Murder on Astor Place (30 page)

“I’m not really sure, Mother,” she said as her mother sat down beside her on the sofa and took her hand. “I heard something today that upset me, and I’m wondering if it might be true.”

“Something about our family... ?” she asked with a worried frown.

“Oh, no, of course not,” she assured her hastily, and for a second wondered if her mother knew of something she might have heard. “It’s about Alicia VanDamm.”

Her mother frowned in disapproval. “Oh, my, I was afraid you’d still be worrying yourself about that.”

“I noticed you managed to confirm that rumor about Mattingly for me. Thank you.”

Her mother frowned. “I’m not sure I should be encouraging you in this, and I’m sure I shouldn’t be helping you, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Now tell me, what have you learned?”

“I went to see Mrs. VanDamm today.”

Her mother didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “She received you? You heard Mrs. Astor, Francisca VanDamm hasn’t been out of her bedroom in a decade!”

“She didn’t come out today, either. I think she agreed to see me because I’m a midwife, and she wanted some medical advice.”

“She can’t think she’s with child!” her mother exclaimed. “She’s much too old for such a thing!”

“Of course she is, but she thought I might be able to advise her on her various ailments, so she allowed me to see her. And while I was there, she told me something very disturbing. She said she hasn’t had marital relations with her husband since Mina was born.”

Her mother gaped at her, as shocked as if Sarah had slapped her, and for a moment she didn’t even breathe. Finally, she managed to gasp, “Sarah, really, I can’t believe—”

“Oh, mother, don’t be prudish,” Sarah said, impatient as her mother’s attempt at maidenly modesty. “I deliver babies for a living. Do you think I don’t know how they get made?”

“I’m sure you do, but I simply can’t believe you would discuss such a thing in my parlor!”

Sarah really had been gone too long from this world. She’d forgotten that women of her mother’s station in society might live their entire lives without ever acknowledging the intimacies between husbands and wives. Whatever had made her consider confiding such a thing to her mother, much less expect to receive counsel? And how could she have ever been so inconsiderate?

“I’m sorry, Mother. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She rose, preparing to take her leave, ashamed of herself and anxious to be on her way. She knew now to whom she should have gone. Malloy would probably be just as shocked as her mother at her references to intimate relationships, but he wouldn’t let that stop him from helping her figure this out.

But she’d underestimated her mother.

“Don’t go!” she pleaded, capturing Sarah’s hand when she would have gone. “I didn’t mean ... I’m afraid I’m just having a little trouble thinking of you as a grown woman. You’re right, of course. I
am
being prudish. Please stay, and tell me what it is you need advice about, and I’ll try not to be shocked again.”

Her mother looked almost desperate in her need to keep her there, and perhaps she was. Probably she thought that if Sarah left feeling her mother had failed her in some way, she would never return. Sarah didn’t want to believe herself so vindictive, but she
had
disappeared from her family’s life for years the last time, so perhaps her mother was right to want to keep her here now.

Sarah sat down again, still holding her mother’s hand. “I’m afraid I forget that other people aren’t quite as ...” She searched for the proper word. “... as
familiar
with the more intimate acts of other people’s lives as I am. I’m very sorry that I shocked you, Mother, and hope you won’t take offense.”

Her mother sighed her relief. “I’m really not so prudish as all that, really. It’s just... You are my little girl, you know, and always will be, no matter how old you get. Or how experienced. Now tell me, what is it you think I can help you with?”

Sarah took a moment to gather her thoughts and re-phrase them in a way that would least offend her mother. “I’m sure you know women who, after they reach a certain age, no longer fulfill their marital obligations to their husbands.”

Her mother nodded, determined not to take offense. “Many women find those duties... unpleasant,” she decided after some thought. “Or even uncomfortable. And others simply decide they don’t want any more children, and abstaining from... from intimacy is the only sure way to avoid having them.”

“Mrs. VanDamm said she hadn’t had relations with her husband since Mina was born,” Sarah reminded her. “If that’s true, where did Alicia come from?”

