When Gino had taken a seat at the kitchen table, Catherine snuggled up in his lap. Sarah and Maeve started pulling things out of the pantry and the icebox to see what they could put together. Sarah peeled potatoes while Maeve sliced some cold ham.
“We read all about the Rough Riders in the newspapers,” Maeve said.
“Not everything they said in the newspapers was true,” he replied. He proceeded to tell them all about the charge up the hill that wasn’t really San Juan Hill and how Theodore Roosevelt had carried several spare pairs of spectacles with him in case one got broken because he couldn’t see a blessed thing without them. By the time he was finished, the girls were laughing, although Sarah suspected no one had thought the battle was humorous at the time. At some point in the story, Maeve had abandoned her cooking and taken a seat across the table from him so she could hang on his every word.
Sarah chopped up some onions and fried them with the potatoes as Gino continued with his tales of the wonders he’d seen in Cuba, such as crabs as big as dinner plates that ate anything left unattended, and the incompetence of the army, which had supplied the soldiers with shoes that fell apart the instant they got wet.
By the time they’d finished eating, Gino had convinced the girls that the brief war with Spain had been little more than a lark.
When they’d cleared the dishes away, Maeve said, “I’ll take Catherine upstairs now so you can talk. It’s very nice to have you home again, Officer Donatelli.”
Sarah didn’t miss the disappointment on Gino’s face, so she said, “I’ll call you back down when we’re finished, Maeve, so you can say good night.”
Maeve hurried Catherine away before Sarah could judge Maeve’s opinion of this plan, but at least she hadn’t objected. Sarah noted that Gino watched them go until they were out of sight, then turned back to Sarah.
“Thank you for supper.”
“Thank you for coming. Now tell me why you haven’t rejoined the police department.”
“I . . . I, uh, just got back to the city yesterday. I wanted to spend some time with my family first.”
“And yet here you are, not with your family, and you’ve already agreed to work with Malloy on a case. So obviously, you aren’t reluctant to go back to work. You’re just reluctant to go back to police work.”
Gino gave her a little grin. “I kept thinking about the last case I worked on with Mr. Malloy. Those women . . . The police didn’t seem to care, and what would’ve happened to them if Mr. Malloy hadn’t gone looking for them?”
Sarah didn’t want to know the answer to that question. “So you’ve decided to help him again.”
“When he told me what happened to your friend, well, I could see why the family didn’t want to get the police involved. But I could also see why Mr. Oakes wants to find out for sure what happened to his son.”
“Malloy is only doing this because Mr. Oakes is a friend of my father’s, you know. What will you do after this is over?”
Gino gave her an odd look, but before she could figure it out, it vanished. “I don’t know, but maybe by then, I’ll have figured it out. Mr. Malloy wanted you to know that the coroner—his name is Titus Wesley—was able to get Charles Oakes’s organs . . .” He stopped, mortified. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brandt. I just realized that’s not a fit topic for you to hear about.”
Sarah smiled at his chagrin. “Don’t be silly. I’m a nurse and a midwife. I know more about organs than you ever will. Just forget I’m a lady for the time being.”
“All right,” he said, although he didn’t look happy about it. “Wesley got Oakes’s organs from the undertaker. He was able to test what he . . . what he found in Oakes’s stomach and what was in the cat’s stomach, too. It was arsenic.”
“He’s absolutely sure?”
“He said he did the Marsh test, whatever that is, and he’s sure. He said it would be accepted in court, too.”
“Then I guess he’s sure. This is terrible news, of course. It means someone poisoned poor Charles, probably on purpose.”
“Was he a good friend of yours, Mrs. Brandt?”
“Not really a friend. An acquaintance, I guess. We knew each other because our parents were friends. He’s a few years older than I, so our paths didn’t cross much growing up, and of course, I haven’t been in society for years.”
“I guess you and Mr. Malloy will be now that he’s a millionaire.”
Sarah sighed. “My mother would like nothing better, but I can’t imagine Mr. Malloy being interested in that, can you?”
“No,” he said with a grin, “but don’t you want to?”
“Not really. I haven’t missed it at all, if you want the truth.”
“Then what will you do if you’re not a midwife and you’re not doing whatever it is rich ladies do all day?”
“That, my dear Gino, is an excellent question, and like you, I hope to figure it out very soon. So what is Malloy doing right now that he had to send you here in his place?”
“Oh, he went over to see Mr. Oakes and give him the news about the arsenic. He said to tell you he’ll come see you later.”
“He’d better.”
“So what do you know about the Oakes family that might help us figure out who killed this Charles?”
Sarah told him what she knew about his mother and his wife and her impressions of them.
“Did the family ever accept Mrs. Oakes? The mother, I mean,” Gino asked.
“They didn’t really have a choice, did they?”
“I guess they didn’t, and maybe they put on a good show for outsiders, but did they really accept her as one of their own after they got over the shock of having a Johnny Reb for a daughter-in-law?”
