Murder on Sisters' Row (15 page)

“Which house?”

Frank remembered the rescue house where she’d been just before she died. “Either one.”

Miss Yingling pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze, just the way any well-bred young lady would if she was asked to blacken the character of another person. “I really hate to gossip.”

“If somebody killed your mistress, you want them to be punished, don’t you?”

She looked up, startled at his bluntness. “Well, of course!”

“Then tell me what you know. Is there anybody in this house who might’ve wanted Mrs. Van Orner dead?”

She flinched but she said, “I don’t believe so. Mrs. Van Orner always treated her staff kindly.”

“What about her family?”

“Mrs. Van Orner has no living family.”

“Not even any children?”

“She was never able to have children.”

“What about her husband?”

Miss Yingling took offense at that. “Mr. Van Orner was devoted to her.”

Frank hadn’t gotten that impression at all, but Van Orner wasn’t likely to give Frank permission to investigate if he’d killed his wife himself. “All right, what about the rescue house? Anybody there have it in for her?”

“Everyone there admired Mrs. Van Orner. The work she did—”

“Not everybody admired her,” he reminded her.

Plainly, she really didn’t like speaking ill of other people. “I guess you mean this Amy person, the one who met with Mrs. Van Orner today.”

“You said you didn’t know what they talked about, but you must have some idea.”

After a brief internal struggle, Miss Yingling decided to help him. “I told you, Amy refuses to do anything to help herself. She’s convinced the father of her baby is going to help her. She even named her baby after the man. She named him Gregory.”

Frank needed a minute to remember. “That’s Mr. Van Orner’s name. Did she claim he was the baby’s father?”

“Not exactly. She hasn’t named the father, at least not right out, but I don’t know what she might have said to Mrs. Van Orner today. If Amy had made such a claim, Mrs. Van Orner would certainly have been upset. Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly. “I just realized, that might explain why she left without me today. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see how upset she was.”

“And she would’ve needed a nip or two from her flask.”

A knock distracted them. Miss Yingling opened the door to the maid, who carried in a small wooden crate and set it down on one of the chairs. Miss Yingling dismissed her.

Frank lifted the lid of the crate to find half-a-dozen decoratively shaped, emerald green bottles packed carefully in straw. They might have held fancy perfume, but when Frank picked one up to examine the label, he saw they were, as Miss Yingling had said, some kind of liqueur called crème de menthe. Five of them were still sealed, but the sixth was more than half empty.

“I’ll need to take these with me to have them tested.”

“Do you think . . . Could there be something in it that killed her?”

“Only if somebody put it in there.”

“Oh!” She lifted her fingers to her lips again.

“Is it all right if I take them? And the flask, too?”

“Of course,” Miss Yingling said, taking a step back, as if afraid of contamination. “I’m sure no one else will be interested in them now.”

Frank slipped the flask into his pocket and picked up the crate. “Thank you for your help, Miss Yingling.”

“I almost forgot, Mr. Van Orner told me to take care of your fee.”

Frank tried not to let his annoyance show. “We can talk about that later.”

She let the maid show him out.

 

 

S
ARAH HAD INTENDED TO VISIT HER MOTHER THE NEXT day, to find out what she knew about the Van Orners, but her mother arrived on her doorstep that morning, before Sarah had even finished her breakfast. She’d brought a bakery box of petit fours, which were just the right size for a doll tea party. Mrs. Decker had helped Catherine eat them as they sat around the small table and drank water from the tiny china cups Mrs. Decker had brought on one of her many previous visits.

When the petit fours were gone and Catherine had tired of the tea party and moved off to play with something else, Mrs. Decker came back downstairs to drink coffee with her daughter. After some polite inquiries after her father’s health and her mother’s activities, Sarah finally asked the question she’d been longing to ask.

“Do you know Vivian Van Orner?”

“Gregory Van Orner’s wife? Of course I do. Why?”

“She died yesterday.”

“Good heavens! I hadn’t heard a thing about it.”

