Murder on Mulberry Bend (37 page)

“Oh dear!”

“I’m sure they were frightened when Richard and that detective came in shouting. Now that things have settled down, they’ll probably come back. We can hope, at least.”

Sarah sighed and looked down at Aggie’s sweet face. “What should I do with Aggie?” she asked, wondering where the child normally slept so she could put her to bed.

“I think she should go to an orphanage,” Opal said, misunderstanding the question. “This certainly isn’t the right place for her, and a child that young deserves a chance to be adopted.”

Sarah gaped at her in surprise. “I ... I didn’t mean that, but now that you say it ... I realize you’re right. These girls have so many problems themselves, they shouldn’t be expected to look after a child. And neither should whomever you find to operate the mission.”

“Some of the girls might also be a bad influence on her,” Opal pointed out. “I’m sure Mrs. Wells kept her here out of selfishness, probably because she wanted a replacement for her daughter who died.”

“She might not be adopted from an orphanage, though,” Sarah said with a frown. “Many children aren’t, and a child who doesn’t speak isn’t very likely to be chosen. I hate the thought of her growing up in an institution.”

“If you feel that way, maybe you should keep her yourself,” Opal suggested with a small smile. “She’s very attached to you already. Come on, we’ll take her upstairs and tuck her in.”

But Sarah was looking down at the small face, so angelic in sleep. Opal had just been teasing, but Sarah didn’t find the suggestion humorous at all. In fact, she found it terrifyingly compelling.

She couldn’t raise a child, of course. She worked long hours and got called out in the middle of the night. Who would take care of Aggie when Sarah couldn’t be home? The whole idea was insane.

“Sarah, you didn’t fall asleep yourself, did you?” Opal called from the doorway.

“No, I’m coming,” she said, lifting Aggie’s delicate body in her arms. Yes, she would be crazy to take on the responsibility of a child. What had she been thinking?

 

For some reason, Frank hadn’t expected the mission to look exactly the same as it always had. By rights, he supposed, it should have changed color or something, now that it was free of the Devil Woman who had run it.

While he’d been taking Mrs. Wells out to the police wagon, the old priest had accused her again of killing other girls in the past. To Frank’s horror, she had admitted it, perversely proud that she had sent them to heaven while they were in what she called a state of grace — before they could backslide into evil once more. He still shuddered when he thought of the righteous expression on her face when she described robbing those young girls of their lives.

This morning, Frank only knew that he had to see Sarah Brandt and make sure she was truly all right. By the time he’d gotten Mrs. Wells legally incarcerated last night, it had been too late to seek her out. Now he was making his first stop at the mission, figuring she would have returned there at the first opportunity.

“Malloy,” Sarah Brandt said with a smile when she opened the door to him. That smile brightened an already beautiful day.

“How are you this morning?” he asked, pulling off his bowler hat as he stepped into the foyer.

“A little bruised, but nothing that won’t heal,” she said with a rueful smile. She led him into the parlor and offered him a seat.

He chose one of the sturdier-looking chairs. She picked the rocker, as if she needed comfort.

“I’m sorry about Dennis,” he said and watched her smile vanish.

“How did you know?”

“I checked with the hospital.”

“She must have somehow managed to get the pin into his heart,” she explained. Talking about it obviously pained her. “It had to have been an accident. I don’t think she had time to plan it, and even if she did, the chances that she could pierce his clothing and slip the pin in between his ribs are very small. To hit his heart after all of that — well, as I said, it had to have been an accident.”

“She might be the first woman to meet up with Old Sparky,” he said. “Nobody cared about the poor girls she killed, but she won’t get away with murdering Dennis and his wife.”

“That’s not much comfort,” she said. “Her execution won’t bring them back.”

“At least it’ll keep her from doing it again. The old priest was right — there were other girls before Emilia. God only knows how long she’s been sending girls to heaven.”

“How on earth did she decide that was her job?” she asked, outraged.

