Murder on Lexington Avenue (9 page)

“Annie!” he called, leaning over the railing to the hallway below.

The girl came racing up the stairs, holding her skirts in both hands, her eyes wide and her face pale with fright.

“I need to send for someone. Give me some paper and a pencil, and I’ll write down the address.”

She hesitated, looking up the stairs to see if someone in authority would appear to tell her if she needed to obey his request, but no one did.

“Give him whatever he needs,” Young snapped, and that apparently was all she required.

She took Frank into a small room that had a desk and rummaged for the writing implements. He jotted down the directions to Bank Street and then wrote a short note. He folded it and gave it to the girl. “Have one of the servants take this to Mrs. Brandt at this address and tell her I need to see her here at once.”

The girl took the paper gingerly. “Should I send the carriage?” she asked uncertainly.

“No, it’ll be faster to go on foot.” It was often faster to go on foot than to maneuver a carriage through the traffic that clogged the city’s streets. He just hoped they’d find Sarah at home. He wasn’t sure what he would do if she wasn’t available.

The maid nodded and hurried off. When Frank returned to the hallway, Mrs. Parmer was coming down from the floor above.

“I sent for the midwife,” he told her.

“I can’t believe this,” she said, looking slightly dazed. Then she saw Young lurking and she turned on him. “You . . . you
cad
!” she cried. “How could you do such a thing!”

Frank didn’t think she really wanted to know the answer to that question, and he was sure Young didn’t want to answer it, so he tried to distract her. “Shouldn’t someone stay with Mrs. Wooten?”

“I called for her maid. She’s getting her settled,” she said distractedly. “I can’t believe this is happening!”

“Where are the children?” Frank asked, thinking he could use his time productively while he waited for Sarah by questioning them in addition to Young.

“I have no idea,” she said, giving Young another glare.

“I should go,” he said and started sidling toward the stairs.

“I told you, I need to talk to you,” Frank reminded him. “If you’ll excuse us, Mrs. Parmer,” he added, “I need to ask Young some questions about your brother’s murder.”

“Ask him some questions about my brother’s widow’s seduction while you’re about it,” she said through gritted teeth.

Frank clapped a hand on Young’s shoulder and directed him to the parlor where Mrs. Wooten had received him on his first visit.

 

 

“I
T’S FROM MR. MALLOY,” SHE TOLD SARAH, PASSING IT to her.

Sarah ignored the small flutter in her stomach at the mention of Malloy’s name. He’d sent her plenty of messages in the months she had known him. This one shouldn’t cause her any special excitement. And of course, it wasn’t exactly a personal message. His familiar scrawl informed her that someone needed her professional services immediately and would she please come?

The young footman didn’t appear to be as excited as the normal male who was sent to fetch a midwife. Usually, the messenger who came to summon her was nearly panicked by the time he reached her door. “I’ll just be a few minutes. I have to gather my medical supplies,” she told him.

This distracted him from admiring Maeve, and he looked up in surprise. “Medical? Are you some kind of doctor?” he asked. “I never saw a woman doctor.”

To his chagrin, Maeve and Catherine giggled at his ignorance. “She’s a midwife,” Maeve informed him.

“What’s a midwife?” he asked, making them giggle again.

“She delivers babies,” Maeve informed him.

This surprised him, and his surprise dismayed Sarah. She glanced at Malloy’s message again and saw that it clearly said he needed her professional services. Was it possible this boy didn’t know someone in the house where he worked was expecting? Yes, she realized, that was indeed possible.

She pulled out her medical bag and began to check her supplies to make sure she would have everything she needed.

 

 

T
ERRANCE YOUNG WASN’T YET THIRTY YEARS OLD. HE was his father’s son, stocky but not yet fat, and not particularly handsome. His mousy brown hair was already thinning and had been carefully pomaded into place to cover the bare spots.

Sweat had beaded on Young’s upper lip, and he licked it off nervously. “I can’t imagine why you want to question me,” he protested unconvincingly.

