Murder on Astor Place Page 4

  No, she’d leave Detective Malloy to his investigation. And meanwhile, she’d do a little investigating of her own.

  FRANK WALKED OVER the one block from the Sixth Avenue elevated train station to Fifth. The trains, which ran on elevated tracks along various avenues in the city, were a godsend for getting from one end of the congested city to the other in a reasonable time. Traffic in the unregulated streets clogged to impassability at major intersections during busy times of the day, so a trip uptown could take hours by cab or trolley. Of course the noise the trains caused and the dirt and cinders they dropped on hapless pedestrians below were a scourge of major proportions, too, inspiring talk of building a railroad underground instead. Frank agreed with those who claimed the only people who would ride such a thing were those who didn’t want to be seen riding a train.

  As he studied the enormous mansions that graced Fifth Avenue at its northern end, he could hardly believe they existed in the same city as the Lower East Side with its crowded, filthy tenements. Up here in the fifties, the rich lived in houses that sometimes filled entire city blocks and which probably contained enough treasure to support the whole population of the ghettos for years. Another block farther up stood the elegant Plaza Hotel, named for the plaza on which it was built, and across the street from it was one of the Vanderbilt mansions. Frank thought the place looked like a museum, but people rarely asked his opinion about such things.

  Frank could remember when this whole area was open ground. When he was a boy, the only people living at this end of Manhattan Island were vagrants and bums who had constructed a shantytown on the outskirts of the park some city fathers with foresight had begun up here. But when the park was finished, they ran off the bums and sold the lots to millionaires who wanted to live away from the noise and smells and heat of the city itself. Now the city had spread upward to meet them, so if they really wanted to get away, they had to escape the city altogether, to mansions in the country. The poor, of course, had Coney Island.

  But Frank had given up railing against the inequities of the world. Now he concentrated on getting as much of those treasures for himself as he could. Other people were depending on him.

  The VanDamm house was only slightly less pretentious than some of the others, a stately town house on the block of Fifth Avenue between Fifty-Seventh and Fifty-Eighth streets called “Marble Row.” It had marble steps, of course, and a shiny brass door knocker. A butler in a uniform that probably cost as much as Frank earned in a month opened the door for him. It was clear he thought Frank should have used the service entrance.

  “Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy,” he told the butler before the man could order him around to the back. “I’d like to see Mr. and Mrs. VanDamm. It’s about their daughter.”

  There, if that didn’t get him in to see the girl’s parents, he’d need dynamite.

  Frank figured the butler was trained not to show any emotion, but he’d also probably never had a policeman come to the door, either. He seemed to blanche a little at the mention of the girl.

  “Please wait in the front parlor,” the butler instructed stiffly as he grudgingly allowed Frank to enter. “I’ll see if Mr. VanDamm is at home.”

  Nice trick the rich had, Frank mused. If they didn’t want to see somebody, they’d just tell the servant to report that they weren’t at home. Frank had a feeling the VanDamms would be home to him, though, at least for today.

  Frank’s opinion of the rich dropped a notch or two as he looked around the front parlor (which meant they probably had a back parlor, too; what in God’s name did they need two parlors for?). Frank decided he’d been in classier whorehouses. This place was a disaster of ostentation, with red velvet everywhere, draped in enormous folds over the windows and covering all the plush furniture. The walls were covered with dark paper in a hideous design. A palm tree in the corner and potted plants on every flat surface. Tables adorned with lace doilies and cluttered with figurines of every description. And they were all ugly.

  He found himself wondering what Kathleen would have said. Too much stuff to dust, probably. Kathleen had always been practical.

  When the parlor doors opened twenty minutes later, Frank was examining the covers someone had put on the piano’s legs. He’d heard about people who were so modest that they never uttered the word “leg” and even clothed the legs of their furniture. He’d never expected to actually see such a thing, however.

  The man who entered the room was obviously the master of the house. He was dressed for the street, in an impeccably tailored suit of the finest wool and a shirt so white it could blind a man. Frank noticed his tie was slightly askew, however, telling him VanDamm had made himself presentable in a hell of a hurry.

