Murder On Astor Place

11

FRANK FOUND THE BRASS LANTERN A LOT NOISIER this evening than it had been earlier in the day. Nightfall had brought the lodgers back to claim their beds or their share of the floor space that was offered, to anyone who could pay, for a few pennies. The “beds” were lengths of dirty, sagging canvas strung between rows of rough-hewn boards. Less than a foot of space separated each hammock, and a man could reach up and touch the bunk above him. Privacy was in short supply in a place like this. No wonder Will Yardley’s friend had no trouble spotting Hamilton Fisher.

The proprietor stood at the door, collecting nickels and pennies and cuffing those who thought to sneak in without paying back out into the street. He frowned when he saw Frank and grew instantly defensive.

“I keep an orderly house here, I do,” he insisted belligerently. “There’s no call to come barging in here. I pay my protection money.”

“I’m not here to bother you. I’m looking for somebody,” Frank said, tossing him a silver dollar. “Tall fellow with buck teeth. Might be calling himself Hamilton Fisher.”

“I don’t care what anybody calls hisself,” the man replied. He smelled of garlic and sweat. “Do you think I keep a register? This ain’t the Plaza Hotel, now is it?”

“I said he’s got buck teeth. Seen anybody like that?” Frank said, not even tempted to give the fellow any more money. Frank liked his informants to be more cooperative than this, so he wasn’t going to encourage bad behavior by reaching into his pocket again, and if this fellow didn’t get more friendly, Frank was going to have to get rough.

The man waited, jutting out his greasy beard and hooking his thumbs in his suspenders. But Frank could wait, too, and he did, glaring his policeman’s glare, which had been perfected after years of practice. As he had anticipated, he won the staring match.

“Might be somebody by that description inside,” the man allowed.

Frank acknowledged the cooperation with a nod and stepped into the building. Most of the bunks were occupied. The men laid down fully clothed because any article of clothing left unattended would be claimed by someone else before the night was over. A group of men were playing cards for matches in a comer, and someone on a top bunk was snoring like a foghorn blasting its way down the Hudson River.

Frank walked up the aisle, glancing at each man in turn. Fisher had been clean shaven when Sarah Brandt saw him last, but he might have let his grooming lapse since he was living harder now. The teeth would be his only certain distinguishing characteristic.

Most of the men recognized his profession immediately and watched his progress warily. People of this class, which was almost the lowest in the city, would fear the police and rightly so. Most of them were felons of some sort or another and could be assumed to have committed a crime of some magnitude within the last twenty-four hours. Even if they hadn’t, they might be picked up and charged with something, then beaten into confessing to it. Frank believed such police behavior was simple laziness, but these men needn’t know this. Better if they were afraid of him.

Someone kicked the foghorn snorer, jarring loose a snort and a string of profanity from him and raucous laughter from everyone else. Frank moved on. The room smelled of sleep and filth and the stink of too many people in too small a space. It was, Frank had long since determined, the aroma of despair. The bare brick walls, the unfinished ceiling, the scarred muddy floors. Not one element designed for comfort in the whole place, because, of course, comfort could not be bought for a nickel.

Too many men were lying in shadow, safe from Frank’s probing gaze, but before long, a weasel of a man sidled up to him, baring his rotting teeth in an ingratiating smile. “Who might you be looking for, governor?” he asked “Maybe I could be of help. Roscoe’s my name, and I always play straight with coppers because they play straight with me.”

Frank took a moment to look the fellow over from the crown of his greasy hair to the soles of his broken shoes. His suit was too big, probably because it had once belonged to someone else, someone who may not have parted with it willingly. Stolen or not, it was showing green in spots where the fabric was so worn that even the color had come off.

Since this Roscoe was clearly not the man he was looking for, Frank figured it was safe to ask for a little help. “I’m looking for a young man, tall and blond with buck teeth. Might have only been around a week or so. His name is Ham Fisher, although he probably isn’t using it right now.”

Roscoe scratched his head, almost dislodging his shapeless hat in the process. “Don’t know if I recollect such a fellow here, governor. My memory ain’t what it used to be…” His voice trailed off expectantly.

Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out a dime. This was enough to buy Roscoe an all-night drunk on stale beer. His rheumy eyes lit up, and he grabbed for the coin, but Frank held it out of his reach.

“How’s your memory doing, Roscoe?” Frank asked. “Is it improving at all?”

“Oh, my, yes, it’s improving quite considerable,” he allowed. “In fact, I think I seen the very fellow you’re looking for right down at the end of this row.” He pointed vaguely and reached for the coin again.

Frank tucked it inside his closed fist. “Maybe you’ll show me exactly which bed,” Frank suggested.

Roscoe licked his lips, probably already tasting his first beer. “Sure, governor, I’d be pleased to show you. Right this way.”

Frank followed the little tramp, earning glares from all the men they passed. Frank cowed each of them in turn, taking pride in making one after the other drop his gaze, until at last they reached the bunk Roscoe had indicated.

“That’s him,” he said, pointing to a shadowy figure curled on his side and balanced precariously with his hat pulled over his face. Roscoe reached again for the dime, but Frank wasn’t going to pay until he was sure he’d gotten his money’s worth.

“Fisher!” he bellowed, and the figure on the bed jerked awake, jarring loose his hat and in the next minute dumping himself unceremoniously onto the floor. Howls of laughter rose up around them, and Frank tossed Roscoe his dime.

Fisher looked around desperately, until he finally noticed Frank. He needed only another moment to discern the danger he was in, and he was on his feet in a minute and out from between the bunks, ready to bolt.

Frank was one second quicker, however, and he grabbed the boy in a choke hold with one arm, twisting his arm behind his back with his other one. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Fisher,” Frank said, half-walking, half-dragging him along the aisle back toward the door.

“I don’t know nothing,” he gasped, trying to struggle but failing. Frank had him too far off balance and in too much pain.

“You’re being too modest, Mr. Fisher. I’ll bet you know lots of things. How do you know I’m not going to be asking you something you do know? But then,” he added as he dragged Fisher out into the street, “maybe you know perfectly well what I’m here to find out and that’s why you’re so set on running.”

An alley yawned nearby, and Frank hustled him into it, slamming him up against the brick wall and bracing him there with a forearm against his throat. “Now, then, let’s set a few rules. First of all, don’t lie to me, or I’ll have to show you what I know about giving the third degree.”

Fisher made a gurgling sound that might have been a protest, but Frank didn’t really care if it was or not.

“First question: Why were you following Alicia VanDamm?”

Fisher shook his head violently in denial, but Frank merely increased the pressure on Fisher’s throat slightly, until his eyes started bulging in his head. Judging that he’d gone far enough, he released the pressure enough for Fisher to draw a desperate breath.

“We can go down to Police Headquarters if you’d rather,” Frank suggested. “We’ve got rooms there where we can question our prisoners in comfort. Our comfort, you understand, not yours. And I’ve got a cell I can lock you in until I remember to come back to get you. That might be a few days. I’m pretty busy, so you’d do better to answer me now and save yourself some time in the hole. What do you say?”

He could see Fisher was thinking it over, weighing his options. Plainly, he was afraid to cooperate with Frank, but he was also afraid to refuse. Frank decided that whatever he feared Mattingly would do, Frank’s threat had the advantage of being the most immediate. That surely gave him an advantage.

He tried another question, an easier one this time. “Who hired you to follow Alicia VanDamm?”

Whatever loyalty he’d had, evaporated. “Sylvester Mattingly,” he gasped.

This wasn’t news, but at least he’d gotten the boy to tell the truth.

“Why did he want to find the girl?”

“I don’t know. It ain’t my place to ask. I just do like I’m told.”

This was also probably true. “All right, then, if you were supposed to find her, why didn’t you just tell Mattingly where she was? Why did you move into the boardinghouse with her for a week?”

His eyes rolled as he looked around desperately for some escape, but he found none.

“It’s late, and I’m tired, Mr. Fisher,” Frank said. “If you make me exert myself, I’m going to be in a very bad mood.”

