Murder in Morningside Heights

by Victoria Thompson

  Sarah threw her book at him, which made him laugh, so she stuck out her tongue. “Not every woman has servants and a nursemaid to watch the children. Being a wife and mother is hard work, and it doesn’t leave time for much of anything else. If a woman wants to do something important, like teach or be a nurse or a social worker or—”

  “Or a midwife,” he supplied, naming her former profession.

  “Or a midwife. Well, not only does a woman who is married with children not have time for that, most of those professions won’t even employ a married woman and certainly not a woman with children. On the other side of the coin, not every woman receives an offer of marriage in the first place and some wouldn’t accept it even if they did.”

  “Why not?” he asked in genuine surprise.

  She gave him a pitying smile. “Because not every woman wants to put her entire life in the hands of a man. You may find this shocking, but not all men are as kind and loving and wonderful as you.”

  He thought about this for a moment. “That’s true.”

  “Good thing I don’t have another book handy.”

  He grinned again. “So these women go to college so they can get a job and support themselves without a husband.”

  “Which is far preferable to the old system, where they’d be dependent on the charity of family members or be forced to sell themselves in the street.”

  “You’re right. That is preferable to the old system.” He thought for another moment. “I guess that tells me what I need to know about these lady professors, too.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “They’re not society women, so I won’t need your help getting them to talk to me.”

  Sarah winced under a crushing wave of disappointment, but then she saw the glint in his eye. “They may not be society women, but they’re still women. You may feel the need for some feminine insight when you question them, and if you do, I’m sure I could spare the time to assist you.”

  Malloy glanced around the comfortable room again. “If you’re willing to give all this up, then I’m sure I would appreciate the sacrifice.”

  She ignored his provocation. “When were you planning to see them?”

  “Not until tomorrow, I think.”

  “What are you going to do in the meantime?”

  “Go see Doc Haynes. He did the autopsy.”

  * * *

  Doc Haynes looked up from behind the piles of paperwork littering his desk and glared at him with eyes that had seen far too much death. “I thought I’d seen the last of you when you struck it rich, Malloy.”

  “So did I, but you know how it is.”

  “No, I don’t. How is it that a man who never has to work another day in his life shows up at the city morgue looking for a dead body?”

  “I’ve opened a private detective agency.”

  “Have you, now? And a good thing it is, too. I guess you’ll be solving the cases the police can’t.”

  “I couldn’t possibly do that. I’m only one man, Doc.”

  Doc chuckled at the implied insult to the New York City Police Department. “So who is it you want to see today?”

  “Abigail Northrup. She was killed at the Normal School.”

  “Oh yes. What a shame. So young, and you can still see how pretty she was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t they tell you? Oh, maybe her parents don’t know. Somebody at the school identified her body, so there was no need for the parents to see her like that.”

  “Then she was beaten, too?”

  “In a way.” Haynes shuffled through a stack of folders until he found the right one. “She was stabbed in the face. Looks like it was three times.”

  “How did that kill her?”

  “Let me finish. Three times before the final, fatal blow that went into her eye and then into her brain.”

  Frank muttered a curse. “What was she stabbed with?”

  “A screwdriver.”

  Contrary to logic, the more information Frank got about this case, the less sense it made. “A screwdriver? Who kills somebody with a screwdriver?”

  “I’ve seen it before,” Haynes said, “but usually it’s two fellows who get into a fight while they’re working, and one of them grabs the closest thing to hand.”

  “So you think she was killed by some workman?” Frank didn’t think college professors had much use for screwdrivers.

  “I did ask, because it was so strange, and it seems the janitor was doing some repairs to the gazebo where she was found and had accidentally left it behind.”

  “Or so he said.”

  “Yes, well, figuring that out is not my job. What I can tell you is that somebody stabbed her in the face three times with the screwdriver and then put it through her eye, either by mistake or on purpose.”

  “And that killed her?”

  “Obviously.”

  “How quick?”

  “Not right away, but she didn’t last long. It kind of looks like the killer tried to pull it back out and she was probably struggling, and well, there was a lot of damage. And a lot of blood.”

  Frank shook his head in wonder. “Was she interfered with?”

  “No, and her clothes were all neat and tidy except for the blood. She was most likely still a virgin, too. You can’t always tell, contrary to popular belief, but there was no sign of recent activity, and they watch those girls at the Normal School pretty close, I’ve heard.”

  “Jewelry?”

  “A locket and a ring. I kept them in case her family wants them.” Most jewelry and all the cash on a dead body would usually disappear long before the family came to claim the body.

  “Valuable, do you think?”

  “Not the crown jewels, but good quality.”

  “Then a thief would have taken them?”

  “If she was being robbed, sure, but this wasn’t a robbery.”

  “Of course it wasn’t. In that neighborhood, in broad daylight, right on the school grounds? And the only things of value she had with her were left behind?” He didn’t add that the killing had been much too personal. Thieves didn’t stab people in the face. Frank sighed. “Can I take a look at the body?”

