Murder in Murray Hill (Gaslight Mystery) (17 page)

“Yes, you were, and I know Grace and Rose would be grateful if they knew what you’d done for them.”

Maeve waved away their imagined gratitude. “I just keep wondering what Neth was planning, if he thought he’d take me captive like Pendergast did with the women he met.”

“I know. He certainly didn’t have any place to lock someone up, unless he thought he’d just lock you in a room. And what about Joanna? She obviously didn’t know what he was planning, and I doubt she would’ve been too happy about it if she did.”

“I can’t imagine she would.”

“We’ll probably never know what Neth was planning, though. There’s so much we’ll never know. But I do plan to visit all the women for whom we have addresses to see if we can find out what became of them and let them know Pendergast is dead, at least.”

“Some of them died, though. What will you do about them?”

“We don’t know which ones, so I guess we’ll have to visit all the families and see which of the women are still missing, then deal with what we find. It won’t be pleasant, but it’s the right thing to do.”

Maeve sighed. “My grandfather always used to warn me about men, but I never dreamed . . .”

“Not many men are like Pendergast.”

“I know, and I also know many men are like Mr. Malloy. The trick is how to tell the difference before you make a terrible mistake.”

“I’m glad you understand that, Maeve, although you’ve got plenty of time before you have to worry about making a mistake.”

Maeve shrugged, as if she disagreed but wasn’t going to say so. “Which reminds me, when are you and Mr. Malloy going to get married?”

Sarah sighed, knowing they needed to make plans very soon. “We haven’t really discussed it. We need to find a place to live first.”

“Are you looking?”

“Well, we haven’t really had time yet . . .”

“Mrs. Ellsworth is looking.”

Sarah should not have been surprised. “Is she?”

“She’s looking in this neighborhood.”

“Has she found anything?”

“No, but I’m thinking she’s not above asking someone to move out if it comes to that.”

“You’re probably right,” Sarah said with a smile. “Maybe Malloy and I need to get busy finding a house to protect our neighbors from Mrs. Ellsworth.”

“Or you could just wait to see what she comes up with. She might surprise you.”

Sarah sighed. “Mrs. Ellsworth always surprises me.”

• • •

F
rank didn’t bother to make an early start the next morning. He wanted to be sure the neighborhood had settled down and people who left their homes early were gone before he returned to Pendergast’s house. He was fully prepared to break a window if necessary in order to get inside, and he wanted as few witnesses as possible.

As he turned onto Pendergast’s street, however, he saw a man standing on the front stoop of Pendergast’s house. Frank slowed his steps, being careful not to look directly at the man or act at all interested in who he might be. Frank didn’t think he’d seen the fellow before, but he didn’t look like a servant. In fact, he looked quite prosperous in his tailor-made suit and smart new bowler hat. He glanced around nervously as he waited for someone to answer his knock, so Frank stopped a few houses away to retie his shoelace.

While he was hunkered down, the man knocked again, more loudly and very insistently. Frank retied his other shoelace before rising again. By that time, the man had tried the door, much as Frank had done last night, and to his surprise—and Frank’s—he found it unlocked.

Someone had been there and had left the house unlocked since last night. Frank quickened his step. He’d sneak in behind this fellow and see what he was doing here. Then he’d ask him some questions about how he knew Pendergast.

But just as he reached the front stoop, the man came barreling out the front door as if his tail were on fire. Frank caught him before he could escape.

The man glared at Frank with eyes wide with terror. “Let me go!”

Frank took his arm and twisted it up behind him until he cried out. “Not so fast. What were you doing in there?”

“Nothing! Let me go, I tell you!”

“Were you looking for Pendergast?”

“No, no! I . . . I don’t even know who that is!”

“You’re a terrible liar. Now let’s try this again. What are you doing here?” He gave the man’s arm a little extra twist and nearly sent him to his knees.

“Stop! Stop! I’ll tell you!”

Frank eased the pressure but didn’t let go. “So tell me.”

“I . . . Someone sent me a message.”

“Who? Not Pendergast.”

“No, he . . . he’s dead. Andy. Andy works for him. He . . . he wanted to see me.”

