Murder On GramercyPark

by Victoria Thompson

  “And if Calvin had gotten it, that probably means he’s the killer,” she guessed, “but if he did kill his father and get the money, it also doesn’t seem likely he’d still be here in the city, does it?”

  “That does seem reasonable,” Malloy said just to keep from admitting she was right. She knew he hated admitting she was right.

  “But you don’t think Calvin is the killer, at least.”

  “No, I don’t. He’s just too innocent.”

  “I’m impressed, Malloy. You hardly ever see good in anyone.”

  “There’s hardly ever any good to see,” he countered.

  “With the people you deal with, that’s probably true.”

  “With the people you deal with, too, if you’d admit it.”

  He was right. Sarah didn’t like to think about it, but the father of the last baby she’d delivered had been murdered right in his own home. No one she’d met so far seemed completely innocent, either, except perhaps the baby himself.

  “Did you find out anything else from the people at the funeral?” he asked.

  “Just that all of Blackwell’s female patients-”

  “Clients,” Malloy corrected her.

  “Clients,” she dutifully repeated, “were extremely fond of him. Apparently, his reputation as a ladies’ man wasn’t exaggerated.”

  “Do you think he actually seduced them?”

  Sarah considered. “I believe there was some physical contact. Certainly, he had to touch his clients in order to perform his treatments, but there’s different kinds of touching, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Wouldn’t the women have objected if he took liberties with them?” Malloy asked with a frown.

  Malloy was, Sarah remembered, something of a prude when it came to such things. “Not if they believed it was part of the treatment, and not if it felt very pleasant. And of course if they were under hypnosis…”

  Malloy made a face to express his distaste. “If they were in some sort of trance, he could’ve done anything he wanted. So you’re telling me that all the husbands of these women could’ve had a good reason to blow Blackwell’s brains out.”

  “I’m telling you that Blackwell gave these women relief from their pain, and he may have even given them pleasure. Many women never experience physical pleasure from their marital relations, Malloy. Blackwell must have seemed like a miracle worker to them.”

  Malloy was glancing around anxiously to make sure no one had overheard her. “Do you have to talk about things like that?” he asked.

  “We’re talking about the case,” she reminded him. “I’m just trying to help you understand the kind of man Blackwell was, and who might have had a reason to kill him and why.”

  “I guess you’re ruling out all his female patients, then,” Malloy said sarcastically.

  “Unless one of them was the jealous type,” Sarah said with some amusement.

  “Could one of them have been jealous of his wife?”

  “Mrs. Fitzgerald apparently was, but if that was the motive, then Letitia would be dead instead of her husband. Although…”

  “Although what?” he prodded when she hesitated.

  “Mrs. Fitzgerald was not aware that Letitia was with child. If Blackwell led his patients to believe he had a marriage in name only…”

  “That’s a little hard to believe,” Malloy said. “These women are married, too. Why would they expect him to be faithful to them?”

  “You’re right. That’s pretty farfetched. On the other hand, if Letitia was jealous of them…”

  “I haven’t met Mrs. Blackwell yet,” he reminded her, “but you said she doesn’t seem like the type.”

  Sarah sighed. “I’m afraid she’s not.”

  They walked a block in silence. Finally Sarah said, “Why don’t you just arrest Amos Potter? Neither of us likes him much.”

  “I don’t like Maurice Symington, either. Why couldn’t he be the killer instead?” Malloy countered.

  “I like that idea. Do you know that he spoke at Blackwell‘s lectures when Letitia couldn’t, and that the eulogy he gave today was the same speech he used for the lectures? He couldn’t even be bothered to write a true eulogy for his son-in-law. But what would his motive be to kill Blackwell?”

  “What would Potter’s motive be?”

  “Let’s see, if either of them was upset about Edmund’s bigamy, that would be a good reason to kill him. They’re both devoted to Letitia and would be eager to protect her,” Sarah said.

  “Why should Potter care?”