  “Sure. I’ll get Herman to take you down.”

  The dead room was as grim as its name, dark and dank and chilly on this wintry day. They ran cold water over the corpses to keep them fresh, even in February, so the sound of dripping water added to the bleakness. He didn’t have to look far to find Abigail. Her lush white body stood out among the bloated and battered carcasses of the other dead. Seeing her lying there, completely exposed, was an abomination.

  “Even with the cuts, she was a looker,” the young man named Herman said, leering. “Wouldn’t mind a piece of that when she was alive.”

  Frank gave him the glare he usually reserved for uncooperative criminals to frighten them into submission. It worked pretty well on Herman, too. He scurried away guiltily.

  The wounds were worse than Frank had imagined. The eye, of course, was awful, but the other wounds were vicious, too, jagged and deep and probably inflicted by someone in a rage. If she had survived, she would have been scarred. Had that been the killer’s original intention?

  He checked her hands and saw that she’d tried to ward off the blows that had killed her, but bare hands weren’t much help against a determined assailant with a weapon.

  Even a woman could have done this.

  With a sigh, he realized he’d just doubled his number of possible suspects.

  * * *

  Since he still had most of the afternoon left, he decided to take the elevated railroad up to Morningside Heights to look at the place where Abigail had been murdered and see if he could speak to the person in charge of the college. Would that be a dean or something? Frank realized how very littl
e he knew about higher education.

  He managed to get a hansom cab to carry him from Bellevue on First Avenue all the way over to Ninth Avenue, where he could catch the El up to Morningside Heights. The nine-block journey over to the El station took far longer than the ninety-block trip uptown to the Normal School on the El, since the El didn’t have to stop for traffic at every intersection.

  The trip gave Frank plenty of time to consider the various methods of transportation available in the city. His in-laws kept a carriage, which meant they had to keep horses and servants to tend the horses and drive the carriage. The electric trolleys were a big improvement over the old horsecars that used to carry passengers up and down the city, but they were always overcrowded and either too hot or too cold, depending on the season. They were still talking about a train system that would run underground, but Frank would believe it when he saw it. Meanwhile, he amused himself by watching the buildings flashing by outside the train and catching glimpses of the people living and working behind their windows.

  He stepped out of the station at 118th Street into another world. Here trees graced the streets and traffic moved at a leisurely pace. Houses sat behind neatly tended front yards guarded by wrought iron fences. In summer, it would seem like the country, and even now, in the dead of winter, Frank could feel the relative peacefulness.

  He’d been right. No thieves were stabbing young girls to death in broad daylight here, or even in the dead of night. He found the Normal School easily enough. In fact, no thieves or any other miscreants could get within a hundred feet of the building without being seen. It sat in the middle of what had been a field not too long ago, its U-shaped grandeur even more impressive because no other buildings competed with it. The entrance was columned and Frank stepped inside the impressive doors unchallenged. Inside, the entryway stretched upward to the domed roof three stories above, where a stained glass skylight filtered the feeble winter sun. An impressive staircase gave access to the floors above, and on either side of the foyer, doors opened into what Frank imagined were classrooms of some sort.

  No one appeared to be assigned the task of welcoming visitors, so he glanced around, looking for the kind of directory one would see in a city office building. Before he could find one, two young women came out of one of the classrooms. They wore the bell-shaped black skirts and starched white shirtwaists that seemed to be practically a uniform for young women today. They were chatting pleasantly until one of them noticed Frank standing in the middle of the foyer. She gave a shriek and both of them bolted back into the classroom and slammed the door.

  Frank blinked in surprise, but then he figured they knew that one of their professors had been murdered just outside and seeing a strange man where he probably had no business being had made them fear for their own lives. This made him reconsider his plan to go wandering about until he found the dean’s office. Luckily, before he had to decide what to do next, the classroom door opened again and an older woman wearing unrelieved black with a watch pinned to her ample bosom stepped cautiously out.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” she demanded.

  “I’m a detective investigating the death of Miss Abigail Northrup. I was wondering if you could direct me to the office of the head dean or whoever is in charge.”

  She seemed to relax just a bit, as if she wanted to believe him but didn’t quite dare. “That would be President Hatch. His office is on the second floor.”

  Frank thanked her and hurried off up the grand staircase before he frightened anyone else. On the second floor he found an impressive set of double doors labeled PRESIDENT’S OFFICE and stepped inside into a wood-paneled room.

  A young woman sitting at a desk worked a typewriter with a good deal of proficiency. She looked up in alarm, and Frank quickly identified himself before she could run away shrieking. “I’d like to speak with President Hatch if he’s available.”

  As if struck dumb, she nodded quickly and scurried over to an interior door. She ducked inside and emerged after a few minutes, looking slightly less terrified. “President Hatch will see you.”

  She held the door for him and closed it behind him.

