Murder on Gramercy Park (18 page)

“Yes, there are,” Sarah agreed.

“I was hoping you’d come,” the nurse said after a moment. “I found out some things I thought you’d want to know.”

“What kind of things?” Sarah asked politely.

“For instance, do you know how Mrs. Blackwell started using the morphine in the first place?”

“It’s my understanding that she was injured very badly in a riding accident,” Sarah said. “She started taking it for the pain.”

“I suppose that’s true as far as it goes,” the nurse said, her homely face creasing into smugness. “But do you have any idea where she was riding off to, and with who, when she had that accident?”

Sarah hadn’t given the matter any thought, but she was willing to play along. “No, I don’t.”

“Then you’ll be surprised to hear that she was eloping.”

Sarah’s first thought was that she had been eloping with Dr. Blackwell, but that wasn’t possible. She hadn’t even known him then. “Who was she eloping with?” she asked.

“That’s the scandal, don’t you know,” the nurse told her with satisfaction. “She was running off with the local schoolmaster!”

“Good heavens!”

“I got this from her maid what’s been with her since she was in pigtails,” the nurse informed her. “She said Mrs. Blackwell had been carrying on with this fellow behind her father’s back. The father never would’ve approved of a marriage between them, so the two of them were running away together. Except that Mrs. Blackwell’s horse stumbled in a ditch, and she was throwed.”

“How awful,” Sarah said, her mind trying to grasp this information and analyze its importance. She was sure Malloy would figure it out instantly, but for once she wanted to beat him to it.

“It was more than awful. Seems like it was night and her young man didn’t want to leave her there and go for help, so he had to carry her back to her father’s house. I guess there was quite a ruckus when he brought her in, with everybody thinking she was tucked up safe in her bed and all.”

Sarah could well imagine how Mr. Symington would have greeted the man responsible for what he would consider abducting his daughter and causing a terrible accident. “What happened to the schoolmaster?”

“Oh, he was let go, as you can guess. Don’t nobody know what become of him after that. And Mrs. Blackwell, she was confined to her bed for months and months. Her maid said sometimes she’d scream with the pain, and the only thing that’d help was the morphine. Poor thing, so young and pretty and not able to get up from her bed for all that time.”

“It was quite fortunate that her father found Dr. Blackwell when he did,” Sarah said, knowing she shouldn’t encourage servants to gossip about their employers, but knowing the information could be important. One never knew which scrap of information might lead one to the killer. She was going to see Malloy tomorrow, and she’d love to have something interesting to report.

A maid’s knock interrupted them, and the nurse instructed her to bring some tea for Sarah. When she had gone, Sarah said, “This makes it even more romantic that Dr. Blackwell and his wife fell in love after he treated her.”

“Oh, it would, if that’s what happened,” the nurse confided. The baby was now fast asleep at her breast, but she hardly seemed aware of him.

“What
did
happen, then?” she asked, as the nurse was waiting for her to do.

The nurse looked around, as if she expected to find someone eavesdropping, but they were, of course, alone in the room except for the sleeping baby. “According to Daisy, Mrs. Blackwell’s maid what’s been with her since she was a girl, Dr. Blackwell somehow convinced her father to make her stand up at his lectures and tell how Dr. Blackwell cured her. She didn’t want to do it, and who could blame her?”

Sarah nodded encouragingly, even though she already knew all of this.

“She did it for a while, but she wanted to stop. Her maid said she had to take morphine just to get her through it, but she didn’t dare let her father or Dr. Blackwell know. They thought she’d stopped taking it after she got well. It seemed like the father was going to tell Dr. Blackwell his daughter was finished testifying for him, but then Dr. Blackwell, he starts paying court to the girl.”

“Was her father pleased?” Sarah could hardly credit it.

“What do you think? The girl was damaged goods. If anybody found out she’d been carrying on with a schoolteacher and tried to elope with him, she would’ve been ruined.”