“She had something,” he reluctantly admitted.

“Something you were supposed to steal? Her jewelry, maybe?” Would the VanDamms have hired someone just to get the jewels back and the hell with their daughter?

“I never stole nothing! Not no jewelry, anyways,” he added quickly when Frank started to press on his throat again.

“What then?”

“A… a book.”

This made no sense. “What book?”

“It was a diary, they told me. She wrote in it all the time. I was to find it and make sure I brought it back before they went to fetch her.”

Frank recognized the irony of this. Hadn’t he hoped to find just such a book when he’d searched Alicia’s room last week?

“And did you find it?” he asked.

Fisher rolled his eyes again. Even in the shadows of the alley, Frank could see his fear. And smell it, too. Fisher reeked of it. “I don’t know,” he tried, but Frank was having none of it. He leaned in, bearing down with his forearm again until Fisher was writhing.

After a few moments, Frank released him. “I’m only going to ask you once more, Mr. Fisher,” he said while the boy gasped for breath. “Did you find the diary?”

“I found it, but…”

“But what?” Frank demanded.

“He said it was the wrong one.”

“Who said?”

“Mr. Mattingly. He said it wasn’t the right book. He said there was another one, and that was the one he wanted, but she hardly ever left her room, so I never had much time to look for it. I didn’t find another one, though, even though I tried. It just wasn’t there.”

This made no sense to Frank. “The girl kept two diaries?”

“The one he wanted was the old one. The one she’d had for years. What I found was just from when she’d left home. The old one wasn’t in her room.”

“So you killed her and ran away,” Frank guessed.

“No!” he cried, his body fairly trembling with fear. “I never touched her! She was alive when I left the house!”

“You’re pretty sure of that, which probably means you killed her.”

“No, no, I swear! I saw her let somebody into her room, and then I got my stuff and left. She was alive then.”

“Who did you let into the house that night? If what you say is true, maybe he was the one who killed her.”

Fisher was quaking now, like a man possessed. Surely, he knew that betraying Mattingly wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done. “It wasn’t just a man. He had a woman with him, too.”

“And you know who they are, don’t you?”

“I don’t! I swear!”

“Stop swearing and tell me the truth. Who was the man?”

“I don’t know. Some swell. I never saw him before. Mattingly sent me word he’d be coming that night, and I should let him in. That’s all I know!”

“What did he look like?”

“I told you, a swell. Expensive clothes. Skinny little mustache.”

“Blond or dark?”

“Blond. Talked through his nose, like they all do. Walked like he had a stick up his ass.”

“How old was he?”

“How should I know? Maybe your age. I don’t know for sure. He didn’t really let me get a good look at him, and I sure as hell didn’t care.”

“What about the woman? Did she call him by name?”

“She called him ‘sir.’ That’s all. That’s all I know. Now let me go!”

Frank was pretty sure he knew more. “Just one more thing, Fisher. What are you doing in the Brass Lantern?”

Frank caught a glimpse of the sass that must have been the boy’s stock and trade. “I was trying to get some sleep when you rousted me out.”

Frank gave him a slap. Just a friendly one, nothing serious, just to remind the boy who was in charge and that he knew Fisher was responsible for Alicia VanDamm being dead. “You know what I mean. Mattingly must pay you well enough so you don’t have to sleep in a flophouse. And look at you.” He took in the boy’s dirty clothes and week’s growth of beard with a disdainful glance. “A swell like Mattingly would demand a little more flash from his hired help.”

“I… I don’t work for him no more,” he insisted.

“And why not? He fire you after Miss VanDamm turned up dead?”

“No, I…”

“You what?” Frank demanded, raising his hand to strike the boy again. But he didn’t have to.

“I quit!”

“Why?”

“I… They didn’t say they was gonna kill her! She was a nice girl. They didn’t have no call to kill her!”

Frank didn’t quite believe the boy’s sense of honor had been so badly offended. “And you figured they’d try to pin it on you, didn’t you? That’s why you ran. That’s why you’re living here instead of at your flat.”

