Murder On GramercyPark

by Victoria Thompson

  Clearly, Letitia hadn’t thought of having a possible legacy. “Of course! And there’s this house, too. I never liked it, and Peter and I won’t need anything so grand, in any case. I could sell it and buy something smaller.”

  Sarah bit her tongue. No one had yet told Letitia that the house had merely been a loan from a grateful patient, a patient whose husband wanted the widow to vacate the property immediately. “You don’t need to make any decisions just yet,” Sarah said. “I believe Mr. Potter has been taking care of your husband’s business affairs. I’m sure he can tell you exactly what your situation is.” Better he than I, she added silently.

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Potter is very capable,” Letitia recalled, and Sarah was glad Potter couldn’t see the indifference in her eyes when she spoke of him. “He’ll take care of everything, I’m sure. He always does.”

  And meanwhile, Sarah would make sure Malloy took care of questioning Peter Dudley to find out if he had an alibi for the afternoon when Dr. Blackwell was murdered.

  WHEN SARAH TURNED down Bank Street, she could see Mrs. Ellsworth sweeping her front stoop. She called out a greeting when she was close enough, and Mrs. Ellsworth pretended to be surprised to see her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brandt! Have you been delivering a baby?”

  “Not today,” Sarah replied with a smile.

  “That’s good,” she said as Sarah stopped beside her porch. “I dropped my scissors this morning, and they landed point down and stuck in the floor!”

  “That’s too bad,” Sarah said. “I hope it didn’t leave a bad mark.”

  “Oh, my, that’s the least of it! Don’t you know that when scissors stick in the floor, it’s an omen of death? Dear me, the last time I had an omen like that, some poor girl you knew died.”

  Sarah remembered and shivered. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence,” she said, as much to convince herself as to reassure Mrs. Ellsworth. “In a city this size, people die every day, you know.”

  “That’s true, of course,” Mrs. Ellsworth agreed. “And I’m always happy to be wrong about something like that. Are you and Mr. Malloy working on another case together? I saw him coming to visit you last night.”

  “Yes, and he enjoyed your pie very much,” Sarah told her. “Actually, he’s trying to find out who killed my husband.”

  “Is he?” she exclaimed, excitement lighting her wrinkled face. “Does he have new evidence?”

  “I’m afraid not, but he’s looking through Tom’s old files to see if he can find someone who might have been angry with Tom or had a reason to want him out of the way.”

  “I’m sure he won’t find anything like that,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “Dr. Brandt was such a fine man. How could anyone not wish him well?”

  “That’s nice of you to say,” Sarah said, but she couldn’t help thinking that while Tom truly had been a fine man, he was also dead, and someone had killed him. It might have been a random act of violence. Such things happened in the city frequently. But if it was, then there was little possibility anyone would ever be brought to account for the crime. Sarah didn’t like to think herself vindictive, but she wanted someone to pay for having ended her husband’s life.

  “That reminds me, did you see that article in the Sunday magazine?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked. “The one about that new photography called X ray? It made me wonder what Dr. Tom would have thought of such a thing.”

  “Yes, I saw it. I’ve heard about it, too. I suppose it would be very helpful to be able to see inside someone’s body.” She thought about Brian Malloy’s foot and wondered what an X-ray photograph of it would show.

  “Although,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, “I think some things are better off left a mystery. If there was something bad inside of me, I don’t think I’d want to know about it.”

  “X-ray photography isn’t likely to be able to do that anyway,” Sarah said. “It’s not very exact and the pictures aren’t very clear. It may very well be just an experiment that has no practical purpose.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “It seems kind of indecent to go looking inside of people like that.”

  Sarah bit back a smile.

  “Will Mr. Malloy be coming back soon?” Mrs. Ellsworth said, catching her by surprise. “I’d be happy to donate another pie for his enjoyment.”

  “I’m sure he would appreciate that. He may stop by later, if he can. Like me, he can’t always be sure when he’ll be free.”

  “I guess crimes and babies make their own schedules, don’t they?” Mrs. Ellsworth observed.