“Well, let’s start with what you and Mrs. Wooten were doing when I came into her room just now.”

“We were talking,” he informed Frank defensively. He wasn’t very good at outrage, and Frank managed not to roll his eyes.

“Are you hard of hearing?” Frank asked blandly.

“Hard of hearing? No, of course not!”

“Then why did you have to sit so close to her? She was practically in your lap.”

The color bloomed in Young’s face, turning it crimson. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Then you’re even stupider than I thought,” Frank replied.

Young decided to take offense at that. “You have no right to keep me here,” he tried.

“You’re right, I don’t. Maybe I should take you down to Police Headquarters and lock you up instead.”

The crimson stain drained from his face. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Most people would think that seducing another man’s wife was wrong,” Frank countered.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t I? Well, then, why don’t you explain it to me.”

“It’s none of your business!” he tried desperately.

“Of course it’s my business. If you and Mrs. Wooten are lovers and she’s carrying a child and Mr. Wooten would have known it couldn’t be his, then both of you have a good reason to want him dead.”

“I never! How dare you even suggest such a thing! I could never . . . Mr. Wooten was like a father to me!”

“And was Mrs. Wooten like a mother to you?” Frank asked curiously.

His face grew scarlet again. “You can’t speak about her that way!”

“What way?” Frank asked. “I didn’t intend to insult her, although it’s hard not to, knowing what I know about her. Answer my question, was she like a mother to you?”

“My mother died when I was two,” Young told him, every word sounding as if it were being pulled from him like a bad tooth. “When my father and Mr. Wooten became partners, Mrs. Wooten was very kind to me, welcoming me into her home.”

“Welcoming you into her bedroom,” Frank added.

“None of this concerns you,” Young insisted impatiently. “Wooten is dead and I had nothing to do with it. That’s all you need to know.”

“Then you won’t mind telling me where you were on Saturday.”

His expression tightened as he realized that was the day Wooten was murdered. “I was at the office that morning, as usual. I left at noon, like everyone else.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, Mr. Wooten stayed. He often did.”

“Who was the last one out of the building?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t me.”

“Do you have a key to the building?”

“No, I don’t.”

“But your father does.”

“Of course he does. He owns it.”

“And you’re his son. Why don’t you have one?”

“I don’t need one. The clerk has one, and he opens the door for everyone first thing and locks up at the end of the day.”

“And you can always borrow your father’s key if you need it.”

“I suppose I could . . . Wait a minute! I don’t like your implication!”

“I don’t have an implication. I was just stating a fact, and you agreed. Did you borrow your father’s key and go back to the office on Saturday?”

“Certainly not!”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t need it. I had no intention of going back to that godforsaken office again until Monday. Why should I?”

“Don’t you like your work?”

He sputtered at that, loath to admit he didn’t and unable to deny it.

“All right,” Frank said, relieving him of the burden of replying. “What did you need to talk to Wooten about that afternoon?”

Young’s eyes grew wide. “Nothing!” he lied, too forcefully.

Frank had taken a shot in the dark and hit a bull’s-eye. “Were you going to confess your love for Mrs. Wooten and ask him to divorce her so you could live happily ever after?”

“Of course not!” he cried, although Frank wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not. Even though that would have been a foolish thing to do, people had been doing foolish things that ended in murder ever since Cain killed Abel.

“Then what
were
you going to talk to him about?”

“I wasn’t, not really. I just . . . Well, uh . . . I was going to speak to him about Electra.”

“What about her?” Frank said, his interest piqued.

“She . . . It had just come to my attention that she has been conducting herself in a manner completely inappropriate for a girl in her position.”

“What position is that?”

“As Nehemiah Wooten’s daughter,” he clarified indignantly. “What else could it be?”

“I thought you might have meant her being deaf. Was she acting inappropriately for a deaf girl?”

“I don’t think a deaf girl is held to a different standard than a normal girl,” he said haughtily.

