Murder On Astor Place

4

THIS WAS A MISTAKE, A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. SARAH knew that now. Her only hope was that Malloy wasn’t so furious with her that he’d leave her here to rot. Or that the desk sergeant upstairs wasn’t so annoyed that he didn’t bother to send for Malloy at all. But surely, someone would come for her sooner or later. This was a police station, after all, and she was an honest citizen who was only trying to help.

If only she didn’t know how little good that would do her if they simply decided to forget about her entirely.

But it was now too late to change her mind. Forcing herself to sit in the cleanest of the chairs, she drew a few deep breaths and managed not to panic. Once she had her control back, she concentrated on her surroundings. This must be one of the rooms they used to interrogate prisoners, she decided. To give them the “third degree,” a term developed by Thomas Byrnes, the longtime chief of the Detective Bureau and until recently the superintendent, whose methods of questioning prisoners were equally violent and effective. He had, they said, actually invented the “third degree.”

As awful as this room was, however, Sarah knew that those on the floor below would be even worse. There, prisoners were held in dank cellar rooms a floor below street level where no ray of sunlight or breath of fresh air ever permeated. They said that after a few hours in one of those cells, a man would confess to anything just to get out.

Until recently, the cellar had also provided housing to the homeless who were too poor even to manage the few cents required for floor space sleeping in a Bowery flophouse. So awful was this space that few people ever actually took advantage of the free lodging except in the worst weather. Still, it was the only place in town where a homeless woman who was not actively engaged in prostitution could stay. But Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had closed the police department homeless shelters a few months ago, on the advice of newspaper reporter and self-appointed reformer Jacob Riis. Riis seemed to think the shelters were a breeding ground for vice and sin. Sarah wondered if he realized that the people who had once used the shelters now had to sleep in the very streets instead. What kind of a breeding ground would that be?

Having satisfied herself that she had adequately proved Riis wrong, for a while Sarah passed the time by imagining what Malloy would say when he found her here, assuming he ever did. She could even picture the expression he’d have on his face when he came through the door, please God, let him come through very soon. He’d be furious and impatient and even a little smug, thinking she’d gotten herself into a fine fix and wasn’t it just what she deserved for sticking her nose into things that weren’t her business?

When she was finished with that, she rehearsed what she’d say to him, refining and clarifying what she had to tell him, so he wouldn’t have time to cut her off before he’d heard the most important information. He could be a little short, and she was certain he wouldn’t be in the mood for lengthy explanations when he finally arrived, which had better be soon. And when she was satisfied that her speech was perfect, she simply waited, imagining she heard rats scurrying and men moaning and cursing, and trying not to imagine that the spots she saw on the far wall were blood.

More than an hour passed before she finally heard a key turning in the lock, and the door was flung open to reveal Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. He looked exactly the way she’d expected, which was not at all happy to see her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

Thank heaven he had no idea how genuinely thrilled she was to see him. To see anybody, in fact, who might rescue her from this hellhole. Resisting the impulse to jump up and throw her arms around him in gratitude and carefully keeping all trace of elation from her voice, she said, “Didn’t they tell you? I have some information about Alicia VanDamm’s murder.”

Malloy ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of exasperation. Hair, Sarah noticed, that appeared to be uncombed. Just as his cheeks appeared to be unshaven. And his tie was crooked. Indeed, he looked as if he’d just gotten up and had dressed in a very big hurry. It was early in the morning, but not that early.

“This better be something really important,” he warned her, closing the door behind him with a decisive slam.

Frank couldn’t believe it. Sarah Brandt was sitting in an interrogation room. Had actually been locked in an interrogation room, and for quite a while, if what O‘Brien told him was true. O’Brien was an idiot. He’d been looking all over town for Frank when he’d been right here in the building, sleeping in the officer’s dormitory upstairs after having been up half the night investigating a warehouse robbery. A warehouse robbery that promised to add substantially to Frank’s savings, if he played it right, and he most certainly would.

