Murder on Marble Row (30 page)

A very dangerous urge for a woman who couldn't possibly manage to actually do it.

Mrs. Decker was thoroughly enjoying her one-sided conversation with the little girl. “What's your favorite thing to do here at the mission?” she asked.

Aggie grinned and pointed to her fork, then lifted a bite of potato into her mouth.

“What's your favorite food?” Mrs. Decker tried again.

Aggie considered a moment, then laid her fork down, tucked her hands into her armpits, and flapped her elbows.

“A bird?” Mrs. Decker guessed, pretending not to understand.

Aggie giggled and shook her head. Then she lowered her head and pretended to peck at her plate while flapping her elbows.

“A flying horse?” Mrs. Decker guessed again.

Aggie gave her an impatient glance and scrambled off the bench before Sarah could stop her. She started strutting down the aisle between the tables, scratching at imaginary dirt with one foot, flapping her elbows, and bobbing her head in an amazingly accurate imitation of a chicken. The other girls stopped eating to watch, laughing at the child's antics.

“A chicken!” Sarah couldn't resist saying, even though she knew perfectly well her mother was trying to trick Aggie into speaking out of frustration at not being able to communicate.

Aggie beamed and proudly climbed back into her seat beside Sarah again.

“You make it too easy, Sarah,” her mother scolded.

Sarah knew she was right. Ever since meeting the child, she'd communicated with her by asking questions that could be answered by a simple “yes” or “no.” Her mother had instantly understood that Aggie needed to be challenged, or she would never feel the need to speak.

But Sarah was thinking about something more important. “Aggie, when did you ever see a chicken?”

Aggie looked up at her and shrugged before picking up her fork and taking another bite.

Her mother instantly realized the implication of that question. “A child growing up in the city would probably never get to see a live chicken.”

“Not one scratching in the dirt, at least,” Sarah agreed. “And she wouldn't have eaten chicken here at the mission,” she added. It was too expensive.

They both looked at Aggie with new eyes. The child glanced up and grinned smugly, as if she enjoyed being an enigma. Everyone had assumed she was an orphan because she'd shown up on the mission's doorstep one morning, but for the first time Sarah considered the possibility that she might have a family somewhere, perhaps out in the country, someone who loved her and grieved over her loss.

“Who are you, Aggie, and where do you come from?” Sarah asked, stroking the girl's soft hair affectionately.

She looked up at Sarah with sad eyes and then laid her head against Sarah's side. Unable to resist, Sarah slid her arm around the narrow shoulders and hugged her close.

“You can't leave her here,” her mother said. “She needs a family.”

“She understands what you say,” Sarah reminded her. People tended to forget that even though Aggie was dumb, she wasn't deaf.

Mrs. Decker studied Aggie for a moment. “Would you like to go back to your own family?” she asked, violating her own rule about yes and no questions.

Aggie looked back, her brown eyes enormous in her small face. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

“Why not?” Mrs. Decker asked.

But Aggie wasn't going to speak. She just shrugged her shoulders and looked up at Sarah with a silent plea.

“It's all right, Aggie,” Sarah assured her. “You don't have to go anywhere. You're safe here.”

Her little face crumpled, and her soulful brown eyes filled with tears.

“Aggie, what is it?” Sarah asked in alarm. “What's wrong?”

The girls around them fell silent, and the clatter of forks on plates ceased as they all looked to see what was wrong with Aggie.

“She never cries,” one of the girls said in wonder as a crystal tear slid down Aggie's cheek. “Not even when she hurts herself.”

Sarah watched helplessly, not knowing what to say or do.

“Don't you want to stay here, Aggie?” her mother asked relentlessly.

Sarah wanted to tell her to leave the child alone, but Aggie was already shaking her head vigorously.

“But you don't want to go home, either,” Mrs. Decker guessed.

Sarah felt the little body stiffen beneath her arm, and once again Aggie shook her head.

