Murder On GramercyPark Read online

  Murder On GramercyPark

  Victoria Thompson

  After a successful delivery, a baby falls mysteriously ill. But midwife Sarah Brandt soon discovers the source of the baby's sickness-and a scandal that's paved with greed and deception.

  Victoria Thompson

  Murder On GramercyPark

  The third book in the Gaslight Mysteries series, 2001

  DEDICATION

  With thanks to Julie and Georgia and all the members of the Vicious Circle, past and future, for helping me keep my head on straight, my feet on the ground, and my sanity intact (not to mention all the plotting, character analysis, and general advice you’ve provided through the years). Couldn’t have made it without you!

  PROLOGUE

  SHE THOUGHT OF THE PAIN AS A MONSTER THAT dwelled inside of her. For long periods of time it slept, and then slowly it would begin to stir. It started with a dull ache as the beast came awake. Then it grew and grew as the monster dug his talons into her neck, squeezing and squeezing, the pain a living, breathing thing that consumed her, obliterating thought and light and even the air she breathed.

  She welcomed the monster, greeted him like a beloved friend, because he gave her the only proof that she was still alive. For a few blissful moments, from the time the monster stirred until the pain became so great she had to cry out, she was awake and aware and alive, almost the way she’d been before.

  She gritted her teeth, holding back the moan of agony that came rumbling up from the depths of her soul, stretching out those moments as long as she possibly could. Opening her eyes to see sunlight or lamplight or a human face. Drinking in every vision with the clarity only those who were denied even the most basic pleasures of life could experience.

  But sooner or later the moan or the scream or the sigh would escape, and they would know. Those who loved her. Those who could not bear to see her in pain. They would press the glass to her lips and force her to drink the bitter draft, the magic potion that would put the monster to sleep again. For a few more seconds she would revel in the beast’s assault, counting each precious one of them until she felt the talons loosening their grip, slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, one by one by one, until the pain was gone and the monster slept again beneath the golden haze of the drug.

  For long months she lay like this, watching each of the seasons pass by the window beside her bed. She had given up hope of ever tasting the outside air again, of ever walking down a gravel path or sitting a saddle or dancing a waltz or feeling the embrace of a lover. She had thought she would lie here forever, until at last the beast devoured her.

  And then he came.

  He was the only one who would put his hands on her. The only one who dared. He knew the name of the beast, and he put his hands on her and strangled it, choking it and killing it, and setting her free. Only one man could do that, one man in all the world.

  Edmund Blackwell.

  1

  FRANK MALLOY FIGURED SOMEONE AT POLICE Headquarters must be mad at him. Why else would they send him out to investigate a suicide? Any drunken moron in the Detective Bureau could have handled this, and God knew, there were plenty of them to spare.

  Of course, as soon as he’d heard the address, he knew why he’d been chosen. Gramercy Park. Some rich swell had blown his brains out, and the family would want the matter settled quietly. Frank knew how to handle the boys from Newspaper Row. He’d done it often enough. Give them just enough to keep them happy but not enough to cause the family any hardship. No hint of scandal could escape, and Frank could be trusted to be discreet.

  As he approached the house, he glanced at the park surrounded by the high, gated fence that only residents of the streets around it could enter. The small patch of carefully tended grass and shrubbery would look like heaven to the urchins living on the Lower East Side who never saw anything green except rot. Here the swells had a fence to keep even their own kind from trampling on it.

  When he checked the address, Frank realized with a start that he knew the house. He’d been there several months before, when the previous occupant had been found murdered. Found by Sarah Brandt, a lady of Frank’s acquaintance. That’s how his mother might have explained her, if his mother could have been forced to speak of her at all. Well, at least he didn’t have to worry about Sarah Brandt getting involved in this case the way she had on previous ones. This wasn’t really a case anyway. He was just here to tie up a few loose ends and see the body taken quietly away.

  The beat cop stood guard at the front steps. He nodded at Frank and touched his round hat in a gesture of respect.

  “What’s going on here, Patrick?” Frank asked.

  “The man what lives here shot hisself in the head. His poor wife found him, and she’s in a state.” He leaned closer, so that Frank could smell the whiskey on his breath, and added in a whisper, “She’s breeding, too.”

  Frank managed not to flinch. “Breeding?”

  “About to drop it right on the floor any minute, too, if you ask me,” Officer Patrick offered, his round head nodding knowingly.

  “Nobody asked you,” Frank reminded him. “What’s the dead fellow’s name?”

  “Edmund Blackwell. He’s some kind of doctor.”

  Perfect. A pregnant woman about to give birth and a dead doctor.

  Frank forced himself to mount the front steps, ruthlessly suppressing the visions of his own wife in her dying moments, her blood soaking the mattress beneath her as it ran unchecked from her body. This woman wasn’t Kathleen. He had to remind himself of that twice before he could open the front door.

  Inside, another beat cop was doing his best to keep several servants from entering the room to the left of the entrance hall. Frank figured this was probably the room the dead man had chosen for his own execution. The officer was visibly relieved to see Frank, who drew the servants’ attention at once.