“Perhaps she was confused,” her mother suggested. “She would have been in her early thirties when Alicia was born. She married very young, if I recall. Conceiving Alicia so long after Mina would have been embarrassing. Indeed, I remember how surprised we all were at the time...”

“What is it?” Sarah asked when her mother’s voice trailed off. “What are you thinking?”

Her mother was staring at something across the room but not really seeing it, because her thoughts were far away. “I was just remembering what people were saying then. We all thought... I mean, when there were no other children after Mina and from what Francisca said... I believe we thought that what she told you was the truth, that she had stopped...” She gave Sarah a beseeching glance.

“Sharing her husband’s bed?” Sarah offered.

“Yes,” her mother agreed gratefully. “And she seemed so smug when she told us she was expecting another child, as if she were...” She shrugged helplessly, once again at a loss for words.

“As if she were what?” Sarah prodded. “Guilty, perhaps? Do you think she’d taken a lover, and that’s how—?”

“Heavens, no!” her mother scoffed. “Francisca was much too dull to even think of something like that. No, it was more as if she were sharing a delicious secret with us. She was delighted with herself and with us for being surprised. She thoroughly enjoyed all the attention she received from it, which is why I was surprised when she withdrew to the country shortly afterward. We didn’t see her again until after Alicia was born.”

“I remember that,” Sarah said. “Mina went with her. They took her out of school so she could be company for her mother during her confinement. Mina was terribly angry about it at the time. I thought she was just embarrassed about her mother having a baby, and that perhaps she was a little jealous, too. She always resented Alicia, and I guess that’s why.”

“How odd,” her mother said, considering.

“Do you think so? I’d expect her to be resentful of the new baby who got all the attention, especially since she was just approaching womanhood herself. And for her parents to have produced offspring at that stage in their lives must have been mortifying to a girl her age.”

“No, I mean how odd they took Mina out of school and sent her to the country with Francisca. You said Mina resented the new baby, and in any case, I’d think they’d want to shield a girl of that age from the ... the realities of her mother’s condition.”

It took Sarah a moment to understand what her mother meant, and when she did, she had to agree. In a society where pregnancy was barely acknowledged, it seemed unlikely a family would force their adolescent daughter to confront the reality of it at close quarters when she could have been left at school and remained ignorant.

“What could they have been thinking?” she asked aloud. “Could they have been trying to protect Mina from teasing or from being asked embarrassing questions?”

Her mother looked away, as if unwilling to meet Sarah’s gaze.

“You know something, don’t you?” Sarah asked.

Her mother bit her lip and sighed. “Not really, but I can think of one possible explanation, although it does no one credit, not even me.”

“Mother, what are you talking about?”

Mrs. Decker sighed again. “I feel like the lowest gossip to even think such a thing, but it wouldn’t be the first time it happened.” Her mother turned back to her, her eyes bleak with despair and remembered loss. “We sent Maggie to France when it happened to us, or at least we tried to.”

As Sarah met her mother’s tortured gaze, all the awful memories came flooding back. Maggie angry and defiant, refusing to bend to her father’s will, refusing to be hidden away until her baby was born. Maggie, pale and dying, making Sarah promise to take care of the child who was already dead. The pain of her loss was still raw, and she saw her mother felt it, too. Her eyes had filled with tears, and she held herself stiffly, as if the slightest movement might shatter her.

That was when the question formed in Sarah’s mind, the one she’d never allowed herself to consider, the one she would never have dared to ask all those years ago. “What would you have done with Maggie’s child if she’d gone to France the way you’d planned?”

Even though Mrs. Decker resolutely refused to blink, still one tear escaped and cascaded down her pale cheek. “I wish I had thought...” she whispered, her voice ragged with the agony of her losses.

“You wish you had thought
what?”
Sarah demanded, clutching tight to her fury because she knew she’d never be able to endure the pain if she allowed herself to feel it.

“I wish I had thought to pretend I was with child myself. I could have gone with her. We could have brought the baby back and...”