  “That they do,” Sarah said. “You have a lovely evening,” she added as she made her way to her own front porch.

  After eating her supper, Sarah was sitting by her front window, mentally composing a note to Malloy telling him she had some important information and needed to meet with him right away, when she saw him coming down the street.

  Mrs. Ellsworth saw him, too, and he had to stop and make small talk with her for a few minutes. Ever since Mrs. Ellsworth had saved Sarah’s life, she had taken a great interest in hearing about the crimes Malloy was working on. Unfortunately, Malloy studiously avoided telling her about any of them, which Mrs. Ellsworth found extremely frustrating.

  As soon as he could, Malloy extricated himself from her and made his way to Sarah’s door. She was waiting for him as he came up the steps. “Did she offer you some pie?” Sarah asked as he entered the house.

  “No,” he said, removing his hat. “She’s probably going to bring it over later. She thinks I’m a saint for trying to solve your husband’s murder. Did you have to tell her that?” He was pretending to be annoyed.

  “It was either that or let her think you’re courting me. Which would you prefer, Malloy?” she asked with some amusement.

  He frowned as he pretended to consider his options. “If she thought I was courting you, she might not come over and bother us,” he pointed out.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Sarah replied. “Come in and have some coffee before you get started. I’ve got something very interesting to tell you.”

  He rolled his eyes, but he followed her into the kitchen and sat down obediently at the table.

  “I found the redheaded lover,” she told him smugly when she’d poured his coffee.

  He almost dropped the cup. “You what?”

  “That’s what you told me to do,” she reminded him. “The only problem is that he’s the same fellow she eloped with before-Peter Dudley. They were running away together when her horse threw her, and she was injured.”

  “He’s the schoolmaster, then?”

  “That’s right. It appears that Mr. Symington didn’t have him killed, just discharged. I’m sure he figured Letitia would never encounter him again, so having him murdered was a needless expense.”

  Malloy ignored her sarcasm. “How did she encounter him again?”

  “He went to one of Blackwell’s lectures. He apparently saw Letitia’s name on the poster and wanted to see how she was. He must have felt terribly guilty because she’d been hurt, and then he hadn’t been able to find out if she’d ever recovered. He’d lost his position and come to the city, so he hadn’t had any contact with her at all until then, according to Letitia. He works in a bank or something now.”

  “And he has red hair,” Malloy said, sipping his coffee thoughtfully.

  “Extremely red hair. But even if he didn’st, Letitia admitted he was the baby’s father.”

  “She just told you, right out?” Malloy marveled. “I know priests who can’t get confessions like that!”

  Sarah tried to look modest. “I think she just needed to confide in someone. Someone who wouldn’t judge her, that is.”

  “She deserves to be judged,” Malloy said flatly.

  “Perhaps, but Blackwell wasn’t without guilt either. He only married her because she wanted to stop doing the lectures. He pretended to be in love with her, and he used his considerable charms to convince her he was. But as soon as they were safely
married, he didn’t even bother to… uh… to share her bed.”

  Malloy choked on his coffee. She should have waited until he wasn’t drinking to tell him that. She knew he didn’t like discussing such things, especially with her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked as he coughed.

  He nodded and kept coughing for a few more minutes. Finally, he was able to speak again. “She told you that, too?” he asked incredulously.

  “As I said, she needed to unburden herself. The strangest part is that when Letitia turned up with child, Dr. Blackwell didn’t even realize he couldn’t be the father. That’s how little attention he paid to her. She must have been terribly lonely and unhappy.”

  “I guess committing adultery made her feel better,” Malloy scoffed.

  “I’m not excusing her, Malloy. I’m just explaining.”

  “All right, then explain why she didn’t leave Blackwell for the schoolmaster after he found her again and they discovered they were still in love.”

  “That’s easy. Divorce is extremely difficult and expensive. Letitia’s father was hardly likely to finance one for her, and she and Dudley had no means of their own to do so. Besides, if she did divorce Blackwell, he could keep her child.”

  “Why would he want a baby that wasn’t his?” Malloy asked skeptically.

