Murder on Sisters' Row (6 page)

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“
P
ARDON ME?” SARAH SAID IN SURPRISE.

“I already told you, I always assume people are lying to me, and I’m usually right. That’s because I spend so much time with whores, Mrs. Brandt. They’ll say anything to get what they want.”

“Amy wants her baby to be safe.”

Mrs. Walker raised her eyebrows. “Nobody’s going to hurt it.”

“She’s afraid you’re going to take it away.”

She sighed impatiently. “Of course I’m going to take it away. This is no place for a baby. If men wanted to hear babies crying, they’d stay at home.”

“Where are you going to take him?”

“What business is it of yours?”

Sarah clenched her fists until the fingernails bit into the skin of her palms, but somehow she managed not to scream at this horrible woman. “None, but I know what happens to abandoned babies in the city. I’d like to take him someplace where he’ll be taken care of and perhaps even adopted.”

“You have high hopes for the little brat, don’t you?”

“I just think he deserves a chance to survive. He didn’t choose to be born here.”

“Nobody chooses where they’re born,” Mrs. Walker said. “A midwife should know that. How is Amy?”

“She’s doing well. She should stay in bed for at least two weeks.” Sarah hoped the girl would be gone long before then.

“Since she works on her back, that’s not a hardship,” Mrs. Walker said.

Sarah felt the heat rising in her face, but she refused to let Mrs. Walker make her angry. “She shouldn’t have relations for at least two months.”

“Two months?”
Mrs. Walker echoed in outrage.

“She could get childbed fever and die. You told me yourself she’s valuable to you.”

“She’s not valuable if she can’t work for two months.” Mrs. Walker sighed again, this time in disgust. “All right. If you’re finished with Amy, you can go.” She turned back to her list making, but Sarah didn’t move.

“Will you let me take the baby?”

Mrs. Walker looked up, annoyed. “What on earth do you want him for?”

“I told you, I want to make sure he has a chance. I know an orphanage where they’ll take good care of him.”

“I’m not giving you any money to take him,” she warned.

“I haven’t asked for any.”

“Are you going to sell him?”

“Whom would I sell him to?” Sarah asked in surprise.

Mrs. Walker smiled unpleasantly. “Lots of people would pay to get their hands on a little baby boy.”

“Even if that’s true, I don’t know any of them.”

“You aren’t going to give up, are you?” Mrs. Walker asked.

“No.”

“All right then, you can have him. You’ll save me the trouble.” She turned back to her desk again.

“When should I come for him?”

Mrs. Walker’s expression turned cunning. “How long until Amy’s milk comes in good?”

Sarah remembered what Amy had said about that and managed not to flinch. “A week.”

“Come back when he’s a week old then.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Walker. That’s very kind of you,” Sarah said sincerely.

Her eyes widened in surprise, and the color rose in her pale cheeks. “I don’t mean the child any harm,” she said gruffly. “And I don’t know what she told you, but Amy has a good life here. I take care of all my girls. They get the best of everything.”

Unless they try to leave, Sarah thought, but she said, “I’m sure they do. Will you tell Amy you’ve agreed to let me take her baby?”

“Of course I will. It’ll keep her from crying and carrying on. Men don’t like to hear women crying either. You can go now, Mrs. Brandt. I’ve given you everything you’re going to get.”

 

 

W
HEN SARAH GOT HOME, SHE FOUND A MESSAGE FROM Mrs. Van Orner, asking Sarah to meet her at the Rahab’s Daughters’ office the next morning. Miss Yingling hadn’t wasted any time in contacting her. As much as Sarah hated using her family’s name, the ploy had worked very well this time. Now she supposed she’d have to ask her mother to make a donation. Sarah would make one herself if Mrs. Van Orner and her people could get Amy out of that place.

Sarah spent the rest of the day with her family, enjoying Catherine’s antics and the relief of knowing there was hope for Amy’s predicament. The next morning, she put on her good suit again and made her way to the United Charities Building.

The young man at the front desk remembered her and greeted her by name with much more warmth than she had expected. Miss Yingling must have told him about Sarah’s family connections. Even Miss Yingling welcomed her, although Sarah suspected she was never warm to anyone.