By the time O’Brien had found him, Frank realized Mrs. Brandt had been locked in the basement for quite a while, more than long enough to reduce a normal female to hysterics, which was how he’d expected to find her. Not that he was looking forward to dealing with an hysterical female, but finding her sitting here looking perfectly calm was even more unsettling. The woman was positively unnatural.

“I’m sure you’ll at least find what I have to tell you interesting,” she said, just as prim and proper as you please. As if she was sitting in her own parlor instead of right where countless criminals had endured countless beatings, all in the cause of justice. He should’ve left her here for another hour before coming to rescue her. Maybe by then she would’ve started acting like a normal woman.

“All right,” he said grudgingly, pulling up a chair to the opposite side of the table and sinking down into it. “What is it, and be quick.” He rubbed his gritty eyes, half hoping that when he opened them again she’d be gone. But she wasn’t. “I’ve been awake all night, and I’d like to get a little more sleep before I get called on another case,” he warned.

“Oh, dear, they should’ve told me. I could come back another time,” she offered, annoying him even more. He didn’t want her to be thoughtful. He wanted her to be gone.

“Just spit it out and get it over with,” he snapped, wondering what evil he’d done to deserve having Sarah Brandt enter his life.

“I’ll try to hurry,” she said, folding her hands on the table in that prissy way she had that set his teeth on edge. “I called on the VanDamm family yesterday. To express my condolences,” she added when Frank scowled his disapproval. “Mina and I are old friends.”

Well, he supposed he couldn’t stop her from calling on an old friend.

“At any rate,” she continued, “she told me something that might be useful. It seems that when Alicia ran away, she took some valuable jewelry with her.”

“We didn’t find any jewelry in her room.” Frank absently began to rub the bridge of his nose. His head was starting to ache, and his eyelids felt like they were lined with gravel.

“It may have been stolen, and the thief may have been the person who killed her.”

Frank frowned again, this time because he was annoyed he hadn’t thought of that himself. He would have in another minute, of course. He was just tired. “You know what this jewelry looked like?”

“No, but I’m sure the family can give you a description. They may even have paste copies of the pieces. People sometimes have their jewelry copied so they can wear the fakes and keep the real ones safely locked up. If you find out who pawned her jewelry, you’ll probably find her killer.”

“Unless…” Frank muttered, thinking aloud.

“Unless what?”

Frank didn’t particularly want to share his thoughts with her, but he was too tired to get into an argument about it. “Unless she sold them herself. To get money to live on. Would she have had any money of her own otherwise?”

“I can’t know for sure, of course, but she probably wouldn’t have. Mina didn’t think so, and in fact, she thought Alicia had probably taken the jewelry to sell since she had no other source of money. Girls of that class don’t usually need access to money. Their families provide everything for them.”

“Even when they go shopping?”

“The family would have accounts at all the stores. And if she ever did need to buy something, she’d have a servant along to handle the transaction. It’s considered vulgar for a female to carry cash.”

The more Frank learned about the upper classes, the less he liked them, and he hadn’t liked them very much to begin with. “Which means her sister was right, she probably took the jewelry to sell, so it was probably long gone by the time she was killed.”

“Except that I also can’t imagine Alicia would have known where to sell the jewelry herself or how to go about it even if she did. Girls of her class don’t go to pawnshops, Mr. Malloy. If she did sell the jewelry, someone would have had to help her.”

“I’ll check it out,” he said, “in case she hadn’t sold all the pieces yet. If her killer did steal something, at least that would give us a reason why she was killed.”

“I think I may know who her killer was, too, Detective.”

Frank seriously doubted this, but he could use a good laugh. “And who was it?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

She bristled a little at his tone, but she said, “Hamilton Fisher. He was a lodger at the Higgins’s house, too, and-”

“And he disappeared the night she was killed,” he finished for her. Did she really think he wouldn’t know this most basic piece of information? Now Frank was bristling, too.

“Did you know that he’d been paying her particular attention?” she asked.

“A natural enough thing. She was a pretty girl.”

