Murder on St. Mark's Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “I’m sure she was only trying to have a good time,” Sarah said, for some reason feeling obliged to defend the dead girl. Maybe because she was so young. Sarah could remember what it was like to be so young and wish for freedom and happiness.

  “A good time!” Mrs. Shultz scoffed. “Girls don’t need to have a good time. They should stay at home and help their mothers until they find a respectable man and get married. It’s not natural for a girl to get work and go out alone with no chaperon to protect her. And this is what comes when she does. She ends up dead in an alley!”

  Sarah glanced at the door into Agnes’s bedroom, which she’d left open because of the heat. Fortunately, Agnes still seemed to be sleeping soundly, oblivious to the judgments of her neighbor. Still, she pushed the door closed, not wanting to cause Agnes any more pain than she’d already suffered.

  “Young women have to work nowadays,” Sarah reminded her. “Agnes and her husband couldn’t afford to keep Gerda if she didn’t pay her share of the expenses.”

  “Ach, she didn’t have to run wild, though, did she? Going out every night, wearing those fancy clothes that she couldn’t afford on her wages, not after she gave most of them to Mr. Otto for her board. And those shoes! I heard the policeman ask Agnes if her sister owned a pair of red shoes. That’s how they knew it was her. Everybody in the neighborhood knew about those red shoes. And everybody knows what kind of a girl wears red shoes!”

  “Yes, a girl who is now dead,” Sarah reminded her grimly.

  Mrs. Shultz huffed, plainly annoyed that Sarah wouldn’t join her in condemning Gerda. “I must get back. My own husband will be home soon.” Sarah wasn’t sorry to see her go.

  Sarah looked in on her patient again and found Agnes awake, her eyes brimming with tears. She’d overheard at least part of the conversation.

  “That is what they will say about my Gerda now,” Agnes moaned. “They will say she was a bad girl. They will say she deserved to be murdered, and no one will care that a poor German girl who worked in a shirt factory died in an alley. No one will bother to catch the man who did it, and no one will ever be punished.”

  Sarah knew this was true, so she had few words of comfort to offer. “At least Gerda has you to mourn her,” she offered.

  “She was not a bad girl,” Agnes insisted, trying to make Sarah understand. “She only wanted to be free. That is what she says, all the time. She wants to be free, with no one telling her what to do. That is why she left Germany. She did not want our father telling her what to do and what man to marry. She wanted to make a new life for herself here in America where she could decide for herself what she did.”

  The same way Sarah had left her own father’s house and married the man of her own choice instead of her father’s. When Tom had died, again Sarah had decided to make her own way instead of moving back to her father’s house. She’d wanted to be free, just like Gerda. She’d found a way to make her own living and her own life, just the way Gerda had tried to do. She’d simply been more successful at it than the dead girl had, because Gerda had met a man who had stolen her choices from her. There but for the grace of God go I, Sarah couldn’t help thinking.

  “The police, they will not care who killed my Gerda, will they?” Agnes asked.

  Sarah could have lied to escape an awkward moment, to make Agnes feel better even though she knew the lie would do more harm than good. But because she did know, she told the truth. “The police might investigate if you could offer them a reward for finding Gerda’s killer.”

  Agnes shook her head, tears running down her face. “We have no money for a reward.”

  Of course they didn’t. And justice in New York City was only for the rich. Unless ...

  “I have a friend,” Sarah heard herself saying. A small lie. She and Frank Malloy weren’t exactly friends. “He’s a police detective. I could ask him to help. He might be able to do something.”

  Agnes clasped Sarah’s hand in both of hers. “Please!” she begged. “It is all we can do for Gerda now.”

  SOMEONE in THE building was cooking cabbage for supper. Or maybe everyone was. With cabbage, it was hard to tell. The thin walls were also little barrier to the sounds of life within the flats she passed as she climbed the stairs to the second floor. A baby was crying in one, a mother screamed at her child in another. Pots clanged against each other as women prepared the evening meal, and the smells of cooking combined with the smells of rotting garbage from the streets to form a miasma of decay that seemed to hang over the entire city.

