Murder on Lexington Avenue (5 page)

“What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?” she asked, still annoyed. She was always annoyed by Frank.

“That he’s a fine young man. Does it mean he doesn’t smoke or drink or does it mean he’s a good teacher or does it just mean he’s handsome?”

“I don’t know where you get these ideas!” she exclaimed, snatching up the empty plate in front of him and carrying it over to the sink to wash.

Frank bit back a smile. “I guess that means he’s handsome.”

She gave him a glare over her shoulder, and Frank noticed Brian was watching the conversation with great interest. He could only imagine the boy’s interpretation of what was going on. “He’s a nice- looking young man, if that’s what you mean,” she conceded, “but he’s also very responsible, and he doesn’t smoke or drink, at least that I know of.”

“He’s a good teacher, then?”

“I suppose so. They wouldn’t keep him if he wasn’t. He’s deaf, you know.”

“I did know,” Frank said, recalling that was the reason he was an unsuitable husband for Electra Wooten.

“If you know so much, why are you asking me about him?”

Frank bit back his own irritation. “Did you know he wanted to marry a deaf girl?”

This surprised her, he was gratified to see. She frowned as she dried the dish he’d used and put it into the cabinet. “I never heard nothing about it,” she decided. “All the female students . . . Well, like I said, he’s handsome, and girls can be silly. Even some of the teachers . . . But the female teachers aren’t deaf, at least not most of them.”

“This girl isn’t a student there. She goes to the Lexington Avenue School.”

Now she was even more surprised. “What would he want with a girl from there? They don’t teach signing. How would he even talk to her?”

Frank thought that two healthy, attractive young people could probably figure that out, but he said, “That’s a good question. Does Mr. Oldham know how to talk at all?”

“Not that I know of. How did you know about the girl?”

Frank ignored the question. “Do you know anything about his family?”

“No, why would I?”

Frank persevered. “Does it seem like he comes from rich people or poor people?”

“How would I know that?”

“His clothes, for one thing,” Frank said impatiently. “Are they shabby, like he lives off what they pay him at the school, or are they expensive, like somebody else buys them for him?”

“Shabby,” she said in disgust, but he wasn’t sure what she was disgusted about. “They don’t pay the deaf men teachers as much as they pay the ones who can hear, and the women get even less than that.”

“Why don’t they pay the deaf men as much?” Frank asked curiously. He didn’t have to ask why they paid the women less. Women always got paid less.

“Because they don’t have to,” his mother said, shaking her head at his stupidity. “A deaf man can’t work just anywhere, like a man who hears can. He has to take what they give him, and be happy about it.”

“Just like the Irish,” Frank said.

His mother frowned. She didn’t like being reminded that, to many, being Irish Catholic still meant you weren’t as good as other people. “Worse than that,” she said, surprising him.

“What do you mean, worse?”

“I mean even if you’re Irish, you can talk to people and know what they’re saying back. You can go into a shop and buy something without using a pencil and paper to make yourself understood. You can listen to music or go to a play. You can go to church, if you’ve a mind to, and know what they’re talking about.”

Frank was sending Brian to school so someday he’d be able to support himself, and Frank didn’t like thinking how limited Brian’s opportunities would still be. “But you have to take the jobs they’ll give you, Irish or deaf.”

“Mr. Oldham, he went to college and everything. There’s a college just for deaf people in Washington.”

“And they taught him how to be a teacher?”

She gave him a withering glare. “Of course not! They don’t teach deaf people to be teachers, not even at that deaf college. They taught him something else, but he wanted to be a teacher, so he came here, and they hired him.”

“Even though he’s deaf?”

She sniffed. “Like I said, they don’t have to pay him as much as a hearing teacher.”

“So they hired him because he’s cheap.”

She shrugged, apparently unwilling to speak for the school administrators. “You never did say why you’re so interested in Mr. Oldham,” she reminded him.

“A man was murdered this afternoon, and his daughter is deaf.”

Her eyes widened. “Is she the girl Mr. Oldham was supposed to marry?”

“According to Mr. Higginbotham, who works at the Lexington Avenue School, where she goes.”

“She’s a student? How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

She was frowning again.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Seems a little young for Mr. Oldham.”

“How old is he?”

“No more than thirty, I’d guess, but still . . .”

“She’s a looker,” Frank said.

This time her frown was more like a glower. “That still don’t explain how he met her. Those people at the Lexington School . . .”

“What about them?” he asked when she hesitated.

“They don’t mix,” she said.

“Mix? Who don’t they mix with?”

“With the other deaf people, the ones who use signs. It’s like . . .”

“Like what?” Frank asked, growing impatient again.

“Like they think they’ll catch something. They don’t want their students to know anything about signing at all for fear . . . Well, I don’t know exactly what they’re afraid of, but they don’t want them anywhere near somebody who uses signs.”

Frank had known about the differences of opinion between those who taught speechreading and those who taught signing, but he didn’t know it ran quite so deep. “Who told you all this?”

“Nobody in particular,” she said indignantly. “The teachers just talk. They think it’s important for me to know things, so I can take better care of Brian.”

Frank looked at his mother as if he’d never seen her before. He’d known her all his life, of course, but she’d always just been his mother, someone who cooked and cleaned and sewed and gossiped with the neighbors. When Kathleen had died, and he’d needed someone to take care of Brian, she’d stepped in, but she’d just kept on doing the same things she’d always done.

Until now.

Now she was someone who was advising him on a murder case.

“What are you looking at?” she snapped, annoyed at him again.

