Murder in Chelsea (4 page)

This was pretty much what Frank had determined before Haynes ever got there, while he’d been taking a look around and waiting for the hysterical landlady to get back with a beat cop in tow. She’d expected the cop to arrest Frank, but instead he’d obeyed Frank’s orders to summon the medical examiner. “If you could tell me who stabbed her and why, I’d be very grateful, Doc.”

Haynes grinned. “Ask me after the autopsy.”

When he was gone, Frank closed the door and turned to the beat cop who’d been waiting around in case he was needed. “How’s the landlady doing?”

“Fine once she broke out her gin. After a glass or two, she settled right down. She didn’t want to believe you was a copper, you know. She thought for sure you killed that woman.”

“Thanks for looking after her.”

“Like I said, she was no trouble after she had herself a nip or two. She’s in the kitchen.”

Frank found her sitting at the table, staring at an empty glass. “Mrs. Jukes?”

She scowled. “Are you still here?”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“I don’t have no idea who done for her, if that’s what you want to know.”

Frank was glad to note she didn’t seem too drunk. “How long has Miss Murphy lived here?”

“Less than a month. Leastways, she paid for a month, and the rent’s not due for a few more weeks.”

“What did she tell you about herself?”

She sighed. “If a woman’s got the price of a room and she don’t look or act like a tart, I take her. I don’t ask for no references, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t expect you do. I meant did she tell you anything about herself? Did she have any visitors? Did she have a job?”

“She didn’t have a job. My other boarders, they do, though. That’s why she was here alone this morning.”

“If she didn’t have a job, how did she pay the rent?”

“She had the cash. I don’t do charity work, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Frank hadn’t thought that for a minute. “She didn’t mention where she got her money if she didn’t work?”

“What do I care where she got it? She could’ve stole it from the U.S. Mint for all I know. It’s nothing to me as long as I get paid.”

Frank didn’t sigh. “When did you last see her?”

“She come down to breakfast early, with the rest. If you want to eat, you’re here when I serve it. Then she went back up to her room. I never saw her again until I got back from the market and . . .” She shook her head.

“What time did you leave the house?”

“How do I know? A little after eight, I imagine.”

Frank had arrived a little after nine, so he’d probably just missed the killer. “Did you see the knife Miss Murphy was stabbed with?”

She winced. “Yeah.”

“Is it from your kitchen?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you know if Miss Murphy had it in her room?”

She frowned at this. “How would I know? Boarders, they have all kinds of things in their rooms.”

“So you never saw it before?”

“No, I never.”

“What about visitors? Did anybody come to see her while she lived here?”

“Not that I ever saw, until yesterday. Two women come to visit. Ladies, they was. I don’t know what they wanted with her.”

Sarah and Maeve. Maeve would be flattered to have been thought a lady. “Nobody else?”

“Like I said, not that I ever saw, but I’m not here all the time, am I? Like today. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if I’d been here, I might be dead, too.”

“I think whoever killed her waited until she was alone.”

“How can you know that? How do you know they won’t be back and kill all of us in our beds?”

“Because Miss Murphy was involved in something dangerous. That’s why I came to see her today, to question her about it, so you don’t have to worry. Whoever killed her was only interested in her.”

“What do you know about it? You didn’t know a thing about her or why would you be asking me?”

Frank again managed not to sigh. “And you’re sure she didn’t have any other visitors?”

She glared at him again.

“Was she friendly with any of your other boarders?”

“Not likely. Kept herself to herself, that one. But if she wanted to see somebody, she didn’t have to do it here. She went out most afternoons.”

“Where did she go?”

“She wasn’t likely to tell me, now was she? And what did I care? It’s not like she was out all night and coming in drunk. She went out in the afternoon and come back in time for supper. It’s included with the room, and she never missed but once or twice.”

So whoever had contacted her about Catherine must have met her someplace else. “I’ll need to search her room and pack up her belongings.”

This got her attention. “Pack them up for what?”

“To take as evidence.”