“Then why didn’t he answer the door?”

The man stiffened. Frank tightened his grip again, and the man cried, “Because he’s dead, too!”

Frank nearly shouted a protest. Andy couldn’t be dead, not until he’d told what he knew about Pendergast. “Show me,” he said, shoving him toward the steps.

The two men climbed them clumsily, with Frank still holding his arm. Then Frank propelled his prisoner through the front door before releasing him and closing the door behind them.

The man caught himself and straightened, turning to Frank in a fury. He was older than Frank had first thought, almost fifty, and he was already running to fat.

“Who are you?” the man said, rubbing his arm.

The words Frank could no longer say trembled on his lips, the words that would have won this man’s cooperation instantly, but Frank was no longer with the police. “I’m investigating Pendergast’s death.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that. I hardly know the man, in fact.”

“But you belong to the same club,” Frank guessed, making it sound like he already knew. “Fleet Street, isn’t it?”

The man’s eyes widened, and he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe the sweat from his face. “Yes, but—”

“And you knew what he did here, didn’t you? He’d invited you to his little parties, didn’t he?”

“Only once! I was appalled, I assure you!”

“So why are you here now?”

“I told you, Andy sent for me. He . . . he said he needed help to leave the city.”

“Help? You mean he needed money.”

The man pulled himself up to his full height in a vain attempt to regain some of his dignity. “That was my understanding, yes.”

“So you generously decided to ‘help’ the poor fellow out.”

“He said he’d tell the police I was involved if I didn’t, and here you are anyway,” he added bitterly.

“I’m not going to arrest you,” Frank said quite truthfully, although he saw no reason to explain why. “Show me where Andy is.”

The man turned and pointed down the hall to where a dark form lying on the floor was visible through the open kitchen door.

Frank took a step in that direction, and the man tried to duck around him in a bid to escape out the front door. Frank grabbed him by the lapels and shook him, jarring loose a thick envelope that fell to the floor.

“What’s that?” Frank asked.

“The money for Andy. You can keep it, all of it. Just let me go.”

Frank picked up the envelope and found what looked like several hundred dollars inside. That was a lot of money for somebody who had only been here once.

“I didn’t kill Andy. You know that. I only just got here, and he was dead when I arrived.”

“Let’s take a look and see if I believe you.” He slapped the envelope into the fellow’s pudgy hands and shoved him down the hallway toward the kitchen.

He stumbled but then righted himself, scurrying ahead, but he stopped just short of the doorway. Frank stepped around him until he could see the body lying crumpled on the kitchen floor. Andy had been a small man in his late twenties with a pockmarked face and a crooked nose. Blood soaked his trousers from a wound in his lower abdomen. He’d tried to stanch the flow with a towel, but the wound had been too deep and had bled too fast, and he’d probably fainted and bled to death before he could get help.

The staring eyes told Frank the man was dead, and when he felt his neck for a pulse, just to be sure, the skin was cold. The fat fellow was right. He’d been dead for a while. So when the fat fellow took advantage of Frank’s momentary distraction to bolt for the front door, he let him go. He could always find him at the Fleet Street Club if he needed him.

Muttering a curse—he wouldn’t be getting any information from Andy after all—Frank went out in search of a patrolman.

• • •

A
fter sending for Broghan and the medical examiner, Frank spent some time searching the house again. Andy’s attic room had been stripped clean of his belongings, which he’d stuffed into a cheap suitcase that Frank found lying open on his unmade bed. Besides his clothes, it contained little of interest and certainly no indication of who else he might have contacted about providing him some “help” in leaving the city.

Frank felt certain he had done so, though. It only made sense. He would have asked the men he knew had joined Pendergast for his “entertainments,” and one of them had decided to shut Andy up permanently instead of trusting him to disappear. It was, Frank had to admit, the most effective way of dealing with blackmailers, since you could never depend on them to be satisfied with just one payment.

Broghan was pretty angry by the time he arrived with a couple of patrolmen in tow. Frank braced himself for a tirade, and he endured it until Broghan had to pause because he’d used up his usual store of profanity and needed a minute to think of some more.

