Murder on St. Mark's Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “The dream, you mean?” Sarah asked, reaching into her medical bag and pulling out the stethoscope.

  “No, the cricket!”

  Sarah was just about to put the stethoscope in her ears, but she stopped at this. “You were frightened by a cricket?”

  “Not just any cricket! Everyone knows that a cricket in the house is good luck. Unless it’s a white cricket, of course. And this one was. Pure white, and you know what that means!”

  “No, I don’t,” Sarah admitted.

  Mrs. Elsworth closed her eyes and laid her hand over her heart again. Sarah reached out, fully expecting her to keel over and ready to break the fall, but she didn’t move. She only said, “Death.”

  “Death?” Sarah echoed stupidly.

  Mrs. Elsworth opened her eyes and looked straight at her. “The white cricket means a death is coming to someone close.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that—”

  “And then there was my dream. You were in it, Mrs. Brandt. You were running and running, trying to catch someone, but you couldn’t, and then I saw her. I couldn’t see her face, but she was dead, and I was so afraid ... Well, I had to make sure you were all right, didn’t I?”

  “And as you can see. I’m perfectly fine. I’d be better if you’d allow me to listen to your heart, though. Just to make sure you’re fine. too,” she added with a small smile.

  “It’s really not necessary, but if it will make you happy,” she conceded.

  Sarah was relieved to hear the older woman’s heart beating rapidly but strongly.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Mrs. Elsworth said as Sarah put the stethoscope away.

  “I’d be a poor neighbor if I were less concerned about you than you are about me,” Sarah pointed out.

  Mrs. Elsworth sighed. “At least I’m not going out at all hours of the day and night looking for a killer.”

  “Neither am I,” Sarah said.

  “You were out yesterday, weren’t you? All day. I think that’s what brought on my dream, worrying about you. I knew it wasn’t a delivery. I saw the man who called for you yesterday morning.”

  Of course she had. No one came onto the street that Mrs. Elsworth didn’t see.

  “If you saw the man who called for me, you should have known there was nothing to worry about.”

  Mrs. Elsworth sniffed. “I hope you won’t think I’m meddling, but I don’t believe that fellow is a proper companion for you, Mrs. Brandt.”

  “Dirk?” Sarah asked in surprise. He had called for her in a hansom cab, which had seemed excessive to Sarah, since they were taking the trolley to Coney Island. She would have thought that would have impressed Mrs. Elsworth, however. “Why do you think he’s not proper?”

  “I know that look,” she said. “He’s a man who’s seen too much of the world. He’ll always be restless and angry. No woman will ever satisfy him for long.”

  Sarah was awed that her neighbor could make such an accurate assessment of Dirk Schyler just by catching a quick glimpse of him. “You don’t need to worry about me, Mrs. Elsworth. I won’t be seeing him again.”

  “That is a relief,” she admitted, managing a strained smile. She still looked shaken, though. Sarah might consider her superstitions ridiculous, but Mrs. Elsworth took them very seriously indeed, and this one had truly frightened her. Not badly enough that she forgot important things, however. “And how is that nice Mr. Malloy?” she asked. “I haven’t seen him around for a white.”

  Sarah managed not to choke at the description of Malloy as “nice.” “I haven’t seen him around in a while either,” she said, “so I have no idea how he is.”

  “Now, you should know Mr. Malloy would be a much better match for you than that fellow from yesterday, Mrs. Brandt,” Mrs. Elsworth said.

  This time Sarah did choke. “Are you serious?” she asked when she could talk again.

  “Perfectly. Oh, I know he’s Irish and a Catholic, but I don’t imagine that would stop either of you if you decided you wanted to be together.”

  “I must say, you have an odd idea of what’s proper and what isn‘t,” Sarah said, thinking her mother’s—and Malloy’s mother’s and everyone else’s—was exactly the opposite.