“Nothing,” he said, rising from his chair and helping Brian scramble down from his. After a moment, he asked, “What do you think a father would do if he found out his daughter who can speech- read and talk was being courted by a deaf man who used signs?”

“He wouldn’t like it one bit,” she said without the slightest hesitation.

“Would he forbid them to marry?”

“He’d forbid them to even see each other again.”

“And what about your Mr. Oldham? What would he do?”

“He’s not
my
Mr. Oldham!” she informed him indignantly.

“What would he do?”

She sniffed. “The same thing you’d do. Don’t think he’s any different from any other man, just because he’s deaf.”

Frank sighed as he let Brian lead him back into the front room, where his toys awaited. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

S
ARAH BRANDT SAT ON HER BACK PORCH, WATCHING HER daughter, Catherine, and Catherine’s nursemaid, Maeve, as they pulled weeds from the flower bed they had planted in the spring. Maeve was carefully explaining to Catherine which of the sprouts were weeds and which were flowers, so she didn’t pull the wrong ones.

Sarah smiled, savoring the warm Sunday afternoon sunshine and the sweet domesticity of the moment. They’d all been to church that morning—a rare opportunity, since Sarah’s job as a midwife often kept her away from home. Now that Sunday dinner was over, they had nothing to do but enjoy the beautiful day.

The back gate opened, and they all looked up to see Sarah’s neighbor Mrs. Ellsworth entering. She was carrying a napkin-covered plate, and the girls hurried to greet her. Maeve took the plate from her and offered her some lemonade, which she gratefully accepted. After a few minutes, when Mrs. Ellsworth had been served and everyone had sampled the cookies she had brought, the girls went back to their gardening, leaving the two women sitting in the shade of the porch, sipping their lemonade.

“You spoil us, Mrs. Ellsworth,” Sarah said, holding up the cookie she was about to eat.

“Who else do I have to spoil?” her neighbor replied. An elderly widow who kept house for her grown son, Nelson, she used to spend her days sweeping her front stoop in order to know what everyone on Bank Street was doing. Now she spent her days helping Sarah and Maeve take care of the child Sarah had found at the Prodigal Son Mission. Mrs. Ellsworth’s gaze drifted to where Catherine was enthusiastically pulling weeds. “She’s doing so well.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe it myself,” Sarah confirmed. “When I first brought her home, I was afraid she might never speak again.” When Catherine had been found abandoned on the doorstep of the Mission a year earlier, she had been mute and, with one exception, hadn’t spoken a word until she’d been living with Sarah for several weeks.

“Does she ever say anything about her past?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked.

“Not to me, but I haven’t really asked if she remembers anything. The doctors I consulted said that she’d probably stopped speaking because something had terrified her, and I’ve been afraid to bring up bad memories.”

“I don’t blame you for that, but I thought she might have said something, maybe even without realizing it.”

“She probably spends more time with you than she does with me,” Sarah reminded her with a smile, “so you would know better than I.”

Mrs. Ellsworth smiled back. “I do enjoy being with them both. But you’re her mother, Mrs. Brandt.”

“You know I’m not really her mother,” Sarah reminded her.

“Maybe not legally,” Mrs. Ellsworth said with a dismissive wave of her hand, discounting the technicality that forbade unmarried women from adopting. “But you’re her mother in every way that matters, and she’d say things to you that she’d never say to me.”

“Maybe she will, in time. But the doctors also said that she just might not remember anything at all from her previous life. Whatever shocked her into silence may have blocked out those memories, too.”

“Maybe it’s for the best, then. I’d hate for her to remember something terrible.”

“Me, too, but . . .” Sarah sighed. “I also can’t help wondering if she has a family somewhere who’s been looking for her. As much as I love her and would hate to lose her, if her real mother is out there someplace, grieving for her . . .”

“There, there, now don’t upset yourself. If someone did separate her from her family, it’s not your fault. I know you’d do anything you could to bring them back together again, but you can’t feel guilty about it when we both know how impossible that would be.”

Sarah watched Catherine for another moment, and then said, “I just keep thinking about that female Pinkerton detective who helped us last spring.”

“Do you think she’d be able to find out what happened to Catherine’s family?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked in surprise.

“Not really,” Sarah admitted. “Even a trained detective would need someplace to start, and we don’t know a single thing about Catherine’s background. I guess it’s just wishful thinking.”

“Maybe someday Catherine will tell you something that will help.”

“Maybe,” Sarah conceded without much enthusiasm.

The two women sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the two girls.

Suddenly, Mrs. Ellsworth said, “I wonder how Mr. Malloy’s son is doing in that school.”

Sarah looked at her sharply, but the older woman’s expression was a mask of innocence. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

Mrs. Ellsworth looked surprised. “Haven’t you seen Mr. Malloy lately?”

“You know I haven’t,” Sarah said, not fooled. “And no, I don’t have any plans to see him either.”

Mrs. Ellsworth frowned her disapproval. “I don’t know what’s wrong with that man. First, he’s here every day, and then he disappears for weeks at a time.”

“He’s never here every day,” Sarah corrected her, “and he’s only here when he’s investigating a murder that someone close to me is involved with.”

“I suppose no one you know has been murdered lately, then,” she said with a sigh.

Sarah bit back a grin at Mrs. Ellsworth’s misplaced disappointment. “No, I’m happy to say, they haven’t. My mother hasn’t gotten herself involved in anything strange, and Maeve has been minding her own business, and none of my friends or acquaintances have been dispatched in an unnatural way.”

“I suppose that is good news,” Mrs. Ellsworth allowed. “But I really do wonder how his little boy is. He’ll be back in school by now after the summer break, won’t he?”