Murder on Astor Place (29 page)

“Are you having female problems?” Sarah asked solicitously, thinking that she might gain Mrs. VanDamm’s confidence by giving her some medical advice. If she was consulting with Sarah, she would certainly welcome her back for another visit if Sarah needed more information later.

“Oh, yes, for years now, and nothing helps. I have these spells when I feel weak and I can’t get my breath, and other times my head feels like it’s coming off my body. And sometimes, if I’m very still and quiet, I can actually hear my heart beating. That isn’t natural, is it, to hear one’s own heart beating?”

Sarah thought it probably was if you were listening for it, but she chose to humor Mrs. VanDamm. Perhaps she did have some problem that Sarah’s training could help. Sarah began to question her about her symptoms, and Mrs. VanDamm was only too happy to describe them in great detail. Apparently, she had nothing more to occupy her time than to sit here alone in the semidarkness and concentrate on every sensation of her own body.

She quickly learned that Mrs. VanDamm, who was not quite fifty, had completed menopause and was probably just experiencing the effects of it. “Do you find marital relations uncomfortable?” Sarah asked, ready to give Mrs. VanDamm some tips on how to alleviate that discomfort, but Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head.

“Oh, dear, I
always
found marital relations uncomfortable,” she confessed, rolling her eyes. “I can’t imagine how other women manage. After Mina was born, I told Mr. VanDamm I couldn’t endure his attentions anymore, and to his credit, he hasn’t bothered me since. It’s been over thirty years now, and I haven’t missed it at all, I assure you.”

Sarah was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even remember what they’d been discussing. She wasn’t shocked to learn that Mrs. VanDamm didn’t have intercourse with her husband. Many women of her class felt as she did, which was why so many men of her class kept mistresses. No, what shocked her was the realization that if Mrs. VanDamm hadn’t had sexual relations since Mina was born, she couldn’t possibly have been Alicia’s mother.

12

F
RANK LOOKED AROUND THE VANDAMM ESTATE in Mamoraneck with new eyes. He thought of Alicia VanDamm and wondered if she had been violated in this very house. If what Sarah Brandt believed was true, and Sylvester Mattingly had raped her and gotten her with child, then it might well have happened here, far away from prying eyes and ears.

Frank hesitated a moment before knocking on the front door, wondering if one reason he’d been taken off the case was because of his last, unauthorized visit here. But this time when the housekeeper opened the door, she looked more resigned than outraged at his presence.

“Just like a bad penny, ain’t you?” she said. “You keep turning up.”

“I’d like to look around Miss VanDamm’s room again,” he said, telling only a partial truth.

“You already did that. What do you think, that she came back from the dead and put something there you couldn’t’ve found before?”

“This time I know what I’m looking for,” he replied, concealing his surprise that she didn’t seem to be aware that VanDamm hadn’t authorized his previous visit. Could the woman have neglected to mention it to her employer?

“And what would that be?” she asked skeptically.

“A diary.”

Mrs. Hightower’s eyes grew large in her homely face. “What would you be wanting with
that?”
she demanded.

“I think it might give me some clues about the identity of her killer. You knew the girl kept a diary, I take it.”

Mrs. Hightower sniffed derisively. “Everybody knew it. She wrote in it all the time. For a girl who never went anywhere or did anything except ride that mare of hers, she sure found a lot to write about, I’ll tell you that.”

“Did you ever read what she wrote?”

“Of course not!” She was thoroughly outraged at the very suggestion. “Nobody would do a thing like that.”

“Not even her personal maid? Maybe Lizzie knows what it said. Maybe Lizzie knows where it is.”

“Not likely,” Mrs. Hightower insisted, “but I guess we won’t see the back of you until we ask her, now will we?”

Frank merely smiled expectantly until Mrs. Hightower finally admitted him.

This time she put him in a small front room where he waited until Lizzie had been summoned.

“Mr. Detective,” the maid said in dismay when she saw him. “Have you found out who killed Miss Alicia yet?” She was wringing her hands in her apron and looked on the verge of tears.

