Murder on Lexington Avenue (15 page)

“I didn’t come here to talk about my son, Mr. Rossiter,” Frank said. “I’m investigating a murder.”

“A murder?” Rossiter echoed in apparent surprise. “No one here at the school, I hope.”

“No. Actually, it’s Mr. Nehemiah Wooten.” Frank watched carefully and saw a small flicker of recognition at the name. “Maybe you know him?”

“I can’t say that I do,” Rossiter said.

“But you know his son, Leander Wooten,” Frank said. It wasn’t a question.

“I don’t believe I recall the name,” he lied.

Frank was having none of it. “Leander already told me he approached you about teaching his deaf sister to sign.”

Caught out, Rossiter suddenly remembered. “Oh, yes, of course. Now I recall. Such an earnest young man. He was very worried about his sister.”

“What did he want from you?”

“Oh, he wanted me to teach the girl to sign, just as you said.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Rossiter considered his answer carefully. “I felt she would do better learning from a teacher who was deaf.”

“Did you?” Frank asked with interest. “Why is that?”

“Because . . . because they would have more in common,” he decided.

“But wouldn’t it be difficult for them to communicate, at least in the beginning? She couldn’t read signs, and he couldn’t read lips.”

“Which would make it all the more necessary for her to learn to sign,” he said, pleased to have come up with such a reasonable explanation.

Frank nodded, as if carefully considering his reasoning. “And having such a handsome young teacher would make her even more eager to communicate with him,” he said.

Instantly wary, Rossiter said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, I think you do, Mr. Rossiter,” Frank said in the voice he used to cow hardened criminals. “There were no good reasons to give the girl a deaf teacher and a lot of reasons not to. And anybody with sense would know the girl would fall in love with Oldham. You put them together on purpose so that would happen. The only thing I don’t understand is why.”

“Really, Mr. Malloy, you’re quite wrong—”

“No, I’m not, and I’ll be glad to take you down to Police Headquarters, where we can talk about this some more. All night, in fact, if you’re going to be stubborn about it. So tell me now, or I’ll send for a Black Maria and have you hauled away like a common criminal.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” he exclaimed in outrage.

Frank never batted an eye. “Yes, I would.”

Rossiter searched Frank’s face and apparently saw the truth there. “All right. You’re right, I did hope that Miss Wooten would be taken with Oldham, but I was only doing it for the good of the deaf community.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about her father,” Rossiter said, the color rising in his face. “Mr. Wooten and his ridiculous theory about eugenics. I realized this was my opportunity to throw it into a cocked hat.”

“By giving Electra Wooten the chance to fall in love with a deaf man?”

“Exactly! I couldn’t be sure that Adam—Mr. Oldham, that is—would fall in love with the girl, too, but I made sure he understood the advantages of marrying into such a wealthy and influential family. When he developed feelings for her, that just made it easier to convince him to propose to her.”

“So it was
your
idea for him to propose to her?”

“Let’s just say that I suggested it to him. He needed no real convincing.”

“And what did you expect to happen?” Frank asked with a frown.

Rossiter looked at him as if he couldn’t believe Frank hadn’t figured it out. “Adam and Electra would marry—elope if necessary to escape her father’s disapproval—and their children would not be deaf! That would prove to Wooten that his theory of eugenics was wrong!”

S
ARAH WAS STILL PACKING AWAY HER EQUIPMENT WHEN someone knocked on Mrs. Wooten’s bedroom door. Sarah moved to answer it, but the door opened before she could. Mrs. Parmer entered, her face set in determination, just in case someone tried to turn her away.

“I hope you’re all right, Valora,” she said, although her tone sounded more angry than concerned.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Mrs. Wooten assured her, as if the concern had been real. “And so is the baby.”

Mrs. Parmer stiffened at the mention of the child.

“Would you like to see him?” Mrs. Wooten asked, playing the role of proud mother perfectly now that she had decided to accept it.

“I most certainly do not,” Mrs. Parmer said.

Mrs. Wooten pretended to be surprised. “I’d think you’d want to see your poor dead brother’s child,” she said, making Mrs. Parmer gasp.

