Murder on Pleasant Avenue

by Victoria Thompson

  “And if he refuses to help?” McWilliam said.

  Malloy smiled apologetically at Teo. “Then Mrs. Donatelli will start weeping and beg him.”

  She couldn’t help smiling at that. “I will try, Mr. Malloy.”

  “Nobody could refuse you,” Gino assured her.

  “Let’s go, then,” McWilliam said. “Maybe we can find Jane before she has to spend another night in captivity.”

  II

  Mr. McWilliam asked one of the other residents, a young woman named Kate Westrop, to give Frank and Sarah a tour of the facilities while he escorted Gino and Teo to Mr. Cassidi’s office. Kate was a young woman, probably in her early twenties, who would never be called a beauty, but her fresh face and enthusiasm more than compensated. She wore a plain white shirtwaist and brown skirt and had styled her hair in a neat bun, probably to demonstrate the correct level of modesty and a lack of any ostentation that might put off her poorer neighbors.

  Sarah would have liked to question her about Jane Harding, but she couldn’t, since they were still pretending Jane wasn’t missing. Still, she had a lot of questions for Kate, both about herself and about the workings of the settlement, and Kate answered them patiently and thoroughly.

  “What made you volunteer for this work?” Malloy asked after Kate told them she’d graduated from college a year earlier and come straight here.

  “I wanted to help people, and the settlement houses seemed to be the most effective at doing that.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Sarah asked.

  “Because we live right here with the people we serve,” Kate said, warming to her topic. “Most charities are run by rich people who make all the decisions about what poor people need, but they hardly ever ask the poor people themselves what they really need.”

  Had Sarah done that with the maternity clinic? she wondered with a pang. But she’d gotten the idea from the needs she saw every day as a midwife, so perhaps she’d done it correctly, even without realizing it.

  “So you think it’s good that you and the other volunteers live here?” Malloy asked.

  “Oh yes. We started out . . . Well, not me. I wasn’t here in the beginning, but the founders, I mean. They rented a house on this street and opened it as a place for people to gather. I think they’d serve tea and coffee to draw people in and have music and singing. They asked the visitors what services would help them most. Then they figured out how to do those things and started classes. A lot of the people in this neighborhood are immigrants who don’t speak English, so we started teaching that first thing. The children seem to pick up English at school or in the streets, but the adults need more formal training.”

  “I guess the children learn because their lessons in school are all in English,” Sarah said.

  “And because children just learn everything faster,” Kate said. “We have classes in the daytime for the mothers and older people and in the evening for people who work.”

  “Mrs. Donatelli said you have a kindergarten,” Malloy said.

  “Yes, and a nursery, too. A lot of the women have to work, but they didn’t have anyone to take care of their children, so that was another need we were able to fill.”

  Kate took them through all the buildings. Someone had cut doors between the row houses so residents and visitors could move between them without going outside. One of the houses had a dormitory for the female residents and another one had one for the male residents, far enough apart to satisfy even the strictest of standards. In between were rooms dedicated to child care and learning for people of all ages.

  They had just completed their tour and Kate had asked if they would like some refreshment when Gino, Teo, and Mr. McWilliam returned. Gino and Teo were smiling and Mr. McWilliam looked relieved.

  “Mr. Cassidi has agreed to let Mrs. Malloy visit his wife,” Mr. McWilliam said.

  “I didn’t have to cry or beg, either,” Teo reported with satisfaction. “After Gino explained what we wanted to do, Mr. Cassidi told us his wife has been refusing to see people because she thinks they just want to find out what happened to her so they can gossip about her. She doesn’t even trust her friends.”

  “But I won’t gossip,” Sarah said. “I hope you made that clear.”

  “Of course we did,” Gino said. “That’s why Mr. Cassidi agreed. He wants to help find Miss Harding, too, if we can.”

  “Although we didn’t tell him who had been kidnapped,” Mr. McWilliam added quickly. “Please don’t mention her name.”

  “We won’t,” Sarah promised. “Does Mrs. Cassidi speak English?”

  “She has been taking lessons here and she speaks very well, but I told Mr. Cassidi I would go along in case you needed help. I don’t think she’ll want me there, but . . .” Teo shrugged. “Mr. Cassidi said he would meet us at his house.”

  * * *

  * * *

  No wonder the Black Hand had chosen Mrs. Cassidi as a potential kidnap victim, Sarah thought. The Cassidis lived in a comfortable house a few blocks from the settlement, rather than in one of the many new tenements that had sprung up in East Harlem to house the seemingly endless waves of immigrants settling in the city. A wrought iron fence surrounded the tiny front yard, and flowers grew in beds on either side of the front stoop. They looked a bit neglected now, with weeds sprung up here and there, and no wonder, if Mrs. Cassidi had been gone for a month and now refused to leave her house.

  A middle-aged Italian man opened the door at their knock. He wore a tailor-made suit and a worried frown. His thick black hair and heavy mustache were shot with gray. Teo introduced Sarah.

  “My wife, she is very upset since she is come home,” he told Sarah apologetically.

