Murder on Lexington Avenue (17 page)

“He’s doing well,” Sarah said. “I know it was a surprise, but babies can be a nice surprise.”

Leander didn’t look like he agreed with her. “It’s a boy,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Your sister wants to name him Homer,” she said.

“Homer?” he repeated in surprise. “Why did she pick that?”

“Because she can say it.”

His lips tightened. “She still can’t say Leander very clearly. Or Electra either, for that matter.”

“She speaks amazingly well,” Sarah said quite sincerely.

“She hates it,” Leander said.

“She hates speaking?” Sarah asked in surprise.

“No, she hates it when people can’t understand what she’s saying. She hates it when she can’t understand what they’re saying, too. She gets so angry . . .” He sighed.

“I’m sure that’s why she wanted to marry a deaf man,” Sarah said.

“What did you say?” Leander asked in surprise. “Who told you that?”

“I . . . Mrs. Parmer mentioned it,” Sarah remembered.

“She shouldn’t have,” Leander said, angry now, although Sarah couldn’t tell if he was angry at her or his aunt. “Electra just had a schoolgirl infatuation. She has no intention of marrying anyone. She’s just a girl.”

“I see,” Sarah said, although she didn’t really. Mrs. Parmer had said Electra was “seeing” a deaf man. Not a deaf
boy
, she realized, which would have indicated someone her own age. She would have to find out more about this unsuitable suitor. “She does seem young to be seriously considering marriage.”

“She
wasn’t
seriously considering it,” Leander assured her. “And she won’t be seeing him again, I can promise you that.”

Sarah wasn’t sure why he should promise her anything, but she nodded encouragingly. Sometimes silence was the best way to promote conversation.

“I didn’t intend for anything like that to happen when I hired Mr. Oldham,” he continued. “If I had even suspected . . . But I didn’t, of course. Who would? She’s just sixteen.”

“Sixteen can be a very dangerous age for a girl,” Sarah said, recalling her own youth. “She feels like she’s very grown up, but she’s still very inexperienced.”

“Exactly,” Leander said, happy to find someone to agree with him. “I blame Mr. Oldham. He never should have encouraged her. I would have expected a teacher to be more . . . more
responsible
.”

“A teacher?” Sarah said, surprised. This wasn’t what she’d expected. “You’re absolutely right. He
should
have been more responsible.” Sarah’s mind was racing, trying to make sense of this. “Did you say that
you’d
hired him?”

Leander’s face flooded with color. “I . . . I don’t believe I did,” he hedged, although Sarah had heard him say exactly that.

“You couldn’t have known his true character, though,” Sarah said to excuse him. She didn’t want him to flee out of humiliation before she’d had an opportunity to question him further. “You would never have entrusted your sister to anyone you didn’t believe to be honorable.”

“Of course not!” Leander said, mollified. “He teaches in a deaf school. I expected him to be completely trustworthy.”

“I suppose you’ll have to take Electra out of the school now,” she said.

“Oh, he doesn’t teach at her school. He teaches . . . Well, he teaches at a different school, but Electra wanted to learn something new, something they don’t teach at the Lexington Avenue School, so . . . Well, I don’t suppose you really care about all of this, and you probably need to get back to my mother.”

Sarah was going to deny it in hopes of learning more from Leander, but then she heard the baby start to cry. She really did need to get back to Mrs. Wooten. “I’ll tell her you would like to see her when she feels up to it,” Sarah promised and hurried away.

Malloy had a lot to answer for, she thought to herself, turning her loose in this house without a proper explanation. Yes, he’d been worried about Mrs. Wooten giving birth at any moment, but really, there was no excuse for not taking a few more minutes to explain the rest of it. She’d have something to say to him when next they met.

F
RANK FIGURED HE MIGHT AS WELL TRY TO FIND THE teacher at the Lexington Avenue School who had discovered Electra’s involvement with Adam Oldham. He doubted she knew anything about the murder, but he liked to be thorough. And maybe Mr. Higginbotham had thought of something new by now that would help. Maybe he’d remembered that he did see the killer after all, running out of the building just as he arrived, with blood on his hands and a crazed expression on his face. Frank wasn’t holding out much hope, but stranger things had happened. Just not lately.

