Gaslight Mystery 12 - Murder on Lexington Avenue 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

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Berkley Prime Crime titles 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

  MURDER ON WAVERLY PLACE

  MURDER ON LEXINGTON AVENUE

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  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  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.

  Copyright © 2010 by Victoria Thompson. The Edgar® name is a registered service mark of the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Thompson, Victoria (Victoria E.)

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18814-9

  1. Brandt, Sarah (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Midwives—Fiction. 3. Malloy, Frank (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 4. Police—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 5. Deaf—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3570.H6442M8685 2010

  813’.6—dc22 2009050680

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Keira,

  the very newest Thompson!

  1

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT FRANK MALLOY PUSHED HIS WAY through the crowd gathered at the entrance to the modest office building. Murder always drew a crowd in New York City, even in respectable neighborhoods. Even on a peaceful, autumn Saturday afternoon. The uniformed copper guarding the door nodded and admitted him, causing much outrage to the curious onlookers, who had been fruitlessly demanding admittance for quite some time.

  Inside, the building wasn’t so modest. Marble floors gleamed in the late afternoon sunshine, and rich, dark woodwork gave the place a distinct air of respectability. Not the kind of place where people usually got themselves murdered, Frank thought as he scanned the loitering figures for whoever was in charge of this investigation.

  The man in question had already spotted Frank, and he disengaged himself from the men he’d been speaking with and made his way across the marble floor. Frank recognized him immediately. They’d crossed paths before, and Frank knew he wasn’t the kind to resent Frank’s involvement in the investigation. In fact, he’d be glad to be relieved of the responsibility.

  “Malloy,” he said, reaching out a hand. “Good to see you.” He was one of the ward detectives. His main job would be collecting bribes and blackmail money from the crooks and the madams and distributing it to the right places. But he was also responsible for reporting crimes in his ward to Police Headquarters and getting one of the detective sergeants down to investigate as quickly as possible. Today, Frank was the one called down. For some reason, he’d been asked for by name.

  “Sullivan,” Frank replied, shaking the outstretched hand. “What’s going on?”

  “Some fellow got his skull cracked open. Blood everywhere,” he added with obvious disapproval. “Not so bad when it’s in an alley, but in a place like this . . .” He shook his head again. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his suit had probably been slept in. Frank could smell the whiskey on his breath, but his bloodshot eyes betrayed his intelligence. Sullivan might be a drunk, but he was no fool. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “Have you sent for the medical examiner yet?” Frank asked as he followed Sullivan down a hallway.

  “Yeah, as soon as I saw what happened, but nobody’s come yet.”

  Frank heard an exclamation of surprise as they passed an open doorway, and a moment later, a round man with a shiny bald head popped out. “Mr. Malloy, is that you?”

  Frank turned in surprise. “That’s right,” he said, thinking the man looked familiar but unable to place him.

  “Edward Higginbotham,” he said, taking Frank’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “I’m the one who found Mr. Wooten.” He still looked a bit shaken, and his face was beaded with sweat, but that could just be because it was warm on this September afternoon.

  “Mr. Higginbotham said he knew you,” Sullivan reported. “Asked me to send for you special.” Which explained a lot.

  “Because of your son, you know,” Higginbotham said.

  Frank frowned at the mention of Brian. Who was this man and how did he even know Frank had a son?

  “You spoke to me about putting your son in our school,” Higginbotham reminded him eagerly. “The Lexington Avenue School, or rather the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes. The name’s so long, we just call it Lexington Avenue, but you already know that.”

  Now Frank remembered. He’d visited the place when he’d been trying to decide whether to send his boy to school at all. Finding out Brian was deaf had been a shock, but not as much as it might have been. Until then, he’d believed Brian was simpleminded and would have to be cared for his entire life. Now he’d enrolled him in a school where he would learn to read and write and eventually be able to learn a trade. But it wasn’t Mr. Higginbotham’s school.

  “I remember now,” Frank said, deciding not to mention that he’d decided against the Lexington Avenue School. “Is that why you asked for me? Because we met before?”

  “Well, yes, but . . . well, I mean, I thought you might be more . . . I mean . . . Mr. Wooten, he was very interested in our work. A great champion for the deaf. Tireless. And now—” His voice broke, and he pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his lips.

