Murder in Chelsea (3 page)

“Not a holiday. She went on tour with a show. They’re always putting together touring companies of shows that start out here, and they travel all over, doing the show in different places. They don’t get the first-class actors to go because nobody wants to be away from the city that long. People forget you, you know. And it’s a hard life, traveling all day and doing a show in some dirty little theater and then moving on to the next place in the morning. She never would’ve done it otherwise, but if she was desperate enough, it was a way to go someplace Mr. Smith’s son couldn’t find her.”

“Wouldn’t Mr. Smith have protected her?” Maeve asked.

“I don’t know why she didn’t try that. Maybe she did. Maybe he wouldn’t believe no evil of his son. Some men are like that. And I don’t know for sure that’s what happened, you see. It’s just what I hope happened. What I pray happened, because if it didn’t . . .” Her voice broke and she dropped her eyes.

“Because if it didn’t . . .”

“Well, maybe Mr. Smith’s son found her and killed her like she was afraid he would.”

2

“S
HE’S PROBABLY RIGHT,
YOU KNOW,”
D
ETECTIVE
S
ERGEANT
Frank Malloy said, glaring at Sarah across her kitchen table. “This Emma woman is probably dead, and you’re lucky you and Maeve didn’t join her. What were you thinking?”

A telegram sent to Malloy’s flat had probably terrified his mother—telegrams never bring good news—but it had brought him to her doorstep that evening without alerting anyone at Police Headquarters that she was looking for him. Malloy took enough teasing about her as it was.

“I was thinking I wanted to hear her story before I decided what to do next.”

She hadn’t often seen him quite this furious. “I thought Mrs. Keller already told you somebody wanted to kill Catherine. How much more of the story did you need to hear before you thought about calling in the police?”

“If they wanted Catherine, they aren’t likely to harm me until they find her, now are they?” Sarah was getting a little angry herself.

“You couldn’t be sure of that.”

“Will you stop being unreasonable and help me figure out what to do next?”

“I’m not being unreasonable!”

“You most certainly are!”

“Stop it, the both of you!” Maeve said, stomping into the kitchen in her wrapper. Her auburn hair hung over her shoulder in a braid.

“I told you to go to bed,” Malloy said.

“How can I sleep with the two of you shouting like that? You’re lucky Catherine didn’t wake up.”

That silenced both of them. Malloy contented himself with a murderous glare, which Sarah ignored. “Maeve and I didn’t get ourselves murdered, and I’m asking for your help
now
, Malloy. Will you give it?”

“Of course I’ll give it. And I won’t let this Anne Murphy off as easy as you did either.”

“What will you do to her?” Maeve asked with way too much interest.

“Never you mind, but she’ll tell me this Mr. Smith’s real name and who this Emma woman is and where she’s been hiding all this time.” He turned back to Sarah. “Are you sure nobody followed you when you left her place?”

“I wouldn’t have even thought to check, but Maeve did, and she was sure.”

Malloy glanced at Maeve, who flipped her copper-colored braid over her shoulder and grinned. “I made her get on the El and ride around for a while. First south for a bit. Then off and a few blocks of wandering. Then back north. If anybody followed us, we lost them.”

Sarah couldn’t see how anyone could have kept up with them in the crowded city streets, in any case. “If you’ve calmed down, can we talk about what to do next?”

Malloy rubbed a hand over his face, and Sarah felt a pang of guilt. He’d had a long day, and now she was saddling him with her problems.

“This can wait until tomorrow if you’re tired.”

“I don’t dare let it wait until tomorrow. There’s no telling what the two of you will get up to in the meantime. And don’t start telling me you weren’t in any danger again, because you know you were. That’s why you didn’t tell me about this before you went. You knew I wouldn’t let you go see this woman by yourself.”

Sarah saw no point in arguing since he was absolutely right. “So you’ll go with me tomorrow?”

He looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “No, I will
not
go with you tomorrow,” he said with exaggerated care, “because
you
are not going anywhere tomorrow. I will go and see this woman myself and find out what you couldn’t.”

“And then you’ll come straight here and tell us?” Maeve said.

Malloy narrowed his eyes at her. “Didn’t I tell you to go to bed?”

“If you’re going to start yelling again, I won’t be able to sleep.”

“Maeve,” Sarah said.

“All right, but you know we’ll be worried. Don’t make us wait too long,” she said before flouncing away.

Malloy shook his head. “We never should’ve let that girl get involved with those Pinkertons.”

“We didn’t exactly
let
her,” Sarah reminded him. “Besides, she made a very good detective.”

