Murder on Astor Place (33 page)

“He doesn’t want you anymore, Mina,” she told her daughter again. “He hasn’t wanted you for a very long time. You’re too old. When are you going to accept that?”

“Shut up, Francisca,” VanDamm said, a little more vigorously. “Go back to your room.”

“What do you mean, he doesn’t want her
anymore?”
Malloy asked before Sarah could.

Francisca VanDamm lifted her chin, savoring the novelty of having such a large audience. She had probably not enjoyed this much attention in years. “You didn’t think Alicia was the only daughter he used, did you?”

Plainly, Malloy hadn’t thought of this, and Sarah hadn’t had time to. She needed only another moment to determine something else. “Did he get Mina with child, too? Is that how Alicia was born?”

“What are you talking about?” Malloy asked.

“She’s crazy!” Mina cried. “Don’t listen to her!”

“He told me I’d have to pretend she was mine,” Mrs. VanDamm said, “or else he’d give the baby away to strangers. Now I realize he was only trying to frighten me. He had no intention of giving her away. He wanted her for himself, especially when he saw how beautiful she was. He used to stand over her cradle and unbutton his pants—”

“Stop it, Francisca!”
VanDamm shouted. “Have you no shame?”

“Have
you
no shame?” she countered. “You’re the one who used your own children like whores!”

“And when you couldn’t pass off Alicia’s baby as your wife’s the way you did Mina’s,” Malloy guessed, “you hired an abortionist to get rid of it. Except she refused to operate because Alicia was too far along.”

“That’s a lie! I told you, I wasn’t even there!” VanDamm insisted. “I have witnesses! Sarah’s father—”

“And when you realized she was going to leave you and take the child with her,” Malloy continued, “you flew into a jealous rage and strangled her!”

“No! No!” VanDamm was gasping again, clutching his chest. “I’d never hurt her! I swear it! How can you even think such a thing?”

“Stop it!” Mina cried. “Can’t you see you’re killing him? Father, you must let me take you to your room. I’ll take care of you, just like I used to. You’ll see, it can be just like it was before! I won’t let them bother you anymore. I’ll take care of everything.”

“The first thing you’ll need to take care of is finding out who killed Alicia,” Malloy reminded her. “A man went to the boardinghouse that night with Mrs. Petrovka, the abortionist. That man killed Alicia, and the same man killed Mrs. Petrovka and Harvey. If it wasn’t you, VanDamm, who was it? Someone you hired? Was it Mattingly? Or his man Fisher? Who was it? Don’t you want to see the person who killed her punished?”

“Not if it would cause him embarrassment,” Mrs. VanDamm said from the staircase. “His good name is all he has left since he lost his soul the first time he used his baby daughter for his pleasure.”

“Don’t listen to them, Father,” Mina said, reaching up to stroke his face. “They can’t make you say a thing. Come with me. I’ll make you forget she ever existed! I can be your little girl again just like it was before she came!”

He stared at her for a long moment, and Sarah watched in amazement as his expression slowly changed from distaste to disbelief to horror. “It was
you
!” he said, his voice a hoarse croak. “You killed Alicia!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she scoffed, thoroughly offended. “You heard him. The witness said it was a
man.”

“It
looked
like a man. But it was you, wasn’t it, Mina?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’ve had a shock, Father. You aren’t yourself. Mother has a sedative that will help you—”

“I know about you,” he said, silencing her.

The two of them stared at each other as if they’d completely forgotten about the others, and in that moment, Sarah had a chance to figure it all out.

“Mina
was the man with Emma Petrovka!” she told Malloy, whose expression told her he doubted her sanity.

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at her!” Sarah said, pointing to where Mina stood beside her father, shorter by only a few inches and almost as tall as Malloy. Her body was sturdy and angular beneath the flounces of her dress. “If she were wearing men’s clothes, and it was dark, she could easily pass for a man.”

Malloy couldn’t believe it. “Why would she want to—?”

“For the freedom!” Sarah explained, unable to believe he couldn’t comprehend it at once. “As a man, she could go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted.”

“And she did.”