  The tallest one, a man of middle years who held himself with an unmistakable air of authority, marched over to him. “Are you in charge here?” he demanded.

  “Until Commissioner Roosevelt shows up,” Frank replied sarcastically, referring to the infamous head of the New York City Police Department. Since the commissioner came from the monied upper class of the city and had managed to alienate practically everyone in that city with his puritanical reforms and his insistence on honesty in the police department, Roosevelt’s was the one name certain to annoy if not frighten this snobby butler.

  The butler stiffened but did not back down. “I must insist that you allow me to summon Mr. Potter. He is Dr. Blackwell’s assistant. He will know what to do.”

  Frank gave him the grin that made hardened criminals sweat. “What makes you think I don’t know what to do?”

  A flush crawled up the man’s neck, but to his credit, he held his ground. “I was referring to Mrs. Blackwell, sir. She came home earlier than expected today, and she was the one who found Dr. Blackwell. I should have been the one to-” His voice broke and his face lost a bit of its stiffness for a moment before he recalled his dignity again. “She is… very upset, and in her delicate condition…”

  From the depths of the house, Frank could detect a pitiful moaning sound. He felt the cold sweat breaking out on his body, but he refused to so much as bat an eye. “You’d better send for a doctor, then.”

  The butler frowned his disapproval. “Dr. Blackwell doesn’t hold with medical practitioners.”

  Frank pushed his hat back and stared up at the man. “Didn’t you just say he was a doctor himself?”

  The butler drew himself up defensively. “Dr. Blackwell is a healer,” he explained with the utmost courtesy and unconsciously using the present tense. “A magnetic healer. He does not trust conventional medici
ne.”

  Who did? Frank wanted to ask, but he managed to restrain himself. For a second he was at a loss. A pregnant woman, obviously in labor or about to be from the shock of discovering her husband’s brains spilled out on her carpet, and they wouldn’t let him call a doctor. The irony was so great, he almost smiled. So much for his certainty that Sarah Brandt wouldn’t be involved in this case.

  Frank reached into his coat pocket and found his notebook and a pencil. He scribbled the Bank Street address on one of the pages and tore it out. He thrust it at the butler. “Send someone to this address and ask for Mrs. Brandt. She’s a midwife.”

  The butler looked at the paper as if it were a snake.

  The woman moaned again, and Frank’s patience evaporated. “Who was supposed to help her if Dr. Blackwell doesn’t believe in doctors?”

  “He… he was going to deliver the child himself, I believe,” the butler admitted.

  Frank gave him another of his famous, bone-chilling glares. “Well, that’s out of the question now, isn’t it? So unless you want to leave her to the mercies of her maid-”

  The butler snatched the paper from Frank’s outstretched fingers and turned on his heel, summoning someone from the depths of the house.

  Frank sighed. Sarah would find this very amusing. She’d probably never let him hear the end of it either. Well, at least this wasn’t a murder case. If he let her help him with one more murder case, he’d never be able to show his face down at Police Headquarters again.

  Sending the rest of the servants scurrying away with another of his glares, he turned to the officer guarding the door. “Let’s see what we’ve got, Mahoney.”

  SARAH WASN’T SURPRISED to see an agitated young man at her front door. As a midwife, she frequently saw agitated men, young, old, and in between, who had been sent to summon her to an impending birth. This fellow looked unusually agitated, however, and his uniform marked him as the servant of a wealthy household. The instant she opened the door, he began to speak.

  “Mrs. Brandt, you’re needed right away. Mrs. Blackwell, she’s in a bad way, and the policeman says for you to come at once.” He spoke as if he’d been practicing the words all the way over from wherever he’d come.

  “The policeman?” she asked, not quite believing she’d heard him correctly.

  “Yes, ma’am. Dr. Blackwell, he’s… well, he’s dead, it seems like, and the police come, and when he found out Mrs. Blackwell was… well, he give me your address and told me to fetch you quick as I could.”

  “Was this policeman a detective sergeant?” she asked, managing to keep her expression suitably grave. She didn’t want the boy to see her smiling smugly when he’d just told her someone was dead.

  “I don’t rightly know, ma’am. He’s a big Irishman, and he said for you to come. Mrs. Blackwell, she needs you right now.”

  Many policemen could be called “big Irishmen,” but only one of them was likely to have thought of summoning Sarah Brandt to the scene of a crime. “Of course,” she said. “Just give me a moment to gather my things.”

  She left the young man on her front stoop as she went back into the house to change her clothes and get her medical bag. She changed quickly, with practiced ease, and she couldn’t help thinking how it must have galled Malloy to send for her. Someone dead and the police called must mean another murder. He wouldn’t want her involved in a murder, so he must be desperate indeed. A woman about to deliver a baby would have affected him that way, she assumed, considering how his wife had died.

  Sarah must try to hide her satisfaction at his summons and the surge of anticipation she felt at being involved in another murder investigation, however slightly. If she acted too delighted at being included, Malloy might be provoked into sending her from the house, impending birth or not.

  When she stepped outside into the early autumn afternoon, she saw the young man was on the driver’s seat of a carriage he had obviously brought to convey her. He hopped nimbly down to open the door for her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Gramercy Park, ma’am.”