  President Hatch sat behind a desk larger and more impressive than Frank had seen in any millionaire’s office. Maybe a college president had to try harder to impress visitors. He was a slender man in his fifties with thinning gray hair plastered against his head and pince-nez glasses perched on his nose, probably to give him a scholarly look.

  Hatch rose to his feet, but he didn’t offer to shake hands. “I thought the police had finished their business with us.”

  “I’m not with the police.”

  “But Alice said—”

  “I told her I was a detective. Maybe she got confused.”

  “Then if you’re not with the police, who are you with?”

  “I’m a private investigator.” Frank tossed his card onto the massive desk. Hatch glanced at it but made no move to pick it up. “Miss Northrup’s parents hired me.”

  “To do what?”

  “To find out who killed their daughter.”

  “I thought the police had settled that.”

  Frank gave him a pitying look. “Is that what you want to tell the parents of your students? That a young woman was stabbed to death by a wandering lunatic on the very grounds of your college?”

  Angry color flooded Hatch’s face, but he was far too civilized to shout or anything. “Really, Mr. . . .” He glanced down at the card again.

  “Malloy,” Frank said. “And I wouldn’t want to send my daughter to a place where girls got murdered right in the front yard.”

  Hatch seemed to sag under his carefully tailored suit. “And yet that is what happened, Mr. Malloy, so I don’t see how it matters who killed her. The damage has been done.”

  Now Frank saw the despair. Hatch envisioned his school failing in front of his eyes and had already given up hope. “That’s true, but what if we can find the person who killed her and lock them up? Then you can tell the parents that your students are safe again.” It wasn’t much, but it was more hope than Hatch had a moment ago.

  “How do I know you can do that? The police said—”

  “I know what they said, but I can do it. I have references, if you need them. Felix Decker, for one.”

  “Felix Decker? How would a man like that know a private detective?”

  “I solved a murder for him at the Knickerbocker Club,” Frank said, dropping another impressive name. “He also happens to be my father-in-law.”

  Hatch blinked several times, as Frank had expected. He needed a moment to reassess his opinion of Frank Malloy, and when he had, he said, “Perhaps you should have a seat, Mr. Malloy.”

  Frank took one of the leather wingback chairs that sat in front of Hatch’s impressive desk. They were probably intended for rich parents, but he didn’t mind.

  Hatch sank into his own chair and sighed. He picked up Frank’s card and looked closely. It was the engraved one that he used for wealthy clients, although Hatch didn’t look overly impressed. Then he laid it down carefully, respectfully, pulled off his pince-nez, and rubbed his eyes. “And what can you do for us that the police can’t?”

  “It’s more what I’ll do that they won’t, Mr. Hatch. I will actually try to find the killer, and I’m good at that. I will also do my best to keep the story away from the newspapers. Miss Northrup’s parents were very concerned about scandal, and I’m sure you are, too.”

  “Of course I am, but I hardly think Miss Northrup was involved in anything scandalous.”

  “She was murdered at a respectable women’s college, which alone is enough of a scandal for the newspapers. I won’t be speaking to any reporters, and you should instruct everyone here to do the same. I’ll also need your permission to speak with the other professors and some of the students, the ones who knew her.”

  “Is
that really necessary? The young ladies are already nearly hysterical over what happened.”

  “They’ll be a lot less hysterical if we catch the killer. I’d also like to look at the place where she was killed and see the place where she lived.”

  “You’ll have to get permission from Miss Wilson for that. She lived at Miss Wilson’s house, not here.”

  “Yes, with two other professors.”

  “Only Miss Wilson is a professor. In fact, she’s the only female professor we have here. She was just elected this school year.”

  “I thought Abigail Northrup was a teacher here, too.”

  “She is . . . I mean was, but not a full professor. She was an instructor, as is Miss Billingsly and the other females who teach here.”

  “And you only have one real professor, this Miss Wilson?”

  “Of course not. We have many male professors. Miss Wilson just happens to be our first female.”

  Frank thought it odd that a college for women had only one female professor, but of course he didn’t know much about colleges. “Can you tell me a little about your college?”

  “I can tell you everything about the Normal School of Manhattan,” Hatch said, a little defensively.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “I started the school almost twenty-seven years ago.” Here was a subject he felt confident of, and he straightened in his chair. “So many young men had been lost in the War between the States that a lot of young women found themselves with no prospect of marriage and no way to support themselves. Normal schools were opened all over the country to train them for professions.”

  “Why do you call them ‘normal schools’?”

  “Oh yes, I suppose that could sound odd to an outsider. The schools were established to train teachers and to establish normal teaching standards, so they were called normal schools.”

  “So you only train women to be teachers.”

  “That’s right, although some of them choose other professions after they graduate, and still others marry. And before you ask, no, I don’t think that means they have wasted their education. I think a generation of young men raised by educated mothers would be very good for our country, don’t you?”