Murder on Marble Row Read online

  “Mr. Gregory Van Dyke!” he shouted for all to hear. “Blowed up by anarchists! Read all about it!”

  Sarah’s relief was only momentary. Her father might be safe, but Gregory Van Dyke was one of his oldest friends. She hurried away from the jostling crowd around the newsboy, stopping beneath an overhang where she could “read all about it” and remain relatively dry. All around her, people were voicing their surprise or their shock or their satisfaction that one so wealthy was not beyond the reach of violent death.

  Quickly, she skimmed the story for facts, then reread it more slowly for details. Only three hours had passed since the explosion in his office, so they didn’t have much to report yet. Mr. Van Dyke had arrived at his office as usual, shortly before nine o’clock. He had been in there, alone, for only a few minutes when something exploded. The police suspected a bomb, and everyone knew that anarchists used bombs. They also killed wealthy industrialists such as Gregory Van Dyke. Hadn’t they tried to kill Henry Clay Frick in Pittsburgh, which was why Mr. Frick and his family had moved to New York City? The sheet was filled with words, but very few of them described known facts. Everything else was conjecture and rumor and innuendo.

  Her weariness forgotten, Sarah unfurled her umbrella and looked around for a Hansom. She’d have to go home and change into something more presentable, but instead of taking a well-earned rest, she’d be heading uptown to see what she could do to comfort her parents.

  FRANK STILL COULDN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT HE’D DONE TO deserve this. All the way uptown, riding on the Elevated Train, he’d thought of a dozen ways he could have avoided working on this case. Unfortunately, all of them involved resigning from the police force. Since employment opportunities for Irish Catholic men were extremely limited, and none of the others would allow him to provide adequately for his deaf son, he knew he was stuck. The best he could hope for was to come out of this without getting himself fired. Considering how many rich people he was probably going to have to offend, he figured he’d be extremely lucky to escape with his hide intact.

  Which was a lot more than Mr. Van Dyke had done, Frank noted as he looked around the dead man’s office one last time. The coroner had carried away the larger portions of Mr. Van Dyke. The blast had hit him in the face and chest and literally torn his body apart. Smaller pieces of him were still splattered over much of the room. The pattern told the story. The pattern and the smell.

  The blast had come from a credenza that stood at one end of the room. Shattered glass among its remains and the unmistakable smell of spilled whiskey confirmed the information that the cabinet had held the liquor that Mr. Van Dyke served to his visitors. The odor of the alcohol helped cover the stench of gunpowder and death. The rain-wet air coming from the shattered windows would eventually clear all of it.

  “That’s all we know,” Captain O’Connor informed Frank belligerently. The captain of this precinct had taken over the investigation personally until Frank’s arrival. He was a short, stocky man with a florid complexion that spoke of many years of close association with a whiskey bottle. Most likely, he’d been promoted before Roosevelt came into power.

  Frank nodded politely. He’d read the report Roosevelt had given him, and O’Connor hadn’t had much to add. “I’d like to question everyone who was here when it happened.”

  O’Connor frowned sourly. “Suit yourself, but they don’t know nothing.” The captain would have risen to his current position by knowing exactly how to avoid offending the wealthy residents of the neighborhood. That, and managing to amass the fourteen thousand dollars necessary to buy the promotion. He wasn’t going to jeopardize his livelihood by letting Frank annoy anyone important.

  “Would you introduce me to them?” Frank asked, still polite. “You know them, and they respect you.” He figured they probably knew the captain only too well and despised him, but he needed O’Connor’s cooperation if he hoped to solve this case. Flattery was always a good way to win someone over.

  O’Connor grunted his consent, although Frank could see he was a bit mollified.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d sit in on the questioning, too,” Frank added. “I’d like to get your impressions when we’re done.”