  She considered for only a moment. “I’ll walk, then. It will take over an hour to drive there from here, and only a quarter of an hour on foot.”

  “But Mr. Granger said to fetch you in the carriage,” the boy argued, alarmed by her refusal.

  “Who’s Mr. Granger?”

  “The head butler, ma’am,” the boy explained.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll tell him I refused your offer and insisted on walking. If Mrs. Blackwell is really having her baby, it’s important that I get there as quickly as possible. When Mr. Granger sees how long it takes for the carriage to get back, I’m sure he’ll see reason.”

  His eyes widened with near panic. “Please, ma’am. You don’t want to be carrying that heavy bag all the way uptown. At least let me take it for you.”

  “But I’ll need my bag as soon as I get there. I promise it will be all right,” Sarah said. “You won’t get in any trouble.”

  The boy’s face was a mask of despair, but he plainly had no choice. “I’d go with you, but I can’t leave the carriage,” he said.

  “Of course not. I’ll see you at the house. What is the address?”

  When he gave it to her, she recognized it instantly. She’d known the previous occupant slightly. The house had an unhappy history, and it seemed as if the Blackwell family had just added to it.

  Reluctantly, the boy climbed up onto the carriage seat and slapped his horses into motion. They slowly made their way into the crush of traffic.

  Sarah took note of the carriage. It wasn’t new, by any means, but had been refurbished quite expertly. She thought the gold leaf designs on the doors a bit much, however. New money, her mother would have scoffed. The team wasn’t matched but seemed well cared for, a rarity in the heat of the city. Keeping a carriage and team of any kind here was expensive. Her new clients must have money, new or not. But she’d already guessed that from the Gramercy Park address.

  Sarah set out at a brisk pace. Years of walking the city streets at all hours, hurrying to arrive before a baby did, had made her strong. And she’d been right about walking being the quickest way to get where she was going. The distance from her home on Bank Street to Gramercy Park was less than a mile, but a carriage would have to maneuver through streets choked with vehicles of every description, fighting for the right of way at every intersection. The boldest-or the most foolhardy-soul was the one who got through first, and no one gave way for anyone else voluntarily.

  The only way to travel quickly through the city was on the elevated railway, but that only went north and south. Rumor said the city fathers were considering an underground railway that would take people all over the city. Sarah could hardly credit such a thing. If they dug tunnels beneath the streets, what would keep the streets from collapsing? For an instant she pictured the entire city sinking into a gigantic hole.

  Banishing that disturbing thought, she realized she’d forgotten to ask the young man how her patient’s husband had died. He must have died violently, or Frank Malloy would not have been involved.

  Did the boy say the dead man was a doctor? Sarah thought the name was familiar, but she couldn’t recall meeting a Dr. Blackwell. Someone new in town, perhaps. Or maybe he wasn’t really a medical doctor. Many people called themselves “doctor” without any credentials at all.

  Well, she’d find out soon enough, she thought as she darted between carriages and wagons and carts all stopped at the intersection of Bank and Hudson and Eighth Avenue, their drivers screaming curses at each other as they fought for the right of way.

  “I ALREADY TOLD that other officer everything I know,” the butler informed Frank, who’d summoned him to the front parlor to question him.

  “Then it’ll be fresh in your mind, won’t it?” Frank said amiably. He was sitting in a comfortable chair, and he let the butler remain standing. “Your name is Granger?”

  “That’s right.”
/>
  “Where were you this afternoon?”

  “I was visiting my mother. She’s quite elderly, and I visit her every Wednesday afternoon. That is my customary afternoon off.”

  “Are all the servants off on Wednesday?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank noticed he wasn’t saying “sir,” but he chose to ignore the man’s subtle insult. He was already uncooperative enough, and Frank had other ways of humbling him if he needed to. “Do the servants always leave the house on their afternoon off?”

  “Usually, although sometimes one will stay. Today, however, Dr. Blackwell ordered me to make sure all the servants were out.”

  “And why was that?”

  Granger straightened even more, although Frank would have thought that impossible. “He said he had an appointment, and he wanted to be sure no one else was in the house.”

  “Do you know who his appointment was with?”

  “He did not confide in me.”

  Frank had no patience with this. “You’re a good butler, aren’t you, Granger?”

  Granger seemed insulted by the question. “I pride myself in that.”

  “If you are a good butler, then, you must have known, or at least suspected, who he was seeing today.”

  The observation placated him somewhat. “Ordinarily, that would be true, but Dr. Blackwell was very mysterious about this meeting. He did not confide in anyone.”

  “And you’re sure no one else was in the house?”

  “You can question the other servants, but I’m certain they were all out. They understood this was Dr. Blackwell’s wish. I made that very clear, and I remained until they had all gone,” he added.

  Frank was sure he had. “Was anyone else here when Mrs. Blackwell came home and found her husband?”

  “Not that I am aware. I arrived shortly afterward. As I told you, she is usually gone much longer than she was today, and I try to arrive back before she does, in case she needs anything when she arrives.”