Murder on Amsterdam Avenue (29 page)

“She's nearly deaf,” Hannah said. “She probably can't hear you.”

Sarah knew the old woman wasn't that deaf. She knocked again, even though she was sure by now that she would receive no response.

After what seemed an hour but was probably only minutes, Patsy and Zeller came running up the stairs and down the hallway, with Malloy and Gino and Gerald Oakes right behind.

Gino? Where had he come from?

Zeller had a ring of keys, and he nearly dropped them as he struggled to find the right one.

“She never locks her door,” Gerald was saying. “None of us lock doors. Why would we?”

No one answered him.

Finally, Zeller found the right key, fitted it into the hole, and turned it. “There,” he said and stood back, obviously unwilling to be the one to open the door.

Perhaps he smelled it, too, the stench of sickness and death. Sarah reached out and turned the knob and threw the door open.

“What's that smell?” Gerald gasped.

Sarah remembered that he hadn't visited his son's sick-
room the night he died. She hadn't either, but she'd been at the Nicelys' home and in Letty's room, so she knew it well.

She stepped into the room. The draperies were drawn so she needed a moment to adjust to the dimness. The old woman lay on the bed, still and white.

Jenny Oakes sat in a chair by the fireplace looking as composed as she always did. She looked up at Sarah, smiled slightly, and said, “She's dead.”

S
arah had to check, of course. Prudence Oakes truly was dead. She lay as her daughter-in-law had left her, in her own vomit and waste. A small silver tray sat on her bedside table. On it was a cup and saucer. The cup had once contained something that looked like hot chocolate. Sarah was fairly certain it had also contained arsenic.

For some reason, no one else had entered the room behind her. She saw Gerald Oakes had come to the doorway, his puzzled gaze darting between his mother and his wife, but he couldn't seem to bring himself to cross the threshold. “What happened here, Jenny?” he asked.

“She killed Charles. And Daisy. She confessed it all to me, at the end.”

“That's what I was going to tell you,” Sarah heard Gino say to Malloy. “It was the druggist on the next street. He
told me an old woman bought the arsenic. She gave another name, but he recognized her as Mrs. Oakes.”

Sarah pulled the coverlet over Mrs. Oakes's face. Then she went to Jenny and put her arm around her. “Jenny, come with me.”

For a moment, Sarah was afraid she wouldn't obey, but then she slowly rose and allowed Sarah to lead her from the room. The crowd that had gathered around the door parted for them to pass.

Gerald reached out to his wife, but Malloy stopped him.

“Let them go,” Malloy said. “Mrs. Brandt will sort it out.”

Sarah didn't think anyone could sort this out, but she might finally be able to make some sense of it, at least. Jenny went meekly, allowing Sarah to escort her into her bedroom. Sarah closed the door behind them and led Jenny to one of the two slipper chairs that sat beside the cold fireplace.

“Can I get you anything?” Sarah asked.

She shook her head, but Sarah saw a carafe of water on the bedside table and poured her a glass. She drank it gratefully. Sarah noticed her hands were perfectly steady.

“Did you poison her?” Sarah asked.

“Of course. It was pathetically easy. She always has a cup of hot chocolate at bedtime. I'd found the arsenic hidden in her room while she was downstairs at supper, so I mixed it in her regular chocolate. I had Patsy bring it to her so she wouldn't suspect.”

“How did you know she'd done it?”

“When you told me about the flask, that's when I knew. And the candy. Gerald gave his mother a box of the candy, too.”

“And she'd given Charles the flask for his birthday.”

“She'd planned it all, for weeks. She didn't know Daisy
would be the one taking care of Charles, but when she did, she realized she had to kill Daisy, too.”

“Do you know why she did it?”

Jenny's head jerked up and her eyes were cold. “No.”

“I think you do. I think I do, too. It was because you and Daisy were sisters.”

Something flickered in Jenny's eyes, but she never even blinked. Sarah realized she would keep her secret until the day she died.

“Let me tell you what I know,” Sarah said. “You and Daisy were sisters, but not the usual way that white children would have a Negro half sibling. Your mother was a slave and your father owned the plantation. When the Union soldiers came, you somehow passed yourself off as the only surviving member of the family. Then you married Gerald and he brought you here, and you kept your secret all these years, until Daisy showed up. You must have been horrified to see her after all those years, the one person who could ruin the life you'd built here.”

