heard a shrieked, “No!” and she was galvanized.

  Gathering her skirts in both hands, she clattered upward, sliding and nearly losing her balance on the wet steps but finally launching herself out onto the roof. The storm attacked her, lashing at her hair and her face and her clothes, trying to tear her apart, and for a second she was blind. The darkness and rain and wind obscured everything, but then, in another flash of lightning, she saw them.

  They were standing at the edge of the roof. Mina was on the low ledge that encircled it, holding on to some pole for balance while her father pleaded with her. “This is crazy, Mina! Get down from there! You can’t believe I’d let them take you to jail!”

  “You’re just worried that I’ll embarrass you if I jump!” she accused, clinging tightly to the pole but perilously close to being swept over the ledge by the force of the wind. “If I kill myself, you won’t be able to explain it to your friends!”

  “Is that what you want? To become an ugly piece of gossip that women whisper about over afternoon tea?” he shouted.

  “I won’t care what happens when I’m dead!” she cried, throwing back her head as if daring the storm to take her. The rain had drenched her, turning her hair into a sodden mass and molding her dress to her body.

  It drenched Sarah as well, drowning and stinging and chilling her, but still she inched forward, compelled to get closer. Perhaps if she could sneak up unnoticed, she could grab Mina and ...

  “Don’t come any closer!” Mina screamed, halting Sarah in her tracks, but she wasn’t even looking at Sarah. In fact, she probably hadn’t even noticed Sarah, who was still in the shadows. Malloy was the object of her warning. He’d been edging around, working his way up behind Mina, but now he stopped, too. They all stood like statues, frozen in the darkness for that awful moment in time.

  “Mina, give me your hand!” her father commanded. “Let’s go inside where we can talk this over like civilized people!”

  A lightning flash illuminated them, bleaching all the color from their faces but starkly revealing the expressions on those faces. Mina still clung to the pole as the rain and wind tore at her. VanDamm stood tall and straight, looking powerful enough to force her down using his will alone. He reached out confidently, as if he could not imagine her refusing his order.

  “Come here, Mina,” he said. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  That was when Sarah realized Malloy had moved. He was closer now. Mina hadn’t noticed because she was watching her father, but Sarah saw he was going to be close enough to grab her in another few steps. Forgotten, Sarah stole through the shadows, ready to help him when he made his move. He’d need that help. If Mina decided to jump, Malloy wouldn’t be able to hold her alone.

  Her sodden dress weighed her down as she tried to hurry, but at last she was close enough to smell the wet wool of Malloy’s suit and to hear Mina’s frightened animal sounds above the roar of the storm. She must have finally realized her peril. If she let go of the pole, the wind might sweep her off the wall and over the side of the house where she would be dashed to her death on the cobbles below.

  “Father!” she cried, her anguish as raw and cold as the wind.

  “Give me your hand!” he said, shouting above the storm.

  Slowly, painfully, still clutching the pole with one hand while reluctantly letting go with the other, she reached out to him while behind her, Malloy reached out, too, ready to grab hold and haul her down.

  And just in that instant when VanDamm’s hand met Mina’s, the sky exploded in a blaze of light as lightning struck the pole to which Mina clung.

  Afterward Sarah remembered it all in minute detail, right down to the color of Mina’s eyes as the electricity jolted through her and into her father, and sparks flew everywhere. Although it seemed to last a lifetime, the scene took no more than seconds, and then they were plunged into darkness again.

  “Mina! Mr. VanDamm!” Sarah cried as the smell of burnt flesh filled her nostrils. Then she tripped over an obstacle she hadn’t expected, and she saw that there were three bodies down, not two. “Malloy!”

  She practically fell over him. Had he been touching Mina when the lightning struck? Was he hit, too? He’d been flung on his back, and Sarah dropped to her knees beside him. “Malloy! Malloy! Can you hear me?” she screamed, slapping his wet face with both her hands. She was rewarded with a moan. She laid her palm on his chest and felt a heartbeat through the soaked wool, weak but regular. He was alive!

  Then she turned to Mina and VanDamm, but she saw as soon as the next flash of lightning that they were both gone. The rain slashed down at their staring eyes, and neither blinked. And their hands, Sarah saw, were still touching, melded together by a force neither of them could deny.

  SARAH FOUND THE apartment without any trouble at all. She was a little surprised by the neighborhood, but then she shouldn’t have been. Nothing about Malloy should surprise her.

  She hefted the basket she carried higher on her bent arm and lifted her skirts with the other while she climbed the stairs to the second floor where the boys playing outside had assured her Malloy lived. Outside the door, she hesitated for a moment, entertaining doubts for the first time. She still wasn’t sure what had compelled her to find him. But then, what did it matter? She’d found him, and unless she wanted to turn around and go home, carrying her basket of cheer with her, she’d better knock and d
eliver it so she could clear her conscience once and for all.

  A woman’s voice answered her knock, telling her to wait a minute, which she gladly did. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting. She hadn’t thought about it, but she was fairly certain Malloy wasn’t married. Had he told her that or was it just her general impression of him? Then she saw the woman and knew he wasn’t.

  She was small and round and wore her graying hair pulled tightly into a bun. Her plain face was as wrinkled as a prune, and she seemed as surprised to see Sarah as Sarah was to see her. “What is it, now? We’ve done nothing wrong,” she said with a fierce frown.

  Sarah wondered who the woman thought she was. “I’m Sarah Brandt. I came to see Detective Sergeant Malloy. To see how he’s doing, that is.”

  The woman’s suspicion turned instantly to surprise. “You’re here for Francis? Whatever for?”

  “I... I was with him when he ... when he was injured the other night. I called at the hospital, but they said he’d only stayed a little while. He was gone by the time I got there.”

  “That’s been three days ago,” she said, suspicious again. “If you was so concerned, what took you so long to get here?”

  Sarah smiled. “I had no idea where he lived, and it took me that long to find out.”

  “Did it now?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest in a gesture designed to be intimidating. “And why would you go to all the trouble?”

  Sarah was beginning to wonder herself. “I was worried about him, and I... I felt a little responsible that he was hurt.”

  The door to the next apartment opened and another old woman stuck her head out to peer curiously at Sarah.

  “Maybe you’d better come in then,” the woman Sarah had decided was Malloy’s mother said. Mrs. Malloy gave her neighbor a haughty glance before ushering Sarah into the apartment where they could have some privacy.