Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue (5 page)

“I . . . I think I already am involved, although it's not official.”

“At the very least, you can vouch for Maeve's intent to protect the money.”

“And what should we do in the meantime?” Maeve asked.

“What were you planning to do?” he replied, raising his eyebrows again. She realized she wouldn't be able to fool him very easily.

“I was hoping we could help Mrs. O'Neill and her daughter.”

“I think you've done everything you can for them, Maeve,” he said. “Officer Donatelli doesn't have the authority that Mr. Malloy did as a detective sergeant, and you can't ask him to risk his job by getting more involved.”

“But I did agree to go back to the house tomorrow and pack up the rest of Una's things,” Maeve said, stretching the truth a bit, since Mrs. Decker had only promised to send her maid.

“I wouldn't want you to be there alone if someone came looking for this money,” Mr. Decker said, tapping the ledger again.

He had a point. Maeve glanced at Gino, wondering if she dared ask him to accompany her.

“I could go with you after work tomorrow,” he said.

“Or I could go with you in the morning,” Mrs. Decker said, surprising everyone.

Her husband smiled at that. “And then we'd have two helpless females to worry about.”

Maeve didn't like being thought of as helpless, but she wasn't going to contradict Mr. Decker. Men like him always had to believe they were right.

“And I know Maeve is anxious to get this taken care of,” he went on, “and she can be impulsive, so she might not wait until you're available, Officer Donatelli. So why don't I go with her tomorrow morning
instead?”

F
elix Decker had never considered his life boring, at least not until his daughter Sarah had become acquainted with Frank Malloy. Even for some time after that, he had not been aware of her involvement with his work as a police detective. When he did become aware of it, he'd been furious and determined to remove her from the dangers of such involvement.

Seldom had he been quite so unsuccessful at something he'd set his mind to. Instead of removing Sarah from Malloy's influence, he'd seen his wife drawn into it—although she still believed he had no knowledge of her participation. And now here he was, serving as a bodyguard to his daughter's nanny while she visited a home where a murder had taken place.

Without a doubt, his life used to be extremely boring.

“Is something wrong?” Maeve asked.

“Of course not,” he said, squinting to see her expression
in the shadowed interior of the carriage. He had insisted on traveling to Harlem in his carriage, even though she'd pointed out they could travel faster on the elevated train. He had won the argument when his wife reminded her they would be bringing back a trunk full of Una Pollock's belongings. “What could be wrong?”

She smiled with what he thought was sympathy. “I know this is an unusual situation for you.”

“But not for you?”

“I've helped Mrs. Brandt before. I mean Mrs. Malloy. I keep forgetting her new name.”

Felix did, too, but he saw no need to mention this to Maeve. “Mrs. Decker told me you played an important role when they discovered the identity of the man who killed Sarah's first husband.”

“I was happy to help,” she said with appropriate modesty. She was, except for his own daughters, the most self-possessed young woman he had ever met. Even still, she managed to maintain an air of femininity that compelled a man to offer his assistance. Which probably explained why he was on this fool's errand.

“Do you have family, Maeve?” he asked, realizing how little he knew of her.

“Not anymore. I lost my parents when I was little. My grandfather raised me, but he died a few years ago.”

“Was that how you came to the Mission?” he asked, remembering now that Sarah had first met her at the Daughters of Hope Mission.

“Yes. I was lucky they took me in.”

How true, he thought. The streets of New York were a dangerous place for a girl alone. “Are you happy working for Mrs. Malloy?” he asked, glad he had remembered to use her new name.

She looked surprised at the question. “Of course.”

But he hadn't asked the right question, he realized, because that really wasn't what he wanted to know. “What I mean is, will being a nanny satisfy you?”

Some girls her age would have lied and said yes, just because he would expect that answer. Others would have coyly replied that they hoped to marry someday and raise their own children. Still others would have been dismayed by this question, knowing the world did not approve of girls having ambitions. Maeve simply said, “No, sir, it won't.”

“I didn't think so.” He studied her for a moment as the carriage rattled through the streets. She met his gaze unflinchingly, something even some of his longtime employees could not do. “Do you have any idea what you'd like to do?”

“You mean besides helping Mr. and Mrs. Malloy in their new detective agency?” she asked with a sly grin.

Outrage stung him. “Do they have a detective agency?” And why had no one told him?

“Not yet.” Her sly grin widened. “But they'll have to, won't they? I mean, people aren't going to stop needing help that the police won't give them, and the Malloys won't be able to refuse to help, especially now that they're rich and don't even have to worry if people can pay them or not.”

