Murder on Pleasant Avenue

by Victoria Thompson

  “Yes, yes, that’s right, she did.”

  “Then if she was locked in her room, she couldn’t possibly have killed him, could she?”

  “No, she couldn’t,” he confirmed.

  “But someone did. I wonder who it could have been.”

  McWilliam straightened in his chair, his face white, his eyes bloodshot, and his expression suddenly suspicious. “I can’t imagine why it would matter to you, Miss Smith.”

  Maeve tried a placating smile. “It’s just that . . . well, people are saying the woman killed him, and I can certainly understand why she would want to, and Miss Westrop did mention that Jane didn’t even answer her door at least once when she knocked, almost like she wasn’t there. Maybe she did leave her room, which would mean that she might have—”

  “Who are you?” he demanded, suddenly angry. “Why are you here?”

  Maeve sighed in defeat. “I’m Maeve Smith, like I said. I work for Frank Malloy.”

  He reared back again, this time in fear. For a moment, she thought he might actually bolt, but instead he stared at her for what seemed an age before straightening his shoulders and schooling his expression to appear calm. “I see. And you think Jane Harding killed Esposito. Well, you’re wrong, Miss Smith, because I did. I’m the one who killed Esposito.”

  XII

  Sarah had hoped to catch up with Malloy and Gino as they were making the rounds of the neighborhood, but Mrs. Cassidi told her they’d finished up before she arrived.

  “Thank you for arranging for me to meet with Mrs. Gallo and Fabio,” Sarah told her when those two had left.

  “I happy to do it. You were very good with the boy. His mother told me he would not speak with her about his time away.”

  “He probably didn’t want to frighten her. Children can be oddly protective of their parents. But he knew she couldn’t understand what he said to me. Did what he said help you remember anything else?”

  “No, but the tree was a good thing to know. We do not have many large trees still growing in the city. Farmers cut them down first, and then the rest went when they started building tenements.”

  “But you think you were out in the country.”

  “Even still, not many of the houses have big trees like that right next to them. It must be an old house, and the tree grew up beside it.

  “You’re right. I didn’t think of that. That should make it a little easier to find.”

  “Are you going to look for it, then?”

  “You heard Fabio. At least two boys are still being held there, and if we can find the house, maybe we can also find the kidnappers.”

  Mrs. Cassidi shook her head. “Even if you find them and lock them away, someone will take their place.”

  Sarah was very much afraid she was right.

  She thought she would be the first to arrive back home, but Malloy and Gino were already there. The three of them had just finished sharing what they had learned from Fabio Gallo and Mary White when Maeve arrived home with Catherine.

  Sarah could see at once that something was wrong. Maeve looked as if she had lost her best friend. Sarah quickly ushered Catherine into the kitchen for a snack, knowing their cook would look after her. Mrs. Malloy and Brian came in a few minutes later, and Sarah asked her mother-in-law to take charge of the children for a while so she could speak with Maeve.

  She found Maeve in the parlor with Malloy and Gino, all of them looking glum.

  “We know something happened,” Malloy said, going over to close the parlor door. “But she wouldn’t tell us anything until you got here.”

  “I did something really stupid,” Maeve said.

  “Don’t tell us you’re the one who stabbed Esposito,” Gino said in an awkward attempt at humor.

  No one laughed, and Maeve didn’t even give him a dirty look.

  “Just tell us,” Sarah said. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”

  “Oh yes, it is. I went to the settlement house this afternoon to see Christopher McWilliam.”

  No one spoke for a long moment while they all took that in and tried to think why it was so terrible.

  “What made you do that?” Malloy finally asked.

  “Because I was in the office, typing, and I was thinking about all the people we thought had a reason to kill Esposito, especially to kill him in that apartment that night. We’d talked about McWilliam, but nobody had ever really questioned him.”

  “I did,” Malloy reminded her.

  “But that was before we decided that Jane Harding was really the woman Esposito was keeping there,” Maeve said.

  “Even if she was, how would McWilliam know that for sure if we just figured it out ourselves?” Sarah asked.

  “He’d know it if she told him,” Maeve said.

  Which was something none of them had considered.

  “Why would she tell him, though?” Sarah asked. “Surely, she wouldn’t want anyone to know, least of all the man who wanted to marry her.”

  “But maybe she did,” Maeve said. “Maybe she wanted rid of McWilliam and his righteous cause so much that she decided to tell him, thinking he would be so disgusted, he’d stop wanting her and let her go without an argument.”

  “But if he really loved her,” Malloy said, “it wouldn’t matter to him.”

  Sarah had thought she couldn’t love him any more than she already did, but she had been wrong. “Oh, Malloy, how sweet you are.”

  “Sweet?” he echoed incredulously. “No one ever accused me of that before.”

  “It is very nice,” Maeve agreed, “and I’m afraid most men wouldn’t feel that way, but I think McWilliam would agree with Mr. Malloy, if Jane had given him a chance.”

  “But she didn’t,” Gino said. “She just left.”

