Murder on Fifth Avenue: A Gaslight Mystery

by Victoria Thompson

  “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

  “I couldn’t say. I won’t say nothing about Mrs. Paul. You’ll have to ask somebody else.”

  Which confirmed Frank’s other suspicion.

  “Take me up to Mr. Devries’s bedroom.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I need to see where the decanter came from.”

  Winston obviously didn’t like this, but he’d been instructed to assist Frank in his investigation, so he led the way up the back stairs to the third floor, where the family’s bedrooms were located. Before opening the door from the stairway into the hall, he turned to Frank.

  “Try not to make any noise. You don’t want to disturb Mrs. Devries.”

  He was right about that, Frank thought, following him down to the proper room. Winston closed the door behind them and leaned his back against it, silently telling Frank he was going to observe his every move. Frank remembered seeing a decanter on the table in the sitting area in front of the fireplace, and sure enough, the tray on which it had sat was still there, along with the matching glasses, but the decanter itself was gone.

  “That’s where the old man kept his whiskey, isn’t it?” he asked Winston, nodding to the table.

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “The last time I was here, I saw the decanter sitting on the tray, but it was empty.”

  “That’s impossible. Roderick always kept it full for Mr. Devries.”

  “It was definitely empty when I saw it.”

  Winston frowned. “When was this?”

  “A day or two after Devries died, I think.”

  Winston nodded. “Roderick had probably drunk it by then.”

  “Was he in the habit of doing that?”

  “Not when Mr. Devries was alive, I don’t think, but with him gone…I mean, who would know? Nobody comes in here but him now.”

  “Where is Mrs. Devries bedroom?”

  Winston nodded to his left.

  Frank pointed to the door on that wall. “Do the rooms connect?”

  Winston smirked. “Sure, but there hasn’t been a connection in a long time, if you know what I mean.”

  Frank returned his grin. “I suppose it’s locked on her side.”

  “That’s right.”

  Frank looked around again, and this time he noticed something he hadn’t before. He walked back over to the table where the decanter had sat. If Roderick had sampled the whiskey, he hadn’t touched the walnuts. The bowl still held as many as Frank remembered from his previous visit. The implements stood neatly in their holders, polished and gleaming. Frank plucked one of them from its place, a nut pick, to examine it more closely.

  Something long and thin, like an ice pick, Haynes had said. Testing the point with his thumb, he easily punctured the skin and drew a drop of crimson blood.

  “What are you doing?” Winston asked in alarm.

  Frank ignored him. He was noticing something else. “One of the nut picks is missing.”

  “You’ve got it in your hand,” Winston said, hurrying over.

  “No, there’s an empty hole where another one should be. Where is it?”

  “How should I know? Ask…Oh, I was going to say, ask Roderick,” he said in dismay.

  “I’d like to,” Frank muttered.

  “It seems like a strange thing to steal. It wouldn’t be worth much.”

  “It’s probably just lost,” Frank said.

  Winston brightened. “That’s it. Mr. Devries, he was always walking around, eating his walnuts and dropping the shells everywhere. The maids complained about it all the time. He probably carried it with him someplace and left it.”

  He had, Frank remembered Roderick saying, been eating walnuts the morning he died.

  SARAH AND THE GIRLS HAD JUST FINISHED WASHING UP their Sunday dinner dishes when the front doorbell rang. Maeve and Catherine ran to answer it, and from the laughter, Sarah knew she wasn’t being summoned to a birth. She found the girls happily hanging up Malloy’s coat and helping his son, Brian, off with his.

  When Brian saw Sarah, he ran over and threw his arms around her. She caught him up and returned his hug, smiling as widely as she could to let him know how happy she was to see him, since she knew he couldn’t hear her words. His small hands started making the signs he had learned at the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb where he attended school. Plainly, he had learned a lot, and Sarah sighed when she realized she could make little sense of them.

  “Do you know what he’s saying?” she asked Malloy.

  “He’s happy. I know that sign, at least.”

  “I’m happy, too,” Sarah said, hugging him again.

  But Catherine was tugging on Brian’s arm. When he looked at her, she pointed at the stairs, and when Sarah released him, the two children raced away, clattering up the stairs to visit the toys in Catherine’s room.

  “They don’t need words or signs,” Maeve said, following them upstairs. “They understand each other just fine.”

  “Thank you for bringing Brian,” Sarah said to Malloy. “Catherine loves playing with him.”

  “It makes him pretty happy, too.”

  “Come into the kitchen and tell me what you found out from the valet.”

  To her surprise, his expression darkened, but he followed her obediently. She set out cups and poured them some coffee. She thought he’d start talking the minute he sat down, but he waited until she’d served them both and taken a seat at the table herself.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Roderick is dead.”

  “The valet? What happened?”

  “Someone poisoned him.”

  Sarah needed a minute for the words to register and another for the awful truth to dawn on her. “Oh, no!” she cried, covering her mouth as tears sprang to her eyes. “It’s all my fault!”

  “No, it’s not!” Malloy said, taking her hand in a grip just short of painful. “It’s not your fault, Sarah. You didn’t kill him. Someone else killed him, and that’s who’s to blame.”

