SARAH HAD NEVER CARED FOR BEING ORDERED around. Her father had pretty much ruined her for it before she was out of the nursery, and after Maggie’s death, she’d determined never to do anything a man ordered her to do if it went against her better judgement. Of course, Detective Malloy might be right about her inquiries putting her in danger. Even her better judgment had to bow to common sense, but she wasn’t going to be foolish, no matter what he might think. And certainly, a visit to the VanDamms couldn’t possibly put her in any danger at all.
The windows of the VanDamm town house were draped in black, and a black mourning wreath hung on the door. Alicia’s funeral had been private, probably to avoid the kind of speculation that would only deepen the scandal of her death, and the family was most likely in seclusion for the same reason. Busybodies would be anxious to learn the least tidbit of information, and Cornelius and Mina would be shrewd enough to avoid giving them a chance to gather that tidbit. Still, Sarah had reason to believe she might gain admittance when no one else would.
She lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall. The resounding clunk seemed to echo in the cavernous house, and before long the door opened slightly, enough so she could see Alfred’s familiar face through the crack.
“Miss Decker,” he said in surprise and quickly caught himself. “I mean Mrs… Mrs. Brandt, is it?”
“Yes, Alfred, and thank you for remembering. I don’t mean to intrude, and I know the family is in mourning, but I was wondering if Miss Mina is receiving visitors. And if she isn’t, if she would receive me anyway.”
Alfred frowned uncertainly, and Sarah realized how very uncharacteristic this was for him. Alfred had been a butler his entire life, and he knew the rules of etiquette better than any seasoned society hostess. On the other hand, those rules didn’t necessarily cover the present situation, since well-mannered people were never supposed to be murdered. The very idea was unthinkable. So unthinkable, in fact, that even Alfred was beginning to doubt the rules by which he had lived his entire life.
Certainly, a family in private mourning, as the VanDamms were, would not be receiving visitors so soon after the funeral. And most certainly, a woman of Sarah’s current social standing wouldn’t ordinarily be received at all, unless she had business here and entered through the service door. But nothing was ordinary about the situation of Alicia VanDamm’s death, which meant that all the conventional rules no longer applied. Or they still might. And Alfred, whose position required him to be certain about everything, was no longer certain about anything at all. And, Sarah realized, he must also be dealing with his own grief. He’d known Alicia since the day she was born, and he most certainly would be feeling her loss. Now that she noticed, he seemed to have aged considerably since her last visit mere days ago. Suddenly, he was an old man whose entire world had been shaken to its foundation.
“I’m not certain if Miss Mina is receiving or not,” he told her. “Or if she would make an exception for you, Mrs. Brandt. Would you like to come in for a moment while I inquire?”
Sarah was most happy to wait. Alfred left her sitting on an upholstered bench in the front hallway while he made his way into the nether reaches of the house to find Mina VanDamm and obtain her instructions.
The house was unnaturally still, as if even the clocks had stopped ticking in deference to the family’s grief. Abovestairs, the servants would be speaking in hushed tones, and the family would be closeted in their chambers. Sarah found it difficult to imagine that Mina was spending her time truly mourning her sister, although she would put on a good act for anyone who happened to call, as she had done for Sarah the other day. Mrs. VanDamm would undoubtedly be prostrate and probably heavily sedated. Her doctor wouldn’t need much convincing to prescribe an opiate to calm her, and many women of her class took them freely on far less provocation than the loss of a child. Finally, Sarah considered Mr. VanDamm. He’d looked haggard when she was here before, and she could easily imagine him mourning Alicia. Not, perhaps, with the obvious emotion his wife would display, but in his own way. The way her father had mourned Maggie, knowing his actions had caused her to die in such a horrible manner while still believing he had been right in those actions. How men like that could live with themselves, Sarah had no idea.
After a long time, Sarah heard Alfred’s shuffling steps returning. He emerged from a door at the end of the hallway, his expression properly somber but his eyes improperly bleak.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brandt, but Miss Mina is unable to receive visitors today. She said she was certain you’d understand.”