  The captain only nodded, but Frank could see his attitude toward Frank was beginning to thaw. With a sigh of relief, he followed O’Connor out of the ruined office. The outer office, where Van Dyke’s secretary had been sitting, had also sustained some damage. Van Dyke’s door had been closed, and the blast had torn it loose from the hinges and sent it smashing into the secretary’s desk along with shrapnel from the bomb. The secretary had been taken to the hospital. Frank would question him later. Meanwhile, Van Dyke’s partner and son were waiting down the hall.

  The partner’s office was a good indication of what Van Dyke’s had probably looked like before the blast. An ornate desk polished to a high gloss sat in the center of the room. Several leather armchairs formed a seating area at the far end, by a tall window that looked out onto the street one floor below. A young man sat in one of the chairs, a heavy crystal glass in his hand, while an older man stood beside him, his back to the room, staring out at the traffic going by.

  “Excuse us, Mr. Snowberger,” O’Connor said with such deference, Frank half-expected him to bow. “Sorry to disturb you, but Mr. Roosevelt has sent a detective, and he’s got a few questions for you. Won’t keep you long, sir,” he added with a warning glance at Frank.

  Frank ignored the warning and the glance. “I’m sorry for your partner’s death, Mr. Snowberger,” he said perfunctorily. “I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. Commissioner Roosevelt has asked me to help clear this up.”

  Snowberger slowly turned from his vigil by the window and looked at Frank with little interest. He, too, held a glass half-full of amber liquid, probably an attempt to deal with the shock. “Is this absolutely necessary?” he asked O’Connor.

  “It is if you want to find out who killed Mr. Van Dyke,” Frank said before O’Connor could reply.

  The captain gasped at his bluntness, but Snowberger only looked mildly annoyed. The young man, Frank noticed, drained his glass in one gulp.

  “You must be Mr. Van Dyke’s son,” Frank guessed.

  The boy looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face ashen. He looked appropriately grief-stricken. “I found him,” he said hoarsely.

  “After the explosion, you mean?” Frank asked, instinctively reaching into his coat pocket for his notebook and pencil. No one had invited him to sit down, but he took the chair closest to young Mr. Van Dyke and began to make notes.

  “Yes.” The boy closed his eyes, as if trying to shut out the horrible vision of his father’s mangled body.

  “Tell me what happened. Everything you remember,” Frank urged.

  The boy shuddered. “I heard the explosion—”

  “Start earlier. Did you see your father today before the explosion?”

  The boy drew a breath, probably glad to be thinking about a time before this had happened. “Just for a moment, this morning, at home. I was finishing my breakfast when he came down.”

  “How did he seem?”

  “Seem?”

  “Did he seem nervous or preoccupied or did he seem normal, the way he always did?”

  The boy was handsome, with light brown hair and pale blue eyes. Frank guessed him to be no more than twenty-two, if that. His smooth forehead creased with the effort of remembering. “He seemed happy,” he reported in surprise.

  “Happy?” Frank echoed. “How could you tell?”

  “He called me by name. He said, ‘Good morning, Tad.’

  That’s my nickname, short for Thaddeus. He hasn’t called me Tad in years,” he added with a touch of amazement.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “I don’t . . . Just something about it being a fine morning or a good day or something like that.” The boy’s blue eyes were wide.

  Frank looked up at where the sleet was making streaks on the window jus
t to make sure he’d remembered the weather correctly. It had been miserable all morning. “Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  “I know, it doesn’t make any sense. But that’s what he said,” the boy insisted.

  “I take it your father wasn’t normally so cheerful in the morning?”

  “He hardly ever said anything besides good morning, if that.”

  “Then what happened?” Frank asked.

  “I got up and left for the office. I always try to get here before he does.”

  Frank wondered at that, but he’d find out more later. Right now, he just wanted the facts. “And he stayed behind and ate his breakfast?”

  “Really, Detective,” Snowberger protested.

  “Couldn’t this wait . . .?” the captain began, but Frank silenced them both with a look and turned back to the boy.

  “Your father stayed behind?” he prodded.

  “Yes. I mean, I suppose he did.”

  “And you traveled to the office. How did you get here?”

  “I walked. I like the exercise. Don’t get much sitting at a desk.”