  “Not odd,” Mrs. Elsworth said. “Just practical. You’ll understand when you’re older, or at least I hope you will. Well, now that I’ve satisfied myself that you’re all right, I’ll let you be about your business. Just promise that you’ll be careful, won’t you? Dreams are sometimes omens, and the cricket definitely was. You mark my words.”

  “I’m always careful,” Sarah assured her, not quite accurately. She would be until Gerda’s killer was caught, though. And with any luck, that wouldn’t be long.

  SARAH WAS JUST putting on her hat that afternoon to go out when someone knocked on her door. She was surprised to see Malloy standing on her doorstep. She hadn’t sent for him yet, because she’d wanted to talk to Gerda’s friends first. If one of them knew this Will fellow, that would save a lot of time. She’d been planning to catch them as they left Faircloth’s this evening, but this was even better. Malloy could go with her to question the girls, and she could fill him in on the way.

  But then she got a look at his face. “What’s happened?” she asked in alarm, thinking of his son.

  “That girl Lisle has been murdered.”

  11

  SARAH COULDN’T GET HER BREATH, AND SHE didn’t resist at all when Malloy took her arm and guided her to a chair, just as she had done for Mrs. Elsworth that morning.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, knowing she was grasping at a straw but praying it would hold nonetheless.

  “As sure as we can be. Her face is pretty bad.”

  She felt the gorge rising in her throat and covered her mouth with both hands. .

  “You’re not going to faint on me, are you? Put your head down,” he said.

  “No, I’m fine,” she said, alarmed at how her voice sounded. She didn’t want to be a detective anymore. She didn’t want to know about any other young lives being snuffed out.

  “You don’t look fine,” Malloy said, his own voice alarming as well. He sounded frightened. “You got any smelling salts around here?”

  She did, of course, but she wasn’t going to need them. Her head was clearing now. She swallowed down hard on the sickness in her throat and clung fiercely to her pride. “Just tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”

  “You aren’t in any condition to hear about it,” he said. “I just wanted you to know so you didn’t have to find out from some stranger.”

  She drew in a deep breath. “Thank you for that. I was on my way to Faircloths. I wanted to talk to Lisle”—she had to stop and swallow after saying the girl’s name—“about something I discovered at Coney Island yesterday.”

  “You found out something?” he asked, sounding insulted. “Were you planning to tell me about it?”

  “Yes, of course, just as soon as I’d talked to Lisle and the others.”

  He pulled up her desk chair and sat down facing her. “Tell me now.”

  Sarah drew another breath. She was feeling more like herself, but the pain was beginning. She could see Lisle, the fragile-looking girl with the will of iron. Sarah remembered how frightened she had been about meeting George and taking him out of the dance hall so Malloy could question him. She’d been too frightened to go home that night, so she’d stayed at Sarah’s instead. Sleeping in Sarah’s bed, she’d looked like an innocent child, with her hand curled against her cheek and her corn-yellow hair spread out on the pillow.

  Sarah thought of her death, how terrified she must have been. The pain and the fear and the knowledge that she knew who the killer was but would never be able to tell anyone. How many others would have to die before they could stop him?

  She swiped impatiently at the tears that sprang to her eyes. She didn’t have time for that now. “Do you have any idea who did it?”

  “Well, I did question our friend George, even though I was pretty sur
e he didn’t do it. He didn’t. He was with a group of fellows playing cards all night. They were pretty drunk, but they all said George never left the room for more than a few minutes. He was pretty broken up about the girl, too. I guess he cared for her a little.”

  Sarah wasn’t surprised George was innocent. “I found the place where Gerda got the red shoes. In Coney Island, at a shop in the Elephant Hotel: The shopkeeper remembered that the man who bought them for her was named Will.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Is that all?” he asked impatiently.

  “Yes, that’s all! It proves that Gerda knew this Will fellow, too. We know it wasn’t George, so this Will must be the killer.”

  “Well, unless this shopkeeper gave you Will’s address, I don’t think we’re any closer to finding him now than we were before,” Malloy pointed out.