“No!” she cried, and Sarah watched transfixed as Jenny's icy calm disintegrated. Her eyes filled with tears and she began to tremble. “No, it wasn't like that!”

Jenny wrapped her arms around herself and began to sob. Sarah hurried over to the door and was not surprised to find Patsy waiting outside. “Bring us some tea and some brandy. Hurry!”

Then she returned to Jenny. She knelt beside her chair and put her arms around her, offering her what comfort she could as she wept scalding tears that seemed to come from her very soul.

By the time the tea tray arrived, Jenny was calmer, and Sarah mixed a liberal dose of brandy into the tea she urged her to drink. When the cup was empty, Jenny looked up again, her eyes red-rimmed and still full of pain.

“You don't understand at all. I was happy to see Daisy. So very happy.”

Sarah sat down in the other chair and leaned forward to encourage her. “Tell me. Why were you so happy?”

“Because I finally had someone I could talk to. Someone who knew who I was and loved me anyway.”

“Who are you, Jenny?”

Her smile was achingly sad. “I'm not Jenny. Jenny was
her
child.”

“Whose?”

“The mistress. Jenny was my other sister. Half sister. She was born a month after me, and my mother nursed us both together. We grew up together and did everything together all our lives, up until the day she died.”

“You were raised as sisters?” Sarah asked.

“Oh no, not sisters. I was her slave. We slept in the same room, but she slept in the big bed, and I slept in the trundle. And when we got older, I learned how to comb her hair and dress her. That was our life until the war came.”

“And then she died?”

“They all died. The master and Jenny's older brother, they died in the war. The mistress and the younger boy, they got sick, and my mother was supposed to take care of them. I sometimes wonder if she really did or if she just let them die, but I never asked. Then Jenny got sick, too. We'd just buried her when we heard the Yankees were coming. We didn't know what they'd do to us, but my mother got the idea that they'd treat us better if one of the family was still there, so she dressed me up in one of Miss Jenny's dresses.

“I'll never forget. ‘Lily,' she said. That's my real name, Lily. ‘You can talk just like Miss Jenny. I've heard you mimic her a thousand times. You tell them your family is dead and you need their protection.'”

It was, Sarah had to admit, a brilliant plan. “And you fooled them.”

“I fooled them all. The captain offered to take me to a neighbor's, but they would've known I wasn't really Jenny, so I asked them to take us with them instead. They already had a whole bunch of runaway slaves following the army, so we joined them. The captain, he didn't like the idea of a white girl going in with all those slaves, though, so he kept me close and found a tent for me to sleep in. I kept my mama and Daisy with me. For protection, I said. Gerald was his lieutenant, and he was assigned to look after me.”

“And you fell in love,” Sarah said.

“He fell in love. My mama told me what to do to get him to love me. After, I cried and told him I was ruined, and he'd have to marry me. I didn't really think he would, but my mama did, and she was right.”

Not exactly the romantic story Sarah's mother had heard. “So you had to leave Daisy and your mother behind.”

“My mama was an octoroon, but she couldn't pass for white, and Daisy's father was one of the slaves. She was younger than me, and darker. I didn't want to leave them, but Mama said I should go because this was my only chance. She said I could send for them later.”

“So you really were going to do that?”

“I thought so. She must've known I'd never be able to find them, but she couldn't tell me that, or I never would have gone. As it was, it about broke my heart. I'd never been so scared in my life, before or since.”

“And you fooled everyone.”

“Not everyone. Not completely,” she said, her expression hardening again. “I never fooled the old woman. She knew something was wrong, even though she never knew what until Daisy came.”

“How did she figure it out?”

“She didn't. Oh, she sensed that I was hiding something all those years, but she always believed Charles wasn't Gerald's son. She thought that was my terrible secret, but she never dared accuse me to my face or to Gerald.”

“How on earth did you manage to make people believe you were Jenny?”

“I learned early on to keep my mouth shut and just watch how everyone else behaved. When I made a mistake, I'd just tell them we did things differently in the South.”

“If she never figured it out, why did she . . . ?”

“She didn't figure it out, but Charles did. He . . . There was some kind of instant bond between him and Daisy. It was as if he'd been waiting for her all these years, too. She had a son who died young, only fourteen, and she doted on Charles. If only . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut and two tears ran down her face.

Sarah waited for her to regain her composure. “Did Charles tell his grandmother?”