“And did you know he didn’t have a job? Yet he’d paid his rent a month in advance, and he moved in just a few days before she died. And he started paying Alicia marked attentions from the moment he-”

“So?” Frank’s patience was wearing dangerously thin.

“So, he was probably a cadet,” she said as blandly as if she’d just accused the fellow of being a Methodist.

“A cadet?” Frank didn’t know what was more shocking, that he hadn’t thought of it himself or that Sarah Brandt even knew what a cadet was. “What makes you think so?”

“Didn’t I already explain that?” she shot back.

Actually, she had. A “cadet” was a young man who used his charms to seduce naive or desperate young women into prostitution. The laws of supply and demand required a constant supply of fresh, young females to satisfy the enormous demand of a profession that used them up at an alarming rate. Young men supplemented their meager incomes by working as cadets and helping the pimps fill their need for replacements in the brothels and on the streets.

A girl as lovely and alone as Alicia VanDamm would have seemed a logical target. Maybe Fisher had grown frustrated with his failure to attract her attentions and gone to her room and been a little more forceful than he’d intended in trying to recruit her.

Not wanting to admit he’d missed all the clues, Frank said, “We’re already looking for Mr. Fisher.”

She didn’t seem cheered by that information. Maybe she guessed that Frank hadn’t exactly made Hamilton Fisher a priority in this investigation. “Perhaps now you’ll be looking for him in some different places.”

He probably would, but he didn’t want to admit it to Mrs. Brandt. “Do you think the VanDamms will offer a reward for the missing jewelry?”

“Mina seemed very anxious to get it back. Is it absolutely necessary to have a reward, though?”

Oh, yes, Frank wanted to say, but instead he said, “Without it, I doubt we’ll see the jewelry again. If it was pawned, the pawnbroker will want his investment back. Even though it’s illegal to buy stolen goods, I won’t be able to prove he did unless he tells me. Since he’s not likely to do that, I can’t arrest him for it.”

“So if he’s not afraid of being arrested, your only leverage is to bribe him,” she guessed. She didn’t approve, but Frank couldn’t help that. That’s the way the world worked. Sarah Brandt could reform it on someone else’s time.

“I do what I have to do.” He only hoped she didn’t know that the customary arrangement was for the pawnbroker to split the reward with the police, too. Which, of course, gave the police an incentive for finding missing property in the first place. In fact, some thieves didn’t bother with fences at all. They just held onto the stolen goods until the reward was offered, then turned it in and split the proceeds with the cops. Easy work, but a little too uncertain for Frank’s taste.

“Has Mr. VanDamm offered a reward for the murderer?” she asked.

“I haven’t actually approached him about it yet,” Frank admitted. He didn’t like to rush into something so delicate. If you asked too soon, people thought you were unfeeling, and the VanDamms seemed like just the kind of folks who could get offended.

“I suggested he offer one,” she said, thoroughly shocking him. “I saw him when I called on Mina, and I tried to explain to him why it’s necessary. You won’t find her killer without one, will you?”

Frank didn’t think the answer to that question would do him credit, so he ignored it. “A man like that, with plenty of money, I guess he’ll do whatever it takes to catch the killer.”

To Frank’s surprise, she frowned as if she didn’t agree.

“You don’t think so?”

“He didn’t say anything, one way or the other, when I mentioned it to him,” she admitted, “and I didn’t want to press him. He was still very upset.”

“How could you tell?” Frank asked, honestly wanting to know.

She shrugged one shoulder, a distinctively feminine gesture that Frank found far more appealing than he should have. “He’s very reserved by nature. Most men are, I think, but men in his position must be even more so. Cornelius VanDamm probably wouldn’t shout if his house was on fire, but when I saw him the other day, he looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping at all, and his eyes were… well, they were haunted. There’s no other word for it.”

“Then he’ll pay whatever it takes to find the man responsible.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Why?” Frank challenged, not liking her theories at all. “You can’t think he doesn’t want the killer found.”

To his surprise, she didn’t protest. “It’s not that so much as… He might be afraid of the scandal.”