  “You were friends with Mr. Wooten?” Frank asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Higginbotham said, using the handkerchief to mop his face. “Well, not friends exactly. Not socially. Acquaintances, I suppose you would say. His daughter is one of our students, and he has been a great supporter of the school. He serves on our board, and he’s been an advocate for—”

  “Mr. Higginbotham found the body,” Sullivan reminded Frank, eager to get on with it.

  “How did you happen to do that?” Frank asked with interest.

  “We had an appointment,” Higginbotham said. “And when I went to his office, there he was . . .” He grew even paler than he had been.

  “Why was he in his office on a Saturday afternoon?” Frank asked.

  “He would come in at all hours,” Higginbotham said. “Especially if he was seeing people about the school. He didn’t want it to interfere with his regular business hours, you see, and he didn’t want his family bothered at home.”

  “Did you see anybody else when you got here?”

  Higginbotham’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, dear, I didn’t think of that! I could have seen the killer!” Now he was chalk white, and Frank wouldn’t have been surprised to see him keel over in a dead faint.

  “Why don’t you go sit down and wait for me. I’ve got to . . . to look around, and then I’ll be back to ask you some more questions,” Frank suggested.

  “Oh, yes, yes, of course,” Higginbotham agreed weakly.
“I’m only too happy to help.”

  Sullivan was calling a uniformed cop over to escort Higginbotham back into the room where he’d been waiting. Frank could see now that it was some sort of conference room, with a large table surrounded by chairs. Higginbotham didn’t object to the assistance the cop offered, and Frank and Sullivan were finally able to continue on their mission.

  “I already questioned him,” Sullivan explained as they moved down the corridor. “He didn’t see anyone in the building, and he said the body was cold when he got here, so I’m guessing the killer was long gone.”

  “You’re sure he didn’t do it himself?”

  Sullivan shook his head. “If you’d seen him when I got here, you wouldn’t even ask. He was almost crying, and white as a sheet. Had some blood on his shoes, from stepping in it—you’ll see the footprints—but none anywhere else, and the killer would’ve had some blood splashed on him, at least. See for yourself.”

  They’d reached the last door at the end of the hall, and Sullivan stood back and allowed Frank to enter first. He could smell the blood the instant he stepped through the doorway, the sharp, metallic scent that you never forgot once you’d smelled it.

  The body lay on the floor in the middle of the room, in a heap just where the man had fallen. A pool of blood had formed around the ruined head, congealing now in the autumn heat, and flies were buzzing, settling on the red-streaked face. A few bloody smudges marked the floor where Higginbotham had stepped in the pool and tried to wipe his shoes clean on the carpet.

  Beyond where the body lay sat a large desk made of dark, polished wood. The kind of desk an important man would have. He’d sit there behind it and intimidate those who came to see him to ask a favor or beg for business.

  Two chairs had been positioned in front of it for visitors to use. They weren’t comfortable chairs. The dead man hadn’t wanted to encourage his visitors to linger. One now lay on its side. Frank studied the tableau, taking in every detail.

  From the way the blood had splattered, he could see that the victim had been standing, probably talking to or arguing with his killer. What had he said to enrage someone enough to pick up . . . ? What had the killer picked up? Or maybe he had been carrying the weapon with him. He thought of the weapon that had killed another man whose murder he had recently solved: a silver-headed cane. Many men carried canes, and just about any of them could bash a man’s head in if wielded correctly.

  “That’s what he used,” Sullivan said, pointing.

  A brass loving cup lay on the floor where someone had dropped it. Frank walked over and hunkered down beside it. Blood and a few hairs clung to the rounded, marble base. The sunlight streaking through the windows glittered off the metallic finish, highlighting the engraving. Mr. Nehemiah Wooten had won first place in sculling at Harvard University over thirty years ago. Maybe if he had lost on that long-ago day, he’d still be alive.

  “It was sitting over here,” Sullivan informed him, pointing to a credenza that sat against the wall. Sullivan was enjoying being the one with all the information, Frank noted.

  When Frank stood up, he saw that the credenza was covered with various large and heavy trophies from Mr. Wooten’s athletic youth. His killer would have had his pick.

