Murder on Gramercy Park (15 page)

“Yes, although he didn’t like to call us that. He preferred to call us clients. You see, he treated more than aches and pains. He wasn’t like an ordinary physician at all. Didn’t you know the doctor?” she asked, suddenly growing suspicious.

“Not very well,” Sarah said, stretching the truth a bit. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Blackwell’s, and I felt it was my duty to attend the service, since she couldn’t.”

“I see,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, suddenly cold. Sarah wondered if it was the mention of Mrs. Blackwell or the fact that she, Sarah, didn’t know the doctor that the woman had found offensive. The first was the far more intriguing possibility, but Sarah didn’t want to waste precious time finding out. She decided to win Mrs. Fitzgerald back immediately.

“My name is Sarah Brandt. My father is Felix Decker,” she said, knowing both that it would gain her instant respect with Mrs. Fitzgerald and how annoyed her father would be to have his name used to gather clues in a murder investigation. Fortunately, he would most likely never learn of it.

The Decker name had the desired effect on Mrs. Fitzgerald. The Deckers were one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city. Mrs. Fitzgerald need not know that Sarah had long ago turned her back on their way of life to become a common midwife.

“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Brandt,” the woman said, so obviously impressed at meeting her that Sarah was almost ashamed. Almost. “I’m Martha Fitzgerald. That’s my husband, Clarence,” she added, gesturing vaguely to where Clarence had formerly stood.

“Could you tell me more about Dr. Blackwell’s form of treatment and how it worked? I’m fascinated by what I’ve heard, but I can hardly credit the successes that are attributed to him.”

“You may believe whatever you have heard, Mrs. Brandt. Dr. Blackwell could perform veritable miracles. Surely you know what he was able to do for his own wife.”

“Yes, Letitia shared with me how he cured her, but I can’t help believing that was some sort of fluke. Perhaps she was ready to get well and would have recovered without any treatment at all.”

“I’m sure I can’t speak for Mrs. Blackwell’s case,” she said with just a hint of disapproval, “but I know about my own. I had suffered for many years and was growing worse. I had such pain I could sometimes hardly move from my bed. Most days I couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time. Some of the physicians who had treated me had the nerve to hint that my suffering was imaginary! Can you believe it?”

“Unfortunately I can,” Sarah said, knowing that many people’s pain and suffering were brought on by their own determination to be miserable. She didn’t dare suggest that she also believed this to be true of her companion, however, not if she wanted to hear what Mrs. Fitzgerald had to say.

“I think I would know the difference between real pain and imaginary pain, don’t you?” she asked indignantly.

“Absolutely,” Sarah agreed, less than truthfully.

“In any case, Dr. Blackwell took my case very seriously. He spent a long time discussing it with me, determining when the pain had started and exactly when and how often it occurred. None of the other doctors had cared to even ask such questions!”

Sarah was beginning to understand some of Blackwell’s appeal. He took time to listen to his patients. Or rather, his clients. And, most likely, to humor them as well. This must have been a form of therapy in and of itself. Remembering Dr. Blackwell’s tender care was bringing fresh tears to Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes.

“He sounds like a wonderful man,” Sarah tried.

“Oh, he was!” Mrs. Fitzgerald said. “And so gentle ...” She quickly pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her cheeks.

“I’m sure he would be touched by your grief,” Sarah went on. “You must have been very grateful to him. I couldn’t help overhearing your husband say that he owns this house and allowed Dr. Blackwell to live here rent-free.”

“Well, actually,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper and glancing around to see if anyone was listening,
“I
own the house. My father willed it to me. We had no need of it, of course, and it wasn’t grand enough for Clarence, in any case, so I let it out. It would provide a nice income for me, but I really don’t need the money, so when I learned that Dr. Blackwell was in need of a home...”

She let Sarah guess the rest. It wasn’t difficult. Her only real question was why Mr. Fitzgerald had allowed it. Perhaps he hadn’t known until Blackwell died. “That was extremely generous of you. Dr. Blackwell must have been remarkably talented. Could you explain to me exactly what he did in his treatments that was different from other physicians? I can’t seem to understand it.”