Sarah understood perfectly, but she wasn’t sure exactly why she wasn’t being admitted. Perhaps Mina truly wasn’t feeling up to visitors or perhaps she simply hadn’t bothered to dress and do her hair today so she wasn’t presentable. Or perhaps-and this was the reason Sarah feared most-she had decided Sarah wasn’t worthy of her attentions. If that was the case, then Sarah wouldn’t be able to obtain any more information from the family.
Concealing her disappointment, she thanked Alfred. He was escorting her to the front door when they heard the door to one of the other rooms open, and a gentleman emerged. He was slightly past middle years, wearing a suit that fit so well, it could only have been handcrafted to fit him. His thick hair was silver and painstakingly arranged. He nodded politely at Sarah, although she saw the question in his eyes. He wondered what someone like her was doing here, especially at this time.
“Mr. Mattingly,” Alfred greeted him, and every nerve in Sarah’s body jolted to attention. “I’ll get your hat in just a moment,” he promised, opening the front door to show Sarah out.
Was it possible? Could this be the attorney for whom Hamilton Fisher had worked? And what was his connection to the VanDamm family? Could he have been asked to hire Fisher to find Alicia for them? Although this was a most logical explanation, she couldn’t help remembering Malloy’s skepticism when she’d suggested that very thing. If the VanDamms had hired Mattingly to find Alicia, why hadn’t Fisher simply informed them of her whereabouts when he located her? Why had Fisher moved into the house where she was living and tried to strike up an acquaintance with her instead? But if Mattingly was acquainted with the family, and he was obviously an intimate friend if he’d been admitted when the family was in seclusion, then why would he have sent someone to find Alicia without their knowledge and then not told them?
Alfred made no move to introduce Sarah to Mattingly. A butler would never presume to introduce visitors to each other, and even if he had, an introduction between Sarah and Mattingly would have been in questionable taste, considering their different social classes. Not for the first time, Sarah silently cursed the rigid rules that governed society. In a different time or place, she might have simply introduced herself and made some inquiries of Mr. Mattingly that would give her the information she so desperately sought. Which was probably what Malloy would do if he were here now.
As Alfred ushered her out the door, she bit back a smile at the thought of how she would enjoy the privileges of being a police detective for even one day. Malloy would be interested to know that Mattingly was at least acquainted with the VanDamm family. But what was their relationship? Was he simply a close family friend or was he VanDamm’s attorney? And would even Malloy be able to find out? He wouldn’t know how to question these people or how to win their confidence. They’d see him as an Irish thug-or worse-and might even refuse to talk with him entirely.
Did the police have the power to force someone like Mattingly to answer their questions if he didn’t choose to? Somehow, Sarah doubted it, although she found the thought of the distinguished attorney being slapped around in the filthy interrogation room she’d seen extremely interesting. She thought that perhaps Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy might, too.
Sarah lingered on the sidewalk in front of the VanDamm’s house for a while, walking slowly so Mr. Mattingly might catch up with her when he made his exit. Then she might venture to strike up a conversation with him, if she could think of something sensible to say. But in the next moment a carriage pulled up at the VanDamm’s curb, and Mr. Mattingly went straight down the VanDamm’s front steps and climbed into it.
Too bad his carriage hadn’t been waiting there when she came out. She might have been able to get some information from his driver or his footman. Servants were an invaluable source of information about their employers, as Malloy had learned. But there was an equally reliable source that Sarah had not yet tapped. One from which she had cut herself off years earlier out of anger and bitterness.
When she thought about it now, however, she found her anger and bitterness had faded considerably. Perhaps the time had finally come to reestablish those ties. She had been thinking she should for a while now, but she hadn’t had a reason. Or rather, she hadn’t had an excuse. She’d needed such an excuse to salvage her pride, and now she had the perfect one.
SARAH HADN’T BEEN to the house since Tom’s funeral, and even then it had been strange to her. Although three long years had passed since her last visit, she remembered the way well. It wasn’t far from the VanDamms’s home, just around the comer on Fifty-Seventh Street and a few blocks east, which she walked with determined strides.
