Murder on Gramercy Park

by Victoria Thompson

  “Maybe you’ll tell me why you think all this is important?” he tried, knowing it would annoy her to think he hadn’t figured it out.

  He was right. “Malloy, I’m surprised at you! Mrs. Blackwell might have thought the only way to avoid being discovered as a morphine user and having to speak at those lectures again was to murder her husband.”

  He almost hated to show her how weak her theory was. “You think a woman who was so frightened she’d take morphine to give her the courage to stand up in front of a crowd is going to have the courage to pick up her husband’s pistol, put it to his head, and blow his brains all over her nice carpet?”

  “Desperation can make people do strange things,” she pointed out.

  “Next I suppose you’re going to argue that she wasn’t in her right mind because of her delicate condition.”

  “I’m sure that’s what she’d argue—if she’s guilty, that is.”

  “I can’t see any jury in the world convicting a woman with a baby in her arms. That’s even if her father allowed it to get that far. I can’t believe he would.”

  “Who is her father?”

  “His name is Symington.”

  “Maurice Symington?” she asked with a frown.

  “Probably. Do you know him?”

  “I’ve heard of him, and my father knows him, I’m sure. I think he made his money in manufacturing.”

  “You mean he owns sweatshops?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. I’m surprised he allowed his daughter to marry so far beneath her, unless Dr. Blackwell comes from money, too.”

  “He doesn’st,” Frank said.

  “Well, then,” she said, as if that proved everything. “Now I’m really surprised the father allowed her to appear at Dr. Blackwell’s lectures. Such a public display would surely be offensive to him.”

  “I figured the same thing. Do you think Blackwell had something on the old man?”

  “Looking for blackmail as a motive, Malloy?” she teased: “Sorry to disappoint you, but Mrs. Blackwell said they just felt they owed Blackwell a huge debt after what he did for her. He wouldn’t even accept payment for treating her, and every other doctor had completely given up on helping her. It seems reasonable they would feel deeply grateful and obligated.”

  “Maybe,” was all he would allow. Something about this case bothered him. Probably it was the idea that the man might have been done in by his own son. Frank found that very unsettling. He certainly didn’t want to hear that the wife had done it instead, an even more unsettling idea.

  “Or maybe she had a lover who took matters into his own hands,” she suggested. “He would have the same motive as she, but he’d also have the will and the nerve to actually kill Dr. Blackwell.”

  “Do women of her class usually take lovers?” he asked, ashamed to admit that she might actually have come up with a good possibility. He hadn’t yet seen Mrs. Blackwell, so he couldn’t judge her character.

  She considered this for a moment. “No, they don’t. In fact, a woman from that class in society who is known to have taken a lover becomes a social outcast. It’s simply too dangerous to risk.”

  Frank gave her a murderous frown for getting his hopes up, but she simply shrugged apologetically.

  “All right, Malloy, you told me you’d have the killer locked up yesterday. If Mrs. Blackwell and her imaginary lover didn’t do it, who did? That harmless little man, Mr. Potter?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Never assume anyone is innocent, Mrs. Brandt. That’s the best way to end up looking foolish.”

  She opened her mouth to say something that was probably outrageous, when someone knocked on the door, distracting them both.

  “Yes?” Frank called.

  The parlor doors opened, and Amos Potter stepped in. “Excuse me, but I was wondering how Mrs. Blackwell is doing.”

  Sarah Brandt smiled sweetly, probably thinking Potter was merely a concerned friend of the family. Frank had a feeling Potter’s interest in Mrs. Blackwell was more than just friendly, however. He was just too solicitous.

  “Mrs. Blackwell is just fine,” Sarah said, “although she’s very tired and has asked not to be disturbed anymore today.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t planning on disturbing her,” he hastily assured her. “I’m sure I wouldn’t dream of ... I mean, well, I did want to let her know the plans for Edmund’s funeral, of course. We must have some sort of wake. He has many admirers, and his patients will want to pay tribute to him for all he’s done.”

