Murder on Astor Place Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  “There was two of them.”

  “Two of who?” Sarah asked.

  “In Alice’s room that night.” She glanced up to see if she’d shocked Sarah. She had, of course, but Sarah managed to register only surprise. She didn’t want to frighten Mary Grace into silence.

  “You saw the men who went into Alicia’s—um, Alice’s room?” A thousand questions swirled in Sarah’s mind, but she resisted the urge to throw all of them at the girl at once. If she was too eager or over anxious, Mary Grace might feel she was doing something wrong, and Sarah would learn nothing more.

  “You won’t tell my Mama, will you?” Mary Grace asked anxiously.

  “No, I won’t tell her. But I’m glad you told me. This might help the police catch whoever hurt Alice.”

  “I want you to catch him. I dream he’s coming back for me.”

  “Oh, dear,” Sarah exclaimed. “You don’t have to be afraid.” She just wished Mary Grace looked a little more convinced.

  Gaslight Mysteries by Victoria Thompson

  MURDER ON ASTOR PLACE

  MURDER ON ST. MARK’S PLACE

  MURDER ON GRAMERCY PARK

  MURDER ON WASHINGTON SQUARE

  MURDER ON MULBERRY BEND

  MURDER ON MARBLE ROW

  MURDER ON LENOX HILL

  MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY

  MURDER IN CHINATOWN

  MURDER ON BANK STREET

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  MURDER ON ASTOR PLACE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with Cornerstone Communications, Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 1999

  Copyright © 1999 by Victoria Thompson.

  The Edgar® name is a registered service mark of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

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  eISBN : 978-1-440-67340-5

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my agent Nancy Yost, who never stopped

  believing and who always makes me laugh, even

  when the news is bad. And to my dear husband

  Jim, who eased the load so I’d have the time and

  energy to write this.

  1

  AT FIRST SARAH THOUGHT THE TINKLING OF THE bell was part of her dream. It sounded so sweet and soothing, and she was following it across a sunlit meadow, as if it were a golden butterfly. But then the pounding started, and she knew this wasn’t a dream at all. Dragging herself away from the meadow and out of the depths of sleep, she forced her reluctant eyelids open. Sure enough, someone was pounding on her office door.

  “Hold your horses,” she muttered as she threw off her covers. The night air was chilly for early April, and Sarah recalled the freak storm that had struck yesterday, dropping several inches of snow on the city. Shivering, she felt around in the dark for her slippers but failed to locate them. Padding barefoot through the darkness toward where she knew the bedroom door to be, she snatched her robe from the foot of the bed and shrugged into it as she went. “Coming!” she called, wondering if whoever was knocking could hear her over the racket he was making.

  What she really wanted to say was, “Calm down! Babies usually take their own sweet time, so there probably isn’t any rush.” In the three years she’d been delivering babies for a living, Sarah could count on the fingers of one hand the times that had truly been an emergency. Usually those were the cases where she was summoned to some hovel on the Lower East Side to a woman too poor to pay her fee but whose delivery had gone horribly wrong. Left with no choice, the family summoned her in the often-vain hope that she would be able to save either the mother or the child.

  Shaking off the last vestiges of sleep as she moved through the frigid front room of her flat, which also served as her office, Sarah offered a silent prayer that this wasn’t one of those calls. The gaslights on the street outside reflecting off the newly fallen snow cast enough light through her curtained windows that she was able to pick her way through the room without colliding with any of her equipment.

  “Who’s there?” she called when she reached the front door. A woman living alone in New York City couldn’t be too careful, even if she lived in the relatively civilized section known as Greenwich Village.

  “It’s Ham Fisher. I just started boarding with Mrs. Higgins. It’s her time, and they sent me to—”

  “I’ll be right there. Just give me a minute.” Sarah let herself feel some relief as she hurried back to her bedroom to dress. Mrs. Higgins should be an easy case, barring some unforeseen complication. This would be her sixth child, and her other births had gone easily. Sarah herself had delivered number five not quite two years ago. And she didn’t have to go into the Lower East Side in the middle of the night, where any woman walking on the street after dark would automatically be considered a prostitute, even if she had an escort. She assumed Ham had been chosen for his ability to ensure her safe arrival, but she would
have needed more than one bodyguard to protect her over among the tenements.

