Murder in Morningside Heights (A Gaslight Mystery) (15 page)

They spent some time telling Gino about their visit with the Raymonds the day before.

“So now we don’t have any idea where Abigail got that ring,” Gino said when they were finished.

“No, although we haven’t shown it to her mother yet,” Sarah said. “I wouldn’t expect her father to know much about what jewelry she owned, but her mother probably would. We should show it to her before we start coming up with any more wild theories.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Frank asked.

“I was thinking I’d wait a few days and then visit her.”

“Let’s hope we have this solved before then,” Frank said. “Meanwhile, Gino will find out if Luther and Cory were in New York the day Abigail was killed.”

“And what are you going to do?” Gino asked.

Frank sighed. “I’m going to visit Bathsheba and see if I can find out more about what’s going on in that house.”

“
Y
our hair is getting very long,” Mrs. Ellsworth told Catherine. Their neighbor had come by earlier, and Sarah had been visiting with her in her private parlor when Maeve brought Catherine in to join them.

“Maeve says it’s straggly,” Catherine said. “She’s going to cut it today.”

“Oh my,” Mrs. Ellsworth said, looking over at Maeve in alarm. “You can’t cut her hair today.”

“Why not?” Maeve said with perfect innocence, although Sarah noted she didn’t so much as glance in Sarah’s direction, knowing they would both probably burst out laughing at what was most certainly one of Mrs. Ellsworth’s strange superstitions.

“Because you can only cut a person’s hair on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.”

“Do barbers know this?” Maeve asked, still not meeting Sarah’s gaze.

Mrs. Ellsworth waved the question away. “If you cut someone’s hair on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, you will never grow rich.”

“Oh, so I’m the one who has to be careful,” Maeve said. “But what about Sunday?”

“‘Best never be born than Sunday shorn,’” Mrs. Ellsworth quoted. “And you must burn the hair clippings so . . .” She glanced at Catherine, who was staring up at her, wide-eyed. She obviously decided not to explain in front of the child the potentially dire consequences of leaving hair clippings unburned. “So they don’t make a mess.”

“Burn them?” Maeve made a face. “Have you ever smelled burning hair?”

“Of course I have.”

Sarah had to assume Mrs. Ellsworth had been burning hair clippings her entire life. “You could burn them outside,” she said just to tease Maeve.

Maeve was too fond of Mrs. Ellsworth to actually roll her eyes right in front of the woman, so she said, “I suppose I could.”

“I’d recommend it, dear,” Mrs. Ellsworth said in all seriousness. “And what are you and Maeve planning to do today, Miss Catherine?”

“Play inside. It’s too cold to go for a walk.”

“Then why don’t you come over to my house. I was going to make cookies.”

Catherine’s eyes lit up. “I love cookies.”

“I know you do, dear.”

“May I go, Mama?”

“Of course you may,” Sarah said with a smile, “if it’s all right with Maeve.”

“It’s certainly all right with Maeve,” Maeve said with a grin. “I love cookies, too, and I’m going with you.”

“Well, then, just give your mother and me a few more
minutes to finish our conversation, and we’ll go,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

Catherine obediently jumped to her feet. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Ellsworth.” She scurried over and gave Sarah a kiss, and Maeve escorted her back to the nursery.

“She’s growing into a lovely young lady,” Mrs. Ellsworth said when they were gone.

“Yes, she is. We’ve been trying to decide where to send her to school.”

“Oh, speaking of school, Maeve told me you’re investigating a murder at the Normal School.”

“Mr. Malloy is investigating,” Sarah clarified.

“But you’re helping, surely. You attended the poor young lady’s funeral yesterday, I understand.”

Nothing happened on Bank Street that Mrs. Ellsworth didn’t know all about. “Yes. It’s so sad. She had a promising future ahead of her.”

“As a teacher, you mean?”

“I suppose she would have become a professor eventually. The lady she lived with had recently become the first female professor at the college.”

“Times are certainly changing. Did you say it was the lady she lived with?”

“Yes, she was renting a room in the house where two of the other female instructors lived.”

“It was a rooming house, then.”

“No, Miss Wilson, the professor, owns the house. She shared it with Miss Billingsly, and Abigail had recently joined them.”

“Are these two ladies related?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Oh my, times really are changing! My father would never have let me live on my own with people who were no relation.
If I hadn’t married, I would probably still be living in his house.”