Frank wondered if Electra Wooten would appreciate being considered different from a “normal” girl. He’d have to ask her. “How was she being
inappropriate
?”

Young’s lips thinned down into a stubborn line.

Frank shrugged. “I can wait all night for your answer, Mr. Young, but it will be much more convenient for me if we’re at Police Headquarters because I can lock you up down there.”

“You wouldn’t dare lock me up,” Young said, having recovered some of his common sense as the shock of Valora Wooten’s pregnancy began to wear off. “My father would have your job.”

He certainly would, Frank knew. “But you would still have been locked up in a cell with every drunk and crook and murderer in the city overnight. So why don’t you just explain what you wanted to tell Mr. Wooten on Saturday.”

Young heaved a weary sigh. “It has come to my attention that Electra is . . . Well, she’s been secretly seeing a young man who is totally unsuitable for her. I was going to inform him of that.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No, I did not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I learned that Mr. Wooten had already learned this information and Mr. Higginbotham from the school Electra attends was meeting with him that afternoon to discuss the matter.”

“So you’re saying you didn’t meet with Mr. Wooten that afternoon?”

“No, I did not.”

“And what did you do instead?”

“I went for a long walk in Central Park.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“Hundreds of people saw me.”

“Would anyone
remember
seeing you?” Frank tried.

Young’s expression was bleak. “Probably not, but since I didn’t kill Mr. Wooten, it doesn’t matter. I’d like to leave now.”

Frank studied him. He wasn’t going to get anything else out of him today. Still, he couldn’t resist a parting shot. “Don’t you even want to know if your child is a boy or a girl?”

Young’s gaze darted upward as he recalled Mrs. Wooten’s condition and what it meant. “I had no idea!” he told Frank. He actually sounded aggrieved. “She never said a word to me.”

“Didn’t you notice that she got fat?” Surely somebody had noticed that, but Mrs. Parmer had seemed as surprised as Young.

“Valora . . . I mean, Mrs. Wooten has always been a voluptuous woman. She has seemed a bit more so of late, but I never thought . . . Did
you
think she was with child?”

Frank had to admit it had never crossed his mind. She certainly didn’t have the usual profile of a pregnant female, and her age also made it unlikely, especially considering how old her children were and how long it had been since she’d last given birth.

“Why would Wooten have been so certain the baby wasn’t his?” Frank asked.

“The obvious reason,” Young said, mortified by the question.

“You mean Wooten no longer shared his wife’s bed?” Frank guessed. “Why not?”

“That’s something you will have to discuss with Mrs. Wooten,” Young said, and from the satisfied gleam in his eye, Young knew Frank would never dare do such a thing.

He could, however, ask Sarah Brandt to.

 

 

S
ARAH WAS GLAD THEY HADN’T SENT A CARRIAGE FOR HER. Traffic in the city and the jams at every intersection made traveling by carriage slow and nerve-wracking, which was why Sarah usually refused to be transported unless the case was especially far away. The young footman, whose name, Sarah had learned on their brisk walk and their ride on the Sixth Avenue Elevated Train, was Jack, had carried her bag all the way to the Wootens’ front door. On the way, she had learned where she was going, although Jack knew nothing that could enlighten her as to why a midwife’s services might be needed at his employer’s house. The master had been murdered a few days ago—maybe she’d heard about it. Sarah hadn’t been out since Friday and hadn’t seen any newspapers or even had the opportunity to hear the corner newsboys shouting the details of the latest crimes in order to sell their wares. So she hadn’t heard about the murder.

Jack was only too happy to tell her all the ugly details of how Mr. Wooten had had his head smashed in by someone who had broken into his office. She couldn’t help wondering how much of the story was true and how much had been exaggerated in the servants’ quarters from rumors and eavesdropping and from the sensationalized version in the newspapers. Sarah comforted herself in the knowledge that Malloy would never have sent for her unless he was in desperate need of her assistance. A woman in labor had inspired many men to a desperate need for her assistance.