  “Detective, I’m Cornelius VanDamm,” he said, in case there could be any doubt. Frank noticed he didn’t offer his hand. Probably he didn’t shake hands with messenger boys, either. “I understand you have something to tell me about my daughter.”

  VanDamm was a man trained never to show a trace of weakness. Men who moved in the circles he did, where millions were made or lost on a man’s word, couldn’t afford to reveal any vulnerability without risking attack. VanDamm would be very good at hiding his true feelings, but Frank figured he was about to put him to the ultimate test.

  “Is your wife available?” he asked. “I told your man I had to see you both.” He wanted to tell them together—so he would be sure of seeing their initial reactions, which would reveal a lot about a lot of things. How they felt about their daughter and about each other and about her death. And whether they knew more than they intended to tell him, information he might have to get from other sources.

  “I’m afraid my wife is indisposed at the moment,” VanDamm said without the slightest trace of apology. “What is it you’ve come to tell us? I know it can’t be good news, Detective, so out with it.”

  Frank hadn’t yet decided whether to obey or not when the doors opened again and a woman appeared. She was a fragile, birdlike creature dressed in a filmy gown with flowers printed all over it that swirled around her and made her seem almost ethereal. She must have been a beauty in her day, but that beauty had faded with the years, along with her once-golden hair which was now almost entirely gray. Her pale cheeks were sunken, her eyes hollow, and her skin had turned crepey, even though she probably wasn’t even as old as her husband, who was still a fine figure of a man.

  “Cornelius, what’s going on? Bridgett said the police were here, something about Alicia.” Her eyes seemed slightly unfocused, and at first Frank wasn’t sure she even noticed he was in the room. Then he realized she was simply not acknowledging him. She looked at her husband, waiting for him to explain.

  “Alicia? Don’t be ridiculous, Francisca, go back to your room. I’ll take care of this,” he told her sternly, as if speaking to a recalcitrant child.

  “I think this is something you should both hear,” Frank contradicted him, watching as Mrs. VanDamm finally looked directly at him. Even her eyes were faded, to a washed-out blue, and they watered slightly as she blinked at him curiously. Maybe she was just short-sighted, he couldn’t help thinking.

  She turned back to her husband. “What could he have to tell us about Alicia? She’s at Greentree. If anything had happened, Mrs. Hightower would have sent word.”

  Her husband spared her only a bored glance. “Of course she would. This isn’t about Alicia at all, and don’t say I didn’t warn you, Francisca. All right,” he said to Frank. “What have you come to tell us?”

  Now Frank was the one who was confused. Obviously, VanDamm was expecting bad news, but not about Alicia. If she’d been away at this Greentree place, maybe he didn’t even know she was missing, although that seemed difficult to believe. And if he was expecting bad news about his other daughter, he didn’t seem too upset about it. Ordinarily, a parent in this situation would be bracing himself for something horrible, but VanDamm didn’t seem to require bracing.

  The woman knew nothing, of that F
rank was certain.

  “Maybe you better sit down, Mrs. VanDamm.”

  The vagueness in her eyes turned to confusion. “I do feel a little strange,” she admitted. “It’s that weakness I was telling you about, Cornelius. It comes on me at the oddest times, I never know when. And then sometimes I can’t get my breath—”

  “Sit down, Francisca,” VanDamm said firmly, this time the way you’d would speak to a slow-witted child. Frank understood about that only too well.

  “Well, if you think it’s best,” she murmured as she moved like a wraith to the nearest of the several ornately carved sofas in the room and perched on it, back ramrod straight the way a proper lady was taught to sit. Her hands fluttered restlessly in her lap, though, as if she thought she should be doing something but couldn’t remember exactly what.

  VanDamm simply stood where he was, arms down to his sides, hands relaxed, showing Frank no more than common courtesy. The way he would if Frank had come to sell him tickets to the policeman’s ball. Or the way he would if Frank’s news wasn’t going to be a surprise. But whatever VanDamm was expecting to hear, Frank was pretty sure it wasn’t what he’d come to tell them.