“I know,” Frank said amiably. “You’ve got every right to be mad, but I didn’t kill this fellow and I don’t know who did. I just stumbled on his body.”

“Which you wouldn’t’ve done if you’d been minding your own business,” Broghan said.

“As it happens, I
was
minding my own business. Mr. Livingston has hired me as a private investigator.”

“What the hell does he need a private investigator for? And what the hell do you need a job for, I might add? I thought you was a millionaire now.”

“I like to keep busy,” Frank said, unable to resist the urge to tweak Broghan a bit. “And Livingston is concerned that you’re going to arrest his daughter, so he wants to find the real killer before you do.”

Broghan humphed in outrage. “And he thinks you can do that better than me?”

“He’s worried you won’t try,” Frank said.

Broghan started sputtering incoherently, and Frank raised both hands in a sign of surrender.

“You’ve got to admit, he’s got a point. You did tell him you were going to arrest her before you even questioned her.”

“He wouldn’t let me see her!”

“Would you have, if it was your daughter?”

That shut him up for a few seconds, but no longer. He was Irish, after all. “Did he let you see her?”

“No, but Mrs. Brandt talked to her.”

“And what did she find out?”

So Frank told him. He really had no choice if he hoped to change Broghan’s mind about arresting Grace Livingston, even though he was taking a chance. Broghan could use the information against the women if he wanted to.

“Those women were stupid,” Broghan said when Frank was finished. “You’d think they’d know better than to go off with a strange man.”

“They felt like they knew him, I guess. His letters are pretty convincing. And even stupid women don’t deserve what happened to them.”

Broghan shrugged, obviously uncomfortable with the knowledge he had. “But if she’s the one who cut his throat—”

“I told you, she doesn’t remember.”

“Very convenient, if you ask me. She could be protecting somebody, too. Did you think of that?”

“Another woman, you mean?”

“How should I know? Somebody. The person who killed this Andy, maybe. For all I know, Grace Livingston came back here because Andy knew she’d done it and she wanted to make sure he couldn’t tell anybody.”

“She’s not even in the city.”

“What?”

“Her father took her away, someplace quiet so she could rest.”

Broghan exploded into another round of profanity. He’d managed to remember a few new phrases, and he used them liberally until he ran out of breath. “And when were you going to tell me this?”

“I just told you.”

Broghan sighed in exasperation. “So where is she?”

“I don’t know. I made sure I didn’t know so I wouldn’t have to lie about it.”

“That’s also convenient.”

“Look, Grace Livingston didn’t kill Andy, and she probably didn’t kill Pendergast. Andy was trying to blackmail the men Pendergast had included in his little hobby so he could get some cash for leaving town. One of them probably killed him just to make sure he never told what he knew.”

“How do you know all that?”

“One of the men he tried to blackmail arrived just before I did. He’s the one who really found the body first.”

Broghan looked around meaningfully. “So where is he?”

“He ran off.”

“You let him go?” Broghan asked incredulously.

“I didn’t let him do anything. I couldn’t arrest him. I’m not a cop anymore, remember? Besides, I knew he hadn’t killed Andy. I also know he’s a member of the Fleet Street Club, so if you need him, you can find him pretty easily.”

“I should arrest you for interfering in an investigation.”

“Or you could let me keep investigating, and I’ll tell you everything I find out so you’ll be able to arrest the real killer.”

“You think I can’t find the real killer myself?”

Frank didn’t think Broghan would like his answer to that question, so he said, “Do you want my help or not? Because I’m going to investigate anyway. The only question is whether I tell you what I find out.”

Broghan reached into his pocket, pulled out a flask, and took a long swallow from it. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and glared at Frank. “Do you also think I should tell you what I find out?”

“I’d appreciate it,” Frank said. “And I’m willing to pay for information.”

Broghan snorted and tucked his flask back in his pocket. “Think you’re smart, don’t you?”

“No, and I’m still pretty mad about being kicked off the force, so don’t try my patience. Is it a deal?”

Since he had nothing to lose and everything to gain, Broghan nodded, albeit without much grace.