This time the voice came from behind them, from someone they’d completely forgotten was there. Alfred’s face was gray and slack, but his eyes burned with a righteousness Sarah would never have guessed he possessed.

“Alfred, if you want to continue in our employ...” Mina began, but he simply shook his head.

“No one will work for you when they know what you’ve done in this house.”

“Stop it! Stop it right now!” Mina shrieked. “I won’t have it, I tell you!”

“What do you mean, Alfred?” Malloy said, ignoring her outburst. “What did she do?”

“She dressed like a man and went out at night. Been doing it for years. I don’t know everything she does, but someone saw her going into an opium den once, wearing her man’s clothes, or that’s what I heard.”

“There were prostitutes, too,” her father said, his voice hollow. “Women she would pay for God knows what.”

Distracted by the shock of it all, Sarah had lost track of what she should be surmising, but Malloy hadn’t.

“You dressed like a man,” he said to Mina, “and hired Emma Petrovka to get rid of your sis—” He stopped himself and made the correction, “... of Alicia’s baby. And when Petrovka wouldn’t operate and left, you killed Alicia to get rid of both her and her child.”

“Lies! It’s all lies! Father, don’t believe them!”

But he
did
believe them. “You killed her,” he murmured incredulously. “You killed my darling girl!”

On the staircase, Mrs. VanDamm cried out like a wounded animal.

“No!
No, I didn’t, I swear it!” Mina screamed.

“How did she know where to find Alicia that night?” Malloy asked.

“I didn’t! I couldn’t have!” Mina insisted.

“The report,” VanDamm said. “Sylvester had sent it here to the house. We’d been trying to find her diary before we brought her back, and he had a man in the boardinghouse with her, looking for it. But I was out and didn’t see his report until the next morning. Mina could have read it, though. She would have known where to find Alicia that night.”

“And when she realized Mrs. Petrovka could implicate her, she killed her, too,” Malloy reminded them.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about! I never saw this person!”

“And poor Harvey,” Sarah remembered. “Did she kill him, too?”

“Yes. She was dressed like a man again,” Malloy said. “One of the servants saw her riding away. She must have come up behind him and strangled him with a piece of rope. He might have even known she was there. He wouldn’t have considered her a danger, so she could pretty much do whatever she wanted. Then she somehow got him up and hanging from a rafter. How did you do it, Miss VanDamm? You must be much stronger than you appear.”

“Father, you can’t believe this... this bogtrotter over your own daughter!” Mina grabbed him by the lapels, clinging when he would have pulled away. “Have you forgotten Alicia left you? She ran away, but I stayed! I’ve stayed with you all these years! That must count for something. I love you, Father! You must love me, too. That’s what you said! That’s what you told me all those times when you—”

“No!”
VanDamm roared as thunder shook the house. “You killed my beautiful girl! Get out! Get out of my sight!”

“Father,
please!”
she begged, but he tore her hands away from his coat and shoved her from him.

“I’ll be glad to take her out of your sight,” Malloy said. “Would the women’s lockup be far enough?”

The look Mina turned on him was pure venom, and Sarah took a step backward just from instinct. “Malloy, I wouldn’t try to—” she began, but Mina interrupted her.

“You’ll never arrest a VanDamm,” she told him acidly. “Tell him, Father. You’d never allow it, would you? No matter what I’ve done or haven’t done.”

Everyone looked at VanDamm, and for a moment, Sarah believed he would forbid Malloy to take her. As much as he might despise her for killing Alicia, he would have to risk losing everything he prized in life in order to see his daughter arrested and tried for murder. But to her surprise, his expression hardened. His dark mustache stood out boldly against his pale skin, and sweat dampened his forehead, but he held his head high as he said, “You killed Alicia. How can you think I would care what happened to you?”

The sound she made was so anguished, it chilled Sarah’s blood, and for a moment she thought Mina might attack her own father out of sheer rage. But the balled fists struck his chest in frustration, not fury, and when he grabbed her wrists to hold her, she wrenched free, and with one last shriek, she picked up her skirts and ran.

Malloy would have stopped her if she’d headed for the front door, but she went for the stairs instead, charging up them as if all the devils of hell pursued her, and she surely put Malloy into that category.