  “Is anything missing?” Frank asked, looking around for signs of a robbery.

  “He didn’t have any money in his pockets, but his watch is still there,” Sullivan said with a shrug.

  Which meant that the beat cop who got there first probably took whatever ready money Mr. Wooten had on him. He’d have left the watch, since it would be too hard to get rid of without attracting attention. A real thief would have taken the watch and anything else of value. Frank could see some fancy pieces on the desk that looked like they might be silver. A real thief would’ve taken that stuff, too.

  “I don’t suppose anybody else was working in the building this afternoon,” Frank mused.

  “Not that we know of yet.”

  Frank walked around to the other side of the desk. Wooten probably had an appointment book. Maybe he’d noted the name of this killer in a neat, businessman’s handwriting that would make Frank’s job very easy. He rummaged through the drawers.

  The top one contained several sheets of paper with columns of numbers written in a neat hand, added up with some of the sums circled. Beneath it was a ledger of some kind. Wooten must have been looking at the accounts. Beneath the ledger, he found what he was looking for, an appointment book, but the page for today contained only one entry—an appointment to meet Higginbotham at two o’clock. Frank sighed and tossed it back into the drawer where he’d found it, and replaced the ledger and the papers. The desk yielded nothing else of interest except a half-empty bottle of very good Scotch whiskey. Frank tossed it to Sullivan, who caught it deftly.

  “For your trouble,” Frank explained. Sullivan grinned, and dropped the bottle into his baggy coat pocket.

  Frank rose from the chair and started back around the desk when his foot hit something on the floor and sent it rolling. “What’s this?” he asked, bending to pick it up. It was a small tube that appeared to be made of ivory with a brass tip on one end. The other end appeared to have been broken off something.

  “What is it?” Sullivan asked, coming over to examine it.

  “Looks like part of a mechanical pencil,” Frank said, giving it to him.

  “Broke in half. Where was it?”

  “Here on the floor,” Frank said, looking down to see if he could find the other half.

  “Wooten didn’t seem like the type to leave broken pencils laying around on the floor,” Sullivan observed.

  “No, he doesn’t. Help me look for the other half.”

  Sullivan found it on the other side of the room where it had rolled up against the wall. “That’s funny,” he remarked, handing it to Frank. “How did it get way over there?”

  “It’s almost like somebody threw it there,” Frank said, “but why throw part of it in one direction and part in the other?”

  “If you wanted to get rid of it, like this,” Sullivan said, pretending to toss something away in opposite directions with both hands.

  “Funny way to get rid of a broken pencil, though,” Frank observed, examining the broken ends. It had separated where the brass top fitted into the ivory grip.

  “You’re right. Maybe he broke somebody’s pencil, and they got mad and clocked him in the head,” Sullivan joked.

  “Yeah, that’s probably what happened. I’d kill somebody for breaking my mechanical pencil,” Frank agreed, dropping the pieces into his pocket. “Do we know where Wooten lived?”

  “Higginbotham gave me his address.”

  “He have any family besides the deaf daughter?”

  “A wife and son. Somebody needs to break the news to them.”

  “I’m surprised Higginbotham hasn’t done that already,” Frank said.

  “He wanted to, but I made him stay here.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said sincerely. Seeing the family’s initial reaction to a murder could tell a lot.

  A commotion in the corridor heralded the arrival of the medical examiner. Doc Haynes appeared in the doorway and stopped, taking in the entire scene with his world-weary eyes. “What have we got here?” he asked of no one in particular.

  “Just what you see,” Frank said. “Sullivan here will fill you in. I have to question a witness before he decides he wants to go home.”

  He left the two men to examine the body and found Higginbotham in the room where he’d left him. Somebody had brought him a glass of water, but he looked like he needed something a lot stronger. Frank began to regret giving the whiskey to Sullivan.

  “Oh, Mr. Malloy, have you found out how this happened yet?” Higginbotham asked eagerly, half rising from his chair.

  Frank motioned him to stay seated, and pulled out a chair for himself. Seated at a right angle to Higginbotham, he’d be able to watch his every expression. “It’s too early to know anything for certain yet,” he said, taking from his pocket a pencil and the small notebook he used to jot down important facts. “What can you tell me about Mr. Wooten?”