Murder in Chelsea (21 page)

“She’s dead, Vaughn. Somebody strangled her, and you were the only one in the room with her.”

“No, no, I’d never hurt Emma. I loved her. She said we’d always be together, and she’d take care of me.”

“Then why did you strangle her?”

“I didn’t! I’d never hurt her.” His voice broke. “Emma, Emma!” He dropped his head onto his arms and began to sob.

Frank swore.

“I told you we didn’t know what happened in that room,” Gino said.

“He could be lying,” Frank said, even though he didn’t believe it himself.

“He could be,” Gino agreed without much conviction.

Then Frank remembered what Haynes had said about Emma scratching her killer. He pulled Vaughn’s hands out from under his head. Not a single scratch.

Frank sighed. “Lock him up and go back to the hotel. Take somebody with you, and see if you can find somebody who saw this visitor. The desk clerk had to see him, at least. Tell him you’re going to pack up all of his customers and bring them back to question them if he doesn’t tell you the truth. That’ll put the fear of God into him.”

“It won’t do any good. Nobody will admit to seeing anything.”

“I know, but we have to try.”

“What will you do?”

Frank pushed himself to his feet. “I’ve got to go tell the rest of Catherine’s family that her mother is dead.”

11

S
ARAH SIGHED WITH RELIEF WHEN SHE HEARD SOMEONE
ringing her doorbell. After her mother left, she’d started cleaning her house in hopes that the activity would distract her. Instead, it had only given her more time to think about her situation. She hoped it was a delivery. She needed the distraction.

Then she saw Malloy on her doorstep, and she realized she hadn’t wanted it to be a delivery at all.

“Malloy,” she said, smiling in spite of everything. He didn’t smile back as he came in. In fact, he didn’t even meet her eye. “What is it? What’s happened?”

He waited until she’d closed the door behind him. “Emma’s dead.”

She needed a full minute to take it in. “Dead? How could she be dead?”

“Somebody strangled her.”

“Dear heaven! Who?”

“I don’t know.” He handed her a battered wooden box so he could slip out of his coat and hang it up.

“What’s this?”

“I found it in Emma’s room. It’s full of letters and papers. I thought there might be something important in it, so I brought it along to go through later.”

By silent agreement, they made their way to the kitchen, and Sarah set the box on her desk in the front room as they passed through. The breakfast coffee was gone, but she started a new pot, then sat down opposite him at the table.

“What happened?” she asked.

He told her how he and Gino had found Emma.

“Wait, Vaughn was alone in the room with her body? But you just said you don’t know who killed her.”

“He was passed out. Not just drunk, but like somebody’d slipped him a Mickey Finn. We took him down to Headquarters, and he kept falling asleep while I was questioning him.”

“Who would have given him a Mickey Finn?”

Malloy smiled suddenly and shook his head.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

“You. I’ll bet your mother doesn’t know what a Mickey Finn is.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Ask her.”

“I will. So who could have
slipped him a Mickey Finn
?” she asked with a grin of her own.

“He claims some fellow came to see Emma last night. The fellow gave him a bottle, or maybe just a drink from a bottle, and he says it made him feel funny and he doesn’t remember anything else, and now Emma is dead.”

“That’s pretty far-fetched.”

“Yeah, even a drunk like Vaughn could make up a better story than that. All those plays he’s been in, he probably knows a lot of stories he could’ve told us.”

“Are you saying you think it’s true because it’s so unbelievable?”

“Well, I guess it’s possible that he strangled her when he was drunk and doesn’t remember it now. That happens with drunks. But if he just didn’t remember, he’d probably say so. I think his story is true because if he’d decided to lie about it, he would’ve made up a better story.”

“But who would have wanted to kill Emma?”

“Ozzie Wilbanks, for starters. I almost forgot, you don’t know what happened yesterday. Emma went to see Wilbanks.”

“Oh, my. That must have delighted him.”

“It didn’t make Ozzie or Gilda very happy either. I don’t know what happened between her and Wilbanks, but when I got there, Emma was telling Ozzie and Gilda that she had decided to marry Wilbanks after all.”

“What did Wilbanks say about that?”

“Nothing. He’d had one of his coughing fits, and he couldn’t speak.”

“How did you happen to walk in at just the right moment?”

“I went to see her at the hotel, and Vaughn told me where she was. I figured she would’ve already left, but I got lucky.”

“Do you think Wilbanks would really marry her?”

“No, and neither did she. I think she just said it to annoy Ozzie and his bride.”

Sarah considered this for a moment. “Do you think someone did believe she’d marry him and killed her to stop it?”

“By ‘someone,’ do you mean Ozzie?”

“I guess I do.”

“I don’t know, but why else would somebody bother to kill her? She didn’t have Catherine, and even if she did . . .” He straightened in his chair, obviously realizing the awful truth at the same moment she did.