Miss Helen Dunham turned out to be a respectable middle-aged lady, modestly dressed as became a female who had to make her own way in the world. Her pale blond hair had streaks of silver and was arranged in a neat bun on the back of her neck. Her brown eyes took him in with one practiced glance. In school, his teachers had all been nuns, but they’d used the same method of instantly sizing up a student. Frank could see that she’d already pegged him as a troublemaker. He decided not to disappoint her.

“Miss Dunham, I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy and—”

“I know who you are, and I don’t appreciate being taken away from my students like this. Can’t you come back after school is over?” Plainly, she expected an apology and a promise not to bother her again.

“No, I can’t,” Frank said, absurdly pleased to see the flash of irritation in her eyes. “Please, have a seat,” he added, offering her one of the two straight-backed chairs in Mr. Higginbotham’s office. Higginbotham was out and the receptionist had allowed Frank to use it.

Miss Dunham took a seat, letting Frank know with a look that it was against her better judgment.

“I understand that you recently found one of your students in a compromising position,” Frank said when he had seated himself.

“Who told you that?” she asked, horrified.

Frank had been taking a shot in the dark, but he hadn’t really expected such a strong reaction. “Several people. Electra Wooten for one.”

“I’m sure she didn’t tell you I found her in a
compromising position
,” Miss Dunham said with a frown. “She considered it all very innocent, but there was nothing innocent at all in the way that young man was looking at her.”

“Where did you find them?”

“At the Astor Library,” she said, confirming what he’d already learned, “but just because they were in a public place doesn’t excuse their conduct. The fact that they were together at all was scandalous. Electra is only sixteen. She could have been ruined if anyone found out she’d been secretly meeting this . . . this person.”

“How did you happen to be at the Astor Library at the same time they were?” Frank asked.

Miss Dunham had the grace to look embarrassed. “I had followed Electra.”

“Was that something you normally did?” he asked as mildly as he could.

“Of course not!” she said, mortified at the suggestion she was in the habit of sneaking around after her students. “I suspected she was up to something when I saw her walking in the wrong direction when she left school that day, and as it turned out, she was. She was meeting that man.”

“I understand he’s a teacher at the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.”

“So he said,” Miss Dunham said. “I can’t confirm that. I only know that he was alone with Electra when I found them, and she admitted they had been secretly meeting for several months.”

“If she’s a student here, why did she need another teacher?” Frank asked with as much innocence as he could muster. He didn’t think he was fooling her, though. She just glared at him.

“She had some ridiculous notion that she needed to learn to . . . to sign.” She said the word as if it caused her pain.

“Don’t you teach that here?” Frank asked, feigning ignorance.

“Only to the students who aren’t able to master speech and speechreading, and we give the students every opportunity to do so before we allow them to learn to sign.”

“Why is that?”

She really hated talking about this. He could see it practically radiating from her. “Because students who only know how to sign aren’t able to communicate with the rest of the world.”

“By ‘the rest of the world,’ I assume you mean people who can hear.”

“Exactly.”

“Have you been Electra’s teacher for very long?”

“For five years,” she said with a measure of pride.

“What subject do you teach?” he asked in surprise.

“I teach speaking and speechreading. It’s very difficult, as you can imagine, and takes years and years of close individual attention. I only have four students at a time. Electra is my most accomplished,” she added.

“After all your hard work, you must have been disappointed to find her with Mr. Oldham.”

“I’m not sure I would say I was
disappointed
,” she said, although she plainly was.

“After all the years you spent teaching her to talk?” he asked doubtfully. “Anybody would have been. You must’ve been angry, too. After all you did for her, and then she sneaks out with this fellow and learns to sign like . . . like . . .”

But Miss Dunham wasn’t going to admit to being angry. “I was hurt, I’ll admit. I simply can’t imagine why she’d want to learn to sign.”