The noise from Fifth Avenue faded behind her as she went. There were no tracks or horsecars on Fifty-Seventh Street, nothing to disturb the elegance and serenity of the neighborhood. The house was even more imposing than she had remembered, one of a seemingly endless row of Italianate brownstone town houses that gleamed in the warm sunlight. The neighbors were such luminaries as the Auchinclosses, the Sloanes, the Rogers, and even the Roosevelts.
Malloy would probably make fun of her for even knowing such things.
But as Sarah reached for the perfectly polished brass knocker, she forgot all about Malloy. Anxiety suddenly twisted her stomach, but she refused to acknowledge it. She had nothing to fear, she told herself. She was a grown woman who had her own life, and nothing and no one could change that, certainly nothing and no one in this house, not unless she allowed it herself. And since she had no intention of doing so, she was safe from any attack on her independence.
Besides, she was certain not to encounter the one person she least desired to see here today because he was miles away.
A maid she didn’t know answered her knock, and the girl stared at her in surprise. Sarah didn’t look like the usual visitor to this house.
“I’m Sarah Brandt,” she said, “and I’d like to see my mother, if she’s at home.”
As HE LOOKED at the plush surroundings, Frank figured he’d probably made a big mistake by coming here. The offices of Mattingly and Springer were plainly designed to appeal to people of a completely different social class. Folks like Frank probably came and went by the service entrance, if they came and went at all. From the way the clerk had looked at him when he’d walked through the hand-carved oak door, he guessed it was the latter.
“May I help you?” the clerk asked. Frank noticed he didn’t add “sir.” The fellow was young, not more than twenty-two or -three, and extremely thin. The bones of his face seemed to be straining to get through his tight, pale flesh. That alone would have made him unpleasant to look at, but his expression was pinched, too, like he smelled something bad. Maybe he did. Frank hadn’t changed his shirt in a day or two.
“I’m here to see Sylvester Mattingly,” Frank said. No “Mr.” Mattingly. No “please.” No “if he’s in.” Frank could be rude, too.
“Is this pertaining to a case Mr. Mattingly is handling?” the boy sniffed. Plainly, he doubted this very much.
“It’s pertaining to the death of Miss Alicia VanDamm.”
Frank would have bet the boy’s face was already as white as it could get, but he would’ve been wrong. His eyes even seemed to bulge out a little. Funny how the name VanDamm could get a reaction. Or maybe it was the fact of Alicia’s death.
Whatever it was, it had rattled the skinny clerk. He started fiddling nervously with his paper sleeve protectors, and he ducked his head so that his green eyeshade shielded his face. “Who…? May I tell Mr. Mattingly who is calling?” he stammered, no longer quite so sure of himself.
“Tell him Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy of the New York City Police.”
At this, the boy’s head came up again, and this time his eyes were definitely bulging. “Please, have a seat,” he offered in a choked whisper before fairly running from the room.
He closed the inner door behind him, leaving Frank alone in the reception room. The place felt closed in, even though the room was large and had a high ceiling. Probably, the illusion came from the depth of the carpets, the thickness of the maroon velvet drapes, and the ornately carved plaster ceiling. Everything seemed heavy, from the oak of the doors to the oak of the clerk’s desk. Probably designed to absorb sound, so that every conversation held here would remain in strictest confidence. Frank figured the people who needed such a high-priced lawyer talked about a lot of things that needed to remain confidential.
Frank seated himself in one of the overstuffed chairs provided for visitors. Across from him hung a portrait of an elderly man who’d had lifelong bowel problems, if his expression was any indication. Frank noticed the elaborate chandelier hadn’t been wired for electricity, as if such a thing would be considered vulgar in this bastion of conservatism. All he could say was, Sarah Brandt better be right about Mattingly knowing where to find that Fisher fellow.
After a few moments, the clerk returned. “Mr. Mattingly is expecting a client very shortly, but he can spare you a few minutes. If you will follow me.”
