Murder on Astor Place Page 2

  “Get her out of here,” Mrs. Higgins gasped as her pain subsided. “This ain’t no place for her.”

  “Come along now, dear,” the neighbor woman said, hurrying to do Mrs. Higgins’s bidding. “We don’t want to put you off having children of your own, now do we?”

  At that, the girl’s naturally pale face grew chalk white, and Sarah knew a moment’s fear that she might actually faint. But the other woman was shooing her out. If she fainted in the hallway, she wasn’t Sarah’s problem. Banishing all thoughts of the girl from her mind, she turned back to her patient.

  “Now let’s see what’s going on in there,” she said, unbuttoning her cuff to roll up her sleeve for the examination.

  SARAH DIDN’T THINK of the girl again until a day and a half later when she was paying her first postpartum visit to Mrs. Higgins and her new son. Ordinarily, she went the very next day, but since the baby hadn’t actually been born until nearly the next day, Sarah had waited until another night had passed to pay her usual call.

  The city was very different this morning than it had been the other night. All traces of the snow had been shoveled into carts and dumped into the river, and with it had gone the silence of that night. The roar of the elevated trains over on Sixth Avenue was a constant backdrop to the usual sounds of urban activity. Wagon wheels and horseshoes clattering over cobblestone streets, drivers shouting to their animals or to other drivers, street vendors hawking their wares, women calling for children or to neighbors. Sarah might dream of peaceful meadows, but this was what she truly loved, the vibrant sounds of city life.

  While she walked, she replayed the events of the other night and recalled the girl she’d called “Mina.” Sarah knew exactly who she’d been thinking of. Mina VanDamm had been a classmate of hers at the exclusive private girls’ school she’d attended. They’d also traveled in the same social circles, something that Sarah had once considered important, but which she now knew mattered not a wit. Perhaps Mina VanDamm had looked like that girl back when they were sixteen, but she certainly didn’t look like that any longer. Mina was Sarah’s age, over thirty now, and probably a plump matron with a houseful of children of her own.

  As this girl would be, before long. Because Sarah knew something else about her, too. Something she hadn’t realized until this moment. She was still mulling over her realization when she rounded the comer and saw the crowd gathered in front of the Higgins’s boardinghouse. Several women, still in their plain housedresses beneath their heavy shawls, were huddled together on the sidewalk, which meant an emergency had called them out. Otherwise, they would have changed into their street clothes.

  The women talked quietly while children ran around, playing games and rolling hoops, oblivious to whatever unfortunate event had brought their mothers together. Sarah thought of Mrs. Higgins and her new baby inside the house. If there was trouble, why hadn’t they sent for her?

  She hurried up to the nearest woman, Bertha Peabody. Sarah had delivered her of the fat baby now perched on her hip and contentedly sucking on his middle two fingers.

  “What’s happened?” she asked Bertha.

  “There’s been a murder,” Bertha said, her shock obvious.

  “Mrs. Higgins?” Sarah gasped in horror.

  “Oh, no,” Bertha hastily assured her. “One of her lodgers. A young girl. Hadn’t been there long, only a few weeks, and this morning she turns up dead. One of the children found her when she didn’t come down for breakfast.”

  “A girl with blonde hair?” Sarah didn’t want to believe it.

  “Yes, that’s her.”

  “Terrible thing, just terrible,” another woman declared, and the others murmured their assent.

  Sarah couldn’t have agreed more. People died every day in the city, often by violent means, but hardly ever did someone in this neighborhood die by another’s hand, and certainly not someone as young and innocent as this girl had been. And if Sarah was upset, imagine how Mrs. Higgins must be affected. “I’ve got to check on Mrs. Higgins. All this trouble can’t be good for her or the baby.”

  “They ain’t letting anybody inside,” Bertha warned her, but Sarah was already climbing the front steps to where a portly police officer stood guard at the door.

  CAN WE TAKE her out now?” the fellow from the medical examiner’s office wanted to know.

  Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy took one last look at the crumpled body of the girl and nodded wearily. This wasn’t the way he had planned on spending his morning, not today or any other day. Finding out who murdered this slip of a girl wasn’t going to accomplish anything, and it certainly wouldn’t help advance Frank Malloy in the world one little bit.

  He’d seen hundreds of girls just like this, new in town, trying in vain to find honest work that would support them until their money ran out and then being forced onto the streets—or into a bawdy house if they were lucky. This one would’ve been lucky. She was pretty enough to go into one of the better houses on Fifth Avenue. She might even have caught the eye of some rich man looking for a mistress, someone who would’ve set her up in style. Maybe she would’ve been smart and saved her money and eventually opened a house of her own. That was the mark of success for a woman of pleasure, although few whores ever achieved it. Most of them ended up dead in a gutter somewhere, the victim of disease or a dissatisfied customer.

  Instead, this one had ended up dead on a boardinghouse floor. And a respectable boardinghouse, too, not one simply calling itself that but functioning as a brothel in reality. And this girl never would’ve become the successful whore of Frank’s fantasy. She wasn’t smart enough. He knew because she’d apparently just begun to engage in the flesh trade and no sooner had she started than she’d chosen the wrong man and gotten herself killed.

  It was a pity, a pretty girl like that, but Frank couldn’t afford the luxury of pity. He had a job to do. And responsibilities. He needed to make Captain, and he was carefully saving his money to bribe his way up to that exalted position—the only method of advancement that had ever been possible in the New York City police force until the recent wave of reform had swept the city. Of course, Frank figured the wave would pass, just like every other attempt to change the system that had been in place for centuries. He’d continued to save in the meantime so he’d be ready when the reformers gave up and went back to their gentlemen’s clubs. No one was going to give him a little extra under the table for solving this girl’s murder, though, and solving it would take up valuable time that could better be spent serving people who were willing to show their appreciation in a practical manner.

  “There’s a lady on the stoop trying to get in. Says she has to see Mrs. Higgins,” the officer he’d left guarding the front door reported as Frank made his way down the stairs into the front hall. This wasn’t unusual. There was always at least one old biddy in the neighborhood who felt compelled to get some firsthand knowledge when a crime had been committed.

  “Who is she?”

  “A Mrs. Brandt.”

  “Does she know anything about the dead girl?”

  “I didn’t ask her.”

  Frank sighed. He’d reached the bottom of the steps. “Let her in. I’ll talk to her in the parlor.” The old biddies also usually knew all the gossip. Whatever he could learn might help get this case over with sooner.

  The officer nodded and opened the front door. Frank was surprised at the woman who entered. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but certainly not this. Mrs. Brandt was a handsome woman whose fine figure was encased in clothes that, while a little shabby, had once been expensive and well-made, and she was carrying what looked like a black medical bag. She was also much younger than the type of harridan who usually insisted on being admitted to a crime scene, much too young at least to have acquired the kind of brass it took to challenge the police. And most certainly too young to be quite as sure of herself as she appeared to be. Her amazing blue-gray eyes met his with the kind of defiance that set Frank’s teeth on edge. Thi
s was the last thing he needed. She was probably one of those suffragettes, intent on making every man’s life miserable just on general principles.

  “This here’s Detective Sergeant Malloy,” the officer was saying. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m Sarah Brandt,” she told Frank without being asked.“I’m the midwife who delivered Mrs. Higgins’s baby yesterday, and I need to make sure she’s all right.”

  Midwife? No one had told him about this. Higgins had simply explained that his wife was indisposed and hadn’t seen or heard a thing, so Frank hadn’t bothered to question her yet. But she wasn’t really ill; she’d just had a baby. A baby this Sarah Brandt had delivered. The knowledge tore at the old wound in his soul, bringing a pain he couldn’t allow himself to feel while at the same time sparking a rage he didn’t dare express. From habit, however, he managed to keep his reaction to himself.