“Did you ask her?”

“Of course I did!”

“And what did she say?”

“A lot of nonsense,” Miss Dunham said, angry whether she wanted to admit it or not. “Why would she want to . . . to
limit
herself when she’d spent years and years learning to speak?”

Frank didn’t think she really wanted him to explain that to her. “What did you do when you found Electra with Mr. Oldham?”

“I took her away, of course, back here to the school. Then I told Mr. Higginbotham. I felt it was his place to deal with the situation.”

“Then you didn’t tell her parents?”

“No, of course not. That was Mr. Higginbotham’s duty.”

“Did you tell anyone else?”

“I . . . I suppose I may have mentioned it to some of the other teachers. I was upset, you see, and they wanted to know what was wrong.”

“That would be understandable,” Frank said. “Do you remember who else you told?”

“No, I don’t. What does it matter? After what happened to Mr. Wooten, I’m sure everyone at the school knows by now anyway.”

She was probably right. Frank wasn’t even sure why he’d asked her that, but something was nagging at him. Someone had known about Electra and Oldham who shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t remember who it was. “Someone killed Electra’s father,” Frank reminded her. “I’m just trying to figure out who might have had a reason.”

“That Mr. Oldham certainly did. I’m sure Mr. Wooten would have had him horsewhipped, if he could.”

“And why is that?” Frank asked with interest.

“What do you mean?” she asked warily. His interest had alarmed her, for some reason.

“Just what I said. Why would Mr. Wooten have wanted to horsewhip Mr. Oldham? What do you think he did to deserve it?”

“He . . . He . . . Many things,” she finally decided.

“Like what?”

“Like meeting Electra in secret,” she said. “She’s only a child.”

“Do you think Mr. Oldham seduced her?”

Color flooded her face at such a frank question. “I have no idea, but the mere fact that they were meeting was enough to ruin her reputation.”

This was true. “What else had he done?”

She pressed her lips together, as if trying to hold back what she really wanted to say.

Frank said it for her. “He taught her to sign.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And Mr. Wooten wouldn’t have liked that.”

“Of course not! It went against everything he believed in. He wanted her to speak and to understand the spoken word so she would never have to be isolated or shunned by people who can hear.”

“In your opinion, which would have been the worst crime in Mr. Wooten’s eyes—seducing his daughter or teaching her to sign?”

Miss Dunham stiffened in silent resistance. “I could not possibly speak for Mr. Wooten.”

“Can you speak for yourself then?” he asked. “Which was worse in your eyes?”

To Frank’s surprise, Miss Dunham’s eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t going to answer him, but she didn’t need to. Frank knew. She would have considered Electra’s learning to sign a personal betrayal of all Miss Dunham had taught her.

When Frank finally dismissed Miss Dunham back to her students, he found Mr. Higginbotham had returned and was waiting patiently for Frank to be finished using his office.

“Have you found out who killed Mr. Wooten?” Higginbotham asked when they were alone.

“Not yet,” Frank said. “I don’t suppose you’ve remembered anything else from the day you found Mr. Wooten’s body.”

“Not a thing I haven’t already told you. I try not to think about it at all, quite honestly. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that scene, seeing him lying there . . .” Mr. Higginbotham shuddered.

“When did you find out that Electra was seeing Mr. Oldham?” Frank asked.

He considered the question. “Last Thursday, I believe. Yes, that’s right. Miss Dunham brought Electra to me.”

“What time was that?”

“I’m not sure, not exactly. But it was late in the afternoon. School was out for the day. Most of our students board with us because they live too far away to go home, but Electra went home each night. She’d left the school, as she usually did, but Miss Dunham had followed her that day.”

Frank felt stupid. He hadn’t asked Miss Dunham why she’d chosen to follow Electra that particular night. “Do you know why she did that?”

“Yes, she told me later. She said she’d seen Electra signing to one of the other students, and when she asked Electra about it, she lied and said it hadn’t happened.”