  “Because he’s in love with Letitia.”

  “Then he wouldn’t have to kill Blackwell. All he’d have to do was wait until her life was ruined by the scandal and be her sole remaining support. Then he could have her all to himself,” Malloy pointed out.

  “Only if she’d have him in return, and that doesn’t seem likely. No, her father is a much more logical choice if Blackwell was killed because of his bigamy. Symington would want to save his daughter from the scandal and get revenge on Blackwell, too. Blackwell’s death would ensure that the scandal never became public. He seems like the best suspect to me.”

  “Only if he knew about the Brown family, though,” Malloy pointed out.

  “You could ask him if he did,” Sarah said.

  “Yeah, if I want to be out of a job tomorrow.”

  He was right, of course. Having the audacity to question a man as powerful as Symington about whether he’d killed his son-in-law was a sure way to draw the wrong sort of attention to yourself if you were a police detective.

  “Could Potter have told him?” Sarah asked. “Or even Calvin himself?”

  “Calvin wouldn’t even know who Letitia’s father is, much less how to find him.”

  Sarah sighed. This was getting them nowhere.

  Then Malloy said, “Wait, you said Symington spoke at Blackwell’s lectures. Calvin told me he went to one of those lectures. Someone had sent his mother one of the advertising posters so he would know where to find his father. That’s what brought him to New York in the first place.”

  “Who sent him the poster?” Sarah asked eagerly. “That person would be a likely suspect.”

  “Calvin doesn’t know. It was sent anonymously. Anyway, when Calvin went to the lecture, he heard Symington speak. The boy was upset because Symington said Blackwell was married to his daughter.”

  “So he did know who Symington was,” Sarah said in triumph. “Could he have gone to see him, too?”

  Malloy smiled grimly. “I think I’ll pay young Calvin a visit and ask him that very thing.”

  7

  MALLOY KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF THE ROOMING house early Sunday morning. The landlady, a blowsy woman past her prime named Mrs. Zimmerman, opened the door.

  “’Morning to you, Mr. Malloy. How are you this fine day?” she inquired cheerfully. She’d been a good-looking woman once, Malloy judged, but the years were showing on her now. Her dark hair was streaked with gray, and the smile lines on her face had become permanent wrinkles.

  “I’m well, thanks for asking. Is young Calvin in?”

  “He’s always in, Mr. Malloy. That boy hardly ever goes anyplace except for church, and he hasn’t left yet, I don’t think. I tell him he ought to see something of the city while he’s here, but to tell you the truth, I think he’s a bit scared by all the noise and such. He’s awake, though. Up with the sun, our Calvin is, like he was still in the country. Come right on in.”

  Malloy knew the way to the boy’s room on the second floor of the house. Mrs. Zimmerman wasn’t much of a housekeeper, he noticed, seeing the dust on the edges of the stairs, but Calvin had said she was a good cook. Frank found her pleasant enough, too, when he’d paid the boy’s rent for a week in advance and asked her to send him word if Calvin didn’t come back some evening. She was more than happy to be of service to the police, she assured him. As a business woman, she needed their goodwill.

  Calvin’s door stood open, and Frank surprised hi
m whittling something at the small table in his room. He jumped up and gave the detective a welcoming smile.

  “Mr. Malloy, do you have any news about who killed my father?”

  He certainly didn’t look like a killer, Frank noted again. Or a liar, either. His eyes were clear and met Frank’s unflinchingly. And killers weren’t usually so eager for him to find the guilty party.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Calvin,” he said, “but I only came to ask you a few more questions.”

  “Come on in, then, and sit down. I’ll tell you what I can, but I don’t think I know anything besides what I already told you.”

  There was only one chair in the room, and Calvin had been sitting in it. He offered it to Frank now, however, after carefully brushing the sawdust off the seat. Frank glanced at what he’d been working on. It looked like a small, wooden face.