“I spent a lot of time with her last night. Seems like she decided when her husband was sick. She had a little girl who died years ago, and she kept telling herself the girl was better off in heaven. She nursed her husband for a long time, and then she started thinking he’d be better off in heaven, too.”

“She killed her husband?” Sarah asked, her blue eyes wide with horror.

“Yeah. She thought she did him a favor, too.”

“Did she kill him the same way she killed the girls?”

“Yeah, she said she’d learned it from her father, from killing animals.”

“Oh, yes,” Sarah remembered. “She said her father was a butcher.” Why hadn’t she realized the connection then?

“After she killed her husband,” Malloy continued, “she started killing girls. She chose the ones she thought might go back to their evil ways if she didn’t stop them.”

“Emilia had already left the mission once and returned to her lover,” she reminded him. “That’s probably why she was killed.”

“And she wanted to kill you because you weren’t going to stop until you found out who murdered Emilia. She couldn’t take the chance that you’d figure out she did it. She picked the church as an insult to the priest there because he’d been so critical of her mission.”

Just saying the words made Frank’s blood run cold, and she shuddered, too.

“I’m so tired of death,” she said, and a tear rolled down her cheek. The sight of it burned his soul like acid.

Frank thought of Tom Brandt and what he now knew about the good doctor’s murder. Once he’d hoped to solve that mystery and give her peace and a touch of justice. That hope was gone. Telling her the truth would shatter the world she had built for herself, and he could never do that to her. His effort to repay her for all she’d done for his son had ended in ruin.

“What’s going to happen to this place?” he asked to change the subject.

“Some of the women who’ve been supporting the mission are going to hire someone to run it. They think the work is too important to give up on it.”

Frank nodded, figuring they had to do at least as well as Mrs. Wells had done.

“Malloy, I wanted to tell you,” she said a little tentatively. “I told Richard’s family that he died saving my life and Aggie’s. I know you didn’t think much of him,” she added hastily, “but he was a good man.”

And he’d certainly cared very deeply for Sarah, Frank knew. He’d been as desperate as Frank to save her from that madwoman. Frank shouldn’t be surprised that she’d cared for Dennis in return. He had been everything Frank was not and would never be — a man who could earn Sarah’s love. “Yes,” he agreed, “he was a good man.”

She seemed relieved, perhaps even glad. He couldn’t tell.

“I need to get back to work,” he said, rising from his chair. If he didn’t leave, he might say something that would embarrass them both.

“Thank you for coming. I needed to talk about what happened,” she said.

When he turned to take his leave, he saw an expression on her face that he’d never seen before. Probably, she was thinking of Dennis.

“Will I see you soon?” she asked.

“Sure,” he lied. He knew he couldn’t ever see her again. He loved her too much, and knowing him was far too dangerous. Each time they met, she almost died, which meant she was only safe without him. It would take a miracle to bring them together again.

Or a murder.

As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, I’ve long been aware of the prejudice the Italians endured when they began coming to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I was fascinated to learn, however, that the Irish, who had been the most recent group of immigrants to endure persecution, were among those persecuting the Italians. Everyone, it seems, must have someone over whom to feel superior. In that respect, human beings haven’t changed a bit in the last hundred years.

I’d like to thank my writer friends who helped me come up with the unique method of killing the victims in this book. In the nineteenth century, an Austrian empress actually was killed the same way Richard Dennis was, although the weapon was a thin-bladed knife and not a hat pin. Then I happened to see a display of antique hat pins while I was plotting this story, and I knew I’d found the murder weapon. Finally, thanks to Dr. Jim Hughes for explaining what would happen to someone when a hat pin was inserted into the base of her brain.

I hope you enjoyed this book. If you missed the earlier books in the Gaslight series, they are
Murder on Astor Place, Murder on St. Mark’s Place, Murder on Gramercy Park, and Murder on Washington Square.

If you send me an e-mail, I will send you a reminder when the next book in the series,
Murder on Marble Row,
comes out next year. You can contact me through my web page at
www.victoriathompson.net
.