  “You don’t mind walking in weather like this?” Frank let his skepticism show.

  The boy flushed. “My father uses the carriage himself, and I don’t wait for him. As I said, I like to get to the office early.”

  “You could take a Hansom.”

  “They’re hard to find in the rain,” the boy reminded him irritably.

  Frank nodded his agreement, ignoring the irritation. “Did you see your father again?”

  “No, not until . . .” He shuddered and tried to take another drink from his glass, but it was empty.

  Frank took it from his hand and silently indicated O’Connor should refill it. “You said you heard the explosion. Where were you?”

  “I was downstairs. That’s where I work, with the other clerks.”

  “Mr. Van Dyke believed his son should learn the business from the ground up,” Snowberger explained defensively. Frank wondered whom he was defending.

  “Tell me exactly what you heard,” Frank said to the boy.

  He tried to remember. “A loud boom. We thought the building was falling down.”

  “You and the other clerks?” Frank guessed.

  He nodded. “But then nothing else happened. I mean, nothing fell on us. Nothing collapsed. We must’ve stood there for a while, trying to figure out whether to run or crawl under our desks. Then I realized that whatever happened had happened upstairs. I ran up to see what it was.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “Smoke, coming from my father’s office. We thought it might be a fire, but when we got there, we didn’t see any flames.”

  “You said ‘we,’ ” Frank pointed out. “Who was with you?”

  “Some of the clerks. Dickie, I think, and Sam. We ran into Reed’s office. That’s my father’s secretary. We could hear him moaning. The door to my father’s office had fallen on his desk, and he was underneath. We started pulling it off of him. I was calling for my father, but he didn’t answer. I kept thinking he must not be there yet. Sometimes he didn’t come in until later, and when he didn’t answer . . .”

  O’Connor thrust the refilled glass into his hand, and the boy took a fortifying sip. Frank couldn’t help noticing he didn’t choke or even wince at the taste. In spite of his youth, he was an experienced drinker.

  “You and the other clerks pulled the door off of Mr. Reed’s desk,” Frank reminded him.

  The boy winced at the memory. “He was covered with blood. I’ve never seen so much blood . . . at least not until . . .” The color was draining out of his face.

  “Mr. Van Dyke,” Frank said sharply, pulling the boy’s attention back. “You rescued Mr. Reed?”

  “Yes.” The boy stared into Frank’s eyes, as if determined not to see anything else, even in his mind’s eye. “He was hurt, but not too badly. The door had knocked him to the floor and he’d cut his head, but he was saying my father’s name over and over. That’s when I thought . . . dear God.” He covered his eyes with his free hand.

  “You realized your father must have been in his office,” Frank guessed. “So you went to find him.”

  The boy nodded miserably.

  “That’s enough,” Snowberger declared. “I’m going to send Thaddeus home now. He’s been through quite enough today, and he needs his family around him. I’m sure they will need him, too.”

  As if summoned by a silent command, two young men appeared and assisted young Mr. Van Dyke to his feet. From the looks of them, they’d also been involved in the rescue efforts.

  When they were gone with Thaddeus Van Dyke, Frank looked at O’Connor. “Did someone question Mr. Reed, the secretary?”

  “They took him straight to the hospital,” he replied, a trifle belligerently. “He wasn’t in any condition to answer questions.”

  Frank nodded. He’d get to Reed later. Then he turned to Snowberger. “I have a few questions for you, too, sir,” he said, adding the “sir” only because he needed the man’s cooperation. “While everything is fresh in your mind. People tend to forget things as soon as they get away from a tragedy. It’s human nature not to want to remember.”

  Snowberger looked put upon, but he surrendered with a long-suffering sigh. “Very well, but I will be of even less help than Thaddeus was. I wasn’t even in the building at that time.” Without being instructed, he took the chair the boy had vacated.

  “Where were you this morning?” Frank asked, opening his notebook again.

  “At home. I very seldom come into the office before ten.”

  “Was that Mr. Van Dyke’s habit as well?”