“I’m sure her parents thought she’d be well chaperoned by the two older ladies.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing before, two unmarried, unrelated females living together in their own home.”

“It isn’t often that unmarried females can afford to have their own home,” Sarah said. “They call it a Boston marriage.”

“Really? Why on earth do they call it that?”

“Because Mr. Henry James talked about it in one of his novels that was set in Boston.”

“I’ve heard they do strange things in Boston.”

Sarah bit back a smile. “Women’s colleges are changing a lot of things.”

“I suppose so. They train young ladies to be teachers, don’t they?”

“And for other professions as well. Social work, for instance. And you’ll even see female doctors now.”

“That can only be an improvement,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “So this poor girl who was murdered was living with these two female professors.”

Sarah decided not to bother explaining that Miss Billingsly wasn’t a full professor. “That’s right. They had a spare bedroom, and when . . .”

“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked when Sarah hesitated.

“What? Oh no, I just . . . I just remembered something I noticed when I was visiting that house. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now it seems . . . odd.”

“How odd?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked with interest.

“Oh, not odd really,” Sarah said quickly to deflect her interest. “I was exaggerating. It was just unusual, I suppose.
What kind of cookies are you going to make? Malloy is partial to the shortbread, you know.”

*   *   *

D
uring his many years as an Irish police detective, Frank had often been sent around to the back door when he called on the wealthier residents of the city. He didn’t think Miss Wilson and Miss Billingsly qualified as wealthy, but he also knew he’d probably find their maid a little more friendly if he saved her the walk to the front door.

Bathsheba answered his knock wearing a disgruntled frown that deepened when she recognized him. “The ladies ain’t home.”

“I know. I came to see you.” When she looked as if she was going to slam the door in his face, he held up the box he carried. “I brought you something.”

She eyed the small white box suspiciously. “What is it?”

“Bonbons.”

“What’s that?”

“Chocolate candy.”

“For me?”

“All of it, if you let me in so we can have a little chat.”

She sniffed derisively, but she stepped back to let him inside.

He wiped his feet and went in. The warmth of the kitchen enveloped him, and he couldn’t help his sigh of relief.

“Cold out there, is it?” she asked. “Give me your coat.”

She took it and hung it over a chair. Then she accepted the box that he presented to her. “Don’t think this’ll make any difference in what I tell you. Nothing that happens in this house is your business.”

“Do things happen in this house you don’t want to talk about?”

“Course not!” she snapped, irritated now.

“Well, then, you shouldn’t mind talking to me. Can I sit down?”

“Suit yourself,” she said, jerking her chin toward the kitchen table. “I wouldn’t mind sitting for a while myself. You’ll want some coffee, I expect.”

She poured them each a cup, then took the chair at right angles to his. She set the box down right in front of her but made no move to open it. “I would’ve thought that young fella you sent already found out what you needed to know.”

“He’s young and hasn’t been doing this long, and I didn’t realize how important you were until after he was here.”

This pleased her, although she tried to pretend she was offended. “I’m just the maid.”

“Which means you know more about your people than they do. We know a little more about Miss Northrup now than we did when Gino was here, too. For instance, I know she wasn’t always nice to people.”

“Who told you that?”

“A good friend of hers, so we believed it.”

“I told your boy the same thing. Didn’t you believe me?” she challenged.

She had him there. “Let’s just say we thought you had good reason not to like her, but her friend didn’t. This friend said she had high standards and wasn’t very . . .
understanding
if someone didn’t meet them.”

“Oh, that. Can’t fault a person for wanting things done right, can you?” she asked with a sly grin.

“I don’t suppose you can, but . . . Well, did she have a temper?”

“Do you mean did she get mad easy? No, she didn’t. She had good manners, that one. Knew how to act and how to hide what she was really feeling.”

“I guess that does take good manners,” Frank said, sipping his coffee. “I’m still working on that one myself.”

Bathsheba grinned knowingly. “Me, too.”

“But you think she sometimes hid what she was really feeling.”

“Everybody does, don’t they? But her, she always looked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

“Did she ever get mad at Miss Wilson or Miss Billingsly?”

“If she did, she never let on,” she said carefully.

“Are they hard to get along with?”

“Not at all! There was never a harsh word said in this house until—”

Frank waited but she pressed her lips together, determined not to finish her sentence. “Until Miss Northrup came,” he guessed. “So if Miss Northrup didn’t get mad at them, did they get mad at her?”