  “I’m sure she is. Most people would be after an ordeal like that. Does she know I’m coming?”

  “I tell her and . . .” He shook his head.

  “If she doesn’t want to see me—”

  “No, it is not . . . I am . . . I do not understand. For days she will see nobody. Then I tell her a stranger is coming, and she is happy.”

  This was good news, at least. “Mrs. Donatelli came with me in case there is something she needs to translate, but I’d like to see Mrs. Cassidi alone, at least at first, if that is all right.”

  “Sì, sì, I think this is what she would like best. Please come in.”

  Teo waited in the parlor, and Mr. Cassidi took Sarah upstairs. The house, she noticed, had been carefully furnished with quality pieces that all looked quite new. Sarah had been in enough homes all over the city to recognize that the Cassidis were financially well-off but they weren’t ostentatious about it. Their neighbors would envy them but not hate them for flaunting their success. Unfortunately, this also enabled the kidnappers to identify them as people with the resources to pay a ransom.

  Mr. Cassidi stopped outside a closed door and knocked. Then he said something in Italian that included Sarah’s name. He must have heard something in response because he opened the door and motioned Sarah inside. The bedroom furniture was heavy and dark, but the bedspread and curtains were bright yellow, giving the room a welcoming glow. The bedroom was almost painfully neat, and Mrs. Cassidi rose from where she had been sitting in a rocking chair by the window. She was a small woman in her forties. She wore a simple house dress, and her dark hair hung down her back in a braid. Her eyes were red-rimmed and haunted, and Sarah guessed she had not been sleeping well since her return. She probably hadn’t slept or eaten well during her captivity either.

  Mr. Cassidi introduced her to his wife, whose first name was Violetta.

  She didn’t offer her hand, so Sarah simply smiled. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cassidi. What a lovely name you have. Violets are such a pretty flower.”

  Mrs. Cassidi smiled weakly and said something to her husband in Italian that sounded like a rebuke. He scurried away and returned immediately wit
h another chair, which he placed facing the rocking chair where his wife had been sitting. Then he hurried out, closing the door behind him.

  “Teo Donatelli came with me, if we have any trouble understanding each other,” Sarah said.

  “I have been studying English at the settlement,” she said. “This will be practice for me. Please, sit.”

  Sarah set her medical bag down and took the offered seat. “I was so sorry to hear what happened to you, Mrs. Cassidi. Your husband has been very worried about you, so Mr. McWilliam asked me if I would come to see you. I’m a nurse, and I thought perhaps you might be sick or injured in some way and not want to worry your husband by telling him.”

  Mrs. Cassidi stared back at Sarah for a long moment, her troubled gaze searching Sarah’s for something. Sarah hoped her genuine concern was plain enough to see. Then Mrs. Cassidi’s dark eyes filled with tears and in the next moment she was quaking with great, soul-wrenching sobs.

  No stranger to pain, Sarah sank to her knees in front of the woman, wrapped her arms around her, and let her weep. Sarah wondered if Mrs. Cassidi had allowed herself to really grieve what had happened to her until this moment and realized she probably had not. She had been putting up a brave front for everyone, even her husband, which explained why she had refused visitors and not left her house. Being brave for others was simply too difficult.

  Sarah’s knees were numb when Mrs. Cassidi finally fell silent and pulled away, muttering apologies in two languages. Sarah waved away her concerns and handed her a handkerchief. “Would you like some water?” she asked, spotting a carafe on the nightstand.

  Mrs. Cassidi nodded, too spent to reply. Sarah gave her a glass and waited while she drank and finished composing herself.

  “I am sorry—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Sarah chastened her. “You have every right to grieve for what was done to you. They took your freedom and put you in fear for your life for weeks! I don’t know how you stood it. I think I would have gone mad, but you’re not mad. You’re just sad and angry, which is perfectly normal.”

  “Yes, I am very angry. I do not know how to hold all the anger I feel for what they did to me.”

  “Mrs. Cassidi, I really did come as a nurse, to make sure you are all right. Did they hurt you at all? Hit you or beat you or . . .” Sarah stopped when she saw the look of horror that twisted Mrs. Cassidi’s face.

  “They hurt me.”

  “In what way?” Sarah asked as gently as she could, because she was starting to suspect what Mrs. Cassidi was going to say.

  “One of them. He . . . he forced me.”

  Sarah winced in physical pain at the thought of what this poor lady had endured. “I’m so sorry. Are you—?”

  “Look at me,” she demanded angrily. “I am not young. I am not pretty. He did it only to shame me.”

  Which was always why men raped women, but Sarah didn’t say that. Mrs. Cassidi wasn’t interested in learning more about rapists. “Are you injured? Was there blood?”

  “A little but it is gone now. I am . . . not hurting anymore. Except in here.” She laid a hand over her heart.

  “I wish I could tell you that pain will go away, but you can learn to live with it.”

  Mrs. Cassidi shuddered. “I have told no one. Only you.”

  “I’m glad I came, then. You needed to tell someone. Now it will be easier to tell other people.”