“I’m so glad you could come, Mrs. Brandt,” she said. Her lips curved upward without really forming a smile in the odd way Sarah had noted before. “I’ll announce you.”

She went to a door on the side of the room and knocked, then opened it and told someone Sarah had arrived. She turned back to Sarah and said, “Mrs. Van Orner will see you now.”

She stepped aside so Sarah could enter the adjoining office, and then she closed the door behind Sarah. Mrs. Van Orner had risen from her chair and came around from behind her desk to greet her. Sarah caught a whiff of something clean and minty. Mrs. Van Orner offered her hand, and Sarah took it.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Brandt. Thank you so much for coming on such short notice.” Mrs. Van Orner was nearing forty, but she was still a lovely woman and had maintained her youthful figure. She wore a blue serge walking skirt and a matching bolero jacket over a fashionable Gibson girl shirtwaist, but her light brown hair had been pulled into a simple bun. Her hand was smooth, befitting her status in life as the wife of a wealthy man. The line of her jaw had just begun to soften with age, but grief had carved deep lines into the otherwise fine skin of her face. She had known disappointment in her life. Even wealth could not prevent that, as Sarah knew.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Sarah said when she’d taken a seat in one of the straight-backed chairs that had been placed in front of Mrs. Van Orner’s desk. This room was also simply furnished. A plain wooden cross hung on the wall behind Mrs. Van Orner, the only decoration. The desk and chairs had probably been purchased new but were cheaply made. Mrs. Van Orner wasted nothing on appearances.

Mrs. Van Orner sat down behind her desk again. “Tamar—Miss Yingling—told me about the young woman whose baby you delivered. She’s in one of the houses on Sisters’ Row, I believe?”

“That’s right. I had no idea where I was going that day. I thought it was a boardinghouse.”

“So Miss Yingling said. I’m surprised you stayed once you realized the truth.”

Did Mrs. Van Orner disapprove? Sarah thought perhaps she did, but she didn’t particularly care. “I’m a midwife, Mrs. Van Orner. I couldn’t leave until I knew the young woman and her baby were all right.”

“That’s commendable,” she said, although she didn’t sound as if she really thought so. She’d reached into a desk drawer and she drew out a small tin. “Would you like a peppermint?” She removed the lid and offered the tin to Sarah, who took one.

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Van Orner popped one in her mouth and replaced the lid on the tin. Sarah thought she must suffer from digestive troubles.

“How did this young woman know to send you to me?” Mrs. Van Orner asked.

“She said the other women who work in the house talk about you all the time, about how you rescue girls from brothels.”

“I wish we did,” she said with a sigh, “but we seldom have an opportunity to do so. The women are watched so closely, it’s difficult for them to ask for help, and it’s even more difficult for us to get inside, so we mostly work with streetwalkers. They may have a man who protects them, but it’s still much easier to approach them and get them to safety than to break into a brothel.”

“How will you get into this house?”

“We’ll figure out a plan. We’ll probably go in the morning, when everyone is still sleeping, and catch them by surprise. We’ll have to have a carriage waiting to take the girl away, I suppose.”

“Yes, she won’t be able to walk very far. What about the other women in the house?”

“What about them?”

“Will you rescue them, too?”

Mrs. Van Orner folded her hands on the desktop and leaned forward slightly, her expression solemn as she stared right into Sarah’s eyes. “Mrs. Brandt, this is very difficult work, made more so by the fact that few of the women in these places truly want to be rescued.”

“I can’t believe that!”

“I couldn’t believe it either, when I first started. I assumed that all of them longed to live respectable lives and would gratefully accept my help to free them from their bondage. What I have learned, however, is that even those who do accept my help in escaping will very often return to their lives of shame. They find they prefer that to earning their bread through honest labor.”

“But Miss Yingling said you have a house where they can stay,” Sarah remembered.

“We do, but we can’t keep them forever. Gratuitous charity works evil rather than good, you see. If we continue to support these women, they will learn the dreadful lesson that it’s easy to get a day’s living without working for it.”

Sarah didn’t know where to begin to argue with that philosophy. “What about a woman like Amy, who has a baby? Surely, you can’t expect her to go out and earn her living.”