“Oh, my, I can’t understand it either. In fact, I hardly remember most of it myself. The doctor speaks to you until you drift into a sort of sleep. Then he does things that feel absolutely wonderful, and when you come back to yourself, you feel like a new person. The pain is gone, and you can forget you ever had it!”

“Oh,” was all Sarah could think to say. Mrs. Fitzgerald was hardly enlightening, but Sarah had learned something valuable just the same: the true secret to Blackwell’s success! She couldn’t let on how excited she was without alarming Mrs. Fitzgerald, though. She had to change the subject. “Would your husband really put poor Letitia and the baby out at the end of the month?”

Mrs. Fitzgerald blinked in surprise at the abruptness of the topic change, and then her expression hardened. She didn’t like discussing Letitia. “Well, we’d heard nothing about a baby, of course,” she said, not quite answering the question. “Dear heavens, when did she have it?”

“The morning after Dr. Blackwell was killed.”

“I see. The shock must have brought it on, I suppose. I know I was prostrate myself when I heard the news. And then to learn today that Dr. Blackwell had not one but two sons! I had no idea he had been married before, either.” This fact did not please her at all. “There must be some unpleasantness between them or else why wasn’t the older boy staying here with his father?”

She was obviously hoping that Sarah would give her some answers, but she had no intention of filling Mrs. Fitzgerald in on the doctor’s scandalous past.

“I’m sure Dr. Blackwell would have confided in you if he’d felt the need,” Sarah said tactfully.

“Oh, my,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said, considering this, and her eyes filled with tears again. “He was such a dear, dear man. However shall I go on without him?”

That seemed an odd thing to say about one’s physician, no matter what wonders of healing he might have worked, but Sarah wasn’t going to question her about it. Besides, she still hadn’t answered the question about throwing Letitia and the baby out of the house. “Did you say you hadn’t heard that Dr. Blackwell’s son had been born?”

“Not only that, I hadn’t known he was even expected! Dr. Blackwell hadn’t mentioned it to me, and we were very close. He always said I was one of his favorite clients.”

Sarah thought that an odd statement, but she let it pass.

“Of course,” Mrs. Fitzgerald continued, “we knew she’d stopped appearing at his lectures, but no one thought anything of it. It was obvious she was desperately afraid of speaking before a crowd, so I’m sure we all assumed that was why. She certainly was never very effective. If you ask me, Mr. Symington does much better.”

This woman had no sympathy at all for poor Letitia, and her spite sounded remarkably like jealousy to Sarah. “I heard someone say that the speech he gave this morning is the same one he uses at the lectures,” Sarah said.

“Hmm, I suppose it was very similar,” Mrs. Fitzgerald allowed, “but it certainly applied, didn’t it? I mean, all the things he said about Edmund were true, regardless of when or where he said them.”

Sarah hadn’t missed the fact that Mrs. Fitzgerald had called Blackwell by his given name, an obviously unintentional slip. No matron of her position would call her physician by his given name unless she’d known him from childhood, and even then she probably wouldn’t do so to a stranger. “How long were you under Dr. Blackwell’s care?” she asked.

“Almost a year, I believe.” She sighed. “I suppose all of the good he did will be undone now, with no one to carry on his work.”

“I believe his assistant, Mr. Potter, was trained in the techniques Dr. Blackwell used,” Sarah said.

“Pshaw, who could trust a man like that with their health?” Mrs. Fitzgerald scoffed. “He isn’t even a physician. And those eyes ... I just don’t trust him. How could he possibly duplicate Dr. Blackwell’s successes?”

Or Dr. Blackwell’s charm, Sarah thought. The man must have been a wonder. She was almost sorry she’d never met him in person. And if homely little Amos Potter thought he could take over where Blackwell had left off, he was going to have a rude shock.

“Martha,” someone said sharply right behind Sarah, making her start.

She turned to see Clarence Fitzgerald frowning down at his wife. “We should go now,” he said.

“Yes, dear,” she responded absently. “I’m afraid I must leave,” she said unnecessarily to Sarah. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Brandt.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said, unable to return the compliment. “I hope all goes well for you.”

Mrs. Fitzgerald gave her a sad smile that said she couldn’t imagine that this was even possible.