“It happened late yesterday afternoon. I don’t suppose they’ve had much time to tell people.”

“What happened to her?”

“They aren’t sure yet. She was alone in her carriage, and when they got to her house, the driver opened the door to let her out and she was dead.”

“She was so young.” Mrs. Decker shook her head in dismay. She was still an attractive woman, although her blond hair was threaded with silver, and fine lines had begun to form around her eyes. “Oh, dear!”

“What?” Sarah asked.

“Was she murdered? Oh, my, of course she was. That’s why you’re interested in her.”

Sarah had to admit it was a logical conclusion, considering how many murders she’d helped Frank Malloy investigate. “I told you, they aren’t sure yet.”

“But if you’re involved . . . You
are
involved, aren’t you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Mr. Malloy told her she better not be either,” Maeve offered as she came into the kitchen. She’d brought the dirty plates and cups from upstairs to be washed.

Mrs. Decker’s face lit with interest when she looked at Sarah again. “You must tell me everything.”

“It started when Mrs. Brandt delivered a baby in a brothel,” Maeve said, carefully setting the fragile dishes down in the sink.

Mrs. Decker pretended to be scandalized. “A brothel! Sarah, how could you!”

Sarah glared at Maeve, who ignored her and started to tell Mrs. Decker the story, forcing Sarah to interrupt and tell her own version. After a few confusing minutes, Mrs. Decker had a condensed version of everything that had happened.

“How did she die?” Mrs. Decker asked when they were finished.

“Mr. Malloy thinks she was poisoned,” Maeve said. At some point during the narrative, she had taken a seat at the kitchen table with them.

“That’s what Malloy suspects,” Sarah corrected her. “She could have died of natural causes for all we know.”

“Did you know her, Mrs. Decker?”

“Not well, but all of the old Knickerbocker families know each other,” she said, referring to the original Dutch families who had settled the city of New York. “I knew Gregory’s mother very well, but she died last year, and I didn’t know Vivian’s family at all. In fact, I didn’t meet her until she married Gregory.”

“Did you know about her charity work?” Sarah asked.

“Oh, yes. I’m afraid not many people admired her for it either.”

“I’m sure her husband’s friends teased her about it,” Sarah said.

“Yes, but the women were worse. Women can be very . . . judgmental about others of their sex who have fallen. They didn’t believe women like that really wanted to be rescued, you see.”

“They should have seen the girl whose baby I delivered. She was desperate to get out of there.”

“I’m sure she was. What a horrible life that must be.” Mrs. Decker shuddered.

“Mrs. Van Orner did have some friends who helped her. Two gentlemen named Porter and Quimby and a Mrs. Spratt-Williams.”

“I never heard of them, but I’m not surprised she found helpers. All the causes with offices in the United Charities Building have dedicated followers. They’re extremely organized, too, I understand.”

“Organized?” Sarah asked.

“They have to be, so people don’t take advantage of them.”

“How would people take advantage of them?” Maeve asked.

“By getting help from one charity until it was worn out and then moving on to a new one. Too much charity encourages sloth. People must learn to make their own way in the world.”

“Mother! Do you really believe people are poor because they’re lazy?”

Her mother looked at her with a puzzled frown. “What other explanation could there be? If they’d just get jobs, they wouldn’t be poor.”

“Oh, Mother, most poor people in the city do have jobs, but they don’t earn enough to support a family, not even when everyone in the family works. In the tenements, little children roll cigars and make paper flowers and do all kinds of piecework for the sweatshops, working twelve hours a day, because everyone has to contribute to supporting the family.”

“That’s outrageous!”

“Yes, it is, but it’s true. The poor in New York are the least lazy people on earth!”

“I had no idea . . . Or I suppose I should say, I never really thought about it.”

“Very few rich people do,” Sarah said.

Mrs. Decker sat back in her chair, considering what her daughter had just told her. “I suppose you’re going to say the women who work in brothels aren’t really depraved creatures who have chosen their lot in life either.”

“Actually, they often do choose that life, but not because they’re depraved.”

“Why then?”