  “When were you planning to have the funeral?” Frank inquired, thinking this would be a good opportunity to look at all of Blackwell’s acquaintances at once. The person who killed him would most likely be among them, unless his son really was the killer. In that case, Calvin Brown wouldn’t very likely be in attendance since he would probably be a thousand miles away by now.

  “I thought we’d have it tomorrow, since it’s Saturday and ... Well, that is, I already put it in the newspaper, so we will have it here tomorrow at ten o’clock. Just a small memorial service, you understand. There won’t be a viewing, of course. I mean, under the circumstances, and with poor Edmund ... Well, in any case, people need an opportunity to mourn. I know Mrs. Blackwell won’t be able to attend, but I’m sure it will be a comfort to her knowing Edmund is being honored appropriately.”

  Not necessarily, Frank thought cynically, but he said, “Shouldn’t you have checked with Mrs. Blackwell before making arrangements to have an event in her home?”

  Potter seemed offended at the very suggestion. “Mr. Symington told me to proceed with the arrangements. I felt that was all the authority I needed. I assure you, Mrs. Blackwell will not be troubled in the slightest. Her well-being is my foremost concern, and I would never do anything that might cause her distress.”

  Frank could believe that. The man seemed extraordinarily concerned with Mrs. Blackwell’s well-being. “I appreciate the opportunity to meet Dr. Blackwell’s friends and associates,” Frank said. “It should help me in my investigation.”

  Potter’s round face grew red. “It would not be appropriate for you to question people during a funeral, Mr. Malloy. No one there will know anything anyway. You’d do better using your time to search for young Calvin.”

  “Who’s Calvin?” Mrs. Brandt asked, and Frank winced. He’d been trying to keep her out of this, and now Potter had hooked her right in.

  Frank considered trying to brush off her question, but she’d never allow that. He could tell by the expression on her face that she was like a hound on the scent now. In any case, Potter was already telling her everything she needed to know.

  “Calvin Brown. He’s a young man who had a... a certain grudge against Dr. Blackwell. I believe he is the one who killed Edmund,” he added with more authority than he had any right to feel. At least he hadn’t given her all the dirty gossip, Frank thought.

  She turned to Frank expectantly. “If this man is the killer, why haven’t you arrested him yet?”

  “Because no one knows where he is,” Frank replied, managing not to sound testy. It was a pure act of will.

  “Oh, my, that is inconvenient, isn’t it?” she asked without a hint of sympathy.

  “Very,” Frank agreed.

  “If you could find him, you probably could have arrested him yesterday by, oh, I don’t know, say by nightfall,” she said.

  Frank gave her a thin smile that she returned with a smirk.

  “Oh, yes,” Potter was saying, although no one was paying him any particular attention, “I’m sure this boy is the one who killed poor Edmund. He had an appointment with him that afternoon, and no one else was even in the house at that time. The servants had the afternoon off, and Mrs. Blackwell was out doing her visits. Who else could it have been? And now, of course, he’s nowhere to be found. I’m sure that proves his guilt, the fact that he’s vanished. Don’t guilty men usually flee?” he asked Frank.

  “If they can,” Frank replied. At least Mrs. Brandt would
think the killer was beyond their reach. Maybe she would lose interest in the case or maybe there wasn’t really a case at all. Either possibility would keep her out of it.

  This pleasant thought was interrupted by a commotion out in the hallway.

  “What on earth?” Potter muttered, but Frank beat him to the door.

  When he slid it open, he saw Granger confronting a roughly dressed boy of about sixteen who seemed determined to gain entry into the house over Granger’s equally determined efforts to keep him out.

  “There is a police officer here,” Granger was saying with unmistakable warning. “Must I summon him?”

  “Summon whoever you want, you old windbag,” the boy said. “I come to see my father, and I ain’t leaving until you tell him I’m here!”

  “What’s going on here?” Frank demanded, and Granger half turned to acknowledge him.

  “This young man is obviously at the wrong house,” he told Frank. “He insists on seeing his father, even though I have assured him there is no such person here. He was here the other day, too, and I had to run him off then as well.”