“Oh no, but he did tell Hannah. He never saw her for who she truly is, you see, and he thought she loved him as much as he loved her.”

Just as Gerald thought Jenny had loved him, Sarah thought, but she didn't say it.

“He was upset,” Jenny continued. “He didn't know how to feel about this knowledge, and he didn't know who to tell. He thought he could trust his wife, so he told her.”

“And that's when she refused to share her bed with him anymore,” Sarah said.

“She wanted to leave him, but what reason could she give? She was afraid if she revealed our secret, she would be tainted as well. She'd married a Negro, after all, the son of a slave.”

“Who told your mother-in-law then?”

“I'm not sure. She may have just pieced it together. Charles
and Hannah were quarreling, and she probably offered each of them a sympathetic ear until she'd gotten all the information she needed.”

Sarah could just imagine the old woman asking probing questions while sympathizing with the young people. “But why on earth would she poison Charles?”

“Instead of me, you mean?” Jenny asked. “Because she wanted to protect her precious family name, and she knew I was never going to tell anyone my secret. She couldn't trust Charles, though. He'd already told his idiot wife. Hannah wasn't going to speak of it outside the family, of course. She was too afraid of ruining her social standing. But there was no telling who Charles might tell next. One of his friends at his club, perhaps, when he was too drunk to be careful.”

“And I understand he was drinking very heavily.”

“Like his father,” Jenny said bitterly.

“But to kill her own grandson,” Sarah said.

“I told you, she never believed he
was
her grandson. Never mind that he looked just like Gerald or that they were too much alike not to be father and son. She also knew how much losing Charles would hurt me, every day for the rest of my life. Killing me, too, would be a mercy, and she had no mercy.”

“And Daisy?”

“She was merely protecting herself. Daisy might have figured out that the poison was in the flask and told someone. Besides, she couldn't trust Daisy not to tell anyone about us either. With Daisy dead, she thought she had eliminated everyone who might reveal my secret.”

“And killing Daisy was another way to hurt you.”

Jenny smiled mirthlessly. “That would never have occurred to her. She could never have understood that I loved a slave woman. She probably believed killing Daisy was no different than killing a dog or a cat.”

“Do you know how she did it? I mean, we think she put the poison into some candy, but—”

“Oh, she thought that was so clever. She could have bought a fancy candy box, but she wasn't going to waste that on a darkie, she told me. Oh no, she bought some cheap candy and cut it open and mixed the cream filling with arsenic, and then stuck the pieces back together and put them in the empty box. It wasn't neatly done, but she was sure someone like Daisy wouldn't know the difference, and of course she didn't.”

Sarah found she had no more questions, and she was glad of it. The answers were too painful to hear.

“What are you going to do with me now?” Jenny asked.

“We aren't going to do anything. We aren't the police. Your husband hired Malloy to find out who killed Charles. It's up to him to decide what he wants to do with the information.”

“I wonder what he'll do with me when he finds out I was a slave. He already knows I killed his mother.”

“He knows you killed his mother, and he knows you did it because she killed Charles, but no one is going to tell him your secret unless you decide to tell him yourself.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am. Right now, I'm the only one who knows for sure, so I can promise you that.”

“Hannah knows.”

“Then be sure she understands that you have no intention of ruining her reputation either. She'll keep your secret to protect herself.”

Jenny leaned her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. Sarah realized she must have sat up all night watching her mother-in-law dying and making sure she couldn't call for help. Sarah wondered how she herself would have reacted if she found out someone had murdered her child.
She didn't think she could have done what Jenny had, but she could also understand why Jenny had done it.

“Would you like to rest now?” Sarah asked.

“I need to speak with Gerald. I need to tell him what she did.”

Sarah nodded and stepped out into the empty hallway. She found Malloy and Gino downstairs in the parlor with Gerald. Gerald jumped to his feet when he saw her.

“How is she?”

“She's very upset, as you can imagine, but she'd like to speak with you.”

Gerald hesitated. Then he glanced at Malloy, as if seeking approval. Malloy nodded and Gerald hurried out.

Sarah closed the door behind him.

“Did the old woman really kill them all?” Gino asked.

“Yes, just like we thought. She put the arsenic in Charles's flask.”

“The one she gave him,” Malloy said grimly.

“Yes. Jenny thinks she planned it that way. I guess everyone knows he drank too much, and if he had a fancy flask, he was bound to carry it around and use it from time to time.”