  At least he’d be prepared when he had to meet Mrs. Higgins. Or as prepared as he could be.

  He forced himself not to sigh. “Step into the parlor for a minute, Mrs. Brandt. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “About what?”

  Now Frank was sure she was one of those suffragettes. Imagine questioning an officer of the law. “A young girl was murdered here last night.”

  “I know that,” Mrs. Brandt assured him impatiently. “That’s why I need to see my patient, to make sure she’s all right. A shock like this can sometimes cause problems.”

  Yeah, well, we all have our own problems, don’t we? he thought, and Sarah Brandt was going to be his. Ordinarily, Frank knew exactly how to handle a reluctant witness—a little shake, a slap or a punch, then the nightstick if all else failed—but he didn’t think the usual methods would work on Sarah Brandt, as tempted as he might be to try them. He certainly couldn’t be blamed for wanting to, even if he didn’t dare raise a hand to a respectable female, and no one would fault him for being short with her. “Your patient will wait a few minutes while you answer my questions.”

  She widened her eyes at his tone—out of amazement, not fright, he couldn’t help noticing with annoyance—but at least she went into the parlor when he indicated she should, leaving her black bag in the hall. She wasn’t happy about it, though. She made him understand that without saying a single word.

  Maybe he ought to try a different tack with her, much as it might gall him to do so. Butting his head against a wall would just give him a headache.

  “Have a seat, Mrs. Brandt,” he said, trying to muster up some civility. He hadn’t used it in a long time and was very much afraid he’d lost the knack.

  Apparently he had, because Mrs. Brandt didn’t sit down. “I don’t know what you think I can tell you.”

  “I don’t either, so why don’t we find out?” Frank said without even grinding his teeth. He was amazing himself with his patience. “Did you know the dead girl?”

  “No.”

  This was going to be even harder than he’d thought.

  Frank closed his eyes, summoning up more patience, and tried again. “Did you know anything about the dead girl? Her name was ...” He consulted his notes. “Alice Smith.”

  Sarah Brandt sighed with obvious exasperation. “I only saw her once in my life, the night before last when I was here to deliver Mrs. Higgins’s baby. She came into the room for a moment and ...”

  “What is it?” Frank prodded when she hesitated. Plainly, she knew more than she was telling. Perhaps she even knew more than she realized.

  “Nothing. I was mistaken.”

  Frank figured Sarah Brandt was hardly ever mistaken about anything.

  “Come on, Mrs. Brandt. A girl has been murdered. Anything you can tell me will help catch her killer. You don’t want a killer running loose, do you? A woman like you who makes her living traveling around the city, going to strange places—”

  She sighed again to let him know how put-upon she felt. “I thought she looked like someone I used to know,” she admitted. “An old friend.”

  “An old friend here in the city?”

  She nodded grudgingly.

  “Could she have actually been who you thought she was?”

  “No. She resembled an old schoolmate of mine, a woman my own age, so I know this girl couldn’t have been the same person.”

  “What part of the city are you from, Mrs. Brandt?”

  “Right here in Greenwich Village.”

  Frank looked her over again in the better light of the parlor windows. She stiffened at his effrontery. She probably figured he was sizing up her figure, which was even better than he’d originally thought, but actually, he was sizing up her clothes. Just as he’d thought, they were quality, although she’d been wearing them for a long time. “You came from money, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t think my background is any of your business, Detective Sergeant Malloy,” she said coldly.

  Oh, yes, she came from money, all right. Only a rich person knew how to use that tone to put an underling in his place. But Frank wasn’t her underling, not in this situation. “At the moment, everything is my business, Mrs. Brandt. And for your information, the dead girl came from money, too.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “The same way I can tell about you, her clothes.”