  “I cannot tell other people,” she said, suddenly angry again. “How can I tell my husband another man has taken me? He will never be able to look at me again.”

  Sarah wanted to reassure her, but she really had no idea how Mr. Cassidi would react. “He may guess even if you don’t tell him.”

  She shrugged. “I will deny it. And I cannot tell other women. They are . . . What do you call the birds who eat the dead?”

  “Vultures?”

  “Yes, vultures. They come to find out my shame so they can feast on it. I will never speak of it again.”

  That was her right of course, although Sarah would have advised against it. Perhaps she really had no one whom she could trust, though. The only thing worse than being violated by a stranger was having your friends gossip over it afterward.

  Sarah reached into her medical bag and pulled out one of her cards. “Here. If you need anything or you just want someone to talk to, please send for me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she took the offered card. “I cannot think about this, so how can I talk about it?”

  Sarah had no answer for her. “You might help someone else, though.”

  “Who?” she scoffed.

  “Another woman has gone missing. One of the young ladies who works at the settlement house. They fear she has been kidnapped by the same people who took you.”

  Her eyes widened in horror. “No! Why would they take one of those girls? They have no money.”

  “Perhaps they think the girls’ families will pay, or maybe the people at the settlement house.”

  “That is foolish!”

  “The young lady has not been seen since yesterday. She took nothing with her, and she hasn’t returned to her home.”

  Mrs. Cassidi shook her head. “This is very bad.”

  “Yes, it is. We were hoping . . . If the same people took her, they are probably holding her in the same place where you were. If we could find that place . . .”

  Mrs. Cassidi’s reddened eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who is this we who will find it?”

  Ah yes, she’d be worried they might call in the police. “Mrs. Donatelli’s brother-in-law is a private investigator. Mr. McWilliam has asked him to try to find the young lady and rescue her.”

  “Not the police?”

  “No, not the police.” Sarah gave her a few moments to consider that. “If you could remember the place where you were kept, what it looked like and any sounds you heard, perhaps that would help Mr. Donatelli locate it.”

  “I did not see the outside. I was here, at home, and someone knocked on the door. I open it and they grab me. They put a sack over my head and carry me to a motorcar. We drive a long time. I do not know how long. I am too afraid to remember.”

  “Of course,” Sarah said, nodding her encouragement.

  “They carry me inside and drop me on a bed and leave me alone in a room. I take off the sack, but I can see nothing to know where I am. There is a window, but it is nailed shut and the glass is painted black.”

  “So you cannot see outside and no one can see you,” Sarah guessed. “Was anyone else there?”

  “There are children.”

  “Children? In the neighborhood, you mean?” In the city, children played outside on the sidewalks and the streets, in all weather and wherever they could find an open spot.

  “No, in the house. Upstairs. I could hear them.”

  “In the house with you?”

  “Yes. I hear them play. I hear them cry.”

  But of course. Mr. McWilliam had explained that the Black Hand mostly kidnapped children. How horrible to think of a group of them locked away day and night for heaven knew how long. “Do you know who they were?”

  “I do not see them.”

  If they could locate the house, they could rescue those children as well. “Did you hear anything that might tell us where the house is located?”

  “It was quiet. Not like the city.”

  “Did you hear anything at all outside?”

  “A train. It goes by sometimes, but not too close.”

  So someplace outside the city near a train track. Someplace that could be reached by motorcar. That really wasn’t much help. “Would you recognize any of the men who took you?”

  “They have masks. When they bring me food, they wear them. I never see faces. I will always remember that one’s voice, though. If I hear it again, I will kill him.”


  Sarah believed her. She asked a few more questions, hoping to stir some memories, but the kidnappers had been very careful not to reveal anything that would have given them away.

  “I did not help you,” Mrs. Cassidi said at last. “I would like to help you find this lady.”

  “I know, and maybe we could find those children as well. But I thank you for speaking with me. If you think of anything else, please let me know.”

  She nodded sadly.

  “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?”

  “You listen. That is good.”

  “Please remember, if you need me . . .”

  Mrs. Cassidi waved away her concern. “I will do better. I will see my friends. I will tell them lies about how brave I was and how I spit on those men.”

  Sarah reached out and took her hand. “You are brave. You survived, didn’t you? You are one of the strongest women I know.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Frank had to agree with Sarah, Mrs. Cassidi hadn’t given them much new information. The kidnappers could have taken her in any one of several directions to get to a quiet place outside the city. Not to New Jersey, which would have involved a ferry, but across the Brooklyn Bridge to the south, or north to the farms that lay not far away.

  “It makes sense that they’d have a place north of the city,” Gino said. They had all met back in the same classroom at the settlement house. Teo had gone home, but Mr. McWilliam had joined them, hoping Sarah had learned something that would help find Miss Harding. “If they’re kidnapping people in East Harlem, that would be the closest.”

  “And driving through the city with a captive could be risky,” Sarah said. “If she got loose and managed to scream, someone would surely notice.”

  “Someone knows where this house is,” Frank said.