“Even if she did,
she
wasn’t the threat,” Sarah said, her blood turning cold. “
Catherine
is the threat.”

“We’re not going to let anything happen to her, Sarah.”

The coffee had started to sputter, and she jumped up to rescue it, grateful for the distraction. This was just too horrible.

“Both of the women who were closest to Catherine are dead,” she said, pulling cups and saucers out of the cupboard.

“I thought I’d figured out who killed Anne Murphy.”

“Who?”

“Something Kirby told me got me thinking—”

“Who’s Kirby?”

“Oh, he’s the investigator Hicks hired to find Catherine. I went to see him to find out if he knew anything we didn’t.”

“Did he?”

“He said Emma, uh, hits Vaughn.”

“What? That’s crazy. Women don’t hit men.” She set the cups on the table.

“He said they sometimes do, and the men won’t hit them back for some reason.”

Sarah shook her head. “Maybe because they’ve been trained that it’s not right to hit a woman.”

“Maybe. Knowing Vaughn and Emma, I’m not real surprised, actually. He got a black eye a couple days ago. He said he walked into a door.”

Sarah poured the coffee. “That’s unbelievable.”

“That he walked into a door?”

“No . . . Well, yes, I guess. I meant it’s unbelievable that a woman would hit a man and blacken his eye.”

“Kirby’s point was that Emma was known to be violent when she’s angry. Then he said something I should’ve realized right away: Anne Murphy and the killer were alone in her room at the boardinghouse.”

“Why is that . . . Oh! I see. Men aren’t allowed upstairs, at least in decent boardinghouses.” She sat back down.

“But she would’ve invited Emma upstairs, the same as she did you and Maeve.”

“And you think that’s what happened, that Emma went up to Anne’s room, and Anne told her Catherine was missing, and Emma got mad and stabbed her?” Sarah thought this over. “Did she bring the knife with her?”

“I think Anne already had the knife in her room. She was scared, remember? Emma had told her she was leaving the city because someone wanted to kill her, and for all Anne knew, they wanted to kill her and Catherine, too.”

“So the knife was handy for the killer, who maybe hadn’t planned to do Anne any violence at all until Anne provoked her by telling her that her daughter had vanished.”

Malloy nodded. “That’s what I was thinking, and I went to the hotel to take Emma in and see if I couldn’t get her to confess.”

“And instead you found her dead.” Sarah sighed. “I hoped she wasn’t the killer.”

“Who else would Anne have invited up to her room, though? It had to be a female.”

Sarah saw a flaw in that logic. “But the landlady wasn’t there the morning Anne was killed, and neither was anyone else. Who would know if she invited a man upstairs?”

“Remember how scared she was. I doubt she would’ve let a strange man into the house at all. Kirby had been asking people about her, and I’m sure someone told her. She probably thought he was one of the men Emma was afraid of, so she would’ve been extra careful.”

“Maybe he didn’t ask. Maybe he didn’t even knock. Maybe he waited until Anne was alone and snuck in.”

“I guess that’s possible, but how did he know which room was hers?”

“Stop ruining my theory with logic,” she said.

“Sorry. So we know Emma could’ve killed Anne, and maybe she did and maybe she didn’t, but Emma certainly didn’t kill herself, so there’s at least one killer on the loose and maybe two.”

“There’s always the possibility that Vaughn killed her and he just dreamed up the fellow with the Mickey Finn.”

Malloy sighed and drank the last of his coffee.

“Would you like some more?” she asked.

“Yes, but I need to go see Wilbanks.”

“Why?”

“To tell him about Emma. She was his fiancée, after all, at least the last I heard. I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

“And you want to see how Ozzie reacts, too, don’t you?”

“Ozzie and Hicks.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows. “You think Mr. Hicks could have been the man who drugged Vaughn and strangled Emma?”

“I know, that’s hard to picture, but maybe he hired somebody. I just want to see how surprised he is.”

“I guess I should go tell my mother. She’ll never forgive me if I don’t.”

“I’ll wait for you. We can go uptown together.”

Sarah needed only a few minutes to change her clothes and smooth her hair. They took the El uptown, and then parted company. Sarah almost wished she could have gone with Malloy. She’d never met any of the Wilbanks family except Gilda, and she wasn’t really related to Catherine. On the other hand, she already felt sorry for Wilbanks and guilty for keeping his child from him. Seeing the dying man might soften her heart even more, and she couldn’t risk Catherine’s safety over sentiment.

* * *

F
RANK GREETED
W
ILBANKS’S MAID WITH A FRIENDLY
smile when she opened the door.

“Oh, Mr. Malloy, I was that glad to see you yesterday,” she whispered as she let him in. “That woman was so awful. Poor Mr. Wilbanks.” She’d certainly changed her mind about him since his first visit.