The boy was trembling again. “I didn’t touch her, not ever. They went into her room, and I left. Mattingly told me to get out when they came, so I did. When I heard she was dead… I mean, that’s why you’re here, ain’t it? Because they said I killed her? They’re trying to pin it on me, ain’t they?”

It would’ve been a good idea, Frank thought. In fact, he could have done so himself, just to get the case solved. A boy like this would be an easy target, with no friends to help him. Mattingly certainly wouldn’t, not if he’d framed the boy for the murder. But Frank had a witness who’d seen Fisher leaving the house before Alicia was killed. Or at least when her mysterious visitors were still with her.

“Well?” Fisher asked, his voice reedy with terror.

“I just wanted some information,” he told the boy, releasing him at last.

His legs threatened to buckle, but pride kept him on his feet. Clutching the wall for support, he glared at Frank, or tried to. It was more of a cringe. “You ain’t taking me down to the station house?” he asked, afraid to trust his good fortune.

“I know you didn’t kill the girl, so you can quit running. The police aren’t looking for you. But is somebody else?”

Fear flickered across the boy’s face again. “I couldn’t say.”

“But if you could, you’d say that you think Mattingly and maybe the fellow you let into the house that night are trying to find you so they can say you killed her.”

“Even a fool could see that’s the best thing to do,” he admitted. “Nobody’d believe me over them, not for a minute.”

“I think you can forget about it, then. It only took me a few days to find you, and I wasn’t trying very hard. Mattingly knows how to find somebody in this town. If he wanted to frame you, you’d be in the Tombs by now,” he said, naming the prison building used by the city. They were going to tear the place down, but Frank figured that no matter how modern the new prison was, it would always be called “The Tombs.”

“Maybe it ain’t Mattingly I got to be worried about,” he said quietly. “Nor the Tombs, neither.”

“What do you mean?”

The boy swallowed, trying to get some moisture back into his mouth, and his gaze darted up and down the alley, as if trying to judge who might be the bigger threat, Malloy or some unseen pursuer. “I mean, I know who the swell was who come to her room that night.”

“Who was it? Mattingly?” Frank demanded, resisting the urge to grab the boy again and shake the truth out of him.

But the boy shook his head. “Wasn’t him. It was…” He looked around again, making sure they were alone. “Well, I heard Miss VanDamm call him ‘Papa.’ ”

A FOOL’S ERRAND. That’s what Sarah was on. She didn’t even know why she was going back to the VanDamm’s house, but she was getting too restless sitting at home, waiting to hear back from Malloy. She had to do something.

She was hardly down her front steps, however, when someone called a warning.

“Stop, dear, don’t go any farther!” Mrs. Elsworth cried, hurrying down her own porch steps. Apparently, she’d been watching out her front window for something to happen in the neighborhood that would require her attention. “You dropped your glove!”

Sarah looked to see it lying near the top step, and started back for it.

“Don’t pick it up!” Mrs. Elsworth shrieked in terror, causing Sarah to nearly stumble on the steps. “Bad luck, you know!” she explained when Sarah gaped at her.

Sarah swallowed down her exasperation. “Am I supposed to let it lie there?” she asked, trying not to sound sarcastic.

“Of course not!” Mrs. Elsworth said, her eyes wide at such a ridiculous notion. “I’ll pick it up for you. And that’s good fortune for you today, to have someone else pick up your glove.”

Amazingly spry for her age, she brushed past Sarah and flitted up the steps, snatching the glove, then handing it back to Sarah with a flourish. “There!”

“Well, thank you,” Sarah said, trying to appear suitably grateful.

“Are you off to help a baby into the world?” she asked, plainly delighted to have been of service.

“No, I have an… an appointment,” she said, although it wasn’t any truer than it had been the last time she’d said it.

“Nothing serious, I hope.” Her face crinkled in concern.

“Oh, no, it’s just a visit with an old friend.” This was stretching the truth a bit, but Mrs. Elsworth didn’t need to know everything, however much she might wish to.

“With that gentleman who called on you the other day?” she asked coyly.

“I told you, that was a police detective, and he wasn’t calling on me. He’s working on a case, and I was able to give him some information.”