“How much more scandal could there be? His kid was murdered.”

“Does anyone know that? Anyone except you and I and the police, I mean? I haven’t seen anything about it in the papers, have you?”

Frank really hadn’t had time to look. “So?”

“So he’s been able to keep the circumstances of her death a secret. He probably has a story he’s been telling to explain her death, a tragic accident perhaps, since the truth would be too awful to admit. The funeral will be private and no one will ever know the truth… unless the killer is caught.”

This made absolutely no sense to Frank. “What’s the shame in getting murdered?”

“The shame is in the circumstances. She had run away from her home, which is bad enough, but the reason she ran away is even worse. I’m assuming that she really was with child.”

Frank nodded grudgingly. The medical examiner had confirmed that at once.

“How far gone was she?”

Frank shifted uneasily in his chair. He’d never get used to discussing such topics with a female he hardly knew. “Almost six months, they said.”

“Then her family must have known. That’s why they sent her to Long Island, to keep her out of sight since her condition would soon be obvious.”

“But they wouldn’t’ve been able to keep it a secret once she had the baby,” Frank pointed out.

“Of course they would. They’d simply spirit the child away someplace and return Alicia to society as if nothing had happened.”

“Their own grandchild?” Frank scoffed. Nobody could be that heartless. “What would become of it?”

“Maybe a servant would adopt it, or maybe they would give out some story about a distant relative who died and left her child in their care. Who knows? The important thing is that no one would ever know the truth. Alicia’s reputation would be safe so she’d still be able to marry well, and the family wouldn’t lose their place in society. But with her running away, they’d have a much more difficult time making up a story. They’d have to invent excuses for her disappearance, which would be hard to explain, and now with her death, the situation is even more delicate. If the truth came out, that she was pregnant and living in a boardinghouse alone and her parents didn’t even know where she was, they’d become a laughingstock. I’m very much afraid they might think that was too high a price to pay for justice.”

“Are you saying they’d let their daughter’s killer go free just to protect their reputation?” She must be exaggerating, he thought. “I know rich people are a little strange, but that’s not human.”

For a long moment, she didn’t speak, and Frank thought his skepticism must have shown her how ridiculous her theories were, but then she said, “In some ways, rich people aren’t human, at least some of them aren’t.”

“You know this for a fact?” He very much doubted it, but she nodded.

“From my own personal experience. With my own father. He’s a close friend of Cornelius VanDamm.”

Well, he’d known she came from money. He’d known she and Mina VanDamm were friends. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but still, he had a difficult time believing she’d come from the same stock as the VanDamms. “What’s his name?”

“Felix Decker.”

Frank tried not to show his surprise. Felix Decker was definitely one of the Four Hundred socially elite in the city. His family had been here since before the flood, and he was probably richer than God. Was it possible Decker’s daughter could be sitting here with him in a filthy room in the basement of police headquarters? “Felix Decker’s daughter is a midwife?” he asked in disbelief. Surely, that alone proved the lie.

She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. It was a bitter smile, full of pain and wisdom dearly earned, and suddenly, Frank knew things about Sarah Brandt he had no desire to know.

“I had a sister,” she began, telling him a story he knew he didn’t want to hear. “Her name was Maggie. She was three years older than I, and I adored her. She was beautiful and smart and so strong. Too strong, as it turned out. She didn’t approve of the way our father treated his workers. He was too cruel, she thought, but she couldn’t convince him to adopt more humane methods. She began spending time at the shipyards. She was especially interested in proving to my father that it would be in his own best interest financially to treat his workers better. Since my father’s only concern was his financial best interest, she stood a good chance of changing his mind if she could prove her theories. But while she was going over his books, she met one of the clerks and fell in love with him.

“Peter was a beautiful young man, and I think he truly loved my sister in return. He must have, because he stayed with her even after… But I’m getting ahead of myself. Maggie and Peter fell in love, and they wanted to marry, but of course my father refused to allow it. His daughter would never be allowed to marry a penniless clerk. She was to be the bride of some millionaire’s son or perhaps even of an English Lord. My father had great hopes. He simply failed to realize that Maggie could be as stubborn as he.