“The Salvation Army has a crèche where women can leave their children while they work. We wouldn’t expect her to go to work immediately, of course, but eventually she would have to. You earn your own living, do you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“You do have advantages these women do not, however,” Mrs. Van Orner continued. “You could have returned to your parents’ house when you were widowed. You might even eventually remarry and have a husband to support you. If these women do have families—and they usually do not—the families don’t want them back. And I assure you, Mrs. Brandt, there are few men in the world who would knowingly marry a woman who has been a prostitute.”

She was right, of course, as difficult as it was to accept. “But you will try to rescue Amy.”

“Of course. This is a wonderful opportunity. Her story would bring all sorts of attention to the cause.”

Sarah would have preferred her to want to rescue Amy for the girl’s sake, but she would take what she could get. “What can I do to help?”

“As I said, we have to make a plan. First we’ll have to decide when the girl can safely be moved.”

“I’ve arranged with Mrs. Walker, the madam, to take the baby next Tuesday.”

“She’s going to let you have the child?” Mrs. Van Orner asked in surprise.

“Yes, I made a nuisance of myself until she agreed. Amy was terrified that they would take the baby and she’d never see him again, so I wanted to be able to keep him safe.”

Mrs. Van Orner seemed to be seeing Sarah in an entirely new light. “That was very clever of you.”

“I don’t feel very clever. I feel helpless.”

“You won’t feel helpless when this is over, Mrs. Brandt. You are going to be of tremendous assistance to us. You will need to meet with the people who work with me and tell them everything you remember about the house and the people in it.”

“I’ll be happy to do that. When can we meet?”

“Would you be available on Monday?”

“I’ll make a point of it.”

“I’ll gather my associates, and we’ll meet here at ten o’clock. That will give us adequate time to arrange for the carriage and whatever else we will need.”

“Is this going to be dangerous?”

“Extremely.”

Sarah looked at Mrs. Van Orner and wondered what had motivated her to take up such a mission. “I must admit, I admire you very much.”

“Please don’t. We all do our duty. ‘Faith without works is dead,’ ” she added, quoting a scripture verse.

“Yes, but a woman of your position in life could be considered a ‘faithful servant’ by just rolling bandages for a leper colony or filling barrels of old clothes for foreign missionaries.”

“A woman of your position could do the same, yet you’ve chosen to be a midwife.”

Sarah had to smile. “You’re right. I didn’t think of it that way.”

“There’s no need to think of it at all. I do what I must. Don’t admire me for it, Mrs. Brandt. It is my cross to bear.”

 

 

S
ARAH WAS STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT MRS. VAN Orner had meant by that odd comment as she walked to the United Charities Building on Monday morning. She’d been worried that a birth might prevent her from keeping the appointment, but she’d delivered a baby on Saturday and found herself free when the time came.

Several people were already at the Rahab’s Daughters’ office when Sarah entered. A tall, muscular gentleman and a shorter, plump man appeared to be in their thirties. The taller man wore a tailor-made suit and had the well-tended look of the very rich. She’d known no other type of men when she was growing up. The other man seemed less affluent, but perhaps that was just because his suit was rumpled and his hair a little disheveled. A lady, dressed in a deceptively simple but hideously expensive gown and a hat with a large white bird perched on it, had been chatting with them, but they all stopped and turned to her as she closed the office door. Miss Yingling, Sarah noticed, sat behind her desk, apparently absorbed in some papers lying on its top.

“You must be Mrs. Brandt,” the lady said. “I’m Mrs. Spratt-Williams. This is Mr. Porter.” She indicated the tall man. “And Mr. Quimby.”

Both gentlemen bowed.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Sarah said.

Miss Yingling rose from her chair and went to the door of Mrs. Van Orner’s office. She tapped lightly, then opened it. “Mrs. Brandt is here.” She turned to the people gathered in the outer office. “Please go in.”

Mrs. Spratt-Williams went ahead, and Sarah followed. The two men came up behind, and Miss Yingling also came in and closed the door. Someone had gathered additional chairs and placed them in a semicircle around the desk.