“How dare you say a thing like that? My brother had nothing to do with that child,” Mrs. Parmer exclaimed.

“How dare
you
say a thing like
that
?” Mrs. Wooten replied.

“Because Nehemiah knew nothing about it, and all of us knew he was determined not to breed any more children with you.”

“Nehemiah knew all about this child, but we were both afraid I wouldn’t be able to carry him to term, because of my age.” She seemed to be trying out the story for size, to see if it felt comfortable to her. Plainly, it did. “He and I had decided not to tell anyone else, just in case,” she added with more confidence.

“You witch!” Mrs. Parmer said, quietly furious, as ladies were trained to be. “You can tell all the lies you want about my brother and what he knew or didn’t know, but I know the truth, and I’ll never accept your bastard as Nehemiah’s child.”

“I’m shocked at you, Betty,” Mrs. Wooten said righteously.

“And I’m shocked at your behavior, Valora. Taking a boy young enough to be your son as a lover! What were you thinking?”

“He’s not young enough to be my son! He’s only ten years younger than I!” Mrs. Wooten protested, seemingly unaware that her vanity had made her admit to having taken a lover.

Mrs. Parmer smiled smugly, having won the battle of words. “And will you marry him now?” she challenged. “And make yourself the laughingstock of New York?”

“I’ll do what I like now,” Mrs. Wooten replied, stung by her sister-in-law’s words but too proud to show it.

“Then you’re even more depraved than I thought,” Mrs. Parmer said. “Have you forgotten you’ve got two other children to think of? What about Electra and Leander? What will happen to them if they have a mother who’s known to be a common trollop?”

Mrs. Wooten’s face grew crimson, but before she could answer, the bedroom door flew open and Electra came rushing in, looking around frantically. “The baby?” she cried, and Mrs. Parmer reached out to her, as if trying to protect her from something. But Electra wasn’t interested in being protected. “Baby?” she cried again, pushing past Mrs. Parmer.

“Here he is,” her mother said, reaching down and picking up the tiny bundle lying beside her on the bed and holding him up for Electra’s inspection.

The girl froze, staring at the bundle as if unsure of what it might contain. Then her mother turned back the edge of the blanket, revealing the baby’s entire head, which was covered with dark fuzz. Electra’s eyes grew wide.

“A girl?” she asked hopefully.

“A boy,” her mother replied with a shrug.

Electra frowned and took a few steps closer to the bed, eyeing the baby suspiciously. “He’s ugly,” she announced.

As if in protest, the baby yawned hugely, making Electra start. His eyes opened to little slits, as if he were peeking out to see if there was something interesting enough out there to capture his attention. Then, apparently seeing nothing worthy of his notice, he closed his eyes and went sound asleep again.

Electra wasn’t charmed. She frowned and said, “Why did you want a baby?”

“Sometimes babies just come, whether we want them to or not,” Mrs. Wooten said, earning a rude snort from Mrs. Parmer. Fortunately, Electra couldn’t hear it.

“What is his name?” Electra asked.

Mrs. Wooten glanced at Mrs. Parmer, probably trying to judge just how far she could push the woman. She must have decided that naming her lover’s child after her dead husband would be too far. “I haven’t decided. What do you think we should name him?” she asked the girl.

“Orestes,” Mrs. Parmer said behind Electra’s back.

Even Sarah gasped at this reference to the brother of Electra in the ancient Greek tragedy. Orestes killed his mother and her lover, who had murdered Orestes’ and Electra’s father. A very interesting choice, Sarah couldn’t help thinking.

Electra turned to see why her mother was glaring so angrily at her aunt, but Mrs. Parmer simply smiled benignly and said, “Yes, Electra, what should we name the baby?”

“Something easy to say,” Electra suggested.

Sarah imagined that the girl had had a difficult time learning to say her own and her brother’s unusual names.

Minnie came in the still open door, pausing just inside the room, as if sensing the anger radiating from Mrs. Wooten and her sister-in-law. She held a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

“Is that for the baby?” Sarah asked, stepping forward to take it.