“She refused to stop seeing Peter, so my father fired him, turned him out without a reference and blackened his name everywhere, so the only work he could find was as a common laborer. He thought this would be the last he’d hear of Peter, but Maggie had conceived a child. She thought when she told our father about the baby, he would relent and allow her to marry, but instead, he tried to send her off to Europe. In fact, we thought she did go to France, but she’d manage to escape from the ship before it sailed, and she found Peter. They were married, and by the time we discovered what had happened, she’d vanished.

“I begged my father to find her and at least help Peter find a decent job, but he said she’d made her choice, and she could live with it. I think he expected that once Maggie had a taste of poverty, she would come crawling back to him and beg forgiveness, but of course, she didn’t. The next we heard was one night when Peter sent us word to come to her because she was dying. My parents were out for the evening, but I went. They were living in a rear tenement on the Lower East Side. On the fifth floar.”

Frank winced. This would be about the cheapest lodging available. The rear tenements were built in the court-yards behind the regular tenements, cut off even from what little light and air were available in the crowded streets of the city.

“I found her in a back bedroom, a room with no windows, hardly bigger than a closet. She was lying on a straw mattress on the floor, and she was bleeding to death.”

For a moment, Frank thought he was going to be sick, but he swallowed down the bitter bile and forced himself to listen to the rest of Mrs. Brandt’s story without betraying his weakness.

“The baby had come, but they were too poor for a doctor or even a midwife. Most of the time Peter couldn’t find work, so they were surviving by renting out the other room of their tiny flat to lodgers who slept in rows on the floor. Five of them. They were all there that night, snoring in the front room while Maggie died in the back. I don’t know how she stood it, the filth and the grinding poverty and the lack of privacy. Nothing in her life had prepared her for that, but she bore it all somehow. Perhaps it was her pride that kept her going.

“But even her pride couldn’t protect her anymore. I was just a girl then, only seventeen, so I didn’t know how to help her or what to do. Nothing would have helped by then, though. She was so weak, she could hardly speak, but she begged me to take care of her baby. I promised I would, even though her baby was already dead. And then she was gone, too.”

Frank didn’t like the way her eyes shone. If she started crying, he wasn’t exactly sure what he should do. Fortunately, she blinked several times and regained her composure.

“Detective, Malloy, my sister died because my father didn’t want to be embarrassed. He thought more of his good name than her happiness, and when he couldn’t force her to his will, he abandoned her. I don’t think he planned to lose her forever, or at least I hope that’s true, but that’s what happened nevertheless.”

“And was his good name ruined when word of her death got out?”

Mrs. Brandt gave him a pitying look. “Don’t you understand yet? Word didn’t get out. He made up a story about her catching a fever in France. He said she died over there and was buried there, too. Oh, some people knew. There was gossip, but because my family told them a story they could pretend to believe, no hint of scandal ever touched us. My father didn’t even put her in the family plot. She and the baby are buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery on Long Island. And Peter, too. He hanged himself the day after she died.”

“Good God.” Why had Frank assumed that having money would encourage finer feelings in people? Felix Decker was one of the wealthiest men in the city, and yet he had treated his daughter as cruelly as the drunken immigrant who sends his daughters out to prostitute themselves so he won’t have to work.

“So you see, Detective, the VanDamms might decide they don’t want the killer found. It won’t bring their daughter back and will only cause them harm.”

“If they don’t want the killer caught, why should you care? You said yourself, you hardly even knew the girl.”

She thought this over for a few seconds. “I want to see justice done, Detective. I want someone punished for snuffing out Alicia’s life and the life of her child. I don’t want to watch another young woman vanish into a web of secrets and lies.”

