Murder on Lenox Hill Page 4

  “I hope not, Mr. Decker,” Frank replied, trying to sound humble but not certain he was successful. He took a seat, even though Decker hadn’t offered one. “I thought a lot about your proposition yesterday, and I decided I should’ve taken it.”

  “Why?”

  The word hung in the air like a challenge, holding more meanings than Frank could even guess. He cleared his throat and told his lie. “I could use the reward you offered.” The words came more easily than he’d expected, but he couldn’t stop the hot wave of shame that poured over him as he held his face rigidly expressionless.

  Decker considered his claim for a long moment. “For your son, I suppose,” he said finally.

  This time the hot wave was fury, but Frank managed to hold his temper as tightly as he held Decker’s gaze. “Yes,” he managed through stiff lips.

  “He’s a cripple, I believe,” Decker said, pausing to see if Frank would react. He didn’t, although the effort cost him dearly. “Or he was,” Decker continued. “Didn’t David Newton operate on him? David’s father and I were at school together.”

  Frank saw no reason to reply. Decker obviously knew everything about Brian. Had Sarah told him? No, he couldn’t imagine her discussing the Malloys with her family. Decker must have had him investigated. How ironic to investigate a man you wanted to investigate someone else, but he supposed men like Decker did things like that all the time. He’d take nothing for granted and trust no one.

  When Frank didn’t reply, Decker said, “But he’s still deaf, isn’t he? Your boy, I mean.”

  Who else could he have meant? Frank simply sat, his fury like gall in his throat, waiting for Decker to finish demonstrating his superiority.

  “So you want the money to take care of your boy,” Decker concluded for him.

  Frank swallowed down the bitterness. “Yes.”

  Decker studied him for a long moment. “Mr. Malloy, I know you wouldn’t do this for money. I saw your reaction yesterday when I made you the offer. What really made you change your mind?”

  Frank saw his error instantly. He’d underestimated Felix Decker, so he’d only prepared one lie, and now he had nothing else to offer. But maybe the truth would serve him just as well, if he only told part of it. “I don’t trust anyone else to get this right,” he tried.

  “You were the one who advised me to hire a Pinkerton,” Decker reminded him. “Don’t you believe a professional detective could uncover the truth as well as you could?”

  “I think he’d be willing to tell you what you want to hear, whether it was the truth or not,” Frank said. “I’m not interested in pleasing you, just in solving Brandt’s murder.”

  “Even if that means proving Tom Brandt wasn’t what he seemed? Even if that means my daughter may learn things she won’t want to know about him?”

  “Yes,” Frank lied again.

  “Yesterday you didn’t want to hurt my daughter. What happened to change your mind about that?”

  There it was, the perfect explanation, the one even Decker would believe. Frank should’ve thought of it himself. “I realized I want her to forget him. You said it yourself, it would be to my advantage.”

  Decker studied him for what seemed a long time. He didn’t look as if he believed this, either, but he would have no reason to doubt it. Frank was sure of that. Decker himself had provided the reason.

  “All right,” Decker said suddenly, as if he’d come to some conclusion. Then he pushed himself up out of his chair and walked over to the far corner of the room where a small safe sat. He bent over and spun the dial with practiced ease. The handle made a soft, well-oiled thump when Decker twisted it, and the door swung open. He rummaged inside for a moment and pulled out a folder. After closing the safe, he carried the folder back to his desk.

  “A few months before Tom Brandt died, I received a letter.” He pulled a piece of paper out of the folder and passed it across the desk to Frank.

  The paper was good quality, the handwriting neat and precise. The writer had been an educated man. The text of the letter was short and to the point. “Dr. Tom Brandt is a seducer of young women. He has taken advantage of innocent females under his care and ruined them both in body and in mind. Someone must stop him.”

  “There’s no signature,” Frank noted. “How can you take something like this seriously?”

  “I didn’t, not at first,” Decker said. “But I had the matter investigated, just to be sure. This is the report.”

  He handed Frank the folder which contained half a dozen sheets of a handwritten report from the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

  “Don’t bother to read it all now,” Decker said. “It says Brandt had several young, female patients whose symptoms were very similar and who had all lost their minds as a result of some kind of assault.”

