Murder in Chelsea (28 page)

“Hicks’s private investigator had found her, and Udall had access to his reports,” Malloy said. “She probably didn’t intend to kill Miss Murphy, but when she found out nobody else knew where Catherine was, she saw her chance. With Miss Murphy out of the way, she probably thought no one would ever find her.”

“I just remembered, the girl at the Mission told us a woman had been there asking if any little girls lived there,” Sarah said. “We thought it was Emma, but maybe it was Gilda.”

“That’s possible,” Malloy said. “Gilda was the one who sent Udall to kill Emma. He’d brought the drugged whiskey for her, but she didn’t drink enough of it, so killing her was a lot more difficult than he’d thought it would be. He said he hasn’t slept since.”

“You never told us how you found him,” Sarah said.

“Are you sure you want to hear the story?”

Sarah didn’t have to think about that. “Yes. I need to know.”

“Michael Hicks told me they had a client who might have arranged the kidnapping for Udall, so we went to see him. Turns out he was right.”

“That scoundrel,” her father said. “I hope you arrested him.”

Malloy gave him a sheepish grin. “Actually, he’s the one you might need to pay the reward to.” He explained how Udall had lied to engage Klink’s help. “And he told us where to find Udall. He’d taken Catherine to a hotel, but he was so unnerved by killing Emma that he couldn’t harm Catherine or at least that’s what he claimed.”

Sarah thought there might be more to it than he was telling her, but she said, “Thank heaven for that.”

The maid knocked on the door and told Malloy that he had a telephone call.

“How did they know you were here?” Sarah asked.

“They must’ve sent someone to my flat. I told my mother where I was going.”

He excused himself, and when he was gone, Sarah happened to remember something she’d intended to ask. “Mother, do you know what a Mickey Finn is?”

“Of course I do, dear.”

Sarah smiled. She’d have to inform Malloy.

But her father said, “What is it then?”

She gave him an impatient glance. “He’s one of the boys in those books that Mr. Twain wrote.”

“That’s
Huckleberry
Finn, my dear,” he said with a smile.

“Is it? Then who is Mickey Finn?”

Sarah wouldn’t tell Malloy after all.

They were still discussing Mickey Finns when Malloy returned, his expression grim.

“What is it?” her mother asked. “Not bad news, I hope.”

“That was Police Headquarters. Terrance Udall hanged himself in his cell last night.”

15

F
RANK HAD TO GET TO
G
ILDA
W
ILBANKS BEFORE SHE
found out about Udall, so he’d left the Deckers’ house immediately and headed for Wilbanks’s house. He’d asked Headquarters not to notify anyone else about Udall’s death, but Gilda would have found out last night from Hicks that Catherine had been rescued and Udall arrested. She would not know he’d betrayed her, however. Still, she’d had all night to make her plans. If she loved Udall as he thought she did, she would probably try to save them both. Frank had all of that in his favor.

What he didn’t know was who might still try to protect her.

The maid told him that both Mr. and Mrs. Hicks were still there, so he asked to see them. They received him in the parlor. They didn’t look as if they’d slept much the night before.

“How is little Catherine?” Lynne Hicks asked when they had exchanged greetings.

“She’s fine. She slept through most of her ordeal, and she thinks it was a bad dream.”

“That’s a blessing.”

“How is Mr. Wilbanks?” Frank asked.

The two exchanged a glance. “Not well, I’m afraid,” Hicks said. “The shock made him very ill.”

“He was greatly relieved to hear you’d found Catherine, of course,” Lynne said, “but he’s so weak. We don’t know how well he can recover from this, if he can at all.”

“I was afraid of that, but I must speak with him. I need to know how he wants me to handle the situation with Gilda.”

“Was she really involved in Catherine’s kidnapping?” Lynne asked.

“According to Udall, she was the one who planned everything, and she actually killed Anne Murphy herself.”

Frank had expected shock, but Lynne Hicks was merely furious. “Then you must arrest her like the common criminal she is.”

“I’d like nothing better, but it’s not that simple.”

Michael Hicks nodded. “You’re concerned about who might want to protect her.”

“When Mr. Wilbanks dies, Ozzie will be a very rich man, and Gilda is his wife,” Frank said. “He can use his money to make sure she never even goes to trial. And if he won’t protect her, her own family probably would, if only to spare themselves from the scandal.”

“Her family no longer has any great wealth, but they can probably marshal enough influence to accomplish the same thing,” Michael said. “They’ll also want to see Udall released.”

Frank wasn’t going to tell them about Udall yet. “Your father might want to protect his family from scandal as well, but I know something that will change his mind. May I speak with him?”

“I’ll ask him if he feels up to it,” Lynne said.

When she was gone, Frank said, “Thank you for your help yesterday, Mr. Hicks.”

“I’m just glad I guessed correctly. Klink might have had nothing to do with it.”

“I guess we’re lucky Udall didn’t have any other criminal friends.”

“I’ve never liked Gilda, but it’s hard to believe a woman could be so cold-blooded, especially about a child,” Hicks mused.