  Frank looked the boy over. “What’s your name, son?”

  The boy pulled himself up to his full height, making him still half a head shorter than Granger. “My name is Calvin Brown.”

  4

  CALVIN BROWN! SARAH THOUGHT. HE’S THE ONE Potter thinks killed Dr. Blackwell! But he was just a boy, hardly more than sixteen or seventeen, and he certainly didn’t look like a killer. Besides, if he’d killed Dr. Blackwell, he’d hardly be demanding admittance to his house today, would he?

  Sarah heard Amos Potter gasp, and then he said, “That’s him! The one I told you about. Arrest him, Malloy!”

  The boy’s face blanched, but he didn’t look particularly intimidated. Quite the contrary, he looked even more defiant than he had before. “Arrest me for what?” he challenged. “Ain’t no crime to come to see your old man!”

  “Who is his father?” Sarah asked of anyone who would listen.

  Young Calvin was the only one listening. “He’s Eddie Brown, but that’s not what he calls himself these days. Calls himself Edmund Blackwell, but that don’t change who he is, does it?”

  It took Sarah only a moment to judge that the woman upstairs, who was the current Mrs. Blackwell, could not possibly have given birth to this boy. She was no more than five years older than he, if that. Dr. Blackwell had a very interesting history, if Sarah was any judge, but she could tell from the look Malloy was giving her that she’d better not inquire too closely into the subject just now.

  Malloy stepped forward, forcing Granger to stand aside so Malloy could confront the boy. “Dr. Blackwell is dead,” he said baldly.

  Sarah winced at the coldness of it. If the boy was truly Blackwell’s son, this was needless cruelty.

  The boy blinked in surprise, not yet comprehending what Malloy had said. “Dead? How could he be dead? Wasn’t nothing wrong with him a couple days ago.”

  “There wasn’t nothing wrong with him at all until somebody shot him on Tuesday,” Malloy replied.

  The boy’s jaw dropped, but he still wasn’t ready to believe. He glanced around wildly until his gaze settled with desperation on Sarah. “Is that true, ma’am?”

  Sarah was touched. He’d chosen her as the most trustworthy person in sight. “I’m afraid it is, Mr. Brown,” she told him as gently as she could.

  They all watched as the emotions played across his young face—shock, confusion, despair, and finally anger. “Well, that’s just something, ain’t it?” he asked of no one in particular as he blinked back tears. “He’s run out on us twice now, and this time it won’t do no good to find him.”

  The story was coming clearer to her now. Dr. Blackwell—or whatever his real name was—had abandoned this son and the rest of whatever other family the boy had, changed his name, and made a new life for himself. Somehow the boy had found him, though, and ... Oh, dear heaven! No wonder Potter thought Calvin might have killed his father. Potter had said the boy held a grudge against Dr. Blackwell, but this was far more than a grudge. Could such a young, innocent-looking boy have fired a bullet into his father’s brain, no matter what that father had done to deserve it?

  “Mr. Malloy, are you going to do your duty and arrest this boy?” Potter was asking, his tone outraged.

  Malloy gave him a quelling look that silenced him, then turned back to the boy. “Why don’t you come into the parlor with me, son. I’ve got some questions to ask you.”

  “You think I killed him?” the boy asked, even more outraged than Potter had been. “My own father?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Malloy reminded him, taking his arm in his strong grip.

  The boy instinctively tried to pull away, but the resistance lasted only a moment, until he saw the expression in Malloy’s dark eyes. He seemed almost to shrink with his surrender to Malloy’s superior strength and power. His bravado evaporated, and he was an uncertain boy again.

  “Excuse us, please,” Malloy said with uncharacteristic courtesy as he forced Sarah and Potter to give way and allow him and the boy to enter the parlor.

  Sarah had a powerful urge to follow them in. Only her knowledge that Malloy would immediately—and not very politely—order her out prevented her from acting on it. She sighed as the parlor doors closed in her face.

  “Will he arrest him?” Potter asked her anxiously.