“Where do you want to go?” Mrs. Decker asked.

Aggie went perfectly still, and then slowly, almost reluctantly, she turned and looked up into Sarah's face with a longing so naked, it almost took her breath.

Sarah tried to take her in her arms, but Aggie wriggled free and scrambled off the bench again. She ran out of the room, her shoes clattering on the bare, wooden floors.

“Maeve,” Mrs. Keller said to one of the older girls. “Make sure Aggie's all right, and don't let her leave the house.”

Maeve got up and hurried after the child. Mrs. Keller came over to where Sarah and her mother sat. “She'll be fine,” she said. “The girls get attached to the ladies who come to help out. You can't blame them, really. Most of them never got any kindness in their lives.”

“I wouldn't have any way to take care of a child,” Sarah explained, staring longingly at the doorway through which Aggie had disappeared.

“You don't have to feel guilty,” Mrs. Keller assured her. “You do what you can, and we're all grateful.”

But Sarah couldn't help remembering what Mrs. Ellsworth had said. The heart finds a way.

13

C
APTAIN O'CONNOR WASN'T HAPPY WITH FRANK. Having one millionaire die in his precinct was bad enough, but two was inexcusable. He intended to hold Frank personally responsible. “What do you think Commissioner Roosevelt is going to say when he finds out you drove this poor bastard to suicide?” the captain asked angrily when he'd had a chance to survey the scene. He'd brought along his two pet detectives, and they were standing around, trying to look important while not getting in the captain's way.

“He didn't kill himself,” Frank told him.

O'Connor gave him a blistering look. “I guess he just stood up on the table and let somebody tie a sheet around his neck and push him off, then.”

Someone had shoved the substantial dining room table out from under the chandelier but left it close enough to stand on while attaching the wound sheet to the chandelier and Snowberger's neck. Snowberger would have only had to step off the table to accomplish his purpose. But that wasn't the way it had happened.

“He didn't stand up on the table at all,” Frank said. “I figure whoever knocked him unconscious—”

“What?”
O'Connor nearly shouted.

“I said, whoever knocked him unconscious managed to lift him up onto the table. He's not a large man, so anyone who's reasonably fit could've done it. It was a simple matter to wind the sheet into a rope, tie one end to the light fixture up there and the other end to Snowberger's neck. I'm guessing he sat Snowberger up for that, so the length would be right. Then all he'd have to do is push him off the table. His feet wouldn't quite touch the ground, and he'd choke in a few minutes.”

“A very nice fairy tale, Malloy, but what makes you think Snowberger wasn't conscious when he was hanged?”

The dead man was now lying peacefully on the floor amid the rubble Frank had pulled off him. Frank hunkered down and lifted one of Snowberger's hands. The fingers were dusty but otherwise unmarked. “Even suicides claw at the noose when they start choking. It's a natural reaction. But there's no marks on his hands or his throat.”

O'Connor still didn't look impressed.

“Then there's this gash behind his ear,” Frank continued, turning Snowberger's head slightly so O'Connor and the detectives could see the hair matted with the blood that had also stained Snowberger's shirt collar.

“He probably got that when the chandelier fell on him,” O'Connor snorted.

“By the time it fell, he'd been dead for a while. Dead men don't bleed, Captain.” Frank pointed to several other places on Snowberger's face where the skin had been broken in the fall. Not one drop of blood seeped from any of them. “This one happened when he was still alive. I found blood on the fireplace poker.” He pointed to where the poker sat in its stand. The killer had carefully replaced it, but he hadn't wiped it completely clean.

O'Connor frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “I guess you think whoever killed his partner killed him, too.”

“I'm not guessing about anything. I've got to
prove
what happened.”

“Then have at it, Malloy, and may God help you. Let's get this stiff out of here before it starts to stink.” With that he nodded to the orderlies from the morgue to get started. Then he turned on his heel and left, his detectives following.