Frank’s head was throbbing now. “But if her own family doesn’t want her murder solved…”

“The police force is changing Mr. Malloy. I know what’s going on, how men are finally being promoted on merit rather than on how big a bribe they can afford. If you bring this killer to justice, you’ll be noticed. Noticed for something good. Don’t you want to be Superintendent someday?”

“I’m not that ambitious, Mrs. Brandt,” he assured her sourly. “Captain is all I’m aiming for.”

“I have friends in government, Mr. Malloy. I’ll make sure they notice you.”

Frank wished he believed this. “The reformers won’t last long. Don’t you read the papers? Roosevelt’s stupid plan to enforce the law and keep the saloons closed on Sunday is already making all the wrong people mad. He won’t last, and when he’s gone, things will be the way they’ve always been.”

“Then I’ll pay you a reward,” she said, startling him yet again. “I have some money of my own, and I, can’t think of a better way to use it.”

The thought of taking Sarah Brandt’s money was unsettling, and Frank didn’t like the feeling one bit. Since when had he gotten so particular? Money was money, and that’s what he needed if he ever wanted to make Captain, Teddy Roosevelt and his reforms be damned. And he had to make Captain, because he had a story of his own, a story just as awful as Sarah Brandt’s, but one that he had no intention of ever telling her or anyone else.

“If the VanDamms don’t cooperate, I won’t get very far, no matter how big the reward is or who pays it. Nobody else is likely to tell me anything useful or even know anything useful,” he pointed out.

“The servants will know. The servants know more than anyone. And if you need to bribe them, I’ll be happy to provide the funds for that, too.”

Frank was pretty sure he would’ve thought of the servants eventually. He was just groggy from not enough sleep. And maybe that was why he said, “Keep your money, Mrs. Brandt. I won’t be needing it.” He couldn’t think of any other reason why he would say something so foolish.

“But you will try to find Alicia’s killer, won’t you?”

Frank knew he shouldn’t make the promise, but he said, “I’ll find him.”

And he wasn’t sure if he was terrified or grateful when he saw that Sarah Brandt believed him.

CORNELIUS VANDAMM DID offer a reward for his daughter’s jewelry. When Frank explained that stolen goods could often be recovered this way, VanDamm was only too happy to oblige. The sapphire necklace had belonged to his mother, he said. Frank hadn’t mentioned that the trail of the pawned jewelry might also lead to Alicia’s killer. He didn’t want to ruin the deal, especially when VanDamm hadn’t mentioned anything about a reward for the killer yet and Frank wasn’t yet sure he even wanted the killer found.

The pawnshop was on Catherine Street, amid the slums of the Bowery. All the pawnshops in the city were located in the Bowery. The shop was small and crowded with a strange assortment of goods, ranging from gold watches to eyeglasses. Overcoats hung along one wall, and musical instruments of various ages and stages of repair were piled in a comer. There was even a rack of umbrellas. People in need would sell anything for a few cents.

The proprietor, a sly character known only as Slippery Joe, greeted him warmly. “Detective Malloy, as I live and breathe, and how are you this fine day?”

It was gray and drizzling a bit outside, but Frank didn’t bother to mention this. “I’ve got a little problem, Joe, and I thought you might be able to help me with it.”

“Anything I can do for the police, you know I always try to help.” Joe was a slender man of indeterminate age, with watery eyes and thinning gray hair and an ingratiating smile for detectives. Frank had no idea how he treated his customers since they always made themselves scarce when the coppers were around.

“I’m trying to trace some jewelry. Would’ve been sold sometime in the last month.”

“You know I don’t deal in stolen articles, Detective,” Joe reminded him unctuously. To give him credit, few pawnbrokers served as fences. The risks were too great, and besides, they made enough money already simply doing their regular work.

Frank gave him a conspiratorial smile. “You probably didn’t know they were stolen. And I doubt the person who had them would’ve gone to a fence.” He was still going on the theory that Alicia VanDamm had sold the jewels herself to finance her escape. “They’re nice pieces, and there aren’t many places that would handle them. Not many other brokers would recognize the quality.”