  Oh, dear, she just wasn’t thinking clearly. “There’s more. I also realized I’d never asked Gerda’s friends if they knew anyone named Will. I just asked the names of the men they did know. I was going to ask them today—” Her voice broke, and she had to cover her mouth to hold back a sob.

  “There wasn’t much chance that they did know him,” Malloy pointed out.

  Sarah drew a shaky breath. “That’s what I thought, too, at first. But then Dirk said—”

  “Dirk?” he asked incredulously.

  Oh, dear, she hadn’t meant to tell him that part. “Yes, I asked Dirk Schyler to go with me when I went back to Coney Island. He knows the area,” she added defensively when he made a face. “At any rate, I realized that there was really no reason for Gerda not to have told her friends. the name of the man who’d been so generous to her and bought her the shoes unless one of them already knew him and considered him her beau or something. Dirk pointed out that the girls are very possessive of the men who are generous, so if she’d stolen him away from one of her friends, she might not want her to know.”

  “It’s possible,” he said sourly. “Or maybe she didn’t want anybody stealing him from her, and that’s why she didn’t tell them who he was.”

  “There’s one way to find out, although I don’t suppose this would be a good time to question Hetty and Bertha. They’ll be pretty upset.”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t seem very upset when Gerda died. Maybe they’ll think it’s one less woman to compete for the men.”

  “What a horrid thing to say! Don’t you have any feelings at all?” she demanded, suddenly furious.

  “Ah, that’s more like it,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “For a minute there, I was afraid you were going to go vaporish on me.”

  Now she really was mad. He’d made her angry on purpose so she wouldn’t cry. Just like a man, afraid of a few tears. Well, she’d make him pay for getting her ire up.

  “All right, now tell me what happened. How did Lisle ... ?” Angry as she was, she still couldn’t say the words.

  He winced a bit, but he said, “She was beaten, like the others. In an alley not too far from where she lived. Near where they found the Reinhard girl, too. Why do these girls go into alleys with strange men in the first place?”

  “Because they can’t go to hotel rooms,” Sarah informed him without thinking.

  “What?”

  Oh, dear, now she would have to explain. How on earth could she do that without embarrassing them both? She drew a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Prostitutes usually have a room or else men take them to a hotel, but these girls can’t do that. They have families who expect them to come home at some point for the night. If they want to be alone with a man, their choices are few. Alleys are dark and private and perfectly suitable for a quick ... uh ... rendezvous.”

  Malloy was horrified. “Are you talking about ... ?”

  Sarah nodded reluctantly. “Whatever favors the girls grant are granted in alleys. Standing up. Which only makes sense, considering how filthy the alleys are.”

  Malloy took a minute to digest what she was telling him. She hadn’t been able to imagine discussing this with him, but for some reason she didn’t feel the embarrassment she’d expected to feel. Malloy’s attitude probably had something to do with it. Most men would have snickered or made fun, but he was as appalled as she.

  “Mother of God,” he murmured, and rubbed his face with both hands.

  “Had Lisle been... interfered with?” An awkward euphemism for rape.

  “Not violently. She probably consented to that part, the same way the others did. It’s after that the killer gets angry and starts beating them. That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense. I can understand him getting angry if the girl refuses him, but these girls didn’t. It’s like he’s angry with them because they allowed him to use them.”

  “Maybe he is,” Sarah said. “His mind has got to be twisted to kill the girls the way he does.”

  He gave her no argument.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked after a moment.

  “You don’t do anything,” he said. “I’m going to see this girl’s family and find out what I can about where she was last night.”

  “Her family won’t know anything.”

  “And I’ll question Hetty and Bertha, too.”

  “They won’t tell you anything,” Sarah warned him. “Why don’t you let me talk to them?”

  “Because you’re not a police officer,” he reminded her.

  “What difference does that make? They’ll tell me things they’d never tell you. If you expect to find out anything at all, you’ll have to let me talk to them sooner or later.”