“Yes, ma’am,” Minnie said, her eyes still watching the others warily. “Some diapers and sacques. Mary’s looking through the attic to see what we have left from when Miss Electra was a baby.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Wooten said. “We’ll want all new things for the baby. You can go back out and get whatever we’ll need.”

“Homer,” Electra said, oblivious to the discussion around her. She’d been staring at the baby sleeping in her mother’s arms.

Mrs. Wooten looked up in surprise. “What, dear?”

“Homer. For the baby. Papa would have liked that, and I can say it.”

No one seemed to know how to respond to that. Sarah doubted that Mrs. Wooten was interested in pleasing her dead husband, though.

Sarah took the package from Minnie and began to tear away the paper. She took a diaper from the small pile inside and found some pins tucked in with them. Then she took the baby from Mrs. Wooten’s unresisting arms, laid him on the bed, and unwrapped him. The blanket was already damp, and she asked Minnie to fetch another one.

“What’s that?” Electra asked in surprise, pointing to the baby’s penis.

While Mrs. Wooten stammered through an explanation, Sarah concentrated on folding the large square of fabric into a triangle small enough to fit and securing it to the baby’s bottom. Then she pulled one of the sacques over the baby’s head, slipped his tiny arms into the sleeves, and drew the drawstring tight at the bottom.

At least Electra’s question indicated she was still an innocent. That was something.

When the baby was swaddled again, she returned him to Mrs. Wooten, who accepted the tidy bundle absently. She was still answering Electra’s anatomical questions.

“Can he hear?” Electra asked when she’d been satisfied on the previous subject.

Mrs. Wooten’s face fell, and she looked at Mrs. Parmer, who seemed equally stricken by the question.

Sarah got Electra’s attention and said, “It’s too soon to know.”

“When will you know?” the girl asked.

“Maybe not for a long time.”

Electra frowned and looked at the baby, still sleeping peacefully, in spite of all the turmoil around him. “I hope he’s deaf,” she said.

 

 

F
RANK STARED AT ROSSITER, TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF his reasoning.

“You planned all this just to prove some theory wrong?”

“It’s more than just a theory. Do you know what Alexander Graham Bell is trying to do?”

“I know he doesn’t think deaf people should marry each other.”

“Oh, it’s more than that. He also wants to forbid the deaf from learning to sign.”

“What?” Frank asked in surprise. He hadn’t heard about that before.

“That’s right. Signing makes deaf people more inclined to associate with other deaf people. It just stands to reason, of course. Very few people who can hear understand signing, so if that’s how you communicate, you’re going to spend most of your time with other deaf people.”

Frank was starting to understand it now. “So if you spend all your time with other deaf people and they’re the only ones you can talk to, naturally you’ll marry a deaf person.”

“Yes, yes,” Rossiter said, excited now that Frank understood. “And Bell is convinced that deaf people who marry are more likely to produce deaf children, and he wants to prevent more deaf children from being born.”

“But Mr. Higginbotham told me that very few of the students in his school have two deaf parents.”

“Higginbotham? From the Lexington Avenue School?”

“That’s right.”

“How do you know him?”

“I visited his school when I was trying to decide where to send Brian.”

Rossiter frowned for a moment, and then he realized what that meant. “But you sent him here instead. Why?”

“Because when I met some of the former students from the Lexington Avenue School, I found out that even though they can talk and read lips, they still mostly associate with other deaf people. And when I found out that Brian probably wouldn’t ever learn to speak clearly because he was born deaf, I decided he ought to at least be able to communicate with somebody. And when I met some deaf people who could sign, they seemed pretty satisfied with their lot in life.”

Rossiter was nodding his approval of Frank’s decision. “And those deaf people you met, did they have children?”

“Yes, they did, and their children could hear.”

“My observation has been that deaf parents have about the same chance of having a deaf child as parents who can hear. Most of the parents of the students here can hear, and right now we don’t have a single student with two deaf parents.”

“Hasn’t anybody pointed this out to Mr. Bell?” Frank asked.

“Mr. Bell isn’t interested in hearing anything that disproves his theories. He is determined to do things his own way.”