She was right, of course. If Letitia was no longer a virgin, or even if there was reason to believe she wasn’st, then no respectable man of her own class would have her, particularly if she’d been having an affair with a penniless schoolteacher.

“Do you think she didn’t love Dr. Blackwell?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, my, who can say? With a man like that ... Well, you know what I mean.”

“No, I don’st,” Sarah said. “I never met Dr. Blackwell.”

The nurse nodded knowingly. “Then you couldn’t know. I only met him once, but I can see how he’d turn a girl’s head,” the nurse eagerly explained. “Right handsome he was, tall and dark, and dressed real smart in his fine clothes. Good manners, too, and well-spoken. Had a way of looking right at you, like he knew what was going on inside your head. Made my heart flutter a bit, I don’t mind saying, even though I knowed he wasn’t interested in me
that
way.”

Sarah could hardly comprehend it. A man who took the time to charm the woman who was going to be his child’s wet nurse. He must have been a master at beguiling women. Poor, tortured Letitia hadn’t stood a chance.

“So Letitia fell in love with Dr. Blackwell,” Sarah ventured.

“Or at least she thought she did. And only one person knows how he felt about her, but he’s dead, now, ain’t he?”

Sarah was fairly certain a man who could desert his first wife and family without a qualm would have no love to waste on anyone else, either.

“And after they were married, Mrs. Blackwell continued to speak at his lectures,” Sarah said.

“Oh, yes, that she did. Didn’t like it any better, but what could she do? He was her husband, and she didn’t have any choice. And just between us”—she glanced around again and this time even leaned forward a bit, conspiratorially—“once they was married, he didn’t have no more use for her except that, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean he neglected her?”

“Something awful. Poor girl cried and cried many a night, according to her maid. If he cared for her at all, he’d forgot about it. Seemed like the only reason he’d married her was to make certain she’d keep speaking at his lectures. He was busy with his lady patients, keeping them happy and all, but he didn’t have any time for her. Never even shared her bed, not hardly ever.”

He must have managed it occasionally, Sarah thought, or she wouldn’t have had his child. But all she said was, “How awful for her.”

“Oh, my, yes. I guess it’s no wonder she kept taking that awful morphine. She goes out every afternoon. Did you know? Tells everybody she’s going to visit friends, but none of them ever returns the visits.”

Sarah knew what this meant. Society demanded that formal visits be returned, and if they weren’st, the visitor was put on notice she was being snubbed and would not be welcomed back again. But perhaps there was another explanation.

“I thought she was visiting the poor or the sick.”

“Every day?” the nurse scoffed. The nurse obviously believed this was more charity than anyone could offer, “I don’t like to speak bad about someone who pays my wages, but her maid thinks she goes to one of them opium dens.”

Since Sarah knew this was exactly where she went, she said nothing, managing to look shocked instead.

“You know what goes on in them places, don’t you?” the nurse demanded.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Sarah said.

The nurse was only too happy to enlighten her. “I don’t know myself, of course, not from experience, but I’ve heard awful things. Like white women and Chinese men together, if you can imagine a white woman doing such a thing.”

Sarah was saved from answering by the maid’s return with the tea things. She’d lost her interest in socializing with the nurse any longer. She really did think it would be a good idea for Mrs. Blackwell to find someone else for the job, but it wasn’t her decision. Could she suggest a change on the grounds that the woman gossiped too much? Or because she had no respect for her employer? Somehow Sarah doubted Mrs. Blackwell would care about such things. As long as her baby was doing well, she most likely wouldn’t want to make the effort required to replace her. A change like that would be difficult for the child, too, and heaven knew, he was having a hard enough time without it.

Somehow Sarah managed to be civil to the nurse and to chat about inconsequential things while they drank their tea, but as soon as she could, she made her escape. She had, she told herself, simply been trying to obtain information that might help Malloy solve the case. Why, then, did she feel so soiled?

