Murder on Astor Place (13 page)

“I’ll want to talk to the servants, too. All of them. Alone.” He didn’t want her intimidating them into lying to protect Alicia’s good name.

“They don’t know anything. None of us knows anything.”

“Then it’s my time that’s wasted, isn’t it?” Frank replied, tucking his notebook back into his pocket but giving it a little pat to remind her that he had her name if she thought about giving him any more trouble.

She sniffed again and started into the house, surging ahead like a schooner at full mast. Frank had to assume she expected him to follow, which he did, but the instant he reached the doorway, she turned abruptly and snapped, “Wipe your feet before you come in here!”

Cow, he thought, but he wiped his feet. Didn’t want her complaining to VanDamm about his manners. It would be bad enough when she complained about his visit.

The interior of the house was dim, since the windows were all heavily draped. The sun faded fabrics, as his mother had told him time and again, and the VanDamms had a lot of fabric to fade. It hung in lavish folds around each window and was upholstered onto numerous pieces of furniture. This Frank glimpsed through a series of doorways during his hasty trip through the entrance hall to the long staircase at its opposite end. The hallway was paneled in dark wainscoting and wallpaper so elaborately patterned it made him dizzy to stare at it. An amazingly large crystal chandelier hung down from the second story. He knew exactly what Kathleen would’ve said: How in
heaven’s name do they clean it?

He followed the housekeeper up the stairs and remembered when he’d followed Sarah Brandt up a similar set of stairs. He’d been tempted to look at her ankles, but he wasn’t the least bit tempted to look at Mrs. Hightower’s.

Upstairs, the hallway branched to the left and right, seeming to go on forever in each direction. She turned right, still surging along like a ship at full sail, never even glancing back to make sure he was behind her. A thick carpet muffled their footsteps, and Frank was struck by how silent the house was. Silent and forlorn, as if it were mourning the loss of the girl who had lived here. Or maybe it was just the result of the place being uninhabited, Frank thought, because no one really lived here even when they were here.

A little astonished at such a profound thought, Frank almost didn’t realize the housekeeper had stopped in front of one of the closed doors. Her hand was on the knob, but she hesitated for a long moment. Frank thought she was just being obstinate, making him wait so she could show her power over him. But then he noticed she was blinking furiously as she stared resolutely at the panel of the door. Good God, she was trying not to weep. For all her coldness, she must have genuinely cared for the dead girl.

Maybe Frank could use this to his advantage.

After waiting respectfully for her to regain her composure, he remarked, “You must’ve known her a long time.”

“Since the day she was born, right here in this house.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears, tears she was probably too proud to let Frank see.

“Mr. VanDamm said she’d been here a little over a month. I guess she hadn’t been feeling too well.”

Mrs. Hightower, fully recovered now, glared at him. “It was nerves, is all. That girl was never sick a day in her life.”

“What did she have to be nervous about?”

Her thin lips thinned down even more, obviously because she realized she’d already told him more than she’d intended. “I’m sure it’s not my place to know. Well-bred girls are all high strung.”

“Like thoroughbred horses,” Frank suggested.

Mrs. Hightower did not approve of his comparison. “Miss Alicia was sensitive. She let things upset her.”

Now if Frank could only find out what those things were. “She was like her mother, then?” he suggested.

“Her mother?” she echoed suspiciously.

“Mrs. VanDamm,” Frank prodded, wondering if she could have actually forgotten her own mistress.

Her expression pinched with disapproval. “She’s nothing like Mrs. VanDamm. She’s an angel.”

Frank watched as she realized the irony of her assertion. Her strong face sagged with despair as the reality of her loss struck her anew.

He gave her only a moment to absorb the impact before using her weakness to press his case. “Is the door locked?”

She glanced at it in surprise, as if she’d only just realized where she was. “No, of course not. Why would it be locked?”

“Then you can go about your work while I look around. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to talk to the servants.”

For a second he thought she would refuse to leave, but then she glanced at the door again, and he could see how painful it was for her to even consider opening it. Just as he’d suspected it would be.