“But Malloy will be too busy for that kind of thing,” he protested.

“Busy doing what?” Her dark eyes were wide and apparently innocent, so why did he feel she was challenging him? Girls like her didn't challenge men like him.

“He'll have . . . other interests,” he tried.

“Like what? Going to his club? Even you have your business, Mr. Decker. Mr. Malloy is used to working and feeling useful, too. And how is he going to refuse when somebody asks him for help?”

“Or more to the point, when someone asks
Sarah
for help,” he said, seeing it very clearly now. “He might be able to refuse, but she'd never allow it.”

“Besides, helping people is fun.”

“Fun?”

“Oh, not fun like going to Coney Island, but it's . . . I don't know, interesting, I guess.”

“Are you serious?” he asked, incredulously.

“Of course I am. That's why you're going with me today, isn't it?”

“I'm going to protect you,” he protested.

She seemed unconvinced. “You could've sent one of your servants with me. In fact, the coachman would probably do just fine.”

He tried frowning at her, which usually worked beautifully when he wanted to silence an annoying subordinate, but she just smiled knowingly. Yes, his life truly was no longer boring.

And Harlem was no longer farmland, Decker observed as the carriage delivered them to St. Nicholas Avenue. New houses had sprung up here like some modern crop of bricks growing in neat rows along freshly paved streets. Who lived here, he wondered, besides men like Pollock who had needed a respectable home from which to operate?

He helped Maeve down when the carriage stopped in front of a turreted stone house. It was, he saw, a double house, and he caught the twitch of a curtain on the front window of the house next door. The neighbors must surely be wondering who was driving up to a house where the master had been murdered and the mistress was in jail. At least no one here was likely to recognize him.

Maeve preceded him up the front steps, and he took a moment to glance around the neighborhood. Although he
felt they were being watched, he saw no one on the street and no visible faces pressed to window glass to observe them. He actually heard a bird singing somewhere, reminding him of how far they were from the heart of the city.

No one answered Maeve's first knock, even though she'd worked the brass knocker with some authority. “I wonder if the servants decided to leave after all,” she said with a frown, and tried the knocker again.

“Surely they wouldn't go off without a reference,” he said. “Or did you give them one?”

“Not yet,” she said. Then the door opened a crack to reveal part of a face and a maid's uniform. “Do you remember me? I was here yesterday.”

The door opened wider, and the maid's face reflected relief. “Yes, miss, I remember you.”

“We're here to pack up the rest of Mrs. Pollock's things.”

“Oh, miss, I don't know about that,” the maid said in some distress. “We've had some trouble here.”

“What kind of trouble?” Decker demanded, startling the maid, who backed up a step, her eyes widened in alarm.

“This is Mr. Decker,” Maeve said quickly, taking advantage of the maid's retreat to move into the foyer. “He came along to help. What's happened?”

“Oh, miss, we don't have no idea. It was like this when we come down this morning.”

“What was? Show us,” he said.

With an uncertain glance at him, the maid indicated they should follow her down the hallway. He closed the door behind them and caught up with Maeve. The maid led them to a door that stood open. Maeve got there first, and her surprised gasp almost prepared him for the sight of the room.

It was, he saw at once, an office of sorts, with a desk and some upholstered chairs. Or it had been. Now it was a mess.
The desk drawers had been pulled out and dumped, their contents scattered on the floor. The chairs had been overturned and their cushions slashed open. The stuffing lay in heaps. But the centerpiece of the mayhem was the squat little safe with its door hanging wide open.

He caught Maeve's eye. “Did you . . . ?”

She shook her head, then turned to the maid. “Who did this?”

“We don't know,” the girl cried, wringing her hands. “We was all asleep. Or at least we figure it must've happened in the night sometime. Everything was fine when we went to bed, and it was like this first thing this morning.”

“Didn't anyone hear something?” he asked.

“No, sir. We never heard a thing.”

“Have you sent for the police?”

“Oh no, sir! We was scared to do that!”

“Were any of the other rooms disturbed?” Maeve asked.

“No, miss. Not that we could tell. What should we do?”

Maeve gave him a questioning look.

“Let me check this room, and then we'll decide what to do. Maeve, why don't you pack up Mrs. Pollock's things while I look around?”

“Come along,” she said to the maid, ushering her out. “Mr. Decker will take care of everything,” she added, glancing back to give him a little grin. He wasn't sure he appreciated her confidence in him.