  Sarah remembered the door. She remembered the last and only time she’d come here, just after she and Malloy had solved the murder of a young girl Sarah had known all her life. She’d left on good terms with Malloy that day, but certainly, he’d never expected to see her again. Just as she’d never expected to see him either. Not that she was going to see him now, of course. She’d been fairly certain he wouldn’t be at home in the middle of the day. No, she just wanted to get word to him, and going to his home seemed much more sensible than going to police headquarters. The last time she’d sought him out at the Mulberry Street station, she’d found herself locked in an interrogation room!

  Besides, she had another, very good reason for coming to his home: his son, Brian.

  She raised her gloved hand and knocked more loudly than she’d intended to. From the other side of the door, she could hear the sound of grumbling, and then the door opened. The woman on the other side was small and sturdily built, her iron-gray hair pulled fiercely back into a bun. She looked ready for anything, but she was not ready to see Sarah Brandt. Her wrinkled face grew slack with surprise for an instant before it hardened into anger.

  “He ain’t here, and he ain’t expected,” Mrs. Malloy said, turning up her nose. Or maybe she was just looking up. Sarah was much taller.

  Sarah feigned surprise. “Brian isn’t here? Where is he, then?”

  Now Mrs. Malloy was surprised again. And confused. “Brian? What would you be wanting with the boy?”

  “I brought him a present,” Sarah informed her with a smile as genuine as she could make it, knowing full well that Frank Malloy’s mother would rather push her down the stairs than allow her inside their apartment. “Oh, here he comes!” Indeed, Brian was crawling over to where his grandmother was trying to block the door with her black-clad body.

  His beautiful face was alive with happiness at having a visitor. Surely, he didn’t remember Sarah. He’d seen her only once, for a few minutes, and that had been over two months ago. And he was feebleminded, as his grandmother had explained to Sarah with perverse satisfaction on her first visit, in addition to being crippled by a clubfoot. But Brian’s life would be very uneventful, and the arrival of anyone at all would be a cause for joy.

  Mrs. Malloy instinctively turned to see what Brian was doing, and Sarah took shameless advantage of her momentary distraction to slip past her guard and into the flat.

  “Hello, Brian,” Sarah said, leaning over to greet him. She ignored Mrs. Malloy’s gasp of outrage. “Look what I’ve brought for you.” She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small wooden horse and rider. The horse had been fitted with a miniature leather saddle and bridle, and the rider was done up in someone’s idea of what a western cowboy would wear. It was designed to delight any little boy, and Brian was no exception.

  “He don’t need no toys from the likes of you,” Mrs. Malloy tried, but Brian was already snatching the horse from Sarah’s hand, his luminous green eyes huge with wonder. He sat back on his haunches and began to examine his prize.

  “It won’t make no difference,” Mrs. Malloy told her fiercely. “You can bring the boy a cartload of toys, and it won’t make no difference to Frances. He don’t have no use for any woman but Brian’s mam, God rest her soul, so don’t go thinking you’ll win him through the boy.”

  Sarah was hard-pressed not to laugh out loud at the ridiculous notion that she had designs on Frank Malloy. “I’m not looking for a husband, Mrs. Ma
lloy,” she said instead, even though the old woman plainly didn’t believe her. “But I do need the services of a police detective once again, so I thought I’d stop by and leave word for him. Would you mind telling him I need to speak with him?”

  “I’ll do no such thing! I’m not some servant you can order around and—”

  She stopped speaking for the same reason Sarah stopped listening to her. They were both distracted by the realization that Brian had, within seconds, figured out how to remove the toy rider from his saddle, unbuckle the saddle and remove it, and then put everything back together again.

  “Aren’t you clever, Brian,” Sarah told him, expecting him to beam his glorious smile at her. Instead he didn’t even look up. He had already started working on removing the horse’s delicate bridle.

  Perhaps he was simply engrossed in his project, but Sarah didn’t think so.

  “That’s a horse, Brian. You probably see them in the street when you look out the window,” she tried.

  “That’s right, Bri, don’t pay her no mind,” Mrs. Malloy said, and the boy paid her no mind either. “He won’t talk to you,” she told Sarah with just a trace of satisfaction. “If he won’t talk to me in three years, he ain’t going to talk to you just because you brought him a present.”