After making him wait another few seconds, she nodded. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” And then a final, sharp, “Don’t disturb anything,” before she launched herself down the hallway again.

Frank waited until she was on her way down the stairs before he opened the door. It was solid oak and moved silently on its hinges. No squeaking here. The interior of the room was dark like the rest of the house, the drapes drawn against the glare of the sun. Giving his eyes a chance to adjust, Frank looked around, getting his bearings. Then he went to one of the windows on the far wall and pulled back the draperies. He needed a minute to figure out how the chords worked for tying it back, and when he had it secured, he looked around again.

The room was large, larger than his entire flat back in the city. And if he’d known nothing about Alicia VanDamm before, he would know everything about her from simply seeing this place. While her room at the boardinghouse had been stark and impersonal, this one was hers entirely. The furniture was white with gold leaf accents, everything curved and delicate and graceful and completely feminine. The drapes and the coverlet on the bed and the canopy over it were all a pale rose and of some kind of rich material. The wallpaper depicted scenes of young maidens frolicking gaily. In one corner sat a doll’s house. Frank walked over to examine it more closely, and he saw it was furnished with remarkable attention to detail, even to the curtains on the windows. Everything was all arranged, just so, and the tiny doll family were seated around the dining room table. They even had real china dishes and a maid to serve them. Next to the house stood a chest, and when Frank lifted the lid, he found toys inside. Some dolls, worn from years of playing, the paint of their faces almost rubbed off and their clothes ragged from use. A top. A life-sized tea set. Everything had a neglected air about it, as if it hadn’t been used in some time, but Frank couldn’t help noticing the things were still here, near at hand, as if their owner hadn’t quite been ready to part with them yet. As if the owner hadn’t been ready to leave her childhood just yet.

Frank had been thinking of Alicia VanDamm as a young woman. She was pregnant, after all, so she most certainly had a lover, but now he was struck with how recently she had taken that step into adulthood. So recently that her toys were still here in her room, as if she wanted to be able to maintain her ties with the world of childhood while also trying her hand at being an adult.

Frank glanced around again, trying to imagine what kind of a person Alicia VanDamm must have been. Her room spoke of innocence. And purity. Neither of which applied to Alicia VanDamm. Something was out of kilter here, and Frank needed to find out what.

And more importantly, why.

He started his search of the room and conducted it systematically, going through each drawer and cupboard carefully so as not to disturb the contents. Mrs. Hightower would probably know what he’d done, but at least she wouldn’t be able to complain he’d left things in a mess. And of course if he didn’t leave things in a mess, he could always deny he’d searched the room at all. He reached beneath the mattress and checked under the chair bottoms and behind each piece of furniture. Behind and under every drawer. He even took each of the books off the shelf and shook them out. Examining every possible hiding place. He had no idea what he was looking for, of course. A diary naming her killer would have been just the thing, but naturally, he didn’t find one.

Nor did he find anything else. No love letters from the father of her child. No secret messages. Nothing. He’d looked in every possible hiding place, even checking beneath the rugs and tapping on the wall and floor for possible hidden compartments. But if what he failed to find disturbed him, what he did find disturbed him even more: The girl who had lived in this room was still in every way a child. The books on the shelf were mostly lesson books with a few volumes of nursery rhymes and stories. Even the clothes she’d left behind were decidedly juvenile. No scheming seductress had lived here, at least not from any evidence Frank could discover. If he hadn’t known about her condition, he might actually have believed Mrs. Hightower’s description of Alicia as having been an angel.

But even angels fell, as he remembered from his catechism lessons. Now he’d have to find out how this one had.

Mrs. Hightower had been more than reluctant for the other servants to leave their tasks, but once again Frank was able to intimidate her into accommodating him. He only hoped he wasn’t around when she found out VanDamm hadn’t given his permission for any of this.

One by one the other servants paraded through the small back parlor she had given him to use. And one by one they insisted they knew nothing of why Miss Alicia had run away or even how she had accomplished it. Either Mrs. Hightower had instructed them or else they really had no knowledge. Frank was very much afraid it was the latter.