As soon as the Fitzgeralds had left, Sarah looked around for Calvin Brown. To her relief, he seemed to have gone, so she started looking for someone else who seemed to have been unusually affected by Dr. Blackwell’s death.

 

W
HEN THE LAST of the guests had left, Frank caught Sarah Brandt when she would have gone back upstairs to check on her patient.

“What did you find out?” he demanded, stopping her as she was about to start up the stairs.

“It’s a good thing for you that I’m not sensitive, Malloy. I might take offense at your abruptness,” she told him.

“I’m not being abrupt. I just asked you a question.”

She sighed, as if she were being put upon, when Malloy knew perfectly well that if she had any information at all, she’d be dying to tell him. “Mrs. Fitzgerald is the one who actually owns this house, and her husband may not have known she was letting Blackwell live here rent-free. She also didn’t know Mrs. Blackwell was expecting a child. I think Blackwell may have hidden that from his clients.”

“Clients?”
Frank echoed.

“He preferred to call them clients instead of patients.”

“To each his own,” Frank muttered. “And it isn’t strange that he didn’t tell his
clients
about his wife’s condition. It’s none of their business.”

“True, but news like that gets out just the same. Mrs. Fitzgerald was actually shocked that he hadn’t confided in her. She even seemed a bit jealous, too. She claims she was one of his
favorite
clients.”

“Favorite? What does that mean?”

“You’ll have to ask Mrs. Fitzgerald,” she said. “I wouldn’t even want to guess. She was also shocked to find out Calvin was Blackwell’s son.”

“How did she find
that
out?” Malloy asked in annoyance.

“He told her. Oh, she asked him who he was, I suppose, and he’s too naive to lie,” she added when Malloy would have expressed his exasperation. “By the time I got there, she knew his life story, or just about. I hope you got him out of here before he talked to anyone else.”

“He was glad to leave. I never should’ve let him come in the first place, but Blackwell was his father, and he had a right to be here, I guess.”

“It was still awkward, and hearing Symington talk about Letitia was very difficult for him, I’m sure. I hope he’ll be all right.”

“He’ll be fine,” Malloy said, dismissing her concerns. “Did you learn anything else that might be useful?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. It seems Blackwell used mesmerism on his clients.”

“Yes, it’s a technique where a practitioner puts someone into a state resembling sleep and then makes suggestions to them that they will still believe when they wake up.”

“Are you telling me he was some kind of a magician?”

“No, mesmerism isn’t magic, although it’s sometimes used as a parlor trick. It’s a valid technique for helping people overcome illness that is all in their minds, and many times illness is just in people’s minds.”

“Could he have mesmerized Mrs. Fitzgerald into giving him this house to live in?” That was the first theory that made the least bit of sense to him so far.

“No, but I do think he used his skill to make his patients relax and to convince them they felt better. His treatments no doubt helped relieve physical discomforts, but mental discomforts can be just as bad. Anyone who can figure out how to make people feel better mentally will be a guaranteed success.”

Frank thought that was probably true. He wasn’t going to tell Sarah Brandt that, however. She already had too high an opinion of her powers of observation. “So are the Fitzgeralds going to throw Mrs. Blackwell and her baby out into the street?”

She glanced around to make sure no servants were lingering near and lowered her voice. “I don’t think Mrs. Fitzgerald has much use for the good doctor’s wife. If I were of a suspicious nature, I’d say she was even a little bit jealous of Mrs. Blackwell. She was certainly overly fond of the doctor, although it’s not uncommon for women to fall in love with physicians and ministers and other people who are kind or helpful to them.”

“Nobody falls in love with policemen,” Frank said sourly.

“I said
kind
and helpful, Malloy,” she reminded him with one of her grins. “I’ve got to go check on Mrs. Blackwell, but then I’m going home. You can walk a ways with me and discuss the case if you’ve a mind to. I found out some other interesting tidbits of gossip this morning.”

She knew perfectly well he would wait for her, Frank thought as he watched her mounting the stairs. How could he turn down an offer like that? Especially since she knew he lacked the necessary social position to mingle with the funeral guests to find out any gossip on his own.