“Johnny Reb?” Sarah teased. “Where did you hear that expression?”
“We learned about the War between the States in school,” he defended himself. “The question is, do they still think of her like that?”
“I’m sure her husband doesn’t.”
“What about her in-laws? Isn’t the old mother still alive at least?”
“I think so. We’ll find out tomorrow at the funeral. I guess she could have made life difficult for Jenny, couldn’t she? But she would have had to at least tolerate her.”
“Being tolerated is almost worse than being hated outright,” Gino said. “At least when someone hates you, you know where you stand.”
“You sound like you know this from personal experience.”
Gino smiled mirthlessly. “When Colonel Roosevelt insisted on hiring men for the police force who weren’t Irish, he thought he was doing a good thing. Nobody else did, though. The old-timers on the force never wanted us, but they had to accept us and work with us, at least as long as the colonel was there. That didn’t stop them from assigning us the worst duties or treating us like we didn’t belong, though, and sometimes they pretended not to hear when one of us sent out a call for help. They complain that you don’t do a good job, and they get jealous if you do the job better than they do.”
“I think I understand why you’re not happy about returning to the police.”
Gino shrugged. “It’s the same most places for the Italians.”
“Just as it’s that way for the Irish in other occupations.”
“That’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure it’s funny at all, but I know what you mean. You’d think the Irish would be kind to others since they’ve suffered so much discrimination themselves.”
“Not many people are kind at all,” Gino said. “Which is why we need men like Mr. Malloy to set things right again.”
“Why, Gino, I think that’s the nicest compliment anyone could receive.”
“It’s not a compliment. It’s why I want to work with him.”
“I can see that.” And Sarah was starting to see more than that, too. She understood that Gin
o saw this case as the beginning of something for him. Had Malloy said something to make Gino think he’d be continuing this habit he had recently developed of stepping in when people didn’t trust the police to handle something? And would that be such a bad thing if he decided to fill his days helping other people find justice?
No, it would not be a bad thing at all. She wouldn’t let on that she’d figured this out however. Malloy might not have figured it out himself yet, but when he did, he would have to tell her himself. She could hardly wait.
“You still haven’t answered my question, Mrs. Brandt. Can you think of anybody who would’ve wanted to kill Charles Oakes?”
“Not yet, Gino, but I have every confidence that we will figure it out.”
• • •
Mr. Oakes received Frank in his library again. He had poured a whiskey for Frank, and he handed it to him the moment he sat down. Oakes had already started on his, Frank noticed.
“Thank you for giving the coroner permission to examine your son’s body,” Frank said.
“I didn’t tell his wife or his mother. I saw no need to distress them, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it either.”
Frank couldn’t make a promise like that. If they eventually had to prove Charles had been murdered, the truth would come out. “I can understand your concern.”
Oakes took a sip of his whiskey. Frank wondered if he always used liquor to soothe the rough edges of his life. After a moment Oakes said, “What did your man find?”
“Just as you suspected, Charles was poisoned. The coroner found traces of arsenic in him and in the cat, too.”
A spasm of pain twisted Oakes’s face, but he recovered quickly. “All my life, I have taken great pleasure in being right, until now.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Oakes. I was hoping I would have better news for you.”
“Arsenic, did you say? Not some exotic poison?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s so readily available, just about anyone could have access to it. Practically every home in the city has a box of it somewhere. The question is, who also had access to Charles?”
“Anyone in this house, of course. He was also away from home all day when he first fell ill, and I’m not sure we even know where he spent that time.”
Frank didn’t remind him that the cat, who had died from the same poison, had never left the house. “I guess the real question is, what do you want to do now? You can always pretend you didn’t know and bury your son with no scandal.”
“And let a killer go free?” he asked, outraged. “And what if Charles is just the first victim? Suppose the killer is some madman who intends to keep on killing indiscriminately? How could I live with myself if someone else died because I wanted to shield my family from gossip?”
“We don’t know that Charles was killed ‘indiscriminately.’ He may have been killed deliberately, by someone who knew him well.”
“But why? Oh, Malloy, I know you warned me that the killer would most likely be someone in this house, but I’ve been racking my brain ever since, trying to think of any reason someone here would want him dead, and nothing could be more ridiculous. You can’t think his mother or his wife poisoned him, or his grandmother either for that matter. And the servants have all been with us for years. If one of them had run mad enough to do something like this, someone would surely have noticed.”
Frank decided not to inform Oakes that most people were murdered by someone very close to them, like a wife or a mother or an angry servant. And madmen usually killed viciously, not with the secret cunning of a poisoner. From what Sarah had told him about the wife, Frank was willing to put his money on her, sight unseen. “You’re right, it’s hard to believe someone close to him could have done it, which is why an investigation like this is so painful. A lot of innocent people will be upset that they were considered suspects, no matter how unlikely. And if it turns out to be someone you trusted, you’ll have to live with the guilt of not having seen their treachery in time.”