  “He probably wouldn’st, but he could legally keep the child, and even the threat of that would be enough to prevent Letitia from leaving him. Then he could make her life even more miserable than it already was, and she wouldn’t dare complain. And Blackwell could force her to continue appearing at his lectures.”

  Malloy needed no more than a moment to see the significance of this information. “But if Blackwell was dead, the lovers could be together with no other problems.”

  “I believe you already pointed that out to me,” Sarah reminded him, “which is why you assigned me the task of finding the redheaded lover in the first place.”

  “I didn’t really expect you to find one,” he admitted.

  “I didn’t either,” she admitted right back. “But now that I have, you have another suspect in Blackwell’s death.”

  “Do you think this Dudley could have done it?”

  Sarah considered. “He’s certainly devoted to Letitia. And he wasn’t above bedding another man’s wife. Did I tell you they met at an opium den for their trysts?”

  “Good God.”

  “He also eloped with an innocent young girl against her family’s wishes. I think he’s extremely foolish, maybe even foolish enough to commit murder and try to make it look like suicide, especially if he thought it was the only way to protect Letitia.”

  “A schoolmaster might be smart enough to think of the suicide thing, too. A good way to avoid suspicion. If there’s no murder, nobody will be looking for a killer, and he can come courting the widow afterward with no one the wiser.”

  “Murder would solve another problem as well,” Sarah said. “Letitia was concerned about living on a bank employee’s salary until I reminded her she would inherit her husband’s estate. She wouldn’t have gotten anything at all if she divorced him.”

  “She won’t get anything now, either,” Malloy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Blackwell didn’t leave any estate.”

  Sarah frowned. “I know he didn’t own the house, but surely he had something put aside.”

  “Not a penny, according to Mr. Potter, who seemed pretty upset about it himself. Turns out he was supposed to be a partner in the business and get half of everything. He even thought he owned half of the house.”

  “Oh, my,” Sarah said, giving herself a moment to absorb this. “If Dudley and Letitia didn’t know this, as they apparently didn’st, then it wouldn’t rule them out as suspects, but it also gives Potter another reason to murder Blackwell, besides being in love with Letitia. He thought he would inherit some money, too.”

  “Money that he’d use to pay me a reward for finding the killer,” Malloy suggested mildly.

  “Oh, yes, I keep forgetting about that. I guess I’m going to have to give up on making Mr. Potter the killer,” Sarah said.

  “I understand the temptation,” Malloy said with a grin. “He’s a hard man to like, especially when he keeps insisting poor Calvin Brown killed his father.”

  “That is tactless of him,” Sarah agreed. “Oh, wait, I just thought of something else. If Letitia’s marriage to Blackwell wasn’t valid, then she wouldn’t have needed a divorce to marry Dudley.”

  “She wouldn’t have needed to kill her husband either, which would eliminate her and Dudley as suspects. Do you think she knew?”

  “If she did, she’s done a remarkable job of hiding it.”

  “She did a remarkable job of hiding the morphine, too,” Malloy pointed out. “And she would have had to be an accomplished liar to keep her secret from her husband all that time.”

  He was right, of course. A woman as desperate and unhappy as Letitia might be guilty of anything, innocent face or not. “So if she knew her marriage was bigamous, then she and Dudley probably didn’t kill Blackwell,” she reasoned.

  “Unless the money was just as important to them as being together. If she wasn’t really married to Blackwell, she wasn’t entitled to anything he owned, either. Killing him while she was still his recognized wife would ensure she’d get his estate. And there wouldn’t be the messiness of a scandal, either.”

  “So either way they have a motive for killing him,” Sarah realized.

  A tap on the back door distracted them, and as Malloy had predicted, it was Mrs. Ellsworth bearing a pie.

  “Mrs. Brandt said you enjoyed the one I sent over yesterday,” she explained to Malloy when she stepped into the kitchen.

  “I did,” he admitted, doing his best to be gracious, even though Sarah could tell it was a strain.

  “It’s the least I can do. If you can find Dr. Brandt’s killer, you will have done a great service.”