“Evidence? Evidence of what, I ask you? Her clothes didn’t stab her.”

“What do you care about her belongings?”

“Somebody might come for them.”

“You said she didn’t have any friends.”

“How do I know who she had? Her family might want her things.”

“Then they can get them from the police.”

Mrs. Jukes frowned. “I might need to sell them to get my rent money.”

“You said she was paid up for a month.”

She had no answer for that and had to content herself with another glare. “Just don’t make a mess. It’s bad enough there’s blood everywhere. Them stains’ll never come out of the floorboards.”

Frank made his way back up the stairs, following the blood drops to Anne Murphy’s room. It looked like a thousand other rooms in cheap lodging houses, where people with little money and less hope found a place to live and some human companionship. Only the overturned chair and the blood splashes on the floor betrayed the violent death the room’s occupant had suffered.

Miss Murphy’s meager wardrobe hung on pegs on the wall, an extra skirt, a woolen cape, a jacket that matched the skirt. The drawers in the washstand held her extra linen. A brush and some stray hairpins lay on the stand beside the bowl and pitcher. A battered carpetbag sat in one corner.

He searched every inch of the room, fingering each article of clothing for anything hidden in pockets or seams. He pulled out the drawers and turned them upside down in case something had been stuck underneath. The carpetbag was empty with no secret pockets. He checked under the sagging iron bed, then he pulled off the bedclothes and shook each piece.

Finally, he flipped the mattress up off the bed and there it was, a thin packet of letters placed squarely in the middle, so someone tucking in a sheet or blanket wouldn’t accidentally discover them. They’d been tied into a bundle with string. The envelopes were addressed to Anne Murphy but at an address a little farther north, in the Theater District.

Frank righted the chair overturned in Anne Murphy’s final struggle and sat down. The oldest letter, dated about five weeks ago in January, instructed Anne to find a boardinghouse where no one would know her and wait there for further word. It was signed, “Emma.”

The next letter, dated two weeks ago, told her Emma would be returning to the city soon, and she would meet Catherine and Miss Murphy and they would leave the city together. Anne was to write to her, care of General Delivery in Philadelphia, and tell her where she was living. Anne Murphy must have panicked when she realized she couldn’t locate Catherine. Emma would have been furious to find the child missing.

The letters had no return addresses, and the postmark on the oldest one was Indianapolis and the most recent was Altoona, Pennsylvania. Miss Murphy’s theory about Emma touring was probably correct. The last letter, the most interesting one, had been sealed and addressed—in a different handwriting—to a Mr. David Wilbanks on Seventy-second Street on the Upper West Side. Frank ripped it open and found a letter from Miss Murphy, telling him that Emma would soon be returning to the city to reclaim Catherine and take her away. It also indicated that Miss Murphy would be happy to tell this man where to find Catherine, if he paid for the information. She didn’t say it right out, of course, but her meaning was clear. So Miss Murphy did know the real name of Catherine’s father, and his address, too.

Frank decided he would leave Anne Murphy’s belongings for Mrs. Jukes to dispose of. All he needed were these letters. And he’d deliver one of them to Mr. David Wilbanks himself.

* * *

O
H,
S
ARAH, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?
I
COME BY TO
spend time with our darling Catherine and you tell me you put your life in danger!” her mother asked when Sarah had finished telling her tale. “Mr. Malloy was right. What if this Miss Murphy had attacked you?”

“I think Maeve and I could have adequately defended ourselves. I’m not the one in danger, in any case.”

“Of course you’re not, my dear, but they might have tried to force you into telling them where Catherine was.”

“I think you’re reading too many novels, Mother. Things like that don’t happen in real life.”

“Of course they do. Where do you think novelists get their ideas?”

Sarah decided not to answer that question. “And there is no ‘they’ to force me to do anything. There is just Miss Murphy.”

“You’re forgetting this woman who is supposed to be Catherine’s mother. She’s the most dangerous of all, because if she’s telling the truth, she actually has a claim on the child.” Her eyes filled with tears, and Sarah felt the sting of tears herself. She reached across the kitchen table and clasped her mother’s hand. “I don’t even want to think about that. I hardly slept all night for worrying.”