“Of course, dear, whatever you say.” Mrs. Elsworth smiled knowingly. “But I’d wager he would be calling on you if you’d give him the slightest encouragement.”

Sarah was hard pressed not to laugh out loud at such a ridiculous notion. “I assure you that Detective Sergeant Malloy barely tolerates me, Mrs. Elsworth, and the feeling is mutual. Once his case is solved, we’ll most likely never set eyes on one another again.”

“Oh, my, young people can be so blind,” she clucked, shaking her head in dismay. “He does seem like a very nice man, Sarah, even if he is a policeman. You mustn’t dismiss him too lightly. You never know where your destiny might lie.”

Sarah thought Malloy had seemed rude and obnoxious that day he’d met Mrs. Elsworth, and she was sure Malloy wasn’t any part of her destiny, but she wasn’t going to argue the point standing on the sidewalk. “I’ll give the matter some thought,” she lied to escape further blandishments.

“I should hope so,” Mrs. Elsworth said. “Now I’d best let you be on your way. Watch the weather, though, dear. There’s a storm brewing, and you don’t want to be caught out in it.”

Sarah glanced at the cloudless sky in surprise. The day was unseasonably warm again, and the air was still. “It doesn’t look like rain,” she pointed out.

“I know, but I tried to light a candle this morning, and the blessed thing just wouldn’t catch. That means a storm’s coming, sure as sunrise. Maybe you should take an umbrella, but… oh, dear, it’s bad luck to go back once you’ve started out,” she mused. “Oh, I know, I could lend you mine!”

She would have darted off to fetch it, but Sarah stopped her. “I’ll only be gone a short while,” she assured the old woman with a meaningful glance at the clear sky. “That storm must still be a long way off.”

“Just take care that you’re home before it starts,” Mrs. Elsworth warned. “It’s going to be a bad one.”

Sarah was still shaking her head when she reached the comer.

But as she paused on the VanDamm doorstep nearly an hour later, she couldn’t help giving the sky one last look. Still no hint of impending doom. Mrs. Elsworth’s candle-wick must have just gotten wet.

As usual, Alfred answered the VanDamm’s door. His eyes were still sad, and he now moved as if he carried the weight of the world with him.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brandt, but Miss Mina isn’t at home today,” he told her before she even asked.

Sarah wanted to curse with frustration, but she knew that would shock Alfred so much he’d probably never admit her again. Instead, she chose to simply bend one of the rules of decorum instead of smashing it entirely. “Is Miss Mina really away from home, or is she just not receiving me?”

Alfred was visibly shocked at such a breach of etiquette. No one in the VanDamm’s social circle would dream of making such an inquiry and certainly not of a servant. If one were being snubbed, one would eventually surmise it and just stop calling. Sarah didn’t have the time or the patience for any more fruitless trips uptown if she had been banned from the VanDamm home, however, so she had to ask.

“I’m sure I don’t know to what you might be referring, Mrs. Brandt,” he informed her stiffly.

Sarah resisted the urge to shake him. “Can you just tell me if she’s really away from home?”

He stared at her for a long moment, as if trying to decide if she were demented or not. Or perhaps he was determining whether she was worthy of this information. Finally, he said, “She’s visiting friends in the country.”

Hiding her relief, Sarah was about to thank him and be on her way, when she remembered that another female lived in this house, one upon whom she might also pay a call, or at least try. “Is Mrs. VanDamm at home, by any chance?”

Now Alfred really was shocked. “Mrs. VanDamm is an invalid, and she doesn’t receive callers.”

That probably meant she only received a few of her nearest and dearest friends, and probably her doctors, too. Sarah did not fit into those categories, but she was also beyond caring if she shocked Alfred any further. “Would you ask her if she would receive me? Give her my card, and… does she know I saw Alicia the night before she died?”

Alfred’s face seemed frozen in shock. “I’m sure I couldn’t say what Mrs. VanDamm does and does not know.”

“If she doesn’t, then please inform her. Tell her I’d like to talk to her about how Alicia looked that night.”