He just shook his head again and pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. “Give me the address of this woman’s rooming house.” He wrote it down and tucked the notebook back in his pocket.

“Thank you, Malloy.”

“For what? I’m just as fond of Catherine as you are.”

“Thank you for being as fond of Catherine as I am.” She smiled then, and he smiled back, a lopsided half grin that made her heart flutter a bit. For a second, she thought . . .

But he cleared his throat and stood up. “It’s late. I’d better go.”

Knowing she had no right to be disappointed, she followed him out through the front room that served as her office, the room that had been her husband’s office when he’d been alive and practicing medicine. Malloy gathered his hat and coat from where she’d hung them earlier in the front hallway.

“Malloy, you never told me what you and my father talked about when you went to see him.”

He hesitated just an instant as he buttoned his coat, hardly enough to notice but enough to tell her she’d touched a nerve.

“He just wanted to thank me.”

She could hear the strain in his voice, the uneasiness he felt about her father. She still wondered if her father had offered him a “reward” for helping him solve the murder of one of his fellow club members. Such things were common practice in the city, of course. The police rarely solved crimes unless such rewards were paid, but she also knew Malloy’s pride chafed at having her father acknowledge it. “He
should
thank you. Did you talk about anything else?”

Malloy’s dark eyes twinkled just a bit. “Why don’t you ask your father? Good night, Mrs. Brandt. I’ll stop by tomorrow when I have some news for you.”

Sarah was gritting her teeth as she locked the front door behind him. Ask her father indeed. He’d be more tight-lipped than Malloy about whatever business they had together. She knew someone who might be able to find out, though.

If anyone stood a chance, it was her mother.

* * *

M
ALLOY FIGURED HE’D BE SURE TO CATCH
A
NNE
M
URPHY
in first thing the next morning. If he went before reporting to Headquarters, he also wouldn’t have to worry about being called out on an investigation and getting tied up all day. He wanted to get this settled as soon as possible—before Sarah and Maeve could get themselves any more involved with this Murphy woman.

He found the address easily enough among the ramshackle houses crowded in between the looming factories and warehouses in Chelsea. He was surprised to find the front door ajar on this wintry morning. Even if the weather had been pleasant, nobody in this neighborhood left the front door hanging open. He rapped on the jam and called out, “Hello? Anybody home?”

He pushed the door open and peered into the gloom of the entrance hall.

He blinked, letting his eyes adjust, and then the shadow at the foot of the stairs became a woman’s body sprawled at an awkward angle. “Hello? Anybody here? Hello?” he shouted. Surely, a boardinghouse would have more than one resident.

The woman didn’t stir at the sound of his voice or when he knelt beside her. “Miss? Are you hurt? Can you hear me?”

She lay facedown, her head turned to one side. He touched her cheek. Still warm. He started to turn her, but stopped. Blood had soaked the front of her shirtwaist, but there was no pool of it on the floor or the stairs around her. He fumbled for her wrist, searching for a pulse even though he already knew. Only dead people did not bleed.

The sound of footsteps on the porch brought him to his feet. He turned to find a woman in the doorway staring at him in surprise. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” She pulled her overflowing market basket closer to her worn coat. “Who might you be and what’re you doing in my house?”

“I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy of the New York City Police Department, and who might you be?”

“I might be the Queen of Sheba, for all it is to you. I don’t allow men in my house, and I especially don’t allow police in my house, so . . .” Her gaze drifted past him to the figure on the stairs. “Hello, what’s that? What’s going on here?” She pushed past him, glared down at the body, then back up at Frank. “What’ve you done?”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“The devil you say!” She slammed him with her basket. “Look at her. Annie? What has he done to you, Annie?”

“Is that Anne Murphy?”

“Of course it’s Anne Murphy, as if you didn’t know. What’ve you done to her? Killed her, most likely. Dear heaven, is that blood on her?”

“It seems to be.”

“Murder! You’ve done murder!” She dropped her basket and ran out the front door, screaming . . . Well, screaming bloody murder.

Frank sighed. It was going to be a very long morning.

* * *

S
ARAH KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE A LONG MORNING AND
maybe a long afternoon as well, if Malloy couldn’t get back to them. She almost wished someone would summon her to a birth, just so she’d have something to help pass the time, but of course no one did. Babies never came when she wanted them to.

Luckily her neighbor Mrs. Ellsworth came over to help the girls make a pot roast. The cooking lesson kept Catherine busy and distracted. It also kept Sarah from pulling the child into her arms and never letting her go. How would she bear it if some stranger returned to claim her?