Joe had to agree. He rubbed this stubbled chin thoughtfully and nodded. “What did they look like?”

Sarah Brandt had been right about the VanDamms having a paste copy of the jewelry. Frank pulled the imitation sapphire necklace from his pocket and laid it on the scratched counter. Joe’s eyes grew wide, and Frank had to agree, it was a shocking sight, so much beauty amid the squalor of the shop’s other contents.

“Yes, I think I might have seen something like that come through here. I’d have to check my safe, of course. Is there a… a reward being offered for its return?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

A princely sum, to be sure, but only a fraction of what VanDamm had really offered. Frank wanted to leave some room for negotiation.

Joe studied the necklace and nodded. “Yes, yes, I think I may have seen just this very piece.”

“There were other pieces that may have been sold with it. I’ve got the description of them, too. The owner wants all of it back. There’s a pair of earrings, diamonds set in the shape of stars, and another pair that’s pearls. A pearl necklace, too, and a brooch shaped like a spider with a ruby in the center.”

Joe nodded again. “So many beautiful things. I couldn’t possibly have given less than five hundred for them,” he assured Frank.

Frank doubted this very much, but he was willing to dicker a bit to get what he wanted. “I’m sure the victim will go as high as three hundred, but that’s probably all. She’s a widow of limited means. The jewelry is all she has left in the world.”

Plainly, Joe didn’t believe Frank any more than Frank believed him, but he said, “I’ll see if my memory is as good as it used to be. Please, make yourself at home, Detective, while I check my safe.”

Just as Frank had suspected, Joe had all the pieces he was looking for. This meant they’d probably been sold as a group. If his luck was good, this meant they’d all been stolen from Alicia’s room the night she was killed and pawned by her murderer. If his luck was bad, as he suspected it probably was, Alicia herself had pawned the pieces and lived on the proceeds for the past month.

“When did these come in?” Frank asked.

Joe consulted his ledger. “Five weeks ago.”

Frank frowned. This was even before Alicia had disappeared. “Do you remember who brought them in?”

“I have a name here,” Joe said with a small smile. “John Smith.”

Well, maybe this wasn’t too bad. The fellow who sold Alicia’s jewelry was obviously in her confidence. Which also meant he was probably the father of her child. If Frank could identify the fellow, he’d be very close to finding her killer. “I might be able to get the victim to raise the reward an extra fifty dollars if you could possibly recall what this John Smith looked like,” Frank said.

Joe pretended to consider. Probably, he knew exactly without making any effort at all. Merchandise like this rarely found its way into his shop, and the seller would have made an indelible impression.

“If I recall correctly, he was a man about your age. Not a swell, you understand, but not someone from the neighborhood either. He had an air of quality about him, which is why I believed him when he said he was selling the jewels for a friend who’d fallen on hard times. I had no reason to doubt him, at least,” he added in his own defense, in case Frank was thinking about prosecuting him for dealing in stolen merchandise.

“What did he look like?”

This time Joe really did consider. “Tall and well built. Looked almost like a football player, he was so fit, but he didn’t look like no college boy, if you know what I mean. Black hair, very curly. Irish, I’m sure, but no accent. Oh, and he had a scar right here.” Joe drew a line along his jaw on the right side.

That should make him easy to identify, Frank thought. Now all he had to do was locate the fellow out of the millions of men living in New York City.

SARAH SMILED AS she laid the carefully wrapped infant in her mother’s arms. New life was always a cause for rejoicing, and this one especially. Dolly Yardley had lost two others before this one, even though she wasn’t yet twenty years old. Her labor had been long and difficult, but both mother and child appeared to be fine now, if a bit weary from their ordeal. Sarah was weary herself, having been up most of the night. She had never been able to figure out why the most difficult births always occurred at night.

“Oh, look, Will, ain’t she beautiful?” the new mother demanded of her young husband, pulling the blanket back from the baby’s face so he could admire her.

Will had spent the night drinking stale beer with his friends in the seedy bar located in the basement of their tenement, so he was hardly in any condition to judge. “Next time we’ll have a boy,” he said.