  Sarah didn’t acknowledge her. She was too busy studying the boy. His tiny hands were nimble as he worked the intricacies of the horse’s tack. He’d needed no more than a moment of study to figure out how to remove and replace it. And yet his grandmother claimed he’d never uttered a word.

  “Has he always been mute?” Sarah asked as the tiny seed of an idea sprouted in her mind.

  “Mute? What’s that, a fancy name for simple?” Mrs. Malloy demanded.

  “No, it means someone who doesn’t speak. Did he cry when he was a baby?”

  “Hardly at all,” she bragged. “He was the best baby on earth. Never gave his old Nana a second of trouble, did you, Bohyo?”

  Brian didn’t deign to reply. He was moving the horse along the floor, as if the cowboy were going for a ride across the wooden planks. He turned away as the horse rode over toward the sofa. He seemed oblivious to the conversation going on around him. Or maybe not oblivious at all.

  “Hah!” Sarah shouted as loudly as she dared.

  Mrs. Malloy squeaked in shock, her hand going instantly to her heart. “Whatever is the matter with you?” she cried, outraged at Sarah’s bizarre behavior. “You scared me out of ten years’ growth!”

  Indeed, the woman had fairly jumped when Sarah shouted, but the boy hadn’t moved a muscle. He hadn’t so much as hesitated in his determination to take his cowboy on the ride of his life all around the parlor. He hadn’t even noticed.

  Which made Sarah think that she knew the real reason why Brian never spoke, and it had nothing at all to do with him being feebleminded.

  “He seems very clever with his hands. Did you see how quickly he figured out how to work the saddle?” she asked.

  “He’s always been good at figuring things out,” Mrs. Malloy said defensively, as if Sarah had somehow insulted him by hinting his brain might not be as damaged as she had been led to believe.

  She glanced at Mrs. Malloy, then back at the boy. Dare she voice her suspicion? No, not to the old woman. She wouldn’t be interested in Sarah’s theories about her grand-son, not from a woman she had decided was out to usurp her position in Frank Malloy’s life. Malloy might not be interested either, but at least he would listen. And if Sarah was wrong, as well she might be ...

  “Next time I come, I’ll bring you some cookies, Brian,” she tried. The boy was riding his horse up the side of the sofa and didn’t respond.

  “Next time!” Mrs. Malloy huffed. “What makes you think you’d be welcome?”

  Sarah smiled sweetly. “Not a thing,” she admitted. “But I would appreciate it if you would tell Mr. Malloy that I stopped by. If you do, I won’t have to come back again.”

  There, that might be just the motive the old woman needed. But probably she wouldn’t have been able to resist venting her spleen on Malloy over Sarah’s brazenness in calling on a man without so much as an invitation. Whatever her reason, Mrs. Malloy was sure to complain to her son about Sarah, which would, in turn, bring him right to her door. Satisfied that she had accomplished her mission in coming, she took her leave. Brian hardly noticed.

  SARAH WAS GLAD she’d bought an extra chop and a loaf of bread at the Gansevoort Market a few blocks away when she saw the man sitting on her doorstep. He didn’t look particularly pleased to be there, but Sarah had expected that. She was pretty sure she could coax him out of his bad mood if she cooked for him, though. It had worked once before.

  “Mrs. Brandt!”

  The familiar voice distracted Sarah from Malloy’s glowering expression, and she turned to see her neighbor peering at her through her partially opened window. Nothing happened in the neighborhood that Mrs. Elsworth didn’t see and note, and someone as large and formidable as Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy was certainly noteworthy.

  “I knew someone would be coming today. I had bubbles in my teacup this morning,” she reported.

  “Bubbles?” Sarah echoed in amusement.

  “Yes, a sure sign that visitors are coming. Or at least one visitor, in this case. I didn’t think you’d mind if he waited, or I would have told him to be on his way. It’s that police detective, isn’t it? He hasn’t been around in a while.”