“We often underestimate the female of the species, Mr. Hicks. What she lacks in physical strength, she often makes up for in intelligence. We should be grateful that most of them use their talents for good.”

Lynne returned. “Father is quite anxious to see you. He wants to hear everything that happened yesterday. But please, you can’t stay long. He tires very easily.”

Frank asked Michael and Lynne to accompany him. He wanted them to know exactly what he said to Wilbanks and what Wilbanks said to him.

Wilbanks lay in his bed, his face white against the pile of pillows supporting him. His valet had placed a chair beside the bed, and Frank sat down. Michael and Lynne stood at the foot of the bed.

Frank saw the pad of paper lying in his lap and the pencil grasped loosely in his fingers.

“Speaking makes him cough,” Lynne said. “So if he needs to tell you anything, he’ll write it down.”

Frank assured Wilbanks that Catherine was perfectly all right, then told him everything that had happened yesterday, how Hicks had taken him to Klink and how they’d found Udall with Catherine at the river’s edge. He spared none of the details he’d glossed over for Sarah’s benefit. He wanted Wilbanks to know exactly how close they had come to losing the child. Then he told him what Udall had confessed and how Gilda had killed Anne Murphy and Udall had killed Emma Hardy.

“The only thing he told me that I didn’t already suspect was Gilda’s plan to kill Ozzie,” Frank said finally.

Lynne Hicks gasped, but Frank’s gaze never left Wilbanks’s face. Pain flickered in his eyes before igniting into fury.

“She wasn’t going to be satisfied being the wife of a wealthy man,” Frank continued. “She wanted all the money for herself and Udall, so as soon as you die, Gilda plans to slowly poison Ozzie. Then she and Udall will have your money and each other.”

“We must tell Ozzie,” Lynne said. “He’s been defending her, insisting she couldn’t possibly have been involved.”

“He won’t believe it,” Hicks said. “He’ll just defend her more vigorously.”

“Mr. Wilbanks, what I need to know is whether you want to shield your family from scandal by protecting her.”

Fury blazed in his eyes, and the words he scratched out on his pad reflected it. “Let her hang.”

* * *

G
ILDA REFUSED TO SEE HIM ALONE.
O
ZZIE SAT BESIDE
her on the parlor sofa, and Frank wondered why she’d insisted on his presence. Frank couldn’t believe she wanted her husband to hear her accused of murder, but maybe she did. Maybe she had a plan he couldn’t even imagine.

Frank sat down in the chair across from them. “Mrs. Wilbanks, your cousin Terrance told me some very disturbing things last night.”

“I doubt that very much.”

Frank had seen that expression before. Rich women used it when they wanted to intimidate someone. He’d even seen Sarah use it on occasion, and it could be very effective on servants and people who felt powerless. Frank did not feel powerless. “I can understand why you don’t believe me. Udall told me how you’ve been in love for years and weren’t allowed to marry because you’re cousins. You must’ve thought he’d never betray you, but I’m afraid I lied to him to get him to cooperate. I told him you’d betrayed him first. You see, I’d figured out almost all of your plans, and I knew you’d killed Anne Murphy—”

“That’s ridiculous!” she said.

“Really, Mr. Malloy,” Ozzie said.

Frank just smiled. “And I knew he’d killed Emma Hardy—”

“How dare you!”

“And he’d hired some of Mr. Klink’s men to help him kidnap Catherine. Mr. Hicks was the one who guessed that, so it was just luck we found him, but he didn’t know it. He thought you’d told me everything. He believed me when I said you’d betrayed him to save your own skin.”

She didn’t want to believe him. He could see it in her eyes, but she was no longer as certain as she had been. “Terrance would never . . .”

“Would never what? Would never think the worst of you? He knew you’d stabbed a woman to death. He knew you’d ordered him to kill another woman and her child.” Frank paused and looked meaningfully at Ozzie. “He knew you planned to kill your own husband.”

That was it, the one piece of information that could only have come from Udall.

“No!” she cried, raising a trembling hand to her lips.

“He told me how you were going to poison Ozzie slowly with arsenic so it would just seem like he was sick. He said you’d read about it in a novel,” Frank continued relentlessly.

She shook her head, trying to deny it, but her eyes held the terror of a cornered animal. She hadn’t made a plan for this, for how she’d deal with Udall turning on her. She glanced at Ozzie, but his shocked expression told her she’d lost him, at least for the moment.

“Terrance would never . . . He loves me!”

“Maybe he doesn’t love you as much as you love him,” Frank said. “He turned on you in a moment when he thought you’d betrayed him. What kind of love is that?”

“He does! He loves me!”

“Does he love you or the money you were going to bring him? That was the plan, wasn’t it? You’d marry a rich man and get all his money. Did you think of that or did he?”

She jumped to her feet. “It wasn’t like that!”

“What was it like, Mrs. Wilbanks? Which one of you came up with the plan for you to marry a rich man and murder him?”

“No, no, that was never the plan!”

“Are you saying you married Ozzie out of love?”

“They made me marry him! They said it was a brilliant match!”