Once the orderlies had taken the body away, Frank sent for the doorman again. This time he was much more cooperative. Frank made him sit down in the dead man's front parlor, where he could see the rubble left from the falling chandelier.

“So he hanged himself, did he?” the man asked nervously.

“No, somebody killed him,” Frank said. “Tried to make it look like a suicide, but it wasn't. Now tell me again when you saw Snowberger come in.”

“I didn't notice the time. Around midmorning maybe. I hadn't eaten lunch yet. He said hello, the way he always does, and walked up the stairs, like he usually does. He likes the exercise.”

“Did you see anybody else coming in? A visitor maybe?”

He thought about this a moment. “Not coming in, I didn't. I saw somebody leaving, though.”

Frank managed not to grab the man by the lapels and shake him. “Why didn't you mention this before?”

“Because you didn't ask me,” the doorman reminded him defensively, as if he sensed Frank's desire to throttle him. “You only asked me if I saw Mr. Snowberger leave, which I didn't. Besides, the visitor didn't leave until after you were here the first time.”

Good God, the killer could have still been there when Frank was pounding on the door! Holding his temper with difficulty, Frank continued, “Who was it you saw leaving?”

“I didn't know him. I don't even know if he was visiting Mr. Snowberger. He had his face turned away, and he was in a hurry.”

“Could it have been one of the other tenants?”

“No, I know all of them. And they all speak to me.”

“How would he have gotten in without you seeing him?”

“I could've been taking somebody up in the elevator. I told you, I was away from the desk a few times, so I thought maybe Mr. Snowberger went out when I didn't see him.”

The killer could have taken the stairs up, the way Snowberger had, too.

“What time was it when this stranger left?”

“I don't know. Maybe an hour or so after you left the first time. I wasn't paying much attention. Before supper, at least.”

Frank figured the mysterious man was the killer, but he would have to speak to all the other tenants and find out if any of them had had a visitor that afternoon, just to make sure.

“What did this man look like?”

“I told you, I didn't see his face.”

“What
did
you see?” Frank asked impatiently.

The man blinked uncertainly. “He was medium height, not fat or thin. He was wearing a black suit of good quality and a hat pulled down low. I . . . that's all I noticed.”

He'd just described half the men in the city. Frank sighed wearily and let the man go.

Alone again, he took another turn around the apartment. This time he was looking for anything that might indicate Snowberger had constructed a bomb here. Even if he was now dead, he might've been the one who had set the bomb that killed his partner. In fact, that might be why someone had killed him. But an hour of searching failed to turn up so much as a pair of wire cutters. If Snowberger ever did any kind of manual work, he did it elsewhere. Remembering how soft and well groomed his hands had been, Frank figured the roughest thing he'd ever handled was a sheet of paper.

Frank did find a portrait of a young woman hanging in Snowberger's bedroom. He had to look at it twice before he realized it couldn't possibly be Lilly Van Dyke. The style of her dress was much too old-fashioned, and her hair was lighter. Still the resemblance was noticeable. Could this be Snowberger's wife, the legendary Arabella who had been loved by both her husband and his partner? That would certainly explain why Van Dyke had chosen Lilly. He must've been disappointed when he found out her true character was nothing like the saintly Arabella. Had the resemblance been what attracted Snowberger, too? But surely, he'd known what she was really like long before he became involved with her.

Since both men were dead, Frank would never know the answers to his questions. He'd have to be satisfied with finding the killer or killers. He used Snowberger's telephone to place a call to Commissioner Roosevelt's home. He'd want to know about this before the newspapers came out in the morning.

S
ARAH WASN'T SURPRISED TO BE AWAKENED BY SOMEONE knocking on her front door the next morning. People pounded on her door at all hours when a baby was coming. But this visitor wasn't one of them. She recognized her mother's coachman. He took off his hat and wished her good morning, his breath frosting in the morning air.

“Mrs. Decker asked me to deliver this message,” he explained, handing her a cream-colored envelope scented with her mother's perfume.