She thrust her card at Alfred, the one that announced her as a midwife, after folding down the corner to announce she was paying her respects. He took it as gingerly as if she were handing him a live snake.

“I feel I must inform you again, Mrs. VanDamm does not receive visitors,” he reminded her almost desperately.

“I’ll wait in my usual place,” she said, undeterred.

Alfred was gone for quite a while, so long in fact that Sarah began to fear something might have happened to him. Could he have gotten lost or fallen ill? But surely, Alfred knew his way around the house, and she would have heard some disturbance if he had been found prone someplace. So she tried to believe the wait was good news. A simple refusal would have been given instantly, and she would have been sent on her way. The delay indicated that at least her visit was being considered.

At last Alfred reappeared, looking even more disturbed than he had before. “Mrs. VanDamm will receive you in her rooms,” he said, unable to hide his amazement. “Bridget will show you.”

The maid had come halfway down the steps and was looking at Sarah as if she were a rare specimen in a zoo.

“Thank you,” she said to Alfred, then hesitated when he looked as if he wanted to say something more.

“Mrs. VanDamm hasn’t been well for… for some time,” he said, each word sounding as if it were being dragged from his throat. Most likely it was, since he was breaking every unwritten rule of discretion by speaking of this at all. “She’s… Miss Alicia’s death was a shock to her.”

Sarah nodded, understanding the implied warning, although she wasn’t quite certain what the warning was for. She supposed she would find out soon enough.

She followed the maid up the stairs and down the hallway to the proper door. Bridget knocked and slipped inside for a moment. Sarah heard her say, “Mrs. Brandt is here, ma’am,” and some murmured consent. Then Bridget admitted her.

The room was dim and stuffy, the cheerful sunlight of this April morning held at bay by heavy velvet draperies drawn tightly over every window. In contrast, the furniture was light and elegant, if a bit ornate for Sarah’s taste. To her amazement, the bed was an enormous canopy sitting on a platform and surrounded by what Sarah could only call a fence, albeit a low and merely decorative one.

Reminding herself she wasn’t here to critique the decor, she looked around and found Mrs. VanDamm reclining on a fainting couch by the fireplace, much as Mina had been the first time she’d called on her. Mrs. VanDamm looked much more natural in this position, however, probably because she’d had a lot more practice at playing the invalid. She wore a ruffled and flowered dressing gown, and her legs were draped with a crocheted coverlet in spite of the heat. The table beside her held an assortment of bottles and jars, and the room was redolent of the competing odors of camphor and lavender.

“Sarah Decker?” Mrs. VanDamm asked, her voice at once feeble and intense. She looked remarkably unchanged since the last time Sarah had seen her years earlier. The lines of her face had deepened a bit, but her skin was still flawless and smooth, probably because she hadn’t seen the light of day in all those years. Her hair had silvered gracefully, and it was artfully arranged. This was probably what had caused the delay in Sarah being summoned to her.

“Yes, Mrs. VanDamm,” Sarah said, going to the couch where she lay. She smiled her professional smile and took the slender hand the older woman offered. “Except I’m Sarah Brandt now.”

“Oh, yes, I remember that you married. But something dreadful happened, didn’t it?” Her face creased into a delicate frown for a moment, and then she said, “I thought you had died.”

“My sister Maggie passed away,” Sarah said, choosing not to take offense, as she would have if Mina had said the same thing. Mrs. VanDamm looked as if she might really be confused enough to make such a mistake. The pupils of her eyes seemed dilated, and a glance at the jars on the nearby table told her why. She saw Hood’s Pills and Buffalo Lithia Water and Ripley Brom-Lithia and Warner’s Safe Cure, among other brands of patent medicines. Some of these were harmless concoctions, but others contained generous dollops of morphine, which didn’t cure anything but usually made the sufferer less aware of her disease-and everything else, for that matter. If Mrs. VanDamm was taking these medications with any regularity, she would do well to remember her own name.

