Murder in Morningside Heights (A Gaslight Mystery) (11 page)

“We believe that Abigail was killed by someone she knew.”

“That’s impossible. Everyone loved her. And I thought she was killed by a stranger. That’s what everyone thinks.”

“As I said, we don’t believe that, and neither do her parents.”

Poor Miss Raymond was growing more and more distressed. She glanced uncertainly at Frank and back at Sarah. “Excuse me, but why is a female involved in an investigation?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Frank said quickly. “I should have introduced
you. Miss Raymond, this is my wife. She assists me when”—he smiled apologetically—“when we’re dealing with a gently bred female who might be offended by my bad manners.”

“Your manners seem fine, Mr. Malloy. I’m sorry to question you, Mrs. Malloy, but I . . . I’m happy to say I’ve never known anyone who was murdered before, so this is all very new to me.”

“New and distressing, I’m sure,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry we have to upset you even more. What my husband didn’t say is that gossip is what solves most murders, and I’m much better at coaxing it out of people than he is.”

“Gossip?” she echoed in surprise.

“Well, perhaps that’s too strong a word. But it’s often the small, seemingly unimportant detail that is exactly the information we need to find the guilty party.”

“And you think Abigail may have confided this detail to me.”

“It’s possible.”

In the space of just a few seconds, Miss Raymond’s whole demeanor had changed. She sat straighter, and she no longer looked as if she might burst into tears. “If that is the kind of information you want, then I most certainly will be able to help you. In fact, I may know exactly why she died.”

S
arah blinked in surprise at Miss Raymond’s sudden change in attitude. “What do you mean?”

Miss Raymond glanced over at the parlor door, which she’d left open, then quickly got up and closed it. When she was back in her chair again, she said, “Abigail told me she’d found out something terrible about someone at the school.”

“You’d seen her, then?”

“Yes, when she came home for Christmas. She hinted that something was not quite right and that she was investigating.”

“Investigating?” Frank echoed. “Is that the word she used?”

“Yes, it is, and I thought it was strange as well. She was very mysterious about the whole thing. She said she had to be sure, but when she was, well, everyone at the school was going to be shocked. And yes,
shocked
is the word she used.”

“Did she give you any indication at all what she was
investigating?” Sarah asked. “Or who? Or even if it was a student or a teacher?”

“No. She said she didn’t want to start any rumors that might harm an innocent person.”

Sarah glanced over at Malloy, but he looked as puzzled as she felt. “Do you recall any rumors about anyone from when you were at school?”

Miss Raymond shook her head. “Just the usual things. Girls can be very mean to each other, and they were always telling tales, trying to make someone look bad because they were jealous.”

“What were they jealous of?” Sarah asked.

“A lot of the girls came from good families, but some were very poor and received scholarships. They were often the smartest ones, but the teachers didn’t make pets of them very often. They preferred the company of girls like me and Abigail.”

“And did the jealous girls tell tales about the other students or about the teachers?”

“The students. It wasn’t a good idea to say bad things about the teachers, because if word got back to them . . . Well, you don’t want them to think you’re a troublemaker. You might find your grades aren’t very good anymore or your scholarship isn’t being renewed.”

Before Sarah could think of another question, Miss Raymond stiffened at the sound of the front door opening.

“Excuse me, please.” She jumped up and hurried out, closing the parlor door behind her.

“Maybe her parents are home,” Sarah said.

Malloy nodded. “She probably doesn’t want to involve them in this.”

They waited, straining to hear, but no sounds reached them. Then the parlor door opened again, and Miss Raymond
came in followed by a young man who looked so much like her, he could only be her brother.

Sarah and Malloy rose as Miss Raymond introduced them. Cornelius Raymond looked even more distressed to see them than his sister had.

“Why have you come here at a time like this?” he asked.

“Mr. Raymond,” Malloy said. “We know you were corresponding with Abigail Northrup.”

“How could you know that?” he demanded.

“We found your letters,” Sarah said quickly, making her tone as gentle as possible. “Abigail had hidden them, but we had to search her room after she died.”

“And you read them? You read my private letters to her?” He was furious now.

“I’m sorry, but her parents have hired us to find out who murdered her. She can’t have secrets anymore.”

“And you think I killed her?” he nearly shouted.

“Cory, please,” his sister said. “They couldn’t possibly think that.”

Neither Sarah nor Malloy contradicted her.

“We know that you were corresponding with her,” Malloy said, “but that your sister was addressing the envelopes so people would think the letters were from her.”