  “But if I hadn’t said anything about him—”

  “The killer would’ve thought of him sooner or later.”

  “But maybe not until later and maybe he still would’ve been alive when you arrested the killer.”

  “Stop it! You can’t know that. You can’t know anything, and you didn’t kill him. Somebody else did, and that’s whose fault it is. I won’t have you taking on somebody else’s guilt.”

  He was right, of course, but Sarah knew she would never forgive herself for losing her temper with Mrs. Devries. “That means Mrs. Devries must be the one who stabbed him!”

  “I know that’s what we were all hoping, but from what I’ve been able to find out, Paul seems to be the one who gave him the poison.”

  “Paul? I can’t even imagine that. How could he have done it?”

  “I don’t even know for sure what the poison was yet, but the medical examiner and I think it was arsenic.”

  “Rat poison.”

  “Probably. It’s pretty easy to find.”

  “But how—”

  “Somebody gave him a decanter of whiskey.”

  “Who would do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know that either, at least not for sure, but here is what I do know. Roderick seemed to think Paul was going to fire his own valet and keep Roderick on.”

  “Why did he think that?”

  “I’m guessing, you understand, but remember we thought Roderick knew more about what happened the morning Devries got stabbed than he was saying. Maybe he knew who had stabbed him, and he thought that knowledge would protect him.”

  Sarah sighed. “When it really put him in mortal danger.”

  “Right after supper last night, Paul met with Roderick. Afterwards, Roderick went straight to his room, and an hour or so later, I arrived to question him. We found him writhing in agony, and a few minutes later he was dead.”

  “Didn’t you ask him what happen
ed?”

  “Of course I did, but he couldn’t speak. I saw the decanter of whiskey in his room. It was real fancy, not the regular kind of bottle whiskey comes in, but the kind rich people put it in to sit around and look nice.”

  “He might have borrowed it. Servants do that, you know.”

  “One of the maids said he’d probably pinched it, but Roderick managed to say someone had given it to him. Of course I asked him who,” he added when she would have interrupted, “but he was too far gone. He never said another word before he died.”

  “How awful!”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened before I question Paul Devries, and here’s what I think: I think Roderick knew who killed Devries, so when Paul realized it, he put the rat poison in the whiskey. Then he called Roderick in and told him he was going to let him go. Roderick would’ve been pretty disappointed. Maybe he even threatened Paul, but maybe he was afraid to. Whatever happened between them, Paul knew he’d be upset so he told Roderick to take the decanter of whiskey to his room to drown his sorrows. What do you think?”

  “It sounds logical, but do you really believe Paul Devries is a cold-blooded killer?”

  Malloy frowned. “That’s the part that bothers me, too, but if he killed his father—even by accident—he might be feeling desperate. He might be willing to do whatever he could to protect himself.”

  Sarah considered the possibilities. “Or maybe to protect someone he loves.”

  “His mother?” Malloy asked skeptically.

  “We don’t like her, but she’s his mother, after all, and she apparently adores him.”

  “Winston said he’s fond of his wife, too.”

  “He did?”

  “He could’ve been lying, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they don’t hate each other, at least. Paul was angry at his father for treating Garnet badly, remember.”

  “But why would he have to protect Garnet unless she was the one who stabbed Devries?”

  “Maybe she was.”

  Sarah nearly choked on her coffee. “But…If he was naked …” She shook her head, unable to believe it.

  “Something’s going on in that house. Your father said it himself. He didn’t think I had a chance of finding out what it was, so he asked you to help. I didn’t want to say anything in front of your mother yesterday, but I’ve started suspecting that Devries had taken an improper interest in his daughter-in-law.”

  “That’s a horrible suspicion!”

  “I know, which is why I didn’t want to say anything before, but I’ve been noticing how the servants protect her and nobody will tell me exactly what Paul and his father were arguing about the day he died except that it was about Garnet. And now we know Garnet is expecting a baby she doesn’t want. You thought that was because she didn’t want a child by her husband, but what if Devries had fathered it?”

  Sarah shuddered. “That would certainly explain why she said it had been spawned by a monster.”

  “Yes, it would. And if Devries had tried to have his way with her that morning, and she’d stuck him with a nut pick—”

  “A what?”

  “A nut pick. Those things you use to pick out the nut meat when you’re eating walnuts?”

  “Was that what killed Devries?”

  “It’s the right size and shape, and he really liked walnuts and ate them all the time, and one of the picks is missing from the nut bowl in his bedroom.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Yes, oh, my.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not sure. First of all, I have to wait for the medical examiner to do the autopsy and tell me for sure what killed the valet. I can’t accuse Paul Devries of murder and then find out he ate a bad oyster or something.”

  “You certainly can’t. How soon will you know?”

  “Not until tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Mr. Devries’s funeral is tomorrow.”

  “I know. Are you going?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Will you be there?”

  “I’ll go to the church, but I won’t be welcome back at the house afterwards. I’d like to know what goes on there.”

  Sarah had performed this duty for him before. “My parents will be going. I’m sure they’d take me with them.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “Actually, I’d like an opportunity to see Garnet again. She asked me for a…She called it a remedy, something to get rid of the baby. I won’t do that, but there are plenty of people in the city who would. I’m afraid she might do something dangerous.”