  “Mr. and Mrs. VanDamm,” he began, looking at each of them in turn. “It is my sad duty to inform you that your daughter Alicia has been the victim of a crime. I’m sorry to tell you that she has been murdered.”

  VanDamm’s face went chalk white, but he never so much as flinched. “Murdered?” He repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before. He may have been expecting something, but Frank was pretty sure this wasn’t it. “Alicia? Are you certain?”

  “I’m afraid so. We found her name embroidered in her jacket, and someone identified her. An old family friend.”

  “What on earth is he talking about, Cornelius?” Mrs. VanDamm asked plaintively.

  VanDamm continued to ignore her. Frank figured he probably usually did. “Where? What happened to her?” he demanded.

  “We found her in a rooming house in Greenwich Village. She’d been living there for several weeks.”

  “That’s impossible,” Mrs. VanDamm insisted. “Alicia is at Greentree. Tell the man there’s been some mistake, Cornelius.”

  When Cornelius said nothing, his face as blank and stiff as if it had been carved from stone, she turned to Frank with a weary sigh.

  “Our daughter is at our country home in Mamoraneck, Officer,” she explained patiently. “She’s been there for over a month, and if anything had happened to her, our housekeeper would have sent us word immediately. We have a telephone for just such emergencies, so you see, the girl you found couldn’t possibly be Alicia. You’ve wasted a trip and bothered us for nothing, and I must say, I plan to complain to Teddy about this. That’s Police Commissioner Roosevelt to you. His mother is a dear friend of mine, and I used to dandle him on my knee when he was a boy. He’ll be most interested in the way you have inconvenienced us, I’m sure. Imagine, coming into a person’s house and telling such outrageous—”

  “Francisca, that’s enough.”

  The rebuke was mild, in Frank’s opinion, but it was enough to make her stop and gape at her husband in confusion. He didn’t even spare her a glance. The color was coming back to his face, which meant that he was over whatever shock he’d felt at his daughter’s death.

  “Detective,” he said in a perfectly reasonable voice, the one he probably used to seal million-dollar business deals. “As you’ve no doubt guessed, my daughter really isn’t at our country house.” His wife sputtered in protest, but neither man paid her any heed. “Although we sent her there, she ran away a few weeks ago, disappeared completely. Alicia has always been a willful girl—”

  “Willful?” his wife echoed incredulously. “Alicia is the most sweet tempered girl alive! Never a harsh word to say to anyone. And obedient! I can’t remember the last time I had to scold her. If anything, she’s too agreeable. I always tell her—”

  VanDamm seemed not to even hear her protests, any more than he seemed to feel any emotion. His expression was still controlled, and even his flush had faded again. “How did she... ? Who did it?” he finally asked, interrupting his wife’s ramblings.

  He was saying all the right things, asking all the right questions, but Frank didn’t like his steely reserve. Is that the way members of the Four Hundred handled tragedy? Frank had precious little experience breaking bad news to them, so he had no way of judging. Still, he knew how ordinary bereaved parents acted. Oddly, Mrs. VanDamm’s behavior was the most normal. Shock invariably produced denial in most people.

  “She was strangled,” Frank said. “And we don’t know who did it. Yet,” he added, in case VanDamm was going to make assumptions about him the way Sarah Brandt had. “I was hoping you could help me there. Do you have any idea why your daughter ran away? Did she have a lover—?”

  “A lover?” Mrs. VanDamm echoed in outrage. “Alicia most certainly does not have a lover! She isn’t even out yet!”

  For a minute, Frank couldn’t think what she might have been out of, but then he realized she meant the girl hadn’t made her debut into society yet.

  “Alicia is just sixteen!” Mrs. VanDamm was saying. “She has no suitors. She’s never even been alone with a young man! A lover, indeed! Cornelius, why are you standing there listening to this rubbish?”