“Not yet,” Frank said, trying to sound kind while knowing he wasn’t being very reassuring, “but I’m hoping you can give me some help. Do you know where Miss Alicia kept her diary?”

“Oh, cor, she kept it locked up, nice and safe, because she didn’t want anybody never to read it but her, but it ain’t there now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they sent me to look for it right after she disappeared.”

“Who sent you?”

“Why, Mrs. Hightower, who else?”

Who else, indeed. Frank could think of many possibilities, but the truth was probably that Mrs. Hightower would only have acted on orders from the VanDamms. This meant they knew what the diary must contain, and that would explain why they’d ordered Sylvester Mattingly to find it. Now if only Frank could find out what it said, too.

“Can you show me where she kept it?” Frank asked.

“I can, but only if Mrs. Hightower says it’s all right,” she said, glancing nervously toward the door, at which Mrs. Hightower might well be listening.

Mrs. Hightower seemed willing to do anything if it would get Frank closer to leaving, so Lizzie escorted him upstairs to Alicia’s room. She showed him a small chest which he’d searched on his last visit. It held mementos of Alicia’s childhood, awards won in school, some trinkets that had probably held some sentimental value, but nothing that could remotely be called a diary.

By now Lizzie was openly weeping, not making a sound but allowing the tears to flow freely down her face. Frank felt a twinge of guilt and wondered when he had become so sentimental. In other days, he would have been jubilant at the sight of those tears, knowing they would make the person he was questioning more open and forthcoming.

“Lizzie, Mrs. Hightower said Miss Alicia wrote in her diary a lot. Do you know what she wrote about?”

The girl shook her head in silent despair. “Sure and I don’t. She wouldn’t let me see it, not ever. I couldn’t’ve read it, even if she did, of course, but I’d never of wanted to. She wrote in it all the time, and sometimes she cried. I don’t want to know what made her cry. If she had secrets, she should be allowed to keep them, don’t you think?”

Frank didn’t think, so he ignored the question. “Did she have any other place she hid her diary?”

“Oh, no, sir. This was the place. She could lock it up, and she carried the key around her neck so nobody could find it accidental. But when she disappeared, the chest was open and the key was on the table there.” She pointed to the dressing table. “She must’ve took her diary with her. That’s the only other place it could be.”

Frank sincerely doubted this, since Ham Fisher hadn’t found it when he searched her room at the Higgins house, either. He started to ask her if there was anyone else who might know or to whom she might have entrusted her diary when he realized he didn’t have to ask. He already knew: the groom, Harvey.

The stables were dim and strangely silent when Frank entered. He gave himself a moment for his eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight outside. The familiar and comforting scent of horses and straw and manure assailed him, swamping his senses at first so that he didn’t notice it. But the silence was too great, too complete. Oh, he could hear the horses shuffling in their stalls and the hum of swarming insects and the scurry of rodents in the hay, but something was missing. The place was too still, as if its life force had been sucked out. As if it was empty of human habitation.

Except the other servants had told him Harvey was in the stables. No one had seen him come out, and he didn’t appear to be anywhere else, so he had to be here. Except Frank knew he wasn’t.

“Harvey!” he called into the void. A horse knickered, but no one else responded.

Frank’s nerves tingled as his body prepared instinctively for whatever he encountered. “Harvey!” he tried again, making his way farther into the stable. He glanced into each stall as he passed, seeing nothing amiss. Everything was as it should be except for the oppressive silence that seemed to muffle even his own footsteps. The little mare that Alicia had ridden peeked out at him, blinking her sad, brown eyes. A bay gelding stamped his hoof in the next stall but offered Frank no comment as he walked by.

One by one, he passed each stall until he came to the last one, and that’s where he found Harvey, hanging by his neck from the rafter.

S
ARAH SHOULD HAVE expected her mother to be entertaining at this time of the day, but she never would have imagined the scene she encountered. The maid hadn’t seemed surprised to see her this time and conducted her to the dining room without even being asked. When she saw who was there, she realized the girl must have simply thought she was another invited guest to the elaborate formal tea party her mother was hosting.