“How is he today?”

“Not well. The doctor told him he had to stay in bed. He was coughing something awful. Exhausted himself, poor man.”

“Do you think I could see him for a few minutes? I have some important information for him that might make him feel better.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I couldn’t say, myself. I’d have to ask Mr. Oswald.”

Frank wanted to talk to Ozzie anyway. “All right. I’ll wait while you ask him.”

The maid frowned. “But Mr. Ozzie is out.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I . . . Not for a while.”

Frank smiled again. “Then he won’t know, will he? Go ask Mr. Wilbanks if he feels well enough to see me.” When she hesitated, he added, “If anybody gets upset, I’ll tell them I forced you to let me in.”

Still not quite certain but apparently grateful enough for his help yesterday to take a chance, she went upstairs and returned in a few minutes. “He’s anxious to see you, Mr. Malloy. He said he has something to tell you, too.”

She led him up several sets of stairs to Wilbanks’s bedroom. She tapped on the door and a middle-aged man opened it instantly. He looked Malloy over with disapproval. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t let you in at all, but Mr. Wilbanks wants to see you. He’s very weak, though, so you can’t upset him.”

“This is Henry, Mr. Wilbanks’s valet,” the girl said.

Frank recognized Henry’s concern as genuine affection for Wilbanks. He figured Henry already knew all the family secrets anyway. “You can stay, and if you think it’s too much for him, just let me know.”

Henry didn’t like it, but he said, “Come in.”

Frank stepped into the room. The heavy drapes were drawn, making a dark room even darker. The mahogany furniture gleamed dully in the gaslight, and a fire made the room uncomfortably warm. Wilbanks lay in the enormous four-poster bed, nearly swallowed in the bedclothes, but he beckoned Frank urgently with one slender hand.

Henry brought a chair to the bedside, and Frank sat. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I have some news.”

His eyes brightened. “Catherine?”

“No, Emma.”

He frowned. “I’m not going to marry her.” Every word was an effort, his voice little more than a gasp, and Frank wondered what it cost him to speak at all.

“I know. She said that herself after we left yesterday. She was just trying to make your son mad, I think.”

He nodded, relieved.

“But it doesn’t matter anyway. Emma is dead. Someone murdered her last night.”

Frank wasn’t sure what reaction he had expected, but Wilbanks’s expression went from surprised to shocked to horrified in a few moments. “How?”

“She was strangled in her hotel room. She wasn’t alone there. She had a lover, a man named Parnell Vaughn.”

His eyes widened in surprise. “He did it?”

“We think so,” Frank lied. No use upsetting Wilbanks with any wild theories.

“Thank God,” Wilbanks whispered.

Frank studied his face, trying to read the expressions roiling there. “Did you think somebody else might’ve done it?”

Wilbanks met his gaze for a long moment, then turned his head away. “Tired.”

“I think you’d better go now,” Henry said.

Frank thought so, too. He wasn’t going to get anything else out of Wilbanks, but when Henry would have ushered him out, Frank grabbed his arm and pulled him into the hallway. “Who did Wilbanks think might’ve killed Emma Hardy?”

“Really, I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do, and if you don’t want me to go back in there and get it out of Wilbanks, you’ll tell me.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Frank gave him a look that said he would dare that and a whole lot more.

“I can’t speak for Mr. Wilbanks, of course . . .”

“Henry,”
Frank said in warning.

“But I believe he may have been concerned because he had not told Mr. Oswald that he had no intention of marrying that woman.”

“You mean he let Ozzie believe she was telling the truth?”

“Well, he was very ill yesterday, you see, and he couldn’t speak for a long time. The doctor came, and he told Mr. Wilbanks not to talk at all. He would write things down for me when he got like that. He told me . . . well, he wrote it . . . that he wasn’t really going to marry her. He wanted me to know that. I told him I would tell Mr. Oswald to ease his mind as well, but he said not to. He said . . . He said to let him stew awhile.” The last pained Henry almost as much as it would have pained Wilbanks to say.

“And Wilbanks thought maybe Ozzie had gone to visit Miss Hardy and made sure the wedding didn’t happen.”

“As I said, I can’t speak for Mr. Wilbanks.”

He didn’t have to, of course. “Did Ozzie go out last night?”

“Mr. Oswald goes out every evening.”

“Thank you for your cooperation, Henry.”

So Wilbanks thought his son might’ve killed Emma, believing he was saving his father from making a disastrous marriage, Frank thought as he made his way back down the stairs. The marriage would’ve been more disastrous for Ozzie than for Wilbanks, of course, at least in Ozzie’s mind. No matter how terrible a wife Emma might have been, Wilbanks would be dead in a few months, but Ozzie would have to live many years knowing his stepmother and half sister had gotten a portion of what should have been his.