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs distracted them both, and Frank looked toward the open parlor door to see the orderlies carrying the sheet-covered body out on a stretcher. He heard Sarah Brandt’s gasp and smiled at his good fortune. Nothing like a little shock to soften up a reluctant witness. He waited until they had carried the body out of the house. The bloom had noticeably faded from Sarah Brandt’s smooth cheeks.

  By then Frank had decided he would use Sarah Brandt a little, and possibly get back at her in the bargain. “Maybe you’d help me out by going up to her room and looking around. Since Mrs. Higgins is, uh, indisposed, I mean. See if anything looks out of place, and give me your opinion of her things. Maybe I’m wrong about her background after all.”

  He’d figured Sarah Brandt would jump at the chance to prove him wrong about anything, but her natural reserve was apparently stronger than her need to prevail. “I couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t what? Snoop through her things? Make judgments about her? Mrs. Brandt, when a person is murdered, they don’t have a right to privacy anymore. Or maybe you’d rather I took you down to the station house to finish questioning you,” he added, forgetting his plan to be civil.

  “Why?” she challenged, anger flashing in those marvelous eyes of hers. “So you can beat me into confessing to her murder? That would save you a lot of time, wouldn’t it? Then you wouldn’t even have to conduct an investigation.”

  Frank felt a flash of anger himself. How dare she judge him like that? How dare she assume he was something he wasn’t? Understanding instinctively, however, that any attempt to defend himself would only make her more certain she was right about him—and consequently make her more obstinate—he somehow managed to swallow his own fury and sound reasonable again. “No, so I can get you to tell me what you know about this girl. What you may not even realize that you know about her,” he amended quickly when she would have protested.

  “I really need to see Mrs. Higgins,” she insisted.

  “As soon as we’re finished in the girl’s room. And just to put your mind at ease, I’m pretty sure you didn’t kill Alice Smith, so I won’t bother trying to beat a confession out of you,” he added.

  She didn’t smile.

  “You want me to catch the killer, don’t you?” he tried.

  Plainly, it galled her to admit it. “All right, I’ll give you a few minutes, but then I must see Mrs. Higgins.”

  “Sure,” Frank agreed amiably. A few minutes was probably all he’d be able to stand of Mrs. High-and-Mighty anyway. “Her room’s upstairs, on the right.”

  She didn’t wait for a second invitation. He watched her go, wondering how a woman could convey so many opinions without uttering a word. Well, if
she could give him any information at all, he would forgive her just about anything.

  Frank followed her up the stairs, resisting with difficulty the temptation to fall far enough behind to possibly catch a glimpse of her ankles beneath her swishing skirt. He already knew way too much about Sarah Brandt’s figure for his own peace of mind.

  Sarah couldn’t believe she was doing this. Going into a dead girl’s bedroom to give the police information about her. And what could she possibly tell them? Besides being able to look at the girl’s clothes and know if they were expensive or not. And what would that prove? Countless young women from good families found themselves suddenly penniless every day because the man who provided for them—be he husband or father—died or otherwise abandoned them. If this girl still had a family or any means of providing for herself, she would not have taken a room at the Higgins’s house.

  The door to the girl’s bedroom stood open, and Sarah stopped in the opening, looking around. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet here, as if the girl’s death had muffled even the ordinary sounds of the city. The room was oddly neat for being the scene of a murder, too. Somehow Sarah had pictured overturned furniture and smashed and broken crockery. But nothing here had been disturbed at all except the plain, iron bed. The coverlet was rumpled, as if someone had laid down on it, and what appeared to be a red shawl lay casually discarded at the foot of it. Other than the bed, there was little else in the room to disturb. A stuffed chair, a dresser and a cabinet for clothes. It looked, in fact, hardly more inhabited than the unoccupied room downstairs where Sarah had delivered Mrs. Higgins’s baby the morning before.

  “Go on in,” Malloy said.

  Sarah bit back a sharp retort. Good breeding forbade her from speaking rudely to anyone, but good sense played a part in her self-control as well. He might not have been bluffing about taking her down to the station house. She entered the room.