  She was right, and it killed him to admit it. After a painful inner struggle, he surrendered. “Do you even know where they live?”

  “No, but I can find them.” She knew just whom to ask. It would give her the perfect excuse to go there, too.

  MALLOY HATED THIS part of his job. Questioning the grieving family of a murder victim was never easy. When the victim was a young woman, it was horrible. He could hear the weeping from down on the street. Of course, with the windows open because of the heat, you could hear everything going on in the flats above.

  The girl’s family lived on the third floor. Frank was sweating by the time he reached it. The door to their flat stood open, and neighbors had gathered in the kitchen to comfort the girl’s mother, who was inconsolable.

  When they noticed him, the room went silent. Even the mother stopped crying. Her bloodshot eyes looked to him pathetically. Some part of her probably hoped he’d come to tell her it was all a mistake. “Could I talk to you alone, Mrs. Lasher?” he asked.

  “It’s Frankle,” one of the neighbors said helpfully. “She’s remarried.”

  “Mrs. Frankle,” he corrected himself.

  “My husband, he’ll be back soon,” she tried, moving her hands helplessly, desperate to be spared the ordeal of speaking of her dead child.

  “Then I’ll talk to him when he gets here.” He looked at the other women in the room meaningfully. Without a word, they filed out. One of them patted Mrs. Frankle’s hand and whispered something to her before following the others out.

  When they were gone, he closed the door in spite of the heat.

  “There’s no mistake, then? It’s really Lisle?” she asked, her eyes still holding on to the hope.

  “No mistake. I thought somebody had identified her.”

  “My husband, but he said ... He could’ve made a mistake. I wanted to go myself, but when they told me , ... I couldn’t.”

  “You made the right choice,” he assured her. “Remember her the way she was.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat down across the kitchen table from her while she dabbed at her eyes with a damp handkerchief.

  “Do you know where Lisle went last night?”

  She shook her head. “She goes out almost every night, but I do not know the places. She does not tell us where she goes. Dancing, I think. Her friends would know.”

  “Did she have any special men friends?”<
br />
  “None that come here,” her mother said bitterly. “She does not tell us anything about what she does or who she knows. I tell her this is not good, that she will end up like the Reinhard girl, but does she listen? No, she never listens.”

  She was working herself up to anger now. Malloy always learned more when they were angry. “Maybe she mentioned someone she was afraid of,” he suggested.

  “No, never,” her mother insisted. “She does not tell us anything. Except...”

  “Except what?” he asked when she hesitated.

  She was thinking, remembering. “There was a photograph ...”

  Frank couldn’t believe he would be this lucky. “A photograph of what?”

  “Of Lisle. And some other people. In a boat, I think. I do not know when she would have been in a boat. She tried to hide it, but nothing is private here. That is what she always says. The other children, they get into her things, so she cannot keep anything a secret. She cries to me about it, but what can I do?”

  “It’s hard in a place so small,” Frank agreed. “And the other children found this photograph?”

  “Yes. Her brothers teased her about it, but she said she did not care because she did not like the man anymore. She told them to burn the picture. I think she said it because she knew they would not hurt it if they thought she didn’t care. They kept it to tease her, though.”

  “Do you know where it is now?” The chances that it would help him were very slim, but he was willing to take even the smallest clue.

  “No, I—”

  “It could be very important.”

  “Do you think it could help find who did this?”

  “It might.”

  “I will try to find it.”

  SARAH HEARD A baby squalling as she climbed the stairs. The cry was loud and strong, a good sign if it was coming from the Ottos’ flat. The door was open, and Agnes was moving around, preparing dinner while she bounced the wailing baby on her hip.

  “She’s really growing,” Sarah said from the doorway.

  Agnes turned around, obviously startled. Her eyes widened with what looked like alarm. “The baby, she is fine,” she said, offering her for Sarah’s inspection. “You do not need to worry about her anymore. There is no reason for you to come here.”