 

F
RANK HADN’T REALLY expected his mother to accompany him when he took Brian to see the surgeon that Sarah Brandt had found for him. She did not approve of meddling with God’s will, or so she said. Frank suspected she was really just terrified over what would become of her if the surgeon could make Brian’s foot right and Frank didn’t need her to take care of the boy anymore. He didn’t know what she thought the surgeon could do for Brian’s deafness or for the fact that he was only three years old and would need care for many years to come even if he was completely normal, but Frank also knew that reasoning with his mother was a waste of time.

What Frank hadn’t given any thought to was how he was going to manage his son without his mother on the long trip uptown to the surgeon’s office. He’d spent precious little time with the boy, and had no idea how to amuse a healthy three-year-old child, much less one who couldn’t hear or walk. Fortunately, the trip alone was amusement enough to keep the boy entranced.

The loud noises of the city didn’t bother Brian at all, because he couldn’t hear them. The many people didn’t frighten him because he thought all of them were his friends. And since he’d never been more than a few blocks from their flat, everything was new and different to him. He couldn’t look at it all hard enough.

Frank carried the boy on his shoulders as he walked through the streets, giving him a wonderful view of everyone and everything. Brian bounced with joy when they got on the elevated train and the buildings outside began whizzing past the windows. His little head wasn’t still for more than a second as he tried to take in every detail of the big, wonderful world out every possible window.

Seeing his excitement was an unexpected thrill for Frank, but the best part was the way the boy clung to him through it all, as if he were the child’s anchor of security. He’d expected to feel apprehensive and nervous and even uncertain about having sole charge of his son for the day, and he did feel all of those things. What he hadn’t expected was to feel loved and trusted and important, and he felt all of those things, too. Something in his chest swelled into a sweet ache, and as he held his son on his lap while the train sped high above the city streets, he felt an absurd urge to weep.

The surgeon’s office was on a quiet, tree-lined street in the more genteel part of the city. Plainly, only people with the means to pay a high fee for medical care would even bother coming to this neighborhood. The building where the office was located was identified only by a discreet bronze plaque bearing the doctor’s name.

Frank was never one to be intimidated by the rich, but he knew a moment’s hesitation before he could bring himself to open the door to the office and step inside, as if he had a right to be there. He found Sarah Brandt already there, waiting for him.

“Malloy,” she said, jumping to her feet and coming to meet them. He felt the usual unreasonable pleasure at seeing her.

He hadn’t expected her to be there. She’d known when the appointment was scheduled, of course, since she’d set it up, but he hadn’t asked her to come, and she hadn’t mentioned that she planned to be there. He hadn’t wanted to impose any more on her generosity, but he couldn’t deny that he felt relieved that she had come.

“Isn’t your mother with you?” she asked, looking around. “How did you manage with Brian by yourself?”

“I knocked him unconscious and threw him over my shoulder,” he said blandly. “He wasn’t much trouble at all after that.”

She just gave him one of her looks, then flashed Brian one of her brilliant smiles. “Hello, there, young fellow. How are you today?”

Brian couldn’t understand a word she said, of course, but he understood her smile. Maybe he even remembered her from when they’d met before. She’d given him a present, after all. That must have made an impression. The boy returned her smile with one equally bright and reached out to touch one of the red flowers on her hat.

She quickly tipped her head away, saving the flower from certain destruction, but she held her arms out to him. “Would you like me to hold you for a while? Your papa must be getting tired,” she said, just as if the boy could hear her.

But he didn’t need to hear the words. He knew what extended arms meant. He threw himself forward so hard Frank almost dropped him, but she caught him with no trouble at all and drew him into her arms.

“Oh, my, you’re such a big boy,” she said, settling him comfortably on her hip and starting to walk around the room so he could examine the few furnishings of the modestly appointed waiting room. She looked very natural, holding the boy like that, as if she did it all the time. Frank found that thought disturbing. “I can’t imagine your mother letting you take him away like this without her,” she said to Frank over her shoulder.

“She didn’t like it, but when I told her this doctor might be able to fix Brian’s foot, what could she say?”

“Didn’t she want to come along?”