  The question Mrs. Elsworth was too well bred to ask was fairly screaming for an answer, but Sarah felt compelled to discourage her nosiness since she hadn’t been able to do a thing to quell her superstitions. “No, he hasn’t been around in a while,” Sarah confirmed, “and it’s perfectly fine that he waited for me. I need to speak with him. But maybe you just had some soapsuds in your cup. Did you ever think of that?”

  Not waiting for a reply, Sarah strolled on down the sidewalk to where Malloy now stood beside her front stoop, glowering furiously.

  “Good evening, Mr. Malloy,” she said. “It was so good of you to come.”

  He looked as if he’d like to throttle her, but she was fairly certain he wouldn’t, at least not with Mrs. Elsworth watching.

  “What did you think you were doing this afternoon?” he asked, his voice rough but pitched low, so he couldn’t be overheard.

  “I was visiting your son, and a delightful boy he is, too.” She’d passed him and gone on up the steps, leaving him no choice but to follow unless he wanted to shout at her.

  “My mother almost had a stroke, she was that upset,” he told her as she unlocked her front door.

  Sarah could believe it. “She thinks I’ve set my cap for you, Malloy,” she informed him wickedly, pushing the door open.

  “What?” he asked, but he was talking to himself because she’d gone into the house. Left with no other choice, he followed her inside.

  “Your mother thinks I’m looking for a husband,” Sarah explained, closing the door behind him, “and she obviously believes you’re a good catch, so naturally, she wasn’t very happy to see me, but you can assure her I am no threat to your independence.”

  Malloy planted his hands on his hips and made every attempt to intimidate her. She had to admit, he almost succeeded. Malloy could be horribly intimidating when he set his mind to it. “That’s not what she was going on about,” he informed her. “She said you upset the boy.”

  “Brian?” she asked, genuinely shocked. She should have guessed Mrs. Malloy would lie to make her look bad to her son. “He wasn’t upset. In fact, he was very happy when I left. Did he show you the horse I gave him?”

  “He didn’t show me anything. He was sitting in a corner, banging his head on the wall when I got home, and the old woman was screaming like a banshee.”

  “Oh, my.” Sarah frowned, trying to figure this out. Brian had been blissfully happy when she left, and would have remained so as long as he had his new toy to play with. Was it possible? Could the old woman have been cruel
enough to take the toy away to upset the boy for his father’s sake? Of course she could, if she believed she was protecting her family from a she-devil, which she obviously did. “Well, then, you’d probably enjoy having your supper in some peace and quiet. Lucky for you I got some extra meat.”

  “Mrs. Brandt!” he called after her as she made her way into the kitchen.

  Sarah turned back just before disappearing through the doorway. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about why I went to the trouble to get you over here?”

  Frank swore under his breath as he watched her go. What on earth had possessed him to come here tonight? He should have remembered what an infuriating piece of baggage Sarah Brandt could be. Oh, she was smart and a damn fine-looking woman, but Frank had never considered intelligence a particularly attractive trait in a female, and beauty is as beauty does, as his mother would have said. He couldn’t have cared less why she wanted to see him, and he felt obliged to tell her so. Besides, she’d left him standing in her office with its strange instruments and equipment, and the mere sight of those things made his flesh crawl.

  He found her stoking the fire in her stove. “Mrs. Brandt—”

  “It’s too hot in here. Why don’t you go sit on the back porch and wait. I have a little table set up out there to catch the breeze, and I poured you some beer.” She nodded toward a tall glass of amber liquid sitting on her table. “My neighbor makes it,” she explained with one of her sly grins when Frank registered surprise.

  Maybe he was being too hasty. He’d tell her whatever it was he intended to tell her after he’d had the beer. And maybe he’d let her feed him, too. She wasn’t a bad cook, if he remembered correctly. And then ... Well, then he’d make sure she understood she was never to show her face in his mother’s presence again.

  By the time she set his plate in front of him, he’d mellowed somewhat. Maybe it was the beer or maybe it was the peacefulness of his surroundings. Her back porch overlooked the tiny patch of ground that passed for a yard in the city. Sarah Brandt had filled that patch of ground with flowers of every description. Their beauty and fragrance disguised the stench and bleakness that stretched in every direction outside the boundaries of her fence.