“Because they’re starving.”

“Starving? But what about their families?”

“Most of them don’t have families or their families can’t afford to keep them.”

“But I know hundreds of young women work in those sewing factories. Surely a woman can earn an honest living if she wants to.”

“The girls who work in those factories don’t earn enough to keep a roof over their heads. They live with their families, and they’re working to contribute to their support. They could never afford even a room in a boardinghouse on what they earn, though. If a girl is alone in the world, she has a very hard life.”

“That’s horrible,” Mrs. Decker said, obviously moved, “but still, to sell yourself... Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that in front of Maeve.”

The girl had been very quiet during Sarah’s explanations, sitting with her hands folded and staring at the table. She looked up now. “Don’t worry about me. Lots of the girls at the Mission had been whores. I was lucky I had my grandfather to look after me, and when he died, I found the Mission. Otherwise . . .”

“Oh, Maeve!” Mrs. Decker laid her hand over Maeve’s where they were folded on the table. Maeve looked up in surprise, and Mrs. Decker smiled warmly. “We’re very glad you came to us.”

“I . . . I’m very glad, too.”

“I thank God every day that we have her,” Sarah said, “but Maeve is only one of thousands of girls in the city. The woman who runs the house where I delivered the baby claims that dozens of them come knocking on her door every week, begging her to let them work for her.”

“I had no idea.” Mrs. Decker shook her head again. “I was unkind to Vivian. Not to her face, but I laughed at her behind her back. We all did. We made ugly jokes about her dedication to eliminating all the prostitutes in New York. They said her husband . . .” She glanced at Maeve and bit her lip, obviously loath to say whatever she’d been going to say in front of the girl.

“Maeve,” Sarah began, but the girl was already rising from her chair.

“I’ll go check on Catherine,” she said. “I enjoyed the little cakes, Mrs. Decker. Thank you for bringing them.”

“My pleasure, my dear.”

They waited until Maeve was truly gone before continuing the conversation.

“What about her husband?” Sarah asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

“I don’t know for sure, of course, but the gossip . . . there’s always been gossip about him, about how he preferred the company of ladies of the evening.”

“If we can judge by the number of brothels in the city, many men do.”

“It was an ugly thing to talk about, and I’m ashamed now.”

Sarah considered what her mother had told her. “I didn’t tell you everything that happened after Amy was rescued. I didn’t tell you what Amy named her baby.”

“Is this something I would be happier not knowing?”

“She didn’t name him Felix,” Sarah said wryly. Felix was, of course, her father’s name.

“Let me guess. She did name him Gregory.”

“And she told Mrs. Van Orner she was naming him after his father.”

Mrs. Decker sighed. “How cruel of her. But the girl was a prostitute. How could she possibly know who the father was?”

“According to Mrs. Walker, the woman who ran the house where she worked, Amy had been a rich man’s mistress. He’d brought her to Mrs. Walker when he got tired of her. Mrs. Walker said Amy must have already been pregnant when she arrived there.”

Mrs. Decker stared at Sarah for a long moment.

“What is it?” Sarah asked finally.

“Sounds like this Amy person had a very good reason for wanting Vivian Van Orner dead.”

 

 

M
RS. DECKER HAD TO LEAVE TO HAVE LUNCH WITH SOME friends. Sarah and the girls were preparing their own meal when the front bell rang. Sarah went to answer it, with Catherine at her heels, eager to see who their visitor might be. Thinking it was probably someone summoning her to a birth, Sarah felt a stab of pleasure to see Frank Malloy standing on her doorstep.

“Malloy,” she said in greeting, unable to stop the smile that formed on her lips.

Catherine gave a squeal of joy and threw herself into his arms. He picked her up and returned her hug, but when he looked back at Sarah, he wasn’t smiling.

“Catherine, will you go ask Maeve to set an extra place at the table for Mr. Malloy?”

Malloy set the child on her feet, and she scampered off back to the kitchen.

“I haven’t done a single thing about Mrs. Van Orner’s death except gossip with my mother,” she assured him.