“They’s ladies, Mr. Malloy. Fine ladies. They don’t yell at each other like they do in the tenements.”

“But Miss Billingsly wasn’t happy to have her here, was she?”

“You’d have to ask her that.”

“We did, and she said she wasn’t. She said it made more work for you.”

Bathsheba seemed genuinely surprised. “She did? Ain’t that nice of her.”

“And she was jealous, wasn’t she?” Frank said, taking a chance.

“What’d she have to be jealous about?” Bathsheba said, although he could see his question had shaken her.

“Of Miss Wilson’s affections. You told Gino she and Miss Billingsly were close friends all those years, living here happily until Miss Northrup arrived. She came between them, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bathsheba said with a frown.

“Yes, you do. Miss Wilson liked her better than she liked Miss Billingsly. That’s why Miss Billingsly started drinking, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know nothing about it,” she tried, but he could see the alarm flaring in her eyes.

“I know Miss Northrup caused trouble. You said she didn’t argue with Miss Billingsly, and you said Miss Billingsly and Miss Wilson didn’t argue with each other, but . . . wait, it was Miss Northrup and Miss Wilson, wasn’t it? They were the ones who argued.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. They wasn’t fighting, not like you think.”

“How was it, then?”

Bathsheba was angry now, aware that he had tricked her. “They had words one time. They wasn’t yelling. Ladies like them, they didn’t raise their voices, but they was both upset. You could tell that.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I told you, it wasn’t like that. They . . . I couldn’t hear much. Like I said, they didn’t raise their voices, but it was something about a letter.”

“Do you know what letter it was?”

“No.”

Had Miss Wilson discovered Abigail’s secret correspondence with Cornelius Raymond? That certainly could have made her angry enough to attack Abigail. “One of the letters my wife found when she was here?”

Bathsheba shrugged and fiddled with her coffee cup. “I reckon.”

He could see she knew something she didn’t want to tell him. “We know she got other letters that we didn’t find. If we find out you’re hiding them . . .”

“I ain’t hiding nothing, and if you mean those French letters, I don’t know nothing about them.”

Frank gaped at her.
“French letters?”

Bathsheba winced, and for a moment he thought she’d realized she’d used the slang term for condoms in front of a strange man, but that wasn’t it at all. “She got some letters that was written in French,” she reluctantly admitted.

Frank didn’t bother to feel relieved. “You’re sure it was French?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure. The handwriting was all foreign-looking, and the name of the person who sent it was right strange. I couldn’t read the name of the town neither, and she told me it was in France. She was real happy to get it.”

“Did she get a lot of letters from France?”

“A few, since she’s been here. She visited France in the summer, she told me. She said . . .”

“What did she say?”

Bathsheba frowned. “She said she never really knew how to talk French until she went there. But that’s silly. She learned how to talk it in school, didn’t she? She learned it so good, she was hired to teach it.”

Frank had no idea how to answer that. “Do you know what happened to those letters? The ones in French?”

“No. Your wife, she looked all over Miss Northrup’s room, and all she found was the ones under the mattress. I never did figure out why Miss Northrup’d hide letters from her friend under the mattress.”

Frank wasn’t going to enlighten her. “Would you mind if I took another look in her old room? Maybe she had a hiding spot Mrs. Malloy didn’t find.”

Bathsheba frowned again. “No, sir. Miss Billingsly, she done moved into that room now, and I don’t reckon she’d want no man poking around in her things.”

He didn’t suppose she would, but how strange. Why had Miss Billingsly moved from the room she’d had for years into the one Abigail had used? If it was a nicer room, why hadn’t she chosen it in the first place? He didn’t suppose Miss Billingsly would tell him the answers to those questions, and he was sure Bathsheba wouldn’t, even if she knew, but maybe Sarah could figure it out. “Well, if you happen to find anything, would you let me know?”

He gave her one of his expensive cards, because he wanted her to feel flattered. He thanked her for her help.

“She had a room at the school,” Bathsheba said as he rose from his chair. “An office. Maybe she kept the letters there.”

Frank figured she was just trying to distract him from wanting to search the house, but he actually thought it was a possibility. He had already looked through her desk, but if this letter was so important, she might have hidden it well. He hadn’t really searched the rest of the room either. “That’s a good suggestion.”