  “A seduction?” Frank asked skeptically.

  “That’s a polite word for it,” Decker said. “The man responsible was their doctor.”

  “What did you do about this report?”

  “Look at the date on it, Mr. Malloy. I only received it a few days before Brandt was murdered. I hadn’t decided what, if anything, I was going to do, and when he died . . . Well, there was nothing left to do.”

  “Except destroy his widow’s memory of him,” Frank said.

  “Which would be to your advantage,” Decker reminded him brutally.

  Not if Frank were the one to uncover a horrible scandal about Brandt, he thought, but he didn’t say it. Decker had probably already considered all the possibilities and knew even better than Frank how Sarah would feel about the man who did such a thing. She’d hate him, and he wouldn’t blame her, and that would play right into Decker’s plans to free her completely from both Thomas Brandt and Frank Malloy. On the other hand, Frank might be able to protect her from ever learning the truth at all, or at least the worst of it. Or even . . . Well, he hardly allowed himself to think of such a thing, but he might be able to prove these charges against Dr. Brandt were false. That wasn’t something a hired detective would even consider, but Frank prided himself on having an open mind.

  “WHY ARE YOU CRYING, MAMA?” GRACE ASKED. “I THINK it’ll be fun to have a baby.”

  Mrs. Linton resolutely wiped the tears from her eyes and made herself smile. “I’m just worried because you’re so young,” she explained, looking to Sarah with a silent plea.

  Sarah nodded, encouraging her to go on because she was doing fine. They were in the nursery, where Mrs. Linton felt Grace would be most comfortable to hear the news.

  “Babies aren’t like dolls,” Mrs. Linton said. “You have to take care of them all day long. They cry, and they get hungry.”

  “We could get a nurse to take care of it,” Grace said. “Like you did when I was little.”

  “Yes, we could,” her mother said, dabbing at her eyes again.

  This time Grace didn’t notice. She was looking down at the mound of her stomach and rubbing it. “Why can’t we get the baby right now? I want to play with it.”

  “It’s not big enough yet, dear,” Mrs. Linton said, her voice rough with tears. This time Sarah couldn’t ignore the silent plea.

  “The baby has to grow inside of you for about three more months, and then it will be born,” Sarah said.

  Grace turned her innocent gaze on Sarah. “How does it get out?”

  Her mother made a small, distressed sound.

  “Would you mind leaving me and Grace alone, Mrs. Linton? I would be happy to explain everything to her.”

  Mrs. Linton made some token protests, but Sarah easily persuaded her to leave this awkward task to a professional. Carefully and simply, Sarah explained the birth process to Grace and answered her questions as honestly as she could. Grace didn’t ask the one question Sarah had dreaded the most, “Will it hurt?” Probably, she hadn’t even considered the possibility. Sarah would save that explanation until much closer to the time. There was no use in frightening the girl now.

  When Grace was satisfied that s
he knew enough, she went back to playing with her dolls. Sarah decided she would use this time to ask a few questions of her own.

  “Grace, you seem to be a very happy girl,” she began.

  “Oh, I am. Mama and Papa want me to be happy. They’re always telling me.”

  “Is there anyone in your life who doesn’t make you happy? Maybe someone who hurt you?”

  Grace’s pretty face wrinkled in thought. “No one ever hurts me. Except Barbara sometimes, when she brushes my hair too hard. Is that what you mean?”

  “No, I meant something much worse. Did a man ever hurt you? It would have been a long time ago, last summer. Can you remember back that far?”

  “I already told you, I remember last summer,” Grace reminded her. “I don’t remember getting hurt, though.”

  “Maybe the man was someone you didn’t know. Maybe he told you not to tell anyone what happened. Maybe he frightened you, or threatened to hurt your family if you told anyone. But it’s all right to tell, Grace. What that man did was wrong. He shouldn’t have hurt you.”

  Now Grace looked really puzzled. “Nobody hurt me or scared me. Why are you asking me these things, Mrs. Brandt?”

  Sarah had fully expected the girl to at least become upset when Sarah mentioned the strange man and the possible threats. How else could Grace have become pregnant except by rape?