She slammed past her mother, and for a second it looked as if Mrs. VanDamm might go toppling over the banister, but before anyone could think to catch her, she’d grabbed hold and clung as Mina ran by her up the stairs.

“Can she get out that way?” Malloy asked Alfred.

“Not unless she jumps out a window,” the old butler replied.

“Mr. VanDamm,” Sarah asked in alarm. “Are you really going to let Malloy arrest her?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. VanDamm said unsteadily as she sank down onto one of the steps. “He was only trying to frighten her. They’d throw him out of his club if his daughter was hanged.”

“Shut up, Francisca,” VanDamm said wearily. He was still rubbing his chest absently, as if the pain had vanished but he wanted to be ready in case it returned. Sarah could literally see him gathering the remnants of his pride and self-confidence around him again as he struggled to regain his dignity.

Why this should be so important to him when she and Malloy now knew the filthiest secrets about him, she had no idea, but it was, as evidenced by the power he still seemed to believe he possessed.

“You’ve done your job, Detective Sergeant,” he told Malloy. “You found Alicia’s murderer, and now you may go.”

“I have to arrest her,” Malloy said, stubborn to the last. “She killed three people. No one who knows that is safe now, not even you.”

Whether VanDamm believed him or not, they never learned, because the sound of running feet upstairs distracted them.

“Mr. VanDamm!” a voice cried from abovestairs, and in another moment, a maid appeared on the landing. “Mr. VanDamm! Miss Mina went up on the roof! I tried to stop her. The storm’s that bad, I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. She just opened the door and...”

By then Malloy was halfway up the stairs, taking them two at a time in determined leaps. Sarah started after him, but VanDamm almost knocked her over as he rushed past, pushing her out of the way. Outside, a flash of lightning lit the room as bright as day, illuminating Mrs. VanDamm’s fragile features. Sarah knew she would never forget the expression on that face.

She would have expected fear or shock, or even horror and disbelief. Instead she saw pure, naked triumph as she raced up the stairs behind the men.

14

S
ARAH WAS CURSING THE TIGHTNESS OF HER CORSETS by the time she reached the dark, narrow stairway to the roof. Gasping for breath, she stared up at the gaping doorway above her. For an instant, another flash of lightning revealed the raging storm through the opening. The driving rain had washed halfway down the stairs, and the cold, damp air swept past her to invade the rest of the house.

Thunder cracked, making her jump. Only a fool would go out into this.

Then she heard a shrieked,
“No!”
and she was galvanized.

Gathering her skirts in both hands, she clattered upward, sliding and nearly losing her balance on the wet steps but finally launching herself out onto the roof. The storm attacked her, lashing at her hair and her face and her clothes, trying to tear her apart, and for a second she was blind. The darkness and rain and wind obscured everything, but then, in another flash of lightning, she saw them.

They were standing at the edge of the roof. Mina was on the low ledge that encircled it, holding on to some pole for balance while her father pleaded with her. “This is crazy, Mina! Get down from there! You can’t believe I’d let them take you to jail!”

“You’re just worried that I’ll embarrass you if I jump!” she accused, clinging tightly to the pole but perilously close to being swept over the ledge by the force of the wind. “If I kill myself, you won’t be able to explain it to your friends!”

“Is that what you want? To become an ugly piece of gossip that women whisper about over afternoon tea?” he shouted.

“I won’t care what happens when I’m dead!” she cried, throwing back her head as if daring the storm to take her. The rain had drenched her, turning her hair into a sodden mass and molding her dress to her body.

It drenched Sarah as well, drowning and stinging and chilling her, but still she inched forward, compelled to get closer. Perhaps if she could sneak up unnoticed, she could grab Mina and ...

“Don’t come any closer!” Mina screamed, halting Sarah in her tracks, but she wasn’t even looking at Sarah. In fact, she probably hadn’t even noticed Sarah, who was still in the shadows. Malloy was the object of her warning. He’d been edging around, working his way up behind Mina, but now he stopped, too. They all stood like statues, frozen in the darkness for that awful moment in time.