  “Yes, as his son pointed out.”

  “Have you noticed anything unusual in Mr. Van Dyke’s behavior lately?” Frank asked.

  He frowned. “Not that I can recall, but he was hardly likely to have been worried about some anarchist planting a bomb in his office.”

  Frank refused to be intimidated. He gazed back at Snowberger unblinkingly. “We don’t know that anarchists are responsible.”

  This annoyed Snowberger. “Who else could it be? No civilized person blows someone up!”

  Roosevelt had said the same thing. “Civilized people don’t commit murder at all, Mr. Snowberger,” Frank said. “Do you believe that anarchists had a reason to kill Mr. Van Dyke?”

  The color rose in Snowberger’s neck, and it wasn’t from anger. He actually looked embarrassed. “People like that don’t need reasons!” he insisted.

  Frank suspected Snowberger was lying, but he couldn’t say so to his face, not if he hoped to keep his job. “You may be right, but just in case, did Mr. Van Dyke have any particular enemies? Someone who might have benefited from his death? Or who might have wanted revenge?”

  “Certainly not!” Snowberger informed him, outraged.

  “I can’t believe a man as successful as Mr. Van Dyke hasn’t made enemies, Mr. Snowberger,” Frank prodded.

  Snowberger wasn’t going to budge. “Men don’t settle business disagreements with bombs, Detective. If they did, New York would be a pile of rubble.”

  He was definitely right about that. Frank decided to change the subject. “Do you know of any reason why Mr. Van Dyke was especially cheerful this morning? Did he have some recent business success? Or perhaps a personal one?”

  “I’m afraid I would have no idea,” Snowberger snapped. “Don’t let Thaddeus mislead you, Detective. He’s just a boy, and he’s had a terrible shock. He may not even be remembering everything clearly. His father may have greeted him cheerfully one day last week and now he’s sure it was today, because he wants to have parted on good terms with his father. The mind plays tricks on us, as you pointed out yourself.”

  “Did the boy get along with his father?” Frank asked, ignoring the provocation.

  Snowberger blinked in surprise. “I . . . I’m sure he did. Fathers and sons . . . Gregory expected a lot from his sons, but . . .” He gestured vaguely.
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  So Tad and his father didn’t get along. Frank made a mental note. “You said ‘sons.’ Does Mr. Van Dyke have other sons?”

  Now Snowberger was visibly uncomfortable. “There’s an older boy, Creighton,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “Does he work here, too?”

  “No.”

  Frank was certain there was something very intriguing about young Creighton. “Do you know where I could find him?”

  “I have no idea. You’ll have to consult his family.”

  Frank had every intention of doing just that. “One more question, Mr. Snowberger. Was Mr. Van Dyke in the habit of drinking liquor first thing upon his arrival at work?”

  O’Connor gasped in outrage at the implication, and Snowberger sputtered furiously. “What kind of a question is that?” he demanded.

  “A perfectly logical one,” Frank said. “The bomb was apparently in the liquor cabinet. I was wondering why Mr. Van Dyke would have been opening it at nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Detective,” Snowberger said icily. “You’ll have to discover that for yourself.”

  THE VAN DYKES LIVED ON THE SECTION OF FIFTH Avenue in the 60s called Marble Row because all of the houses were fronted with marble. The Vanderbilt family members had made a contest out of mansion building in this neighborhood, each trying to outdo the other in size and stateliness. Marble Row was less grand than the Vanderbilts’ mansions, but no less opulent for all of that. The Van Dykes’ home was the kind of place where the servants earned more than Frank did.

  A very snooty butler escorted Frank up to the second-floor parlor, where three women sat in varying stages of grief. Frank always found it difficult to judge the ages of wealthy females because they were so well kept, but he guessed the oldest of the women to be nearing fifty while the other two were closer to thirty. The older, blond woman sat on the sofa beside one of the younger women and was comforting her as she wept into a hankie. The third woman sat alone in a chair nearby, her hands folded primly in her lap while she studiously avoided looking at the weeping woman.