Sarah glared at him until her disapproval penetrated his alcoholic haze, and she said, “The baby looks just like Dolly, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, yeah,” Will agreed as hastily as he could, given his condition. “The spittin’ image. She’ll be a beauty just like her Ma.”

Dolly smiled at that and nodded her approval.

“Have you decided on a name for her yet?” Sarah asked.

“I think I’ll call her Edith, after my ma,” Dolly said.

“You ain’t naming her after that whore,” Will protested.

Sarah wanted to jump to Dolly’s defense, but Dolly was more than capable of defending herself. “Edith Rose, after both our mothers,” she said, sticking out her chin defiantly.

“Rose ain’t my mother. I told you that.”

“Maybe you should discuss this later, when Dolly’s had some time to rest,” Sarah suggested as tactfully as she could.

Will seemed perfectly willing to wait. The new father stared at his wife and child for a long moment, as if he couldn’t quite bring them into focus, but apparently he was not as drunk as Sarah had thought, because after a moment, he turned to her a little sheepishly and said, “About your fee, Mrs. Brandt. I ain’t had much work lately, and I was wondering, could I owe it to you until things is better?”

Sarah knew exactly what kind of work Will Yardley did, and if there hadn’t been much of it lately, it was because he’d been too lazy to climb into someone’s window and relieve them of their valuables. Or else he’d simply spent all his money treating his friends tonight. She glanced around the comfortably furnished room and wondered how much of the furnishings had been carried down a fire escape in the middle of the night while the rightful owners were sleeping unawares.

“Will, I have a business proposition for you that will take care of whatever you owe me. Let’s step into the other room so Dolly and the baby can rest.”

Will looked a little uncertain as he followed her out of the bedroom. They lived on the first floor in the front, the choicest location. No need to stumble up steep and dirty flights of stairs in the unlighted stairwells to a higher floor, and whatever fresh air was available would make its way into their front windows.

Unfortunately, as in most tenements, only the front room of the apartment had windows, so the rear rooms were dim even on the sunniest days. Will pulled the bedroom door closed behind him, leaving Dolly and the baby in darkness except for the single gaslight on the wall. The kitchen, which was the middle room, was also dark except for the light coming in the other doorway. Sarah went through it into the front room, where she could see that the rain of the last few days had finally stopped and the sun was coming up strong and bright again.

She turned to Will, who looked a little worried. “What kind of business proposition you got for me, Mrs. Brandt? I know people say things about me in the streets, but I want you to know, I’m an honest man. I never done none of the things-”

“I just need some information, Will. I need to locate a person, and you might have the contacts to help me find him.”

“What’s this person done?” Will asked suspiciously.

“Nothing that I know of,” Sarah lied. Actually, he might be perfectly innocent, although an innocent man wasn’t likely to behave as this fellow had. “I’d just like to ask him some questions. About a friend of mine.”

Will nodded wisely, as if he received requests like this all the time. “Who is this bugger you want to find?”

“His name is Hamilton Fisher. He’s a tall fellow. Not very handsome. His hair is blond and his teeth stick out in front. I think he might be a cadet.”

Will frowned. Plainly, he considered such work beneath him. “And you want me to bring him to you?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Sarah assured him hastily. “I just need to know where he is. Then I’ll send someone to talk to him.”

Will nodded, sure he’d figured it out. “I see it now. You’re trying to find some girl he recruited.”

“Something like that,” Sarah agreed. She was getting far too good at lying.

“And when I find him, I let you know, and we’re square?”

“We’re square for this baby, and the next one, too. The boy you want so much,” Sarah added.

Will scratched his chest absently as his gaze drifted toward the back of the flat where his wife and child slept. “Sure would like to get me a boy.”

“Girls are nice, too. You’ll see. And you’ll find this fellow for me?”

“I’ll find him.”

Sarah hoped he could. Finding Hamilton Fisher would bring her one step closer to finding Alicia’s killer.

In fact, it might bring her face to face with him.