  “It’s a doll’s head,” Calvin explained, seeing Frank looking at it. “For one of my sisters. My ma makes the body out of rags.”

  “You’re pretty good at it,” Frank remarked.

  Calvin shrugged self-consciously. “It keeps me busy. There’s not much to do here.”

  Frank didn’t point out that there were plenty of things to do in New York City if a person looked around.

  Calvin sat down on the bed, which he had apparently made this morning. The covers were smooth and tightly tucked, just as the boy’s extra clothes hung neatly on pegs along the wall. His mother had taught him well.

  “What did you come to ask me?” Calvin asked, only too happy to be of assistance, just the way an innocent man would be.

  “Did you by any chance meet with anybody besides your father while you were in town? To talk about your problems with him, I mean?”

  Calvin blinked. “I did go to see that Mr. Symington,” he said guilelessly.

  Only years of practice enabled Frank to remain expressionless. “Was this before or after you saw your father?”

  “I guess you’d say before. I went to my father’s house that first day, right after the lecture, and told that fellow who answers the door that I needed to see Dr. Blackwell, but he wouldn’t let me in. He said I could knock on the kitchen door, and they’d give me some food scraps. I tried to tell him I didn’t want any food scraps, but he just slammed the door in my face. I even tried at the kitchen, but they wouldn’t let me in there either. I didn’t know what to do, but when I told Mrs. Zimmerman, the landlady, all about it, she found out for me where Mr. Symington’s office was.”

  “That was nice of her.”

  “She’s been real helpful to me,” Calvin said. “She’s real nice.”

  “I could tell,” Frank said. “Go on. When did you see Mr. Symington?”

  “The next day. Mrs. Zimmerman said I should tell the fellow who’d be working at Mr. Symington’s office that I had something important to tell Mr. Symington about his daughter. She said he’d probably at least let me talk to somebody, even if he wouldn’t see me himself. They made me wait on the front stoop until they talked to Mr. Symington, but then they let me right in.”

  “You got to see Symington personally?” Frank asked in amazement. Surely, Symington’s household staff would be better trained than Blackwell’s. Why had Calvin been able to get past them?

  “Yes, sir. I went right into the room where he was. He was sitting behind this great big desk and he looked up when I come in. It was funny because he seemed real surprised, even though he knew I was coming in because they’d told him. He got over it real quick, though, and then he asked me what did I have to tell him about his daughter.”

  “What do you mean, he looked surprised?”

  “I don’t know. Just surprised. Like maybe I wasn’t the person he was expecting to see or something. So I told him all about how Dr. Blackwell was my father and how he couldn’t be married to his daughter because he was still married to my mother.”

  “I guess he was even more surprised then.”

  “I’d say he was more mad than anything. At first I was scared he’d hit me or something. At least throw me out of the house. He was that mad. But he didn’t even shout. He just asked me what I wanted from him. I said I just wanted to see my father and make him take care of our family again.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “He wanted to know why I come to him instead of going to my father, so I told him how they wouldn’t let me in there. So he says he’ll take care of everything, and he goes and telephones my father.”

  “What did he say to him?”

  “I don’t know. The telephone was in another room. When he comes back, he tells me to go right back to my father’s house, and he’ll see me for sure. He looked real strange.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I never saw that kind of a look on anybody before. He looked like he could do murder… Oh!” he cried when he realized what he said. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I’m sure he was very angry to find out his daughter had been deceived like that. You wouldn’t like it much if some man did that to one of your sisters, would you?”

  “No, sir! I guess I’d want to kill anybody who did that.”

  Frank didn’t reply, and after a moment Calvin asked, “Do you think that’s what happened? Do you think Mr. Symington could’ve killed my father?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been to see Mr. Symington?” Frank asked, ignoring the boy’s question.

  “You didn’t ask me,” Calvin pointed out, “and in all the excitement, I… I guess I just forgot.”

  He seemed to be telling the truth. Frank looked for a sign, any sign at all, that he wasn’st, and found none. Calvin’s face was as open as a child’s. “Is there anything else you forgot to tell me? Did Symington offer you any money?”