“And if I do nothing, I will have to live with the knowledge that my son’s killer is enjoying life and freedom while he lies in an early grave. Which is worse?”
“That’s a question only you can answer, Mr. Oakes.”
“Then I will answer it, Mr. Malloy. Charles was my only child. There will never be another, and he left no heirs, so my line ends with me. Whatever Charles might have accomplished in his life will never happen now. Whatever his children might have accomplished will never happen. I have to live the rest of my life knowing there is no future, no one to remember me when I am gone and no one to carry on my name or bear the weight of my hopes and dreams. I want the person who stole all this from me to be punished. I want them to suffer as my family has suffered.”
“Even if the killer is part of your family?”
“He is not, I promise you that, Mr. Malloy. And even if I am wrong, even if the killer proves to be someone dear to me, I will rejoice to see him punished for taking Charles. Under those conditions, are you willing to continue the investigation?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to call in the police now that we know it was murder?”
“And have my family’s name plastered all over the newspapers? I’ve seen what Hearst and Pulitzer will do to sell newspapers, the lies they’ll tell and the innocent people they will vilify. No, I want this investigation to remain private until you have identified the killer and have enough proof to take it to the district attorney.”
“They’ll still write about it in the newspapers,” Frank said.
“But only about the trial, because they won’t know about it until then, which means that they won’t have the opportunity to publish rumors and conjecture for months leading up to it.”
He was right, as far as he went. There would still be rumors and scandal, of course, but if Frank could prove who the killer was, perhaps even get a confession, the damage would be limited. “All right. Then I’ll do everything I can to find the person who killed your son,” Frank said.
“Do you think you might fail?” Oakes asked in alarm.
As a matter of fact, Frank didn’t think he’d have much trouble at all, considering the killer was probably in the house with them at that very moment, but he said, “The killer will do everything he can to keep from getting caught, so we have to be more clever than he is. I can’t promise I’ll find him, but if I fail, you’ll understand why.”
“I suppose that is all I can ask, Mr. Malloy. Thank you.”
“You will have to tell your family that Charles was poisoned.”
Oakes winced. “Is that really necessary?”
“They’ll want to know who I am and why I’m asking questions. And you’ll have to instruct your servants to talk to me. They won’t want to say anything about the family to an outsider, but they’re the ones who will know where Charles was the day he first got sick and who brought him the poisoned milk and who had access to it before he drank it.”
“Good God.” Oakes raised a hand to his forehead, and Frank saw it was trembling. “I didn’t realize . . . and we have the funeral tomorrow . . .”
“We can wait until after the funeral to start. It might even help to let the killer think we have no idea what really happened. He could get careless.”
“I would appreciate it if you could delay. Tomorrow will be difficult enough without upsetting everyone beforehand.”
“Mrs. Brandt and I are planning to attend the funeral, if that’s all right.”
“Of course.”
“Mrs. Brandt would probably have attended anyway, as an old friend of the family, but I’ll be watching the other mourners to see if anyone is acting suspiciously.”
“At the funeral? What could they possibly be doing?”
“Maybe it’s what they’re not doing. Someone who should be mourning who seems remarkably composed, or someone putting
on a show of grief that seems out of character. I won’t know until it happens. You can be watching, too, and let me know if you see something odd.”
“You won’t disrupt the service, will you?”
“We won’t do anything at all that day except watch, I promise.”
Oakes finished off his whiskey and got up to pour himself another. Frank wondered if he always drank so heavily. That’s something the servants would know. The trick, of course, was getting them to answer truthfully.
• • •
Sarah had been sitting by the front window, watching for Malloy so he didn’t have to knock. She opened the door and let him in. He looked tired, but he kissed her with his usual level of enthusiasm.
“Thank you for sending Gino over today,” she said when they’d finally made it back to the kitchen.
“I knew you’d be happy to see him, and I guessed he’d want to see Maeve. How did that go?”
“They were shy with each other at first, but when he’d finished telling me everything you’d learned from the coroner, he asked Maeve if she’d like to go for a walk. Of course I offered to put Catherine to bed so she could. He brought her back just as it was getting dark, but she didn’t tell me anything about their visit.”
“Do you think that’s a good sign?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “So tell me about your visit with Gerald Oakes.”
“He wasn’t surprised his son was poisoned, but he was pretty upset about it. He also isn’t ready to accept that it might be someone in the house who did it.”
“Is there any possibility it wasn’t?”
“Not much. He got sick two days before he died, which means someone gave him a dose sometime during the day but not enough to kill him. The same thing happened again on the day he died, and he came home sick again. Those doses could have been given by anyone, but the dose that killed him the last day was in the milk, so that could only have been someone in the house.”
“But Gerald still wants you to investigate?”
“Yes. He’s pretty angry someone killed his only child and left him with no hope for the future.”
“Family heritage is pretty important to these old families. I guess it would be particularly painful if your only son was murdered.”
Murder on Amsterdam Avenue Page 5