  Then another, even more horrible thought occurred to her. She hadn’t considered it before, but now . . .

  “Grace, do you and your father have secrets? Things you don’t tell your mother about?”

  The girl considered this. “I don’t think so.”

  “Does your father ever do things and tell you not to tell your mother?”

  Grace tried hard to think of something, but then shook her head.

  “Does he ever come into your bedroom?”

  “Oh, no, that wouldn’t be proper. I’m a big girl now, and it’s not proper for a man to come into my bedroom. Mama explained it to me.”

  “So no men ever come into your bedroom?”

  Grace gave Sarah an exasperated look. “I just told you, it’s not proper.”

  “Does your father ever kiss you?” Sarah tried.

  “He kisses me good night every night.”

  “Where does he kiss you?”

  “Here,” she said, pointing to her cheek.

  “Do you kiss him?”

  “Oh, yes. I like to kiss him. He smells good.”

  “Where do you kiss him?”

  “On the cheek, but sometimes . . .” She covered her mouth and giggled.

  “Sometimes you kiss him someplace else?” Sarah asked, not certain she wanted to know.

  “It’s a funny place. He likes it when I kiss him there, too.”

  Sarah’s smile felt frozen on her face. “Where is this funny place?” she asked.

  Grace giggled again, and looked around, as if checking to make sure no one could overhear. “I kiss him here,” she whispered and touched the top of her head.

  Sarah blinked. “You kiss him on the top of his head?”

  “Where he doesn’t have any hair,” Grace confided. “His cheeks are scratchy, but the top of his head is really soft, and when I kiss him there, he always laughs. I like to make him laugh.”

  Sarah felt the tension drain from her body, leaving her limp with relief. Thank heaven Grace’s situation hadn’t been caused by incest. But it didn’t appear that she had been raped, either, at least not that she could recall. Sometimes women didn’t remember things like that, as if their minds were protecting them, but their shock was obvious. Their loved ones always knew something terrible had happened to them, even if the woman couldn’t recall what. Surely Grace’s family would have noticed if something awful had happened to her.

  Sarah remembered Mr. Linton’s reaction that it was impossible for Grace to be pregnant. Sarah was starting to feel the same way, and yet she was. There must be some logical explanation, and finding it was important. Someone had taken advantage of Grace, and he would probably do it again—if not to her, then to another unfortunate girl. He must be found and stopped.

  But how, if his victim didn’t even know what he had done to her?

  3

  SARAH TRUDGED UP HER FRONT STEPS WEARILY, EMOTIONALLY exhausted from her encounter with the Linton family and their tragedy. Grace’s parents were so overwhelmed by the prospect of her bearing a child that they didn’t have the energy to consider the man who was responsible for that child. Perhaps they would later, when the shock wore off and they began to feel the anger that was natural in a situation like this.

  But how could they bring the man responsible to justice? Grace could never testify in a court of law. Even if she’d been capable of understanding the legal process, her parents would never allow it. No parents would put their daughter through such a humiliating ordeal. Sarah was beginning to understand why the police sometimes took justice into their own hands.

  As she stepped into her house, she heard the patter of Aggie’s small feet running in from the kitchen.

  “Be careful, dear! You shouldn’t run in the house!” a familiar voice called, and Sarah smiled even before Aggie appeared from the hallway and flew into her arms. Sarah hoisted her up onto her hip.

  “Is Mrs. Ellsworth helping you cook supper again?” she asked the child, who nodded vigorously.

  “Mrs. Ellsworth is really showing us how to bake a cake,” Maeve reported, having arrived at a more ladylike pace. “I didn’t tell her that I already learned how at the mission,” she added in a whisper.

  “That’s very nice of you,” Sarah whispered back.

  “I never knew how much fun it could be to have girls,” Mrs. Ellsworth said as she emerged from the hallway into the front room. “My son never wanted to learn to cook or sew, of course, but these girls are so very clever, it’s a joy to teach them.”

  “You’re very kind to spend so much time with them,” Sarah told her elderly next-door neighbor. Before Maeve and Aggie had moved in, Mrs. Ellsworth could most frequently be found sweeping her front stoop so she could keep track of everything that happened on Bank Street. Nowadays, however, she spent much of her time with Aggie and Maeve.