  “I told you not to get your hopes up,” Malloy reminded her gently, for him. “There really isn’t much chance after all this time.”

  “You can do it, if anyone can,” she said confidently. “It’s apple and raisin,” she added, setting the pie on the table. “There aren’t any good berries left this late in the year.”

  “I’m sure it’s delicious,” Sarah said.

  After some more meaningless conversation, Mrs. Ellsworth reluctantly left, wishing Malloy success in his quest.

  “I didn’t realize that coming over here could be so dangerous,” Malloy remarked, looking admiringly at the pie. “If I’m not careful, I’ll be as big as a barn.”

  “You don’t have to eat it,” Sarah said with a grin.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to eat it,” he replied, grinning back.

  SARAH BRANDT STILL needed some training in being a cop, Malloy mused the next morning as he made his way down Essex Street toward the rooming house where Calvin Brown was staying. She’d met Peter Dudley, but she had no idea where he lived or how to find him. He worked at a bank somewhere was all she could tell him. Letitia Blackwell was hardly likely to be forthcoming with the information he needed either, even if he could get her to see him, which seemed still more unlikely. Short of waiting on the Blackwells’ front steps until Dudley showed up again, Frank had no other means of locating him. He was once again going to have to send Sarah Brandt on police business to obtain the necessary information.

  Mrs. Zimmerman answered his knock at the rooming-house door. She patted her carelessly dressed hair, as if making sure she looked her best for her visitor. “Mr. Malloy, how nice to see you,” she said with a smile so broad, it showed her missing molars. Frank thought she might be trying to flirt with him, so he played along.

  “It’s very nice to see you, too, Mrs. Zimmerman. How’s young Calvin doing?” he asked, stepping into the house.

  “The same as always. He’s been quiet as a mouse this morning. Didn’t even come down for brea
kfast.”

  “Is that like him?” Frank asked, a little disturbed by this news. She hadn’t seen Calvin this morning and hadn’t checked to see if he was still there. Maybe Potter was right, and the boy had finally fled. He didn’t like the idea of explaining that to Potter.

  “No, come to think of it, it isn’t like him at all,” she admitted with a frown. “I just thought… He gets up real early. Maybe he was down and got something before I was up this morning. He does that sometimes…”

  Frank didn’t wait for her to show him upstairs. He took the steps two at a time, instinct telling him something was wrong. If the boy had escaped, Potter would be furious with him, and rightly so.

  He knocked on the door. “Calvin?” he called, and received no answer.

  The knob turned easily in his hand, and he threw the door open. To his great relief, he saw Calvin still curled up beneath his covers on the bed, fast asleep.

  “Calvin, wake up!” Malloy called pleasantly, going over to shake him. But when he touched the boy’s shoulder, he felt the chill and stiffness of his body.

  Calvin Brown was dead.

  10

  “ IT’S NO MYSTERY HOW HE DIED,” THE CORONER explained, having given Calvin’s body only a cursory examination. “The arsenic is sitting in plain sight and see how yellow his face is? That’s always a sure sign of arsenic poisoning.”

  Frank had to admit he was right. Calvin had left the box of rat poison out on the dresser. An empty bottle of sarsaparilla sat on the table and had apparently been mixed with the poison to kill the taste.

  “There’s the suicide note, too,” the coroner pointed out. “That’s usually enough to convince most people it’s a suicide.”

  Frank ignored his sarcasm. He just didn’t want to make a mistake. Or rather, he just didn’t want to be wrong about Calvin Brown. He’d been so certain the boy was innocent, and truth to tell, he’d wanted the boy to be innocent. But here it was, a confession written with his own hand right before he’d taken his own life.

  “Dear Mother,” he’d written. “I can’t live with this no more. I shot father and tried to make it look like he killed himself. He refused to help us or even to admit he was my father. I couldn’t stand thinking that he was living so rich while you worked so hard to support us. I’m sorry I did this, and I don’t want to bring more shame on the family by being arrested for it. I love you and the girls.” He’d signed it, “Calvin.”