Murder on Amsterdam Avenue (2 page)

“It certainly was,” Hannah said. “And the worst part was that we couldn't go because Charles said he had to go to work.”

“Charles had been appointed superintendent of the Manhattan State Hospital,” Jenny said, giving Hannah another glare, although Hannah didn't appear to notice.

“Yes, I saw it mentioned in the newspapers,” Sarah's mother said. “It was a very nice write-up about him and the hospital, too.”

“They call it a hospital,” Hannah said, “but it's really an asylum. A place for crazy people. Can you imagine? What would Charles know about crazy people?”

“It was an administrative position,” Jenny said, more to Sarah and her mother than to Hannah. “His job was to manage the institution, not deal with the patients.”

“It doesn't matter,” Hannah said. “I still don't know why we couldn't go to Newport. The season there is only two months. That's not very long to be away.”

Sarah's mother had had enough of Hannah. She turned back to Jenny. “I remember hearing about Charles's appointment. You must have been very proud.”

Some emotion Sarah couldn't identify flickered over Jenny's face, causing a tightness around her mouth. “Charles has many friends in the city.”

Or maybe she wasn't so proud.

Sarah's mother quickly began inquiring about funeral arrangements, which seemed cheerful by comparison to Hannah's inappropriate bitterness over her husband's inconvenient death. They managed to finish their visit without another outburst from the young widow, and gratefully followed the maid who came to show them out.

Sarah was quietly wondering if it was possible for her to withdraw from society completely after she and Malloy married, when the maid startled them both by stopping dead in her tracks. She turned to face them instead of leading them down the stairs.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Decker, but Mr. Oakes asked if you could see him in the library for a few minutes before you leave.”

“Why, certainly,” she replied, giving Sarah a puzzled glance. “My daughter, too?”

“Yes, ma'am. This way, please.”

She led them down the hallway, away from the stairs that would have taken them to the front door at street level. She opened one of the doors and announced them.

The library was a comfortable room with large leather armchairs and rows of bookshelves. The air smelled faintly of tobacco. A middle-aged man greeted them warmly. Sarah's mother gave him both her hands and offered her cheek for a kiss.

“I'm so terribly sorry, Gerald,” she said.

“It's a cruel trick of fate when a child dies,” he said, blinking at the tears neither his wife nor his daughter-in-law had bothered to shed. “You expect to bury your parents, but never your children.”

“I know,” she said, and Sarah knew she did. “You remember my daughter, Sarah.”

“Of course. Mrs. Brandt, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Sarah said in surprise. He would have had no reason to have remembered her married name. She expressed her condolences, and he thanked her.

“Please, sit down. I won't keep you long, but I have a favor to ask.”

They each took one of the armchairs that sat grouped together in front of the unlit fireplace. The soft leather enveloped Sarah, and she thought perhaps she should get some chairs like this for her new house. She would have to mention it to Malloy.

“You know we'll be happy to do anything for you and Jenny, Gerald,” her mother was saying. “All you need to do is ask.”

“Actually, Mrs. Brandt is the one I must ask,” he said.

“Me?” Sarah asked in surprise.

“Well, you and your fiancé. You're engaged to Frank Malloy, aren't you?”

“Yes,” she said, thinking he couldn't possibly have remembered that tidbit of information from casually reading the society pages of the newspapers.

“I know what Mr. Malloy did for the club, Mrs. Brandt. The Knickerbocker Club,” he added in case she didn't know. “He handled a sensitive situation discreetly, and all the members were very grateful.”

“I'll be sure and tell him you said so.”

“Please do. And of course we know about his . . . his recent good fortune. As you can imagine, it has been a topic of interest to all of us.”

“I can easily imagine that,” Sarah said with a small smile. It had been a topic of interest to many people.

“I say all this so you know that I understand he is no longer with the police and that he no longer needs to earn his living, but I am wondering if you think he would be willing to assist me in another matter that is even more sensitive than the one he handled at the club.”