  “If Devries did what I think he did, I couldn’t blame her.”

  “No matter what he did, I don’t want to see anyone else die.”

  “So you’ll go to the funeral?”

  “Of course.”

  They both looked up when someone knocked on the back door. Sarah hurried to admit her neighbor, Mrs. Ellsworth.

  “Why, Mr. Malloy, what a surprise,” she exclaimed, a little breathless from the cold.

  Malloy smiled. “Is it?” He knew Mrs. Ellsworth usually kept careful track of the comings and goings on Bank Street.

  “Well, of course. If I’d known you were here, I’d have brought two pies, so you could take one home.” She handed the basket she was carrying to Sarah. “Although I should have known you’d have a visitor because I dropped a spoon on the table while I was making breakfast this morning. It was a large spoon, though, which usually means a family of visitors.” She shook her head as if baffled by such a mistake.

  “Mr. Malloy brought Brian with him,” Sarah said.

  Mrs. Ellsworth smiled approvingly. “Oh, well, that explains it! How is that darling little boy of yours?”

  “He’s very well. You can see for yourself if you stay for a while.”

  “Would you like some coffee?” Sarah asked.

  “I’d love some,” she said, pulling out a chair. “I don’t suppose you’re working on an interesting case or anything, are you, Mr. Malloy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’d like to ask your opinion of something, Mrs. Ellsworth,” he said solemnly.

  “I’m sure my opinion would be of no help to you at all, but I’m happy to give it.”

  “Do you think someone could be murdered with a nut pick?”

  SARAH’S PARENTS WERE HAPPY TO COME BY FOR HER ON their way to the funeral the next morning, but Sarah didn’t have any opportunity to tell her mother Malloy’s theories about Paul and Garnet Devries because she didn’t want to discuss it in front of her father. Malloy himself should make that report and only after he’d been able to confirm or refute his suspicions about Garnet and Mr. Devries.

  The service itself was an ordeal. She could hardly sit still while she listened to several of Chilton Devries’s friends speak of him as if he’d been a paragon of virtue. Typically, the son of the deceased would also give a eulogy, but Paul remained in his seat, staring straight ahead, his pale face expressionless. Beside him, his heavily veiled mother appeared frail and distraught, clinging to his arm as if it were a lifeline. Of course, no one could actually see her expression through the veil, so for all anyone knew, she was snickering with delight.

  Paul’s sisters and their families took up the rest of the front pew and most of the second one. The girls looked appropriately bereaved, although Sarah never saw either of them shed a tear. The person Sarah had most wanted to see wasn’t present, however. Garnet Devries had not come to the church.

  If Malloy’s suspicions were right, Sarah could certainly understand why Garnet had refused to mourn the man’s death.

  As they filed out of the church, Sarah’s heart went cold when she overheard another guest say Garnet was too ill to attend. She thought of Roderick, poisoned and dying and how Malloy had found him too late. She was being silly, she knew, but she couldn’t help feeling a sense of urgency to get to the Devrieses’ house as quickly as possible to make sure.

  “Mother, I’m going to go check on Garnet,
” she whispered as they made their way down the crowded aisle.

  “But we have to go to the cemetery,” her mother whispered back.

  “You do, but I don’t.”

  “But we’ll have the carriage. How will you get there?”

  “I’ll walk.” Sarah craned her neck. “Malloy is in the back. I’m sure he’ll go with me.”

  No one seemed to notice when Sarah slipped away and found Malloy in the shadows.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked when she reached him.

  “I heard someone say Garnet was too ill to attend. I want to go straight to the Devrieses’ house and make sure she’s all right.”

  “Do you really think somebody would’ve killed her right before the funeral?” he asked with a trace of amusement.

  “I have no idea, but if somebody tried, I’d like to find out as soon as possible.”

  He couldn’t argue with that logic. They found a side door to the church and slipped out into an alley so they would avoid the crush of mourners waiting in front of the church for their carriages.

  “I doubt we can find a cab,” Malloy said as they stepped out into the wintery air.

  “We can walk. It’s not far.”

  They walked a while in silence, making their way through the midday shoppers and nannies pushing baby buggies. Malloy moderated his pace to match her shorter one. Finally, he said, “If Paul was protecting Garnet, he’s not likely to have killed her himself, you know.”

  “I’m afraid logic isn’t going to have any effect on me today. I’ve been trying to convince myself that she’s simply ill because she’s with child or even that she pretended to be ill so she wouldn’t have to sit and listen to those insufferable men talk about what a wonderful person Devries was. None of it has made me any less uneasy.”

  “What did your father say when you told him what we talked about yesterday?”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. We have no proof, and he won’t be eager to believe one of his friends had forced himself on his daughter-in-law. I’m not anxious to believe it myself.”

  “Do you think you could get Garnet to admit it to you?”

  “Perhaps, if I can meet with her alone, but even then, she may not admit it. Few women would, and Garnet isn’t the sort who bares her soul easily. She didn’t even confide in her own mother, and she was quite angry with me the last time we met, you’ll remember.”