At least she now knew Catherine’s real age and her birth date. But would she still be here to celebrate her birthday in July? Sarah couldn’t stop the ugly thoughts from plaguing her as she watched Mrs. Ellsworth and the girls at their work.

When the pot roast was in the oven, Maeve and Catherine went upstairs to play, and Mrs. Ellsworth turned to where Sarah sat at the kitchen table. “Mrs. Brandt, you look troubled.”

“Is it so obvious?”

Mrs. Ellsworth pulled off her apron and hung it up. “I hope you aren’t stewing over a difficult birth or something.”

“No, I . . . Well, I shouldn’t worry you with my troubles, but a woman went to the Mission the other day, asking about Catherine.”

“Oh, dear! Who was she?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked, pulling out a chair for herself.

Sarah told her what she and Maeve had learned about Anne Murphy.

“I knew it,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

“You knew about this woman?”

“Oh, no, not about her exactly, but I knew something bad was going to happen. I saw an owl yesterday morning, in the tree out back. It’s very bad luck to see an owl in the daylight.”

Sarah managed not to roll her eyes. At least the girls weren’t there. They were fascinated by Mrs. Ellsworth’s superstitions, and she always seemed to have one for every occasion. Sarah didn’t mention that she’d heard the owl hooting last night. Heaven only knew what that meant.

“Mr. Malloy was right,” Mrs. Ellsworth said. “You should never have gone to see this woman without him. You don’t know who her cohorts might be.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t think about her having cohorts or anything else, for that matter. I just wanted to find out if she really has any claim on Catherine.”

“I remember that day last fall when we were outside and Catherine had that . . . Well, I don’t know what to call it.”

“I know, I don’t either, but she was so frightened. I can’t help thinking that the ‘pretty lady’ she was remembering was her mother.”

“I suppose I always half believed that myself, even without having heard this woman’s story. What kind of a woman sends her child off heaven knows where and doesn’t even inquire after her for a year?”

Sarah sighed. “A woman who fears for her own life, perhaps, or that of her child.”

“Mrs. Brandt, you’re picturing Catherine’s mother as some angelic creature who sent her child to safety, but I don’t think that’s necessarily accurate.”

“I don’t think she’s angelic,” Sarah protested.

“Maybe not, but you do think she’s like you, at least.”

“Like me?”

“Yes. You’re trying to picture her as a respectable person who loved Catherine above everything else, but the story this Miss Murphy told suggests otherwise.”

“You mean because she was an actress?”

“I mean because she thought nothing of going off and leaving the child for weeks at a time while she carried on in the city. Oh, I know she’d hired this Murphy woman to take care of the child,” she added when Sarah would have protested again, “and if she needed to work to support herself and her child, I could applaud her devotion. But she didn’t need to. This Mr. Smith supported her.”

Sarah had to admit she had a point. “I suppose she really loved acting and didn’t want to give it up.”

“Even for her child?”

Sarah frowned. “I hate to say it, but she wasn’t very happy about having a child. Miss Murphy said Emma originally asked Mr. Smith for money for an abortionist, but he convinced her to have the baby instead. He promised to take care of them, and it sounds as if he kept that promise.”

“At least for a while.”

“Miss Murphy said Emma and Mr. Smith had an argument shortly before Miss Murphy left with Catherine. I hadn’t thought about it, but maybe he told her he was tired of her and was going to turn her out.”

“If he wasn’t going to keep them anymore, that would explain why she sent Miss Murphy and the child away,” Mrs. Ellsworth said.

“But Miss Murphy said he doted on Catherine. Surely, he wouldn’t punish her just because he was tired of her mother.”

“Men do strange things,” Mrs. Ellsworth reminded her. “Maybe he had come to believe the child wasn’t his. Maybe he wasn’t as fond of Catherine as Miss Murphy thought. Or maybe he lost all his money and couldn’t afford to keep them anymore.”

Sarah rubbed her temples, more than tired of trying to figure out why people she’d never set eyes on had done what they’d done. To her relief, someone rang her doorbell. Maybe it was Malloy.

* * *

F
RANK STOOD IN THE DOORWAY, WATCHING THE ORDERLIES
carry Anne Murphy’s body out to the waiting ambulance.

Doc Haynes, the medical examiner, said, “I’ll do an autopsy, but I doubt I’ll find anything surprising. She was stabbed in the chest with an ordinary kitchen knife. The blade probably nicked her heart or a major blood vessel. From the trail of blood, she was stabbed upstairs in her room and managed to get to the stairs, probably trying to get help or maybe running away from her attacker. At some point she died and fell the rest of the way down the stairs.”