  “And did McWilliam tell you he knew about Jane and Esposito?” Malloy asked.

  “Yes. When I called the woman Esposito’s mistress, he informed me that she was his captive, and then he actually broke down and almost cried right in front of me.”

  Malloy and Gino looked suitably appalled at such unmanly behavior.

  “Which means he had a very good reason to kill Esposito,” Sarah said.

  “Do you think he did it?” Gino asked Maeve.

  Maeve sighed and looked even more miserable than she had before. “Well, he did confess.”

  “What?” Malloy nearly shouted, and Gino actually jumped to his feet.

  “He confessed?” Gino repeated in amazement.

  “I was giving him all the reasons why Jane might have done it, hoping to get him to reveal something, and I guess that was too much for him. He couldn’t stand having her get blamed, so he told me he did it.”

  “We need to tell someone,” Gino said, obviously realizing this would mean the Black Hand would no longer have a reason to pin the murder on him.

  “Yes, we’ll have to think this through,” Malloy said. “We want to make sure the right people know so he’s charged and the charges against Gino are dropped. McWilliam probably isn’t going to confess to anyone else, and Ogden and Sullivan might not even want to investigate, so we have to make sure that—”

  “There’s no need,” Maeve said, still grim. “Before I could even ask him anything else, he told me he was going to tell the police and he left.”

  “He left? Of his own free will?” Malloy marveled.

  “He seemed very determined, but of course I didn’t think he really would. I thought maybe he was going to run away instead, so I went after him. But he went right to the precinct house and got himself arrested.”

  Gino gave a whoop of triumph. “I need to tell Mr. Nicholson so he can get the charges against me dropped. Should we send Balducci an announcement, too?”

  Sarah wanted to share Gino’s joy, but she could see that Maeve was not joyful at all. “What is it, Maeve? Isn�
��t this good news?”

  “It could be,” she said, “but I don’t think he did it.”

  They all stared at her in astonishment, and Gino plopped back down into his chair.

  “Why not?” Gino demanded. “Why would he say he did if he didn’t?”

  Maeve sighed and gave him an apologetic smile. “Because he’s just as nice as Mr. Malloy and he loves Jane Harding and he wants to protect her. I think I convinced him that she did it, so he’s going to take the blame for her.”

  “That’s crazy,” Gino insisted.

  “But it could be true,” Malloy said.

  “Jane couldn’t have killed Esposito,” Sarah reminded them. “She was locked up in the settlement house.”

  “I might have hinted that she could have snuck out,” Maeve said sheepishly.

  “How did you do that?” Sarah asked.

  “Kate Westrop told me Jane didn’t always answer her door when Kate knocked, so I suggested that maybe she wasn’t there the whole time.”

  “That’s possible, I guess,” Sarah said, “but why would Jane have gone back to the flat after she escaped?”

  “To kill Esposito,” Gino said.

  Maeve gave an unladylike snort of derision.

  “Let’s think this through,” Sarah said. “Would a sheltered young woman, raised in a respectable home to be a lady, really go out into the city, late at night, all alone, to murder a man whom she knew to be a gangster who might be capable of anything?”

  “A man who had kidnapped her and raped her over a period of days?” Maeve added. “Even when I was suggesting it to McWilliam, I didn’t really believe it.”

  “But she might’ve been with him because she wanted to be,” Gino reminded them.

  “Even if she was, she’d already left him for some reason,” Maeve said.

  “And she was very upset,” Sarah reminded them. “I saw that myself. I just can’t picture her going back to confront him or something. What would be the reason?”

  “To kill him,” Gino pointed out reasonably.

  “And that brings us back to explaining how a gently bred young lady would decide to murder a gangster who terrifies most of the people in Italian Harlem,” Maeve said.

  “Which means,” Malloy reminded them all, “that if McWilliam is confessing to protect Jane Harding, he’s making a very unnecessary sacrifice.”

  “And the real killer is still going free,” Sarah added.

  “But maybe Maeve is wrong, and McWilliam really did kill Esposito,” Gino said.

  “I’d feel a lot better if he did,” Maeve said. “But even if he did, why on earth would he kill Mrs. Esposito?”

  “So I guess I’m going down to the Tombs tomorrow to pay him a visit,” Malloy said.

  * * *

  * * *

  Before he could go to the Tombs the next morning, however, Frank had to go uptown to see Unger, the coroner who was doing Mrs. Esposito’s autopsy. Frank figured he’d had enough time by now to run whatever tests he needed to run to find out if she’d been poisoned.

  Unger’s office was in a storefront on 99th Street. The place was as dismal and depressing and smelly as one would expect of a place that processed dead bodies. Unger came out into the tiny front office at the sound of the bell over the door. He wore a large rubber apron, dark with stains, and was wiping his hands on a rag that was even dirtier than he was.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Did you find anything?”

  Unger sighed, and Frank’s expectations dropped accordingly. “Arsenic is hard to find.”