  “I’m not a bit kind,” Mrs. Ellsworth assured her. “It’s my pleasure, although you were very right to bring Maeve to look after Aggie. I never could’ve kept up with her.”

  When Sarah had first considered bringing Aggie to live with her, Mrs. Ellsworth had volunteered to care for the child when Sarah had to work. Sarah could never have asked her to do such a thing, and she’d been relieved when a volunteer at the mission had suggested that one of the older girls would be an excellent nanny for Aggie. That decision had allowed Mrs. Ellsworth to play grandmother to the girls whenever she liked, a situation that suited all of them perfectly.

  “What kind of a cake are you making?” she asked Aggie, as she set the girl back on the floor.

  “Come and show Mrs. Brandt,” Mrs. Ellsworth suggested, taking Aggie’s hand to lead her back to the kitchen. Maeve followed, and Sarah did, too, after pausing a minute to remove her cape and boots.

  “Oh, it’s so warm in here,” Sarah exulted, rubbing her stiff fingers and holding them over the comforting heat of the kitchen stove. “And something smells wonderful.”

  “It’s just a simple, one-egg cake,” Mrs. Ellsworth explained. “Do you want to finish mixing it, Aggie?”

  The girl picked up the spoon that lay on the table, but she didn’t get a good grip on it, and it fell from her hand, clattering back onto the tabletop.

  “Oh, my, looks like we’ll be having a visitor,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

  “Is that what it means when you drop a spoon?” Maeve asked with great interest. In the weeks she’d been acquainted with Mrs. Ellsworth, she’d learned that the old woman knew a superstition for practically everything that happened.

  “Only if the spoon falls on the table. If it falls on the floor, then it depends on how it lands. If the bowl is up, th
at means good fortune. If the bowl is down, that means disappointment.”

  “The bowl is up. Does that mean our visitor will bring us good fortune?” Maeve asked. Even Aggie was waiting eagerly for the answer.

  Sarah wanted to groan. She didn’t want the girls to become superstitious, but she also didn’t want to hurt Mrs. Ellsworth’s feelings. “We’ll bring disappointment to our visitor if the cake isn’t ready when she—or he—gets here,” she said to distract them. “And as soon as you put the cake in the oven, you can lick the bowl.”

  That was enough to motivate Aggie to finish beating the batter. In another few minutes, they’d poured it into the pans and slipped them into the oven. The four of them made sure every drop of remaining batter was scraped clean from the mixing bowl and spoons. When they’d finished with that and had cleaned up the kitchen, Mrs. Ellsworth showed Aggie how to make the boiled icing while the layers cooled. When the cake was finally finished, they all had a piece, just to make sure it was suitable for the expected visitor. Then Mrs. Ellsworth went home to fix supper for her son Nelson, who would be home soon from his job at the bank, and the girls went upstairs to play.

  Sarah took advantage of her solitude to savor the exquisite sensation of warmth and comfort in the peace of her own kitchen. Her life was very different from the one she had imagined when she and Tom were married almost seven years ago. She’d expected to raise a family and grow old with him, but Tom had died young, and now her family consisted of two misfit girls. Maeve would eventually be ready to take a job with someone who could pay her, and Sarah would select another girl from the mission to come live with them and train as a nanny.

  Sarah wanted to legally adopt Aggie, so the girl would truly be hers, but her parents had convinced her to wait a while, to make sure Aggie could adjust to living with her. Perhaps they’d also hoped she would find having a child too much work and change her mind, although they hadn’t actually tried to talk her out of it. In any case, having Aggie here had only served to convince her that she wanted the girl permanently. Soon she’d have to start the legal process.

  Sarah sat for a few more minutes, savoring the thought of finally becoming a mother and feeling remarkably content and slightly drowsy when the sound of someone ringing her doorbell startled her back to the present. With a smile, Sarah rose from her chair, thinking it was probably Mrs. Ellsworth, returning to fulfill her own prophecy. Or perhaps it was a frantic father-to-be, summoning her to attend his wife. But the silhouette she saw through the frosted glass of her door wasn’t Mrs. Ellsworth’s, although it was familiar, and Sarah’s smile broadened.