  Tonight, however, she’d only have to go a few blocks through the Village to Mrs. Higgins’s boardinghouse, which was a mercy because the snow was still deep in places. Who, Sarah wondered idly, would do the cooking for the lodgers while Mrs. Higgins was laid up? Sarah would have to be very firm about making sure the new mother didn’t get up and back to work too soon, no matter what the temptation. Six children in less than ten years took a toll, and if Sarah couldn’t prevent the children from being conceived, she could at least make sure the mother’s health didn’t suffer any more than necessary.

  Hastily, as much from the cold as from the urgency of her mission, Sarah put on the requisite undergarments and what she considered her “birthing clothes”—her oldest skirt and shirtwaist, which couldn’t be ruined by the stray spatter of blood or whatever other bodily fluids might be splashing around during the birthing process. When she was ready, just a few short minutes later, she threw her heavy cape over her shoulders to protect her from the wintry winds and grabbed her medical bag. Tom’s medical bag, that is. The one she’d given him when he officially became a doctor. The one still engraved with his name, Dr. Thomas Brandt. She always felt close to him when she carried it. Ruthlessly banishing the memories, she hurried out the door.

  Ham Fisher was waiting for her. He was a strapping youth with a pockmarked face, a mouthful of bucked teeth and eyes that were, at the moment, unnaturally wide with terror. “We gotta hurry, Mrs. Brandt.” As it did most men, the mere hint that a baby might be on the way had sent him into a panic.

  Sarah knew it was useless to argue with him. “Of course,” she said and followed as he started off at a brisk trot. At least the storm was over, and the clouds had cleared. The snow in the street had turned to slush where wagon wheels and horses’ hooves had passed but the sidewalk was still ankle deep, except where other footsteps had smashed it down. Sarah felt the dampness already seeping through her boots, and she followed carefully in the trail Ham was blazing.

  She’d only gone a few steps when she heard a window being raised in the house next door to hers, and a familiar voice called, “Mrs. Brandt, is that you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Elsworth,” Sarah called back, smiling because she knew it was too dark for Mrs. Elsworth to see her amusement. She should have known she couldn’t slip away without her neighbor noticing, even if it was the middle of the night. Sometimes she wondered if the old woman ever slept at all.

  “Oh, my, is a baby coming on a terrible night like this?”

  “That’s right!” Sarah hoped all this shouting wouldn’t wake the entire neighborhood. “I’ve got to be on my way,” she added, seeing Ham Fisher had stopped to wait for her but with obvious impatience.

  “Oh, dear, and here it is, the tenth day after the new moon. You know what that means, don’t you? Anyone born on the tenth day after the new moon is bound to be restless and a wanderer. Do you think you could hold off the birth just one more day? No sense in dooming the poor child to a life of—”

  “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Elsworth,” Sarah promised, shaking her head because she knew Mrs. Elsworth couldn’t see her disgust. The old woman had a superstition for every occasion. Sarah had heard literally hundreds of them in the years she’d lived next door, but Mrs. Elsworth was still surprising her with new ones all the time. There seemed to be an endless supply.

  “Mrs. Brandt, please.” Ham entreated desperately.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Mrs. Elsworth,” Sarah called, hurrying to catch up with her escort, who had already set off again.

  “I hope you’re carrying a pinch of salt to protect you from disaster, going out on a night like this!” Mrs. Elsworth shouted after her.

  “Yes, I am!” Sarah lied without a trace of guilt.

  When Ham realized, half a block away, that she couldn’t keep up with his pace, he slowed and waited for her, although his entire body fairly quivered with his eagerness to run. He pulled off his battered cap and ran long, bony fingers through his sleep-tousled hair instead.

  “Who’s that?” another familiar voice called from the shadows across the deserted street. Ham looked up in fright, but Sarah called, “It’s Mrs. Brandt, Officer Murphy!”

  The policeman, who had been checking all the doors along his beat to make sure they were locked, stepped into the glow of the gaslit streetlamp and squinted over at them. “On a call, are you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not going far at this hour, I hope.”

  “Oh, no, just to Mrs. Higgins’s house.”

  He nodded, the light winking off the star on his domed helmet. “Get along with you then.”

  She knew better than to expect an offer of safe escort. The New York police were notoriously corrupt, in spite of recent attempts at reform, and Sarah couldn’t afford to pay for their protection. She had to satisfy herself with winning their goodwill with small gifts for their children and the occasional sweet, baked in her makeshift kitchen. All she could hope was that if she ever truly needed help, they would come to her aid.