Frank was sorry he hadn’t been there to see Mattingly’s face when the clerk had announced him. He wondered if he’d been as shocked as the clerk. If so, he’d had enough time to recover, Frank noted when he stepped into Mattingly’s office.
This room was just as plush as the outer room, although the colors were darker and duller, browns and tans this time. Mattingly sat behind a desk that seemed a mile wide and a half a mile deep. He didn’t seem pleased to see Frank, and he didn’t get up to greet him.
Frank couldn’t judge Mattingly’s height since the desk would have dwarfed even a large man, but he seemed insignificant sitting there in the high-backed chair. His hair was thick and white and expertly barbered. His coat was tailor-made and filled out his narrow shoulders with artful padding. His face sagged with age, and his eyes glittered like glass beneath heavy lids. He might be very good at concealing his emotions, but those eyes gave him away this time. Frank’s visit had made him furious.
Mattingly waited until the clerk had closed the door firmly, if silently, behind him before he said, “Detective Sergeant Malloy,” as if getting a feel for the words in his mouth. They seemed to have an unpleasant flavor. “I’m used to dealing with the police, but never with anyone below the rank of captain.”
Just as Frank has suspected. Mattingly wouldn’t waste his bribe money on a lowly detective. “This time it looks like you’re stuck with me. I’m the one investigating the death of Alicia VanDamm.”
“A dreadful business, to be sure,” he said, although his tone betrayed no hint of grief or even regret. “But I can’t imagine why you’ve come here. How do you suppose I can aid your investigation?”
He hadn’t asked Frank to sit down-a deliberate omission, Frank was sure-but Frank ostentatiously seated himself in one of the chairs facing the desk. They were leather and remarkably comfortable. He waited for Mattingly’s frown of annoyance before saying, “I’m looking for Hamilton Fisher. My sources say he works for you.”
Frank had been hoping for fear, or at least surprise, but he got only more anger. Mattingly’s thin lips whitened and his dark eyes narrowed. “I’ve never heard of this man. I’m afraid your sources are mistaken. If that is what you came for, you wasted your time and mine. Now if you will excuse me, Mr. Malloy, I’m expecting a client momentarily.”
Frank didn’t move. “That’s funny, because my sources said that Fisher works for you as a sort of private detective. I guess even a high-priced lawyer like yourself needs to do some snooping every now and then. A fellow like this Fisher could come in real handy.”
“I told you, Detective Sergeant, I never-”
“Sure, whatever you say, but I just think it’s kind of funny that somebody who people say works for you was living in the same boardinghouse as Miss VanDamm and that he disappeared the same night she got herself killed. Now if I was of a suspicious nature, I might think this Fisher had something to do with her death or at least that he knows something the police might find interesting.”
Mattingly was used to disguising his true feelings, although a fury such as he was experiencing at the moment was impossible to completely conceal. He had the sense not to succumb to it, however, much to Frank’s disappointment. He took some time to gather himself, folding his knobby-fingered hands carefully on the desk in front of him. He studied the liver spots of the backs of those hands for a long moment, as if seeking some guidance there. When he looked up, he was in complete control of himself.
“Detective Sergeant, I have already told you, I am not acquainted with the gentleman you are seeking. I must ask you again-”
“Did you know Alicia VanDamm?”
For an instant, Mattingly almost lost his patience. “I know her entire family. Everyone knows the VanDamms.”
Probably, he meant, “Everyone who is anyone knows the VanDamms.” Frank wouldn’t qualify, of course.
“Do you know the VanDamms socially or professionally?”
“I can’t believe that is any of your business,” Mattingly said with the confidence of one powerful enough that he needn’t fear the police.
“And I can’t believe you don’t want to help me find out who killed Alicia VanDamm. The girl was strangled, Mr. Mattingly, and I’m trying to find and punish the brute who did it, and here you are, treating me like I’m the third cop to come in here asking you to buy tickets to the policeman’s ball.”
Frank got the impression that Mattingly wanted to wrap those long, bony fingers around his neck and choke him the way somebody had choked Alicia VanDamm. He only got that impression from his sixth sense, however, since Mattingly was doing his very best not to betray any emotion whatever. Finally, however, he allowed himself a bit more impatience.