“I suppose we should take comfort in knowing your father will never allow anyone to take Catherine from you.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped open, and she didn’t bother to close it. “I can’t imagine Father would involve himself in this.”

“Can’t you? Sarah, dear, surely you know you are the most important thing in the world to him, to both of us. Your happiness is all that matters, so no one will ever take Catherine away from you.”

Sarah shook her head, trying to make sense of this. “Mother, I know you’re fond of Catherine . . .”

“
Fond?
Don’t be coy, dear. You know how much I love her. I love her as much as you do. You can’t possibly think I would stand idly by while someone snatches her away from us as if she were a rag doll to be passed from hand to hand whenever someone gets bored with her.”

Sarah could hardly believe her senses, but she recovered quickly. “You’re right, of course. I do know how much you love her, but if this woman really is Catherine’s mother, how can we, in good conscience, keep her from her own child? If our situations were reversed, I’d be moving heaven and earth to get her back.”

“Oh, please, be reasonable. You would never have let your child go in the first place. What kind of a woman does that?”

Mrs. Ellsworth had said the same thing. “She might have had a very good reason.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending her.”

“I’m not defending her. I’m just trying to withhold judgment until I hear all the facts. And I also want to think the best of Catherine’s mother, whoever she might be, for Catherine’s sake.”

“That’s honorable of you, darling, but you also need to think about what is best for Catherine. Would she be better off with you or with some flighty actress who disappears from her life for weeks and months and even years at a time?”

Sarah couldn’t be sure if her mother’s argument really made sense or if she just wanted it to. “I didn’t say I was going to turn Catherine over to her, even if she is her mother. I just want to reserve judgment.”

“Fair enough, but remember that your father has enough power and influence in the city to ensure that these women never so much as set eyes on our Catherine again.”

“Thank you for reminding me of that,” Sarah said with some asperity.

“You’re welcome. Now, I came here to play with Catherine, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” In another moment, Sarah sat alone in the kitchen with her fears.

* * *

F
RANK KNEW THE
U
PPER
W
EST
S
IDE WELL.
H
E’D VISITED
too many of the fancy town houses with their marble steps and their velvet draperies and their dreary furniture. He’d listened to too many rich people make the pettiest complaints and give the paltriest excuses for committing murder. He did not expect today would be much different.

The maid who answered his knock at Mr. Wilbanks’s house looked him up and down and stuck her nose in the air. “Tradesmen use the rear,” she said and started to slam the door in his face.

Frank gave it a shove and sent her staggering back. Before she could recover, he stepped inside and closed it behind him.

“I’ll scream,” she said, her eyes wide.

“Don’t bother. Just announce me to Mr. Wilbanks. Tell him I have a message from Miss Anne Murphy.”

“I shouldn’t’ve let you in. He’ll give me the devil.”

“Not if you tell him what I said. He’ll want to hear news of the child.”

“What child?”

“Just tell him. Tell him I have a message and tell him I know where the child is.”

Frank wasn’t as confident as he let on, of course, but he’d convinced the maid. Or maybe she was just anxious to get away from him. She scurried up the stairs, leaving him to kick his heels. Or at least he might’ve kicked his heels if she’d invited him to sit, but since she hadn’t, he had to content himself with pacing around the unfurnished hallway and admiring the portraits of generations of Wilbanks ancestors. If they really were Wilbanks ancestors, of course. Frank had heard that “new money” families sometimes purchased portraits of other people’s relatives and passed them off as their own. Was Wilbanks “new money”? Maybe he should have consulted Felix Decker before coming all the way over here. On the other hand, Sarah hadn’t said anything about involving her father in this, so he didn’t want to go behind her back.

He turned at the sound of a throat clearing on the stairs. The maid, nose still in the air and now out of joint, glared down at him from the fifth step. “Mr. Wilbanks will see you.”