  Sarah glanced at the butler, who was listening to every word with the discretion to which he had been bred. His expression betrayed nothing, but Sarah imagined he was mentally recording every word and would repeat it belowstairs to all the servants as soon as he got the opportunity.

  “Perhaps we should step into another room,” she suggested. She could simply have brushed off his question and taken her leave—she had no real answer to give him, after all—but she felt certain he had a lot of answers to give her, if she simply asked the right questions. She wasn’t going to ask them in front of the butler, however.

  “Oh, yes,” Potter said, instantly realizing they needed some privacy for their discussion. “We could use the study, if you don’t mind ...”

  The room where Dr. Blackwell had been murdered. Little did Potter know a woman had been murdered in the parlor they had just left, and Sarah had found the body. Sarah wasn’t afraid of the dead. “Not at all,” she said, and allowed him to precede her and open the door.

  Sarah looked around with interest at the room which Edmund Blackwell/Eddie Brown had made his own. The furnishings were decidedly masculine: dark woods polished to a bright sheen, overstuffed chairs, several built-in bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes, English hunting scenes hanging in heavy frames on the walls. Nowhere did she see any signs of the man himself, though. The desk had been cleared, of course, and it may have held some personal items that would have given her a clue as to his character. Nothing of him now remained except a dark stain that had been ineffectively scrubbed away from the carpet, so she was left to reconstruct his personality from what others said about him.

  “Will Mr. Malloy arrest him?” Potter asked again when they were safely behind closed doors.

  Sarah had an urge to check to make sure Granger wasn’t eavesdropping, but she resisted it. “If he decides that the boy killed Dr. Blackwell, he will,” she hedged. “What makes you think he did? He’s awfully young.”

  “A viper doesn’t have to be large to be deadly, Mrs. Brandt,” he said with some force. “I suppose you have surmised the relationship between the boy and Dr. Blackwell.”

  “Dr. Blackwell was his father,” she said, confirming his suspicion. “And I gather Dr. Blackwell must have deserted the family.”

  “Yes, he ... he left his first wife and children several years ago. It wasn’t intentional,” he assured her quickly.

  Sarah raised her eyebrows, wondering how such a thing could be unintentional, but she didn’t have to ask the question aloud. Mr. Potter anticipated her.

  “He explained i
t all to me. You see, he was always a healer by profession, but he was doing very poorly in Virginia. That’s where he lived then. He couldn’t support his family, so he traveled to Boston to study with a well-known practitioner of the art of magnetic healing there. He thought if he could improve his talents, he could be more successful. He worked as much as he could and continued to send money home to his family. He never intended to leave them permanently.”

  “At some point he apparently changed his mind,” Sarah pointed out. “Was it when he met Letitia Symington ?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t like that at all! Letitia would never ... She’s much too ... Oh, no, it had nothing to do with her at all!”

  “Then what did it have to do with?” Sarah prodded, wondering why Potter felt he had to justify Blackwell to her but glad for his need nonetheless.

  “He became quite proficient in the new art of magnetic healing, and so he came here to the city and began to build a following. He lived frugally, still sending money home when he could and depending on his satisfied patients to recommend him to their friends. One of those patients recommended him to Mr. Symington.”

  “For his daughter,” Sarah said. “I understand she’d been severely injured in a riding accident.”

  “Yes, and her father was desperate to see her whole again. Letitia’s mother had died years earlier, so she was all he had. He’d called in every doctor he could find, but nothing had made her any better. Edmund was the only one who was able to help her at all, and within days she was out of her bed for the first time in a year. It was like a miracle.”

  “I’m sure the Symingtons were very grateful to him,” Sarah said, encouraging him in his tale.

  “You can’t know how grateful. Mr. Symington would have done anything to repay Edmund, but all Edmund wanted was for them to help spread word of what he had done for Letitia. Mr. Symington offered to rent a hall for Edmund so he could give a public lecture about his techniques, and when Edmund explained that he needed someone to speak who could personally testify to Edmund’s abilities, Mr. Symington eagerly gave his permission for Letitia to do so.”