“Really, Detective Sergeant, I think you are overstating the case. If I am short with you, it’s because you are wasting my time as well as your own, as I have already pointed out. You come in here asking me about a man I never heard of and accusing me of… well, accusing me of heaven knows what, and then you accuse me of withholding information that I do not have. I believe I have every reason to be annoyed with you, particularly when I have already asked you to leave. Don’t think I won’t mention this to your superiors.”
Oh, yes, Frank thought, please be sure to tell Commissioner Roosevelt just exactly how annoyed you are with me. Aloud, he said, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Mattingly. I’ll be sure to mention your assistance to Mr. VanDamm.”
“Do that,” he countered, calling Frank’s bluff beautifully. “And don’t be surprised if he has already heard about it from me.”
THE MAID BLINKED at Sarah in surprise. “Your mother?” she echoed in confusion. Perhaps she thought Sarah was daughter to one of the servants.
“Mrs. Decker is my mother,” she explained with a small smile.
For a moment, she was afraid the girl was going to close the door in her face in retaliation for telling such a bold-faced lie, but apparently she thought better of that impulse.
“I… I’ll have to see if she’s at home,” she said finally, and after another moment of thought, she invited Sarah inside to wait.
Although she had worn her best dress for the visit to the VanDamm’s today, Sarah knew she still did not meet the standards society had set for being fashionably attired. These days her clothing tended toward the practical rather than the stylish, and she might even, if she allowed herself to admit it, be a bit shabby in the bargain. If she was going to start moving in the more exalted social circles, as she had been these past few days, she would have to start paying some attention to her wardrobe again.
The girl returned almost immediately, and now her eyes were wide in her small face, and her manner had changed from hesitant to ingratiating. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, Miss Decker, but I’m new, and I didn’t know. Mrs. Decker asks will you wait in the morning room until she comes down?”
Sarah released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as relief flooded through her. Although she hadn’t really expected to be turned away, the possibility had been there all the same. Her parents had been just as angry as she when she’d stormed out of their life after Tom’s death. But apparently, the years had mellowed them, too. Or at least the years had mellowed her mother.
Sarah was only too glad to wait. This wasn’t her mother’s usual afternoon “at home,” the time when she formally received visitors, so she wouldn’t be dressed properly. She would also never allow Sarah to see her for the first time in three years looking less than her best, so a delay was inevitable.
The morning room was the room her mother used for her private pursuits, writing letters, reading, managing the household. More simply furnished than the formal rooms where visitors were usually received, it had a comfortable, homey feel to it. Plainly, her mother wanted their first visit in three years to be unhampered by the rigid social conventions that ruled the rest of their lives.
The room smelled faintly of her mother’s perfume, the light floral scent she had used as long as Sarah could remember, and the aroma brought back bittersweet memories of happier times.
How could she have allowed so many years to pass without seeing her own mother? The argument that had separated them had seemed so very important at the time, but now, recalling the loving woman who had raised her, Sarah could only feel regret that she had been so stubborn. In punishing her parents, she had also punished herself by depriving herself of the comfort only a mother could give.
Restless with her memories, Sarah strolled around the room, examining everything. She recognized some of the pieces from the house on Washington Square where she had grown up. The desk was the same one her mother had always used. Sarah could remember darting between its graceful, curving legs as a child, trying to capture her mother’s attention.
On the desktop was a half-written note in her mother’s careful hand, thanking someone for a dinner party. The table in front of the window was new, but Sarah recognized the vase on it. Her mother had bought it at a market in Egypt on one of her trips abroad. A glass-fronted curio cabinet held other treasures, some of which Sarah remembered and others that were new. She was still studying them, remembering the stories behind them, when the door opened and her mother rushed into the room.
“Sarah!” she cried, coming toward her with hands outstretched. Sarah took them in her own and was surprised at how cold they were. As if her mother had sustained a shock, which of course she had. And was she trembling? Perhaps just a little, or maybe it was Sarah’s own nerves making her think so.