Sarah's mind was racing as she tried to figure out where this conversation was taking her. “I really can't speak for Mr. Malloy,” she hedged, although she could easily imagine he would be thrilled to do anything besides oversee the renovations to their house, which had been his sole occupation for the past few months. “But I will be happy to pass along your request. Can you give me some idea of what you'd like him to help you with?”

“Yes. I'd like him to investigate my son's murder.”

•   •   •

A
t first Frank thought the knocking was just more hammering from the workmen who were somewhere
in the bowels of his monstrosity of a house doing something to, hopefully, make it fit for habitation, if he lived long enough to ever see the end of it. He tried to remind himself that eventually, the house would be finished, and he and Sarah would be married, and she'd live here with him. Unfortunately, he'd begun to give up hope that would ever happen, because, at this rate, the house was never going to be finished.

After a few minutes, he finally realized the knocking was coming from the front door, though, and he made his way to answer it.

The front hallway didn't look too bad, he acknowledged, glancing around as he approached the door. Except for some dust, which was unavoidable as long as the workmen were here, it was almost presentable. If only the doorbell worked. He'd asked the workmen to fix it at least a dozen times, to no avail. Who knows how many visitors had given up and gone away because he hadn't heard them knock? A lot, he hoped, since the only people who knocked on his door nowadays were reporters looking for a story or people looking for a handout.

Frank threw open the door, ready to do battle with whoever was there to ask him for something, and he caught himself just in time. “Sarah.”

She smiled the way she always smiled when she saw him, and he had to resist the overwhelming urge to take her in his arms, because her mother was standing right beside her.

“Mrs. Decker, how nice to see you.” He stood back and motioned them inside.

“It's lovely to see you, too,” Mrs. Decker said.

Sarah gave him a peck on the cheek and a knowing smirk as she passed. Both women looked around appreciatively as he closed the door behind them.

“It's starting to look very nice,” Mrs. Decker said.

Just then someone upstairs started pounding, raising a deafening racket. Frank motioned them into the room he'd just left and closed the door. They could still hear the pounding, but they could also now hear one another, too.

“This is going to be Mrs. Malloy's sitting room,” Sarah told her mother. “And her bedroom is through there. We made her a suite down here so she wouldn't have to manage the stairs.”

“It's lovely,” Mrs. Decker said.

“She made me bring all her old furniture,” Frank felt obligated to explain, because it didn't really look
that
lovely.

“Which was very sensible,” Mrs. Decker said, always the lady. “You wouldn't want to put anything new in here until the workmen are finished. Where is your mother?”

“She's at school with Brian.”

“She still stays with him every day?”

“She helps out there,” Frank explained, “and she's learning to sign, too, so she can talk to him.”

“That's such a wonderful thing,” Mrs. Decker said. “We should all learn to sign now that Brian will be a member of our family.”

Frank knew he was probably gaping at her in surprise at the thought that she would actually want to learn sign language to talk with his deaf son, but she was much too polite to notice.

“Uh, why don't you sit down,” he managed after a moment. “Can I get you something?”

“Oh my, no. I wouldn't think of sending you to the kitchen for anything,” Sarah said, still giving him that knowing smirk as she and her mother sat down on his mother's old sofa. “Besides, we're here on business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Gerald Oakes wants to hire you to investigate his son's murder.”

“
Possible
murder,” Mrs. Decker added quickly. “Actually, he wants you to figure out if his son was murdered or if he died a natural death.”

Frank sank down in one of his mother's old chairs. “Who is Gerald Oakes?”

“He's a member of the Knickerbocker Club,” Sarah said.

“And an old friend of our family,” Mrs. Decker said.

“And he knows all about you and what you did for the club,” Sarah said.

“And he also knows your current situation,” Mrs. Decker said, “so he didn't want to insult you by offering to hire you, but he thought you would appreciate a businesslike arrangement of some sort.”