But finally his patience was rewarded. When he’d gone through a half-dozen or so of the people who knew nothing, suddenly, he found a girl who knew everything. And even more than everything. She knew Alicia.

She was a chambermaid, Mrs. Hightower informed him, a pretty girl with bright cinnamon-colored eyes and lots of auburn curls peeking out from beneath her cap. Her name, she told him, was Lizzie.

“Short for Elizabeth, don’t you know? But nobody ever calls me that, now me Mum’s passed on. She only called it when she was that mad at me, too. I always knowed when she was gonna give me a thrashing, ’cause she’d say, Miss Elizabeth, get yourself in here right now!”

Frank had to bite his lip to keep from grinning in triumph. Instead, he settled back, ready to play his part. “Well, now, Lizzie, I’m trying to find out if anybody knows how Miss Alicia got away from the house the night she left.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to be all right, but then her lower lip began to quiver and her eyes flooded with tears, and in the next instant, she was sobbing into her apron. Actually, Frank had been expecting this reaction from someone long before now. He’d been a little disturbed that the other servants had seemed so unmoved by Alicia’s death. This probably meant they hadn’t been very close to her, but this girl had. Her tears betrayed that closeness. He waited patiently, knowing his patience would be amply rewarded, until she had sniffled her way back to coherence again.

“Oh, I’m that sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to cry thataway. Mrs. Hightower would have me hide, but when I think about poor Miss Alicia...”

“You knew her well, I guess,” Frank ventured.

“I was her maid for two years, her personal lady’s maid, but when she comes out here this time, Mrs. Hightower, she tells me, Lizzie, she says, Miss Alicia won’t be needing a maid anymore, so we’ll make you a chambermaid. A
chambermaid
! I’m a trained lady’s maid, I am, and now I have to empty chamber pots! Can you feature it?”

Frank assured her he could not. “Why didn’t she need a maid?”

“I’m sure I don’t know! Oh, Mrs. Hightower would do for her, help her get dressed and such, but she was the only one ever went near her. None of the rest of us could so much as speak to her, not even me, and I’d been with her for two years!”

Frank had a pretty good idea why the servants were being kept away from Alicia, but he didn’t want to share his thoughts with Lizzie.

“Then I guess you wouldn’t have any idea how she could’ve gotten out of the house the night she disappeared.”

“Oh, cor, she probably walked right out the front door, don’t you know. No reason why she shouldn’t, is there?”

“I don’t know, is there?” Frank countered, very interested indeed in this theory.

“Not at all. The servants, we all sleep on the third floor, even me since I’m not allowed to do for Miss Alicia anymore. If she wanted to go out, there was nobody to stop her or even to hear her. The front door was locked, but the key’s right beside it, so she could just open it and walk out, bold as you please. I mean, there’s no reason to hide the key. Who’d think about anybody inside getting out? The locks is to keep people on the outside from getting in, ain’t they?”

Frank had to agree that they were. “So none of the servants would have known her plans? Couldn’t anybody have helped her get away?”

“Oh, no, sir. It’s worth your job to disobey Mrs. Hightower, and none of us even spoke to Miss Alicia since she’s been here this time. Oh, except Harvey, of course.”

Frank felt a rush of excitement, but he managed not to betray himself to Lizzie so he wouldn’t frighten her. “Who’s Harvey?”

“He’s the groom. He’d take her riding every day, or nearly every day. That girl loved to ride, she did. And she loved that horse of hers even more. I never could understand it. She’d always smell like the stable when she got back, and I’d have to pour her a bath and...” Lizzie’s voice caught, and she covered her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears again, but she managed to keep her composure this time.

“You must miss her,” Frank said kindly.

Lizzie lifted her chin and swallowed her tears. “I been missing her for a while,” she said, angry now. “It was so strange, like she was prisoner here... except I guess she wasn’t really, or else they would’ve kept her locked up. Then she’d still be here, wouldn’t she?”