“And the ‘people’ you’re talking about were those old biddies she lived with,” Raymond said.

Malloy slipped his hand into Sarah’s and gave it a little squeeze. She wasn’t sure what message he was sending until he said, “Mr. Raymond, maybe you and I should discuss this privately. There’s no sense in upsetting the ladies.”

“That isn’t really necessary,” his sister tried, but Raymond cut her off.

“I think that would be a good idea. Come with me.”
Raymond strode purposefully out of the room, and Malloy followed, leaving the women gaping.

Miss Raymond turned back to Sarah, obviously mortified by her brother’s behavior. “I’m so sorry. He’s very upset about Abigail, as you can imagine.”

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Sarah said. “And finding out strangers had read his letters to her must be devastating.”

“I suppose you know he wanted to marry her.”

Sarah hadn’t planned to mention that, in case Miss Raymond didn’t know. “Yes, we do, but we gathered that she hadn’t accepted his proposal.”

“No, she hadn’t, but she wouldn’t refuse him outright either. I was so angry with her. She just kept leading him on, refusing to say yes but not saying no, either, so he could get on with his life.”

“It was probably a difficult decision for her. She’d been hired at the college, which was a great honor for a newly graduated student, and she really enjoyed teaching.”

“But a very eligible young man had asked her to marry him,” Miss Raymond said. “How could she refuse an opportunity like that so she could end up a fusty old maid like those women she lived with?”

*   *   *

R
aymond led Frank down the hall to the room his sister had been in when they arrived. It turned out to be the rear parlor, the room the family used as their informal gathering place. The furniture here was more comfortable and inviting, and showed the wear of everyday use. Raymond closed the door behind them and whirled around to face Frank.

“Why do you think she wouldn’t marry you?” Frank asked before Raymond could start his own argument.

As he’d hoped, the question shocked him, and as Frank watched, all the fight drained out of him, leaving him pale and shaken.

“Here, sit down, son,” he said, taking Raymond’s arm and leading him to the nearest chair.

He sank down wearily and covered his face with both hands.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” Frank continued, pretending not to notice the boy’s distress. “But I know you want to see whoever did this to Abigail get punished.”

Frank waited, and after a few moments, Raymond scrubbed his hands over his face and lowered them. He looked up at Frank with red-rimmed eyes. “You know I had proposed to her.”

“Yes. As I said, we read your letters. I apologize for that, but we had to know if you had any reason to harm her.”

“And now you know I didn’t. I wanted to make her my wife.”

Frank decided not to mention that her refusal could be considered a reason to harm her. “We didn’t see her letters, of course.”

“And you aren’t going to.”

Frank ignored that. “So I don’t know what reason she gave for refusing you.”

“What could that possibly matter?”

“It might give us a clue as to what else was going on in her life that might have made someone angry with her.”

He considered this for a long moment. “She hadn’t really refused me. Not outright, at least.”

“What had she said?”

He had to clear his throat. “She said . . . She was very confused. She loved teaching, she said. She loved the young ladies she taught. I already knew she loved attending college.
Irene enjoyed it, too, but not in the same way at all. I think Irene just enjoyed being away from home with a lot of girls her own age. She didn’t mind the classes and the work. She was always good in school, so it came easily to her. But she wasn’t one of these New Women. She didn’t want a Life of the Mind or whatever they call it. She wanted a real life, with a home and a husband and children.”

“And you thought Abigail would, too.”

He looked up, his eyes dark. “Why wouldn’t she? That’s a woman’s natural place in the world. I’ve been waiting for her for years, but I was patient. I waited until she was finished with college. She wouldn’t even discuss it until then, at any rate. I proposed to her before she went to France last summer, as soon as she graduated, but they’d already offered her the teaching position. She wanted to try it. She wanted to be like those professors she admired so much.”

“Miss Wilson?”

Raymond winced. “Yes, and the others. There were others, too. She told me how she enjoyed talking about ideas with them, but she’d already had four years of it. Shouldn’t that have been enough?”

Frank had no answer for him. “Did she ever mention having any trouble with anyone?”

“Never, but she wouldn’t, would she? Not to me. She couldn’t admit anything was wrong because then she wouldn’t have a reason not to marry me.”

Frank hesitated, debating with himself the wisdom of asking him the final question. He decided he had nothing to lose. “If she hadn’t accepted your proposal, why did she have this?” He pulled the ring from his pocket and held it out for Raymond to see.

He looked at it for a long moment, then met Frank’s gaze. “What are you talking about?”