The group of ladies sitting around her mother’s enormous table represented some of the oldest families in New York, and all of them had known Sarah since she was a babe. If that wasn’t bad enough, she saw Mrs. Astor—Mrs. William Backhouse Astor, Jr., matriarch of the Astor clan and designated as “the” Mrs. Astor to distinguish her from the less important Mrs. Astors in the family.

Every instinct warned her to flee, but it was already too late. She was well and truly caught, and couldn’t leave without embarrassing her mother.

“Sarah, dear, what a surprise,” Mrs. Decker said, hurrying to meet her. She did her best to conceal her shock, but only partially succeeded.

“Sarah, is that you?” Mrs. Astor asked. “How delightful to see you! Elizabeth didn’t tell us you were coming.”

“She didn’t know,” Sarah said, smiling as graciously as she could while grinding her teeth in frustration. She needed to speak to her mother alone, not spend hours in meaningless small talk with a group of ladies whose interests were limited to the weather and the foibles of their neighbors.

By then, her mother had reached her and was staring at her anxiously, obviously sensing her agitation. “What is it, dear?” she asked in a near whisper. “Has something happened?”

“No, nothing,” she assured her just as quietly. “I just needed your advice on something.”

Her mother’s lovely eyes lit with surprise and pleasure, but she kept her voice even when she said, “Won’t you join us for tea? I think you know everyone.” Sending Sarah a silent apology that reminded her that her family’s lives were still bound by strict social conventions, her mother reminded her of everyone’s name as the maids brought another chair and laid a place for her with the gold-edged china.

“Tea” was really a meal, served with pomp and ceremony on the best china and silver. The tea itself was poured from a large silver pot into dainty white and gold dinner teacups. Trays of sliced cold chicken garnished with nasturtium leaves, daintily cut slices of ham, and strips of tongue were passed. The bread was cut in thin strips and already buttered. Around the table stood small silver pots of preserves of strawberry and gooseberry and orange marmalade and honey in the comb. Silver baskets covered with lace held slices of golden sponge cake and rich, dark fruitcake, and on another silver tray stood Dresden china cups filled with custard and garnished with a generous amount of grated nutmeg.

Sarah managed to sample each treat as it went by her, but she really wasn’t hungry. She just wanted all these people to be gone. Sarah was seated too far from her mother to even whisper anything about the purpose of her visit, but her mother knew what she was concerned about these days.

After Mrs. Astor had held forth on the advisability of traveling abroad so early in the season—an inordinate number of icebergs had been spotted recently in the North Atlantic in spite of the unseasonably warm weather—Mrs. Decker brought up the subject nearest to Sarah’s heart.

“What a tragedy about the youngest VanDamm girl,” she remarked with creditable nonchalance.

“Oh, yes,” said one of the other ladies. “I heard Francisca is prostrate with grief.”

“She’s been prostrate with something for the past ten years,” Mrs. Astor said. “And I suppose anyone would expire if her parents were going to marry her off to Sylvester Mattingly.”

“It’s true then?” Sarah couldn’t help asking. “They really intended such a match?”

“Oh, I heard the same thing,” someone else offered. “Although I could hardly believe it. If they were in a hurry to marry her off, they should have sent her to England. My son-in-law, Lord Harpster has several quite eligible kinsmen who would be happy to make the acquaintance of an American heiress.”

“Where she could buy herself a penniless nobleman?” another woman scoffed.

While the women debated the merits of marrying off wealthy American girls to poverty-stricken English noble-men just to have a titled lady in the family—a practice that had become so widespread it had a name: Anglo-mania, Sarah considered what she had heard. Apparently, her mother was correct. The VanDamms really had considered marrying their daughter to the elderly attorney, and no one could quite understand why.

After what seemed an eternity of clanking silver and china and meaningless conversation, her mother’s guests were finally forced to take their leave, albeit reluctantly. They obviously sensed Sarah had come for something important and were hoping to catch at least a hint of what that might be. In spite of their best efforts to draw her out, they left disappointed.

When the last guest had gone, Sarah’s mother took her into the parlor, slid the pocket doors closed and turned to face her. “Now tell me what’s happened. Something has happened, hasn’t it?”