“Your sister, yes,” she said vaguely. “I remember now. Tragic. And now we’ve lost our dear Alicia.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said. Although she hadn’t been invited, she seated herself in the chair placed strategically near Mrs. VanDamm’s chaise, close enough that she didn’t have to let go of her hand. “I really hate to intrude on you at a time like this, but I did see Alicia right before… well, the last night she was alive, and I thought you might like to hear that she seemed well.”

“I couldn’t believe it when Bridget told me you’d seen her. I still don’t understand any of it, and Cornelius is no help. That policeman told us the strangest things, but when I ask Cornelius about it, he keeps saying it’s none of my concern, but how could that be? She was my child, after all. Everything about her is my concern, isn’t it?”

Sarah nodded, although she couldn’t help thinking Mrs. VanDamm didn’t look as if she’d concerned herself with much of anything outside of this room in quite a while. “What don’t you understand? Maybe I could help.”

Sarah figured that enlightening Mrs. VanDamm on any subject might earn her the wrath of the rest of the family, but she was willing to take the chance if she was able to get any information at all out of her. Besides, Mrs. VanDamm might not even remember her visit an hour from now.

“I thought Alicia was at Greentree,” Mrs. VanDamm said plaintively. “That’s where we sent her. Or where Cornelius sent her, I should say. He didn’t consult me. He never does, not anymore. Alicia was always high strung, and lately she’d been very nervous. Crying for no reason, that sort of thing. I told him she was just at that age when young girls become emotional, but he thought she would do better away from the city, where things were quieter. She loved Greentree, and she had her horse there, so I saw no harm in it. But now they say she was living in some boardinghouse. I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it. Why would she go to a boardinghouse when she had two perfectly fine homes of her own?”

“Alicia was living in a boardinghouse,” Sarah assured her. “That’s where I saw her, although I didn’t know who she was at the time. I noticed her because she looked so much like Mina did at that age.”

“Oh, yes, she did. Alicia was the very image of Mina at the same age. Sometimes I even called her Mina by mistake. I know she didn’t like it, but she never let on. She was so sweet.” Her eyes filled with tears, and for a moment, Sarah regretted causing her such pain, but then she realized that Mrs. VanDamm was unable to hold onto that pain for more than a moment. Her watery gaze drifted, and along with it her attention. “Oh, I saw you admiring my bed. It’s Marie Antoinette’s.”

“I beg your pardon?” Sarah asked, confused.

“It’s an exact replica of Marie Antoinette’s bed. She used to receive her attendants while she was still in bed. It’s a French custom, don’t you know? But Marie wasn’t French and she didn’t like having all those people coming up to her bed, so she had them put up a fence to keep them from getting too close. Isn’t that clever?”

Sarah had no idea if it was clever or not, but she nodded and smiled politely and tried to figure out how to turn the conversation back to Alicia. She need not have worried. Mrs. VanDamm might be vague, but she hadn’t slipped entirely away.

“Please tell me, Sarah, how did Alicia come to be living at that boardinghouse?” she asked after a moment.

“I believe she ran away from Greentree.”

“That’s nonsense. Why would she run away? She had no reason.”

Sarah knew Alicia had a very good reason, but she was fairly sure Mrs. VanDamm didn’t know it, and even if she did, would never admit it. “I believe she was upset by a marriage her father was arranging for her,” she tried.

Mrs. VanDamm frowned as she considered this. “I had no idea she was upset. I didn’t think she even knew. Cornelius had talked about it, of course, but I couldn’t agree. I thought she was too young, although I wasn’t much older than she when I married Cornelius. I think marriage can be good for some girls, don’t you? Especially to an older man. Cornelius is twelve years my senior, and he helped me settle down. I remember how proud I was to be seen with him when I was a bride. He was so handsome and tall.”

For a moment, she seemed lost in her memories of happier times, while Sarah tried to picture Mrs. VanDamm as a sixteen-year-old bride to her twenty-eight-year-old groom. Although it wasn’t the perfect picture, it was still a long way from Alicia and Sylvester Mattingly, who must be over sixty.

“Do you know who the man was?” Sarah asked, hoping against hope Mrs. VanDamm could shed some light on the uneven match. “The man her father was planning for her to marry?”