*   *   *

S
arah shouldn’t have been surprised that Miss Raymond didn’t approve of Abigail’s housemates. Still . . . “Didn’t you have a smash when you were a freshman, Miss Raymond?”

Her surprise was almost comical. “How do you know about that?”

“We’ve learned a lot in the past few days.”

“You certainly have, and to answer your question, I suppose I did have a smash. Miss Cooper teaches history. She . . . Well, she loved all the girls.”

“Loved?”

“I don’t mean romantically. That would be silly. But she did care for us, even the ones who weren’t as bright as the others. She always treated us with respect, and she’d invite a few of us to her rooms, and we’d make tea and toast and talk about the Roman Empire or the Renaissance or medieval England. She’d tell us what life was like for females back then, and we’d point out that we weren’t much better off now. She tried to convince us we could change things, but after a while, I realized she was wrong. The world isn’t going to change just because we want it to, so I stopped going to her gatherings.”

“And you’d made your own friends, other students, by then.”

“Yes,” she said with a frown. “How did you know that?”

“It was just a guess. But Abigail never stopped going to Miss Wilson’s salons.”

Miss Raymond’s pretty face pinched up in distaste. “No, she didn’t. At first I was a little jealous. Miss Wilson was—well, I guess she still is—everyone’s favorite teacher. Only the best girls were invited to her house.”

“I guess Abigail was a particular favorite.”

“Oh yes. The other girls would laugh about it, although I don’t think they really thought it was funny. They were
jealous, too. Not only was Miss Wilson the favorite teacher, but it was a chance to see a Boston marriage up close.”

“A what?”

“A Boston marriage. The name comes from Henry James’s book
The Bostonians
. A Boston marriage is when two women make a life for themselves together, without having to depend on a husband. We talked about this a lot when I was at school. It’s very difficult for a woman to support herself if she doesn’t marry, or at least it has been, historically speaking.”

Sarah knew this only too well, but she simply nodded her encouragement.

“Women who graduate from college have a different experience, however. Many of them have found fulfilling occupations, so they don’t need a husband to support them, which is fortunate because many of them would probably never have received an offer of marriage.”

“And why was that, do you think?”

Miss Raymond gave her a pitying look. “Because they aren’t attractive enough or pleasing or because they choose not to behave in a manner that appeals to men.”

“I see.” Sarah did, thinking how sad it was that women often had to change or at least disguise who they really were in order to be seen as marriageable. And of course many of them simply weren’t born good-looking enough to catch a man’s eye. “So they have one of these Boston marriages instead?”

“Some of them do. They choose to live together. For the companionship, you understand, and probably for economy as well. In New England, they’ve started calling that a Boston marriage.”

Miss Wilson and Miss Billingsly obviously represented an example of this for the students at the Normal School. “Why do you suppose Miss Wilson and Miss Billingsly invited Abigail to live with them, then?”

“Miss Billingsly didn’t invite her. It was all Miss Wilson’s doing. She owns the house, you see.”

“Do you think Miss Billingsly approved of the new arrangement?”

Miss Raymond started to reply and then caught herself. “You don’t think Miss Billingsly would have . . . That’s insane!”

“Is it? You said there was a lot of jealousy at the school. Why wouldn’t Miss Billingsly be jealous that a student moved into their marriage?”

“It’s not a real marriage, not like a man and wife. It’s just an expression.”

Was it? Sarah wasn’t so sure, but she said, “I suppose you’re right. Did Abigail say how she liked living there?”

“She loved it, I’m sure.”

“Did she say anything about it when you saw her at Christmas?”

“Not really. She was mostly thinking about the scandal she’d discovered, whatever it was. It upset me to think someone at the school was doing something shameful, but at least Abigail wouldn’t have made her accusations publicly. I’m sure she would have been discreet.”

But would she have? And did the person she was going to expose know that? And even if she was as discreet as possible, the person would most likely have lost her place at the school. Or his, she added mentally, since all but one of the professors were male.

“We know that you addressed the envelopes for your brother’s letters to Abigail,” Sarah said. “But did you correspond with her yourself?”

“Oh yes. Not as frequently as Cory did, but we did write.”

“I didn’t find any letters from you in her room.”

“Really? That’s odd. But maybe she didn’t keep them.”

No, Sarah thought, not keeping them would be odd.
People rarely discarded letters from their close friends. She’d have to discuss this with Malloy.

No sooner had she thought of him than the parlor door opened and Mr. Raymond and Malloy came in. Mr. Raymond looked almost angry.