For a moment, she allowed herself to feel the pure joy of seeing her mother again. Inhaling her mother’s unique scent and kissing her still-smooth cheeks, Sarah basked in the absolute love she saw radiating from her mother’s eyes. As she pulled away, those eyes devoured her, taking in every detail of her appearance in an instant.
“You look… well,” she said, but the words held a question. Plainly, she assumed only some tragedy would have brought her home.
“I’m very well, thank you. In fact, I’ve never been better.”
Her mother looked doubtful. And worried. “Are you sure? Your hands… Whatever have you been doing with them, Sarah? They’re like shoe leather!”
Sarah looked down self-consciously at where her mother still gripped her fingers. “I’ve been working, Mother. I have to earn my keep, you know.”
“No, you don’t,” her mother chided, and Sarah saw all the old retributions darkening her eyes.
For a second, Sarah thought perhaps she’d made a mistake in coming. What made her think anything would have changed in this house no matter how much time had passed? But then her mother shook herself, as if consciously shrugging off the old patterns that had alienated them for so long, and she made herself smile brightly, the perfect hostess again.
“Well, never mind about that. Come and sit down, and tell me what you’ve been doing and what brought you here on such a fine day. They say it’s like summertime out there today. Can you believe it? After we had snow just a week ago?”
Sarah allowed her mother to lead her to the settee by the window that overlooked the garden. Outside, the ground and the trees were just beginning to green with new life in the sudden fine weather, giving Sarah hope that perhaps she could begin a new life as well.
“I came to see how you were,” she said when they were seated.
Her mother wasn’t fooled by the polite lie. “You just woke up this morning after three years and wondered how I was,” she scoffed, but there was no anger in her tone, only sadness.
“No, I didn’t,” she admitted. “Something happened, something terrible, and it made me realize how short life is and how we shouldn’t waste a moment of it nursing old grudges.”
Her mother closed her eyes for a moment, as if sending up a silent prayer of thanks, and when she opened them again, the shadows were gone. “Oh, Sarah, how many times I’ve longed to hear you say that. But what terrible thing happened? You said you were well-”
“I’m perfectly fine and disgustingly healthy.” She patted her mother’s hand reassuringly. “What happened doesn’t concern me at all, except that I know the people involved. So do you. The VanDamms.”
“Oh, my, yes. Poor, sweet Alicia. She was so young and always seemed so healthy. I guess you never know. They said it was a fever that took her, and so quickly. By the time they even thought to send for a doctor, she was gone.”
Sarah had wondered what story they were giving out. This one was as good as any, she supposed. Many people died of unexplained fevers every day. “Alicia didn’t die of a fever, Mother. She was murdered.”
“Murdered?” she echoed incredulously. “That’s impossible! Whoever would have murdered her? And why, for heaven’s sake?”
As briefly as she could, Sarah explained that Alicia had run away from home and had been living in a boardinghouse where she was found dead. Plainly, her mother couldn’t believe such a thing could happen.
“How could she get away? She was only a child! How would she know where to go or even how to get a room?”
“I believe someone must have helped her,” Sarah said, deciding not to reveal everything she knew. Her mother had been known to gossip, and Sarah didn’t want to be the cause of the groom Harvey getting fired. “The police think she must have had a lover. Perhaps he helped her get away.”
“That’s nonsense,” her mother insisted. “Alicia was just a child. She wouldn’t even know any young men.”
“She knew at least one,” Sarah said. “She was expecting a baby.”
If her mother had been shocked before, she was stunned now. Speechless, she could only stare at Sarah for a long moment. Finally, she asked, “You’re sure? There could be no mistake?”
“No mistake. She was already six months along.”
Her mother considered this information, weighing it with the facts Sarah had already told her. “Of course, that would explain why they sent her to the country. So she could have the baby secretly.”
Then they both remembered a girl who had been sent to France for the very same reason, a girl who had escaped to die as well. But neither of them was ready to speak of Maggie, not when their reconciliation was so new. They looked away, not wanting to meet each other’s eyes while those memories were still in their minds.