  “I told you about the tests—”

  “Yeah, I know, but she died too quick. If it takes a long time for somebody to die, it leaves traces. From arsenic poisoning, I mean. But she only lasted an hour, maybe two. Whoever dosed her gave her a lot.”

  “Then you think she really was poisoned.”

  “There’s things to look for. Her esophagus was inflamed. That’s her . . .” He gestured to his throat.

  “I know, it goes to her stomach.” Years of reading autopsy reports had given Frank a rudimentary knowledge of human anatomy.

  “That means she ate or drank something harsh. Her stomach was pretty empty, except for some tea, and that’s where I got lucky.”

  Frank’s hopes rose once again. “Lucky?”

  “It wasn’t much, mind you, but just enough. It was arsenic all right.”

  “You’re sure? You’d testify to that in court?”

  “You didn’t say nothing about court.”

  Frank gave him a look.

  “All right. I can testify if it comes to that. Do you know who did it?”

  “Not yet. Not for sure, anyway.”

  “Too bad. Her husband was a rat, but she didn’t deserve this. Arsenic is a bad way to go.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The Tombs was just as squalid as Frank remembered from his last visit here, a sojourn that had been mercifully brief after he was arrested for murder. The stench of mold and rot permeated the building, adding to the general air of despair. The city had announced it was going to build a new jail, but Tammany Hall was involved, so heaven only knew when it might actually be finished.

  Christopher McWilliam hadn’t been bailed out yet, so Frank found him in his cell, sitting on his filthy bunk and looking as despondent as a man should look locked in the Tombs for a crime he hadn’t committed.

  “What are you doing here, McWilliam?”

  He smiled wanly. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “I’m visiting you, which I thought was pretty obvious. The real question is, why did you put yourself in here and why haven’t you bailed yourself out?”

  “Surely you’ve heard. I killed Esposito.”

  “Did you, now?”

  McWilliam frowned in confusion. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Let’s just say I’m having a hard time of it. Why did you kill him?”

  Something like alarm flickered across his face. “Because he was an evil man. He didn’t deserve to live.”

  “Why did you go to that particular tenement to kill him?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. How did you know he’d even be there?”

  “I . . . I took a chance.”

  “All right. You took a chance, but how did you even know about that place? You said you’d never heard of it until after Esposito died, and that’s not where he lived, after all.”

  “He . . . I heard a rumor.”

  “I thought you didn’t listen to rumors.”

  “I listened to that one.”

  “All right, a rumor about what?”

  McWilliam winced at that. “They said he was keeping a woman there.”

  “So you decided, for no particular reason, to go to the place where he kept his mistress and murder him right in front of her.”

  “She wasn’t there.”

  “And did you know she wouldn’t be there?”

  “Of course I . . . Wait a minute. Why do you care about any of this? Usually when a man confesses to a murder, people just believe him.”

  “Some people do, and some people don’t particularly care if he’s guilty or not, but I do. I’m just trying to be sure.”

  “You can be sure.”

  “Can I? Because I’m worried that you might be trying to protect someone else.”

  “Who would I be protecting?” he scoffed with credible outrage.

  “Miss Harding.”

  Anger flared in his bloodshot eyes and he jumped to his feet. “Do you think a lady like Jane Harding is capable of murder?”

  “I think anyone is capable of murder, given the right circumstances, but I think it’s unlikely she killed Esposito.”

  That
left him gaping for a moment, but he collected himself quickly. “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “So if she didn’t do it, then you’re a fool to take the blame if you didn’t do it either.”

  “I would be, wouldn’t I? So we must conclude that I did kill Esposito.”

  Frank decided to try a different approach. “All right. I guess you wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Just one thing I don’t understand. Why did you kill Mrs. Esposito?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just spoke with the coroner this morning, the one doing the autopsy on her body. He told me she was poisoned.”

  McWilliam blinked in surprise. “I . . . I thought she was sick. They said she died of gastric fever.”

  “The symptoms of arsenic poisoning are very much the same.”

  McWilliam had to think about this for a long moment. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “But I did kill Esposito. That part is true. Maybe . . . maybe his wife committed suicide after he died.”

  “Because she was so sad, I guess.” Frank pretended to consider this. “Except she was a good Catholic. She went to church every day. Catholics believe that suicides go to hell.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, well, maybe somebody else killed her, if you say you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t. I swear it.”

  “But you did kill Esposito.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it happen? I mean, what made you go there that night?”

  “I told you. I heard he had a . . . a place. I thought it would be a good chance to catch him alone.”

  “So you knew his mistress wouldn’t be there.”

  McWilliam shook his head as if to clear it. “You’re confusing me.”

  “Am I? Sorry. I was trying to help you remember. How did you know his mistress wouldn’t be there?”

  Pain twisted McWilliam’s face. “You must know. If that girl, that Miss Smith . . . She said she works for you. If she knows, you do, too.”

  “Knows what?”

  “About Jane. That she was the woman he was keeping there. He kidnapped her and he . . . he used her.” McWilliam might have been willing to marry Jane in spite of her despoiling, but he wasn’t willing to forgive her rapist.