The women were making him a little dizzy. “You said he wants to find out if his son was murdered. How did he die?”

“It was sudden,” Sarah explained. She looked especially beautiful today, he noticed, but then, he thought she looked especially beautiful every day. “He became ill, vomiting and other unpleasant things, apparently.”

“He thought he'd eaten something bad,” Mrs. Decker said.

“When he didn't get any better over the next few days, they called in the doctor, but he died shortly afterward.”

“So Oakes thinks his son was poisoned?” Frank asked.

“Wouldn't you?” Mrs. Decker asked.

He gave her a tolerant smile. “It probably wouldn't be my first thought unless I had a reason to think someone wanted him dead. Did someone want this fellow . . . What's his name?”

“Charles Oakes,” Sarah said. “He's . . . he
was
only a few years older than I, and otherwise in good health.”

“Tell him about the milk,” Mrs. Decker said.

“Yes, tell me about the milk,” he said with a grin.

“The night he died, he'd asked for a glass of warm milk,” Sarah said. “He drank most of it, and at some point later, while the doctor was working on him, the glass got knocked over. No one noticed it until the next morning.”

“There wasn't much milk left, apparently,” Mrs. Decker said, “but the cat—his wife has this pet cat—had apparently lapped up what was left.”

“And they found the cat under Charles's bed, dead,” Sarah said.

“After the undertaker had come for Charles's body the next morning,” Mrs. Decker added.

“That's interesting,” Frank said.

“Of course, it doesn't prove anything,” Sarah said. “Sometimes cats just die.”

“And sometimes people just die,” Mrs. Decker said.

“But when they both die after drinking the same glass of milk, you have to wonder,” Frank said.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Decker said.

She looked much too excited for somebody talking about an old friend being poisoned. Frank knew he shouldn't encourage her morbid fascination, but he couldn't help himself. “What did the doctor say?”

“He said gastric fever. He didn't know about the cat, of course,” Mrs. Decker said.

“I asked Mr. Oakes where they took the body, and he said it's at a funeral home now,” Sarah said.

“So they didn't do an autopsy?” he asked.

Sarah shook her head. “No, and it's probably too late now, isn't it?”

“If the body is already embalmed . . .” Frank shrugged.

“And the milk glass has long since been washed and put away,” Sarah said.

“Does Mr. Oakes have any reason to think somebody wanted his son dead?”

The two women exchanged a glance, then Sarah said, “He didn't want to discuss that with two gently bred ladies, but I think if you are willing to help him, he would discuss it with you.”

“If there's no proof he was poisoned, I don't know what I can do,” Frank said.

At some point, the pounding had apparently stopped, which Frank hadn't noticed until it suddenly started up again, making him wince.

“You won't know until you talk to him,” Sarah said, “and helping him would give you a reason to get out of the house.”

Frank sighed. “Do you think he's still at home?”

•   •   •

F
rank stepped out of the cab on Amsterdam Avenue and looked up at the Oakes house. Once he would have been intimidated to enter the home of one of the wealthier families in the city. Knowing Sarah Brandt had brought him into many such homes, however, and if he'd learned nothing else, he'd learned that rich people suffered from most of the same problems as poor people. Rich people also killed each other as often as poor people. They were just a little neater about it.

Frank rang the doorbell and thought again how he needed to remind the workmen to fix his. A maid answered and looked him up and down. He couldn't do much about his Irish face, but he knew his suit told her he was somebody to be taken seriously. Sarah's father had sent him to his own tailor to make sure he looked like the millionaire he now was.

“Frank Malloy to see Mr. Oakes. He's expecting me,” he said.

He'd occasionally been told to use the back door when calling on houses like this, but today the maid let him in without a protest and only kept him waiting a few minutes while she asked her employer if he was at home for Mr. Malloy.

Oakes was in a room Frank suspected he spent a lot of time in. Bookshelves lined the walls and the chairs were oversize and well-worn. The lingering scent of tobacco told him no females frequented this sanctuary.