*   *   *

M
rs. Decker had told Maeve that they'd found an empty trunk in Una Pollock's bedroom, so she hadn't brought one with her. Sure enough, the small trunk sat in a corner of the bedroom that Una had apparently shared with her husband.

“We need to pack up all of Mrs. Pollock's belongings,” Maeve told the maid. “We can put them in this trunk, and we'll get the coachman to carry it downstairs for us.”

“Yes, miss. I guess Mrs. Pollock won't be coming back, will she?”

“I can't imagine she'll want to live here after what happened, can you?”

“Oh, I . . . I guess not. But I was thinking she'll be in jail.”

Maeve had pulled open one of the dresser drawers to begin gathering the clothes, but she stopped and turned to look at the girl. “Do you think Mrs. Pollock killed her husband?”

The girl's eyes widened in alarm. “Oh, I . . . I wouldn't want to say, miss. I'm sure I don't know anything about it.”

And Maeve was sure she knew a lot about it. “I understand you heard an argument before Mr. Pollock was killed. Did the Pollocks argue a lot?”

The girl glanced anxiously at the open bedroom door. Maeve hurried over and shut it. “It's important to find out exactly what happened to Mr. Pollock,” she said. “It would be horrible if the wrong person were punished for killing him, wouldn't it? Not to mention how awful it would be for a killer to get away.”

“Oh, I never thought of that, miss.”

“That's why we need to find out the truth of what happened that day.”

The maid frowned. “But how can you help, miss? You're not with the police, are you?”

Smart girl, Maeve thought. “No, but I work for a private investigator that Mrs. Pollock's mother has hired to help her.”

“A private investigator?”

Plainly, this was a new concept to the girl. “Yes, we help the police in situations like this.” The girl didn't look as if she really believed Maeve's lie, but she also had no reason to
doubt it either. Maeve decided that was good enough. “So, did the Pollocks argue a lot?”

“Not what you'd call arguing, no,” she said with a frown.

“Then what would you call it?”

The girl's frown deepened.

“It's all right to tell me,” Maeve said. “I won't tell anybody where I heard it.”

“Well, Mr. Pollock, he was very particular about . . . about everything.”

“What do you mean, particular?”

“He liked everything just a certain way, and if it wasn't that way, he . . . Well, he got real mad.”

Maeve carefully schooled her expression so her excitement didn't show. “Did he get angry with the staff?”

The girl wrung her hands and wouldn't meet Maeve's eyes.

“Did he hit you?” Maeve asked.

“Oh no, miss, not me,” she said quickly.

“Did he hit someone else?”

She hesitated, chewing her bottom lip as if uncertain how to reply. “He never hit the staff. Not once.”

Maeve saw it then, the whole ugly picture. “But he did hit Mrs. Pollock, didn't he?”

“Only when she deserved it, miss,” she hastily explained. “I told you he was particular, and she tried, she really did, but she couldn't always please him. She wasn't brought up in a nice house, and she didn't know how to conduct herself, you see.”

Fury roiled in Maeve's stomach, but she kept her voice level. “Is that what he said?”

“Yes, miss. We could hear him, you see. He'd tell her how . . .” She caught herself and stopped, dropping her gaze to the floor.

“How stupid she was?” Maeve guessed. “And worthless and ugly?” How often had she heard men shouting those words in the tenements? And how silly she'd been to think that men who lived in houses like this would be gentlemen and treat their women with respect.

The girl looked up in surprise. “How did you know?”

“And did he hit her?” Maeve asked.

She nodded jerkily, then lowered her gaze again.

“Did he hit her that day? The day he died?”

She looked up in surprise. “I don't know.”

“But they were arguing . . . or at least he was yelling at her that day.”

The girl bit her lip again. “I don't know. I mean, yes, he was yelling, but I don't know if he was yelling at her or not.”

“Why not, if you could hear him?”

“We were downstairs in the kitchen. That's where we always went when it started. We just wanted to stay out of his way, I guess. And we didn't want to know about it.”

“So you didn't actually see him hitting her?”

“I . . . I saw him slap her once, but after that, he was more careful. I guess he saw how shocked I was. He never did it in front of us again.”

“How do you know he hit her, then?”

“Because . . . I was her maid. She never had a lady's maid before, so she had to get used to me helping her dress, and . . . after a while, she tried to dress herself and tell me she didn't need me, but sometimes she did, and then . . .”