  “No, sir. He didn’t offer me anything.”

  “And have you seen him again?”

  “Why should I?” Calvin asked quite reasonably.

  Frank didn’t bother to answer. “The day your father was killed, did you see anybody else around his house?”

  “There was some people in the park, it seems like, and maybe somebody walking on the sidewalk.”

  “I mean anyone who looked like they were sneaking around or hurrying away from the house?”

  Calvin considered. “I don’t think so. Why…? Oh, you mean the killer,” he guessed after a moment. “No, I didn’t see nobody like that. I wish I did. I’d sure like to help. The fellow Mr. Potter, he thinks I killed my father, so I want to help all I can to find the real killer.”

  “I know you do, Calvin,” Malloy said wearily. He was more convinced than ever of the boy’s innocence. And now he had another good suspect. Symington must have been furious when he found out the truth about his son-in-law. Could he have figured out a way to free his daughter from the scandal of Blackwell’s secret family? The crime indicated that someone had carefully planned it, even down to establishing Calvin as a suspect if the suicide ruse failed. His daughter would be a respectable widow instead of a bigamist’s wife.

  But if Frank wanted to accuse a man like Symington of murder, he’d need a lot more than a suspicion.

  “Does any of this help, Mr. Malloy?” the boy asked eagerly.

  “Not enough,” Frank replied with a sigh.

  SARAH WASN’T SURE how often she could visit the Blackwell home before someone began to wonder what she was doing there. Sunday afternoon she once again arrived to check on Mrs. Blackwell’s condition. Since no one in the house had any idea how often Mrs. Blackwell needed to be checked, she supposed the ploy would work for a while yet.

  Mrs. Blackwell was sleeping when she arrived, so Sarah went to see how the baby was doing. He was being fed when the nurse bade her enter.

  “Oh, Mrs. Brandt, I’m so glad to see you. Sit down and rest yourself,” the nurse said from where she sat in the rocking chair. “I’ll have some tea brought up. Would you pull the bell there? Someone will come.”

  The woman was so obviously desperate for com
pany that Sarah couldn’t refuse. She took a seat in a comfortable chair that had been provided for the nurse’s use when she wasn’t rocking the baby. She was glad to see the baby seemed to be suckling just fine and gaining some weight.

  “He looks well,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, he’s all right, I guess. Still sleeps a lot, but that’s to be expected, I suppose. And sometimes I’ve got to tickle his feet to keep him awake while he nurses, but there’s lots of babies what do that.”

  “Yes, there are,” Sarah agreed.

  “I was hoping you’d come,” the nurse said after a moment. “I found out some things I thought you’d want to know.”

  “What kind of things?” Sarah asked politely.

  “For instance, do you know how Mrs. Blackwell started using the morphine in the first place?”

  “It’s my understanding that she was injured very badly in a riding accident,” Sarah said. “She started taking it for the pain.”

  “I suppose that’s true as far as it goes,” the nurse said, her homely face creasing into smugness. “But do you have any idea where she was riding off to, and with who, when she had that accident?”

  Sarah hadn’t given the matter any thought, but she was willing to play along. “No, I don’t.”

  “Then you’ll be surprised to hear that she was eloping.”

  Sarah’s first thought was that she had been eloping with Dr. Blackwell, but that wasn’t possible. She hadn’t even known him then. “Who was she eloping with?” she asked.

  “That’s the scandal, don’t you know,” the nurse told her with satisfaction. “She was running off with the local schoolmaster!”

  “Good heavens!”

  “I got this from her maid what’s been with her since she was in pigtails,” the nurse informed her. “She said Mrs. Blackwell had been carrying on with this fellow behind her father’s back. The father never would’ve approved of a marriage between them, so the two of them were running away together. Except that Mrs. Blackwell’s horse stumbled in a ditch, and she was throwed.”