“And pretended it was our baby sister,” Sarah said, finishing the thought her mother couldn’t.

Her mother covered her mouth to hold back the cry of anguish propriety forbade her to utter.

Sarah felt as if someone had clawed her heart out. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie. Was that what had driven her to flee? The thought of having her child torn from her, taken away, never to be seen again? No wonder she had been so desperate. Sarah had blamed it on passion, but she hadn’t understood that Maggie had made the only choice she could if she wanted to keep her child.

Mrs. Decker drew a ragged breath and turned back to Sarah. “I would have done it. I would have done anything to save her. You must believe that, Sarah.”

Anything except let her marry the man she loved,
Sarah thought, but she didn’t say it. Recriminations wouldn’t bring Maggie back, and in all fairness, her mother hadn’t been the one who decided what would become of Maggie and her child. Someday she would have to face the person who had, but not today. Today, she had to comfort her mother and herself.

“I believe you, Mother. Any woman would, to protect her child.”

Even a woman as shallow and self-centered as Francisca VanDamm,
she realized as she watched her mother’s lovely face crumble beneath the weight of her grief.

F
RANK DOVE FOR the body, grabbing the dangling legs and lifting, relieving the pressure of the rope around the neck, but even as he did so, he knew he was too late. The body was already stiffening, and he could feel the chill of death even through the man’s clothes. After a moment, he let go and stepped back in defeat, looking up into the face of death.

Harvey had not gone peacefully. Frank could see the scratch marks on his throat where he had clawed at it while it choked the life out of him. The reaction was instinctive, no matter how much someone might want to die. No matter that he had been despondent enough to make a noose and tie it securely and mount the stool and slip the rope around his neck. Still, when the stool tipped over and the rope cut into the living flesh, the will to live overtook the will to die for at least a few seconds, no matter how futile the effort.

Frank wanted to cut him down. That was always the first thing anyone wanted to do, and Frank felt the urge especially strong when he remembered Harvey was a man his own age, a good man whose only sin had been trying to help a girl he loved. But Frank knew that before he cut Harvey down and afforded his body some measure of dignity, he had to look at everything first to make sure it was as it should be.

The stool was there, turned over just as it would be if he’d kicked it. The rope was tied securely to a hook on the wall, then dropped over an exposed beam. The bloated face and bulging eyes told of death by strangulation. Frank could even imagine a motive or two. Harvey might have blamed himself for Alicia’s death and been unable to bear the guilt any longer. Or perhaps he and Sarah Brandt had been wrong, and Harvey really was the father of Alicia’s child. Perhaps he was even her killer, although Frank was almost certain he wasn’t. Still, he’d been wrong before, and any one of those explanations would have accounted for Harvey taking his own life.

Except he hadn’t taken his own life.

A less skilled investigator might not have known that, of course. A less skilled detective, someone who would be investigating a death in the country for example, might have missed it completely. But Frank saw it at once, the first clue that didn’t fit. The rope mark on Harvey’s throat. The rope mark that went straight around his neck, the way it would if someone came up behind him and put a garrote around it and twisted and twisted until he was dead. The rope from which he was hanging would have left a completely different mark at a completely different angle, and Frank was willing to bet that when he cut Harvey down, he would discover no mark at all underneath it, because Harvey had already been dead when he’d been hoisted up over that beam. And when he turned the stool upright and set it beneath Harvey’s feet, he was certain of it, because there was a good six inches between Harvey’s dangling toes and the stool he had supposedly stood on when he put the noose around his neck.

Frank spent most of the next hour summoning the other servants, questioning them about what they had seen and heard, and sending someone to fetch the local police, such as they were. Frank figured his own investigation would be the deciding factor in the case, since the local authorities might have never encountered a murder, so he made it as thorough as he could. None of the servants had seen or heard anything untoward, but one of the gardeners had noticed a young man riding by earlier in the day. Why he thought it was a
young
man he couldn’t rightly say, except that was the impression he got. All he could really be certain of was that it was a man. Since Frank had already decided Harvey’s killer was a man, this was hardly startling news.