“But it wasn’t, was it?” Frank said, glancing speculatively at Ozzie and thinking about what marriage to him must be like. “He’s boring and stupid, and he’s not even rich.”

“I say, Malloy!” Ozzie said, but he was too boring and stupid to know what else he should say.

“That was the final insult, wasn’t it? Ozzie didn’t even have any money of his own,” Frank said. “At least not until his father died. Lucky for you, that wasn’t going to be much longer. But even after the old man died, you’d still have to put up with Ozzie, so you’d have to kill him. Slowly. With arsenic. Like in the novel.”

She was thinking now. He could see it, and she’d realized she needed to win Ozzie back. “It’s not true, darling. None of it is true,” she said, sitting back down and trying to take his hand.

He let her, but he watched her warily, as one would a poisonous snake.

“Was money really that important to you, Mrs. Wilbanks?” Frank asked. “Important enough to kill for it?”

“Of course not!” she said, managing some of her usual hauteur. “I’m a Van Horn.”

“But you were a poor relation,” Ozzie said, still watching her intently and pulling his hand from her grasp. “You told me how you hated it. You hated the hand-me-down clothes and the second-best schools and the pity from your friends. You told me all about it.”

“And Terrance hated it, too, didn’t he?” Frank said. “So you hatched this plan and started killing everyone who stood in your way.”

“No, you’re wrong. Terrance never betrayed me. He would never do that. He loves me too much.”

“Well, he did betray you,” Frank said, “but I’m afraid it doesn’t matter now. You see, I wanted to watch him being executed in the electric chair for killing Emma Hardy, but I would’ve been willing to give him life in prison instead in exchange for testifying against you.”

Gilda had blanched at the mention of execution, but she lifted her chin.

“I knew it. He won’t say a word against me, will he?”

“He won’t say a word against anyone anymore. He’s dead.”

She stared back at him, stunned. “Wh . . . what?”

“He’s
dead
.”

“You’re lying!”

“No, I’m not.”

The color rose in her face. “What did you do to him? You killed him, didn’t you?”

“No, as much as I might have wanted to, I didn’t. He killed himself.”

She shook her head. “He’d never do that!”

“I blame myself. I should have seen it coming. After I got him to tell me everything, I admitted that I’d lied to him and you hadn’t betrayed him at all. I guess he couldn’t stand the thought of you finding out what he’d done, so he hanged himself in his cell last night.”

The pain in her eyes was so raw, for a moment Frank almost pitied her, but only for a moment. Then she started to wail, a primal cry of agony and loss. At the sound, the parlor doors burst open and Lynne and Michael Hicks rushed in.

Gilda had slumped to the floor, and Ozzie was backing away from her in horror.

“Are you going to arrest her?” Lynne asked, eyeing Gilda with disgust.

“Yes. Her family will probably have her released by tomorrow, but at least Ozzie won’t be defending her anymore.”

“I’m going to speak with her family, so they understand what she and Udall have done,” Michael said.

“It probably won’t make any difference. They still won’t want one of their own tried for murder, and quite frankly, I doubt I can prove anything against her if she did stand trial. The only witnesses against her are dead.”

“I doubt her family will want a murderess living with them, though, so I imagine they’ll make some arrangements for her,” Michael said.

Frank knew about those “arrangements.” “Just so long as she can’t hurt anyone else.”

* * *

D
AVID
W
ILBANKS’S FUNERAL WAS HELD ON A BEAUTIFUL
spring day almost two months later. Fortunately, he’d recovered enough after Catherine’s kidnapping to enjoy a few more visits from his daughter, but eventually, he’d asked Sarah not to bring her anymore. He didn’t want Catherine to see him and be frightened by his condition, and Sarah couldn’t blame him.

Malloy had accompanied Sarah and her parents to the funeral. Michael Hicks took her and Malloy aside for a moment after the graveside ceremony and asked them to come to his office the next day.

“It has to do with Mr. Wilbanks’s estate,” he said.

Remembering they were in a cemetery, Sarah fought to control her outrage. “Mr. Wilbanks left Catherine something in his will after all, didn’t he?”

But Michael Hicks merely smiled. “I assure you, he did not. It’s something else entirely.”

“Can’t you just tell us what it is?” she asked.

“Sarah, this is a funeral,” Malloy said.

“Besides,” Hicks said, still smiling, “I’m an attorney, and we must do everything in a proper way.”

So the next afternoon, Malloy came by, and they took a cab uptown to Michael Hicks’s office.

Sarah had to admit she could understand why he’d wanted them to meet him there. The rich furnishings were probably meant to intimidate people into doing whatever their attorney advised. Well, she wasn’t feeling the least bit intimidated, and she had no intention of allowing David Wilbanks to dictate to her from his grave.

“I’ve asked you both to come here today because the terms of Mr. Wilbanks’s will affect both of you. I know what you’re thinking, Mrs. Brandt,” Hicks said, “but David was very careful to follow your wishes. He left nothing to Catherine or to you.”

“Then why are we here?” Sarah asked.

Hicks cleared his throat. “In view of what happened, Mr. Wilbanks was extremely concerned about his son’s future.”