“What I don’t understand,” Sarah said determinedly, hoping to steer them both away from their painful memories, “is why wouldn’t they have just arranged a marriage for her with the baby’s father?”
“Oh, my, any number of reasons. If he was unsuitable…” Her voice trailed off as they once again remembered Maggie and her unsuitable match. “Or perhaps he was already married,” she added after an awkward moment.
This was something Sarah hadn’t considered. But she couldn’t believe that Alicia could have been discreet enough to be impregnated without stirring at least a whiff of scandal.
“Surely, someone would know if that were the case. Have you heard anything about her? Anything at all that might explain what happened? Perhaps she was engaged, or her parents were arranging a marriage for her,” she added, recalling the groom’s reason for helping Alicia run away.
Her mother considered again, and Sarah waited patiently. Women like her mother, intelligent, talented women who had no socially acceptable outlet for their energies, filled their idle hours by visiting and learning as much about their neighbors as they could. In less elegant circles, this would have been called gossiping, but no one in her mother’s social circle would have used so vulgar a word to describe their activities. Still, that was what they did, day after day and year after year. No word or deed was too insignificant to escape their attentions, and they spent their entire lives analyzing one another’s behavior. This was why Sarah was certain that if Alicia VanDamm had become pregnant, which she most certainly had, someone would know something about it.
“There was one thing,” her mother said at last, “but it was so fantastic, I didn’t credit it. And I don’t think anyone else did, either.”
“What was it?” Sarah asked, unable to disguise her eagerness.
“You understand that I don’t believe in gossiping about my neighbors,” she said primly, and Sarah forced herself not to smile.
“Of course not, but any information you have might help us find out who killed her.”
“Us?” her mother echoed in surprise. “Sarah, just how does all this concern you, and who else would it involve?”
Sarah could have bitten her tongue. Good thing Malloy hadn’t heard her slip. She was getting a little tired of his lectures about how she really wasn’t investigating this case. “I was able to help the police in their investigation. Because I knew Alicia,” she added at her mother’s frown of disapproval.
“The police?” she sniffed. “Really, dear, you shouldn’t become involved with the police. You know the kind of men who are drawn to that profession. They’re hardly the sort of people with whom you should associate.”
Her mother would probably faint if she saw some of the people with whom Sarah associated quite intimately every day of her life, but she decided not to mention that.
“Surely, Mother, you know that the Roosevelt’s son, Theodore, is a police commissioner now. He’s done a lot to reform the police force.”
“Yes, and I know someone sent him a bomb in the mail the other day, too. Can you imagine such a thing? So much for his efforts at reform!”
Sarah decided to take another tack. “In any case, the detective who is working on Alicia’s case is quite… respectable, I’m sure,” she tried lamely, trying not to choke on all the lies. Roosevelt’s reforms hadn’t changed very much about the department yet, except to make people angry at not being able to go to a saloon on Sunday, and even worse was knowing Malloy wouldn’t exactly be flattered by her description of him. “And I just want to know for my own satisfaction who killed Alicia. I can’t stand the thought of the person who snuffed out her life walking around a free man while she lies cold in the ground.”
The thought seemed to disturb her mother as well, although it could simply have been the ugliness of the image that upset her. Whatever it was, it provided the incentive Sarah needed.
“As I said, I hardly credit this story about Alicia, but if you think it might help…”
“I’m sure anything would help,” Sarah said.
Her mother frowned again, uncertain this time. “There was a rumor-and mind you, it was only a rumor; I never heard it from anyone who actually knew it to be true-that Cornelius was trying to arrange a marriage for Alicia.”
“Whom did they want her to marry?” Sarah asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“That’s the strange part. You see, Alicia was quite pretty and would have had many suitors as soon as she was out. There would be no reason to arrange something ahead of time, as one would with a daughter less… desirable.”
She didn’t have to explain to Sarah, who had been quite eligible herself at one time, although she had chosen another destiny. Sarah nodded encouragingly.
“Which was why no one could believe that Cornelius would waste such a prize on… on Sylvester Mattingly.”