“Oh, yes, but I don’t think Cornelius would have gone through with it. He doted on Alicia too much to let her go just yet. And while I think the husband should always be older than the wife, the man Cornelius had in mind was much too old. Too young and too old, do you see? When I was young, many girls married at sixteen, but nowadays, that’s not done anymore. She hadn’t even made her debut. She would have missed so much.”

And now she will miss everything, Sarah thought, but of course she didn’t say it. “Alicia must have thought her father would go through with it, or she wouldn’t have run away,” she pointed out instead.

“That’s something I still don’t understand. How could she have gotten away? How would she have known where to go?”

“Someone must have helped her,” Sarah offered, remembering Malloy’s pledge to keep the groom’s help a secret. “Perhaps a friend. Can you think of anyone who would have done that? A young man perhaps, someone her own age who might have been smitten with her.” Someone who could have gotten her with child, she added silently, praying it wasn’t Sylvester Mattingly, as she suspected. The thought was simply too awful to contemplate, although it would have explained Alicia’s flight perfectly.

But Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head helplessly. “I can’t think of anyone. Our neighbors at Greentree had some boys, I think, but they’re away at school. I don’t believe Alicia knows them, either.”

Plainly, all this thinking was too much for her. She lifted a hand to her head and closed her eyes as if in pain.

“Are you all right? Can I get you something?” Sarah asked, instantly contrite. Morphine addict or not, Mrs. VanDamm was still a grieving mother.

“My salts,” she said, motioning vaguely toward the assortment of medicine bottles on the table.

Sarah picked through the bottles, seeing Lydia Pink-ham’s Remedy, which claimed to cure all manner of female ills but which merely masked them with a morphine fog. After a moment, she located the bottle of smelling salts. Lifting the stopper, she passed the foul-smelling bottle under Mrs. VanDamm’s nose until her eyes popped open again and her color returned.

“Oh, thank you, my dear. I get these spells where I get so weak and…” Her voice trailed off as her unfocused gaze suddenly focused on Sarah. “Did Bridget tell me that you’re a midwife?”

“Yes, that’s right. And a trained nurse, as well.”

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” she asked of no one in particular. “I’ve been wasting my time with doctors. The doctors are all men. What do men know about female problems?”

“Are you having female problems?” Sarah asked solicitously, thinking that she might gain Mrs. VanDamm’s confidence by giving her some medical advice. If she was consulting with Sarah, she would certainly welcome her back for another visit if Sarah needed more information later.

“Oh, yes, for years now, and nothing helps. I have these spells when I feel weak and I can’t get my breath, and other times my head feels like it’s coming off my body. And sometimes, if I’m very still and quiet, I can actually hear my heart beating. That isn’t natural, is it, to hear one’s own heart beating?”

Sarah thought it probably was if you were listening for it, but she chose to humor Mrs. VanDamm. Perhaps she did have some problem that Sarah’s training could help. Sarah began to question her about her symptoms, and Mrs. VanDamm was only too happy to describe them in great detail. Apparently, she had nothing more to occupy her time than to sit here alone in the semidarkness and concentrate on every sensation of her own body.

She quickly learned that Mrs. VanDamm, who was not quite fifty, had completed menopause and was probably just experiencing the effects of it. “Do you find marital relations uncomfortable?” Sarah asked, ready to give Mrs. VanDamm some tips on how to alleviate that discomfort, but Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head.

“Oh, dear, I always found marital relations uncomfortable,” she confessed, rolling her eyes. “I can’t imagine how other women manage. After Mina was born, I told Mr. VanDamm I couldn’t endure his attentions anymore, and to his credit, he hasn’t bothered me since. It’s been over thirty years now, and I haven’t missed it at all, I assure you.”

Sarah was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even remember what they’d been discussing. She wasn’t shocked to learn that Mrs. VanDamm didn’t have intercourse with her husband. Many women of her class felt as she did, which was why so many men of her class kept mistresses. No, what shocked her was the realization that if Mrs. VanDamm hadn’t had sexual relations since Mina was born, she couldn’t possibly have been Alicia’s mother.