  Obviously, Ham Fisher had no desire for a police escort. He was already hurrying away, pulling his cap back down over his head when Sarah reached him. She wondered for a moment if he had some reason to avoid notice by the police, but the thought was gone as soon as it formed. No one poor and powerless wanted to be noticed by the police, who might arrest you simply because they felt like it and might then beat a confession out of you for some crime you hadn’t committed but for which they needed a suspect.

  Sarah had long since denied herself the luxury of outrage over such things. One woman couldn’t change the world. She could just make small parts of it better. That’s what she was doing tonight.

  She was fairly running to keep up with her companion now, and they reached the wide, snow-covered sidewalks of Fifth Avenue in mere minutes. Checking for traffic, Sarah glanced down the street toward Washington Square where she could see the outline of the enormous arch they’d built there recently, practically on the doorstep of the house where she’d grown up. It’s edges were dulled by the mounds of snow, but it’s distinctive shape was still plainly visible against the night sky. Then she glanced up the street, toward where her parents had moved a few years ago, escaping the influx of artists and freethinkers who had changed Greenwich Village from an enclave of the rich to a community of bohemians. The same street, but what a change it made in the fifty blocks that lay between her old home and the brownstone town house where they now lived.

  Sarah wondered if they ever appreciated the irony. She could have asked her mother, of course, except she hadn’t spoken to either of her parents since Tom’s funeral. The fifty city blocks that separated her humble office—formerly Tom’s doctor’s office and now hers—might as well have been an ocean since she and her parents now lived worlds apart from each other.

  Sarah turned her attention to crossing the cobblestone avenue. In the daylight, crossing against the flow of carriages, hansom cabs, and motor cars would be a dangerous and nearly impossible proposition, but because of the storm, even the prostitutes and their clients had retired for the evening. All Sarah had to worry about was picking her way through the piles of horse manure and garbage that the street cleaners hadn’t yet carried away and which were now hidden beneath the snow.

  A few more blocks, then they cut across Broadway to the tiny zig that was Astor Place and the quiet residential neighborhood beyond where Mrs. Higgins’s boardinghouse lay. It had once been home to only her and her family, but when her husband’s eyes had failed and he’d lost his prosperous tailoring business, they’d had to move their growing family into two back rooms and let the others out to lodgers.

  Fortunately, one of the rooms was vacant at the moment, so Mrs. Higgins was laboring in relative privacy with the assistance of one of her neighbors. After shedding her cloak and stamping the snow off her boots, Sarah joined them.

  “I’m glad to see you did
n’t start without me,” Sarah said cheerfully as she quickly surveyed the situation. The room was spartan and bare, but perfectly clean, as were the bedclothes. Many doctors and midwives didn’t see the need for cleanliness, but Sarah had long since observed that mothers who gave birth on laundered sheets did much better than those who did not.

  The neighbor woman smiled, but Mrs. Higgins saw no humor in the situation. “The pains is coming one on top of the other. I don’t think this one’s gonna wait ’til morning. Oh, here it comes again!”

  Sarah saw immediately that Mrs. Higgins was already pushing, a sure sign of advanced labor. She was right, this one wasn’t going to wait until morning. Mrs. Elsworth would be very disappointed.

  Sarah glanced at the gold watch she had pinned to her bodice, a Christmas gift from her parents in some year long past, to time the contractions. “I’ll wait until you’re finished before I examine you,” Sarah said, “but I’m glad your lodger made me hurry. How long has she been pushing?” she asked the neighbor.

  The woman opened her mouth to reply, but an anguished wail from the doorway startled them both. Sarah turned to find a young girl standing there. She could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, her beauty still fragile and unformed, although unmistakable. Her golden hair lay in silken ringlets to her shoulders, and her hastily-donned gown gave proof that she had been awakened and had come to see what the commotion was. Plainly, she was horrified by what she saw. Her china-blue eyes were even wider than Ham Fisher’s had been, and she had covered her mouth with the back of her hand, as if afraid she might be sick.

  Sarah knew she’d never seen the girl before—she would have remembered such a lovely creature—but still, a name came to her lips. “Mina?” she asked before she could think better of it.

  The girl’s glance shifted instantly from the woman writhing on the bed to Sarah, and the horror in her beautiful eyes turned to sheer terror.