  “Francisca, go back to your room,” VanDamm said coldly. “I’ll explain everything to you later.”

  “I certainly hope so. And I fully intend to complain to your superiors,” she told Frank as she floated and fluttered her way out of the room, murmuring her outrage at Frank’s effrontery.

  Frank couldn’t help wishing she really would complain to Commissioner Roosevelt about him. Everyone on the force hated the playboy-turned-reformer who had gotten himself appointed to the Police Commission with an eye toward cleaning up the corruption in the department. A rebuke from Roosevelt would likely propel him to Captain even without paying the requisite bribes as soon as Roosevelt got bored and went back to his old life and things in the department returned to normal.

  “I’m afraid I can’t be of any assistance to you, Detective,” VanDamm said when she was gone. The only sign of whatever emotional distress he was experiencing was the way he idly fingered his gold watch chain. “I have no idea why my daughter chose to run away from the safety and comfort of her home and family. And my wife is right, Alicia doesn’t know any young men, certainly no one who could have lured her away.”

  He was lying, of course. Parents always lied at first. Either they didn’t want their children to look bad or they didn’t want to look like irresponsible parents. Frank figured a cold fish like VanDamm would be more worried about his own reputation.

  And VanDamm hadn’t seemed the least bit surprised that his daughter was living in a rooming house in Greenwich Village. Hadn’t even questioned the identification of the body, as most parents did. As his wife had done. She was sure Frank had made some mistake.

  VanDamm didn’t think Frank had made a mistake. He’d known where she was. Certainly he knew her condition, which was why she’d been banished to the country house in the first place, and he might also know with whom she’d run away. He wouldn’t tell Frank, though, at least not today.

  Frank was just about to suggest that VanDamm go with him to the morgue to identify the girl’s body when once again the parlor doors opened. This time a younger woman entered. She must have just come in from outside, because she was still wearing her hat. She was large-boned and tall for a female, almost as tall as Frank’s five feet, eight inches, and she was dressed in the most outlandish outfit Frank had ever seen. Probably considered the height of fashion, the bold plaid of her skirt and matching jacket made him dizzy. Or maybe it was the woman herself, who came in with the force of a whirl-wind.

  “What’s going on here, Father? Alfred said the police are here!”

  VanDamm didn’t seem too happy to see his daughter, although with VanDamm it was a little hard to tell exactly what
he was feeling. Frank figured this must be the one Sarah Brandt knew, the one she’d mistaken Alicia for. The one VanDamm obviously thought Frank had come to tell him about. Frank could imagine this one getting into some kind of scrape. She looked like one of those suffragettes, always looking to cause trouble. He tried to see the resemblance Mrs. Brandt had noticed, but if this woman had ever looked like the dead girl, it was a long time ago.

  “Mina, I’m afraid Alicia has been murdered.” There it was, bald and brutal, but Mina VanDamm could obviously take it.

  “I knew it!” she declared, pulling off her gloves with furious motions. “I knew she’d come to no good. Didn’t I tell you that when she ran away?”

  So much for sisterly affection, Frank thought. So much for any normal human reaction at all. The mother, whom Frank had pretty much decided was crazy as a bedbug, was the most regular person in the bunch.

  “Do you know why your sister ran away?” Frank asked her, hoping to catch her off guard.

  But Mina VanDamm was never off guard. She looked at him as if he was something that had just crawled out from under a rock for having dared to speak to her directly without benefit of a formal introduction.

  “Mina, this is Detective ...” VanDamm realized he hadn’t bothered to get Frank’s name.

  “Detective Sergeant Malloy,” Frank supplied. If he’d hoped to impress them with his title, he failed.

  Mina simply stared at him in acknowledgment.

  “Mina doesn’t know the reason Alicia ran away either. It’s a mystery to us all,” VanDamm assured him.

  “She ran away because she’s an ungrateful little baggage,” Mina said, making her father a liar. “After all Father has done for her, this is the way she repays us. Running away, getting herself murdered and bringing disgrace down on all our heads. How will we ever go out in polite society again?”