Murder in Morningside Heights (A Gaslight Mystery)

MURDER ON ASTOR PLACE

MURDER ON ST. MARK’S PLACE

MURDER ON GRAMERCY PARK

MURDER ON WASHINGTON SQUARE

MURDER ON MULBERRY BEND

MURDER ON MARBLE ROW

MURDER ON LENOX HILL

MURDER IN LITTLE ITALY

MURDER IN CHINATOWN

MURDER ON BANK STREET

MURDER ON WAVERLY PLACE

MURDER ON LEXINGTON AVENUE

MURDER ON SISTERS’ ROW

MURDER ON FIFTH AVENUE

MURDER IN CHELSEA

MURDER IN MURRAY HILL

MURDER ON AMSTERDAM AVENUE

MURDER ON ST. NICHOLAS AVENUE

MURDER IN MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS

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This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

Copyright © 2016 by Victoria Thompson.

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eBook ISBN 978-1-101-98710-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thompson, Victoria (Victoria E.)

Murder in Morningside Heights : a gaslight mystery / Victoria Thompson.—First edition.

pages ; cm.—(Gaslight mystery ; 18)

ISBN 978-1-101-98708-7 (hardcover)

1. Brandt, Sarah (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Malloy, Frank (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Private investigators—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)— Social life and customs—19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3570.H6442M8653 2016

813'.54—dc23

2015034282

FIRST EDITION:
May 2016

Cover illustration by Karen Chandler.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To my dear friend Roselyn O’Brien.

Thanks for giving me another career option when this writing gig wasn’t working
out.

F
RANK MALLOY, CONFIDENTIAL INQUIRIES.

Frank hesitated a moment to admire the sight of his name in gilt letters on the frosted glass of the office door. The “Confidential Inquiries” had been his mother-in-law’s idea. Elizabeth Decker felt that “Detective Agency” was somehow undignified and might attract the wrong type of client. Frank wasn’t sure what the wrong type of client might be for a private detective agency, but he was more than willing to give his new business at least a hint of respectability.

He turned the brass knob and stepped into the office.

His assistant, former police officer Gino Donatelli, instantly rose from behind his brand-new desk. “Here’s Mr. Malloy now,” he said to the respectable, middle-aged couple sitting in the row of wooden chairs lining the wall.

Frank removed his hat and went over to shake hands as Gino introduced him to Mr. and Mrs. Northrup. They both
had the stunned look of people who had received one of life’s harsher blows. Mr. Northrup covered his pain with bluster, the way men often did, but Mrs. Northrup could barely speak and looked as if she might shatter at the slightest touch.

“Gino, would you take the Northrups into my office?”

The slender young man hurried to escort them through the connecting door while Frank removed his tailored wool overcoat and hung it, along with his hat, on the wooden coat tree. Mrs. Decker had suggested a brass one, but Frank didn’t want to look like he didn’t need business, even though he didn’t. He’d only consented to opening the agency because being a millionaire had turned out to be pretty boring for a former New York City Police detective. Since he didn’t need the money, he also didn’t want to scare off poorer clients who might well be the most interesting cases.

In the few weeks since he’d been open, he hadn’t gotten any interesting cases at all. Unfortunately for them, the Northrups promised to break that streak.

Frank followed them into his modestly decorated office. The furniture in here was new, too, which couldn’t be helped because the business was new, but it wasn’t particularly expensive or ornate. The Northrups sat in the two wooden chairs placed in front of his plain, walnut desk. Frank sat down in a more comfortable chair behind it and pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from the drawer. Gino discreetly sat down on a chair in the corner behind the Northrups with his own pad and pencil to take notes, in case Frank missed anything.

“I’m very sorry to hear about your daughter,” Frank said. “Mr. Donatelli told me a little bit about your case when he telephoned me.”

Frank usually didn’t bother coming to the office unless he needed to see a client, which hadn’t been much of an issue until today.

“I don’t know how much Mr. Donatelli told you,” Mr. Northrup said uncertainly.

“Just that she was killed. Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me the whole story.”

Mrs. Northrup made a small sound of distress and pressed a handkerchief to her lips. Northrup cleared his throat. “It’s hard to know where to begin. Abigail is our only daughter. She was always so . . .” He gestured helplessly.

“Outstanding,” Mrs. Northrup said almost defensively. “Outstanding in everything she did.”

“Yes,” Northrup said. “She excelled at her schoolwork, and she could sing beautifully and play the piano.”

“And everyone loved her—don’t forget that,” Mrs. Northrup said. “She was like a . . . like a little star, always shining so brightly.”

“She was too bright for Tarrytown, I’m afraid,” Northrup said.

“Tarrytown?”

“That’s where we live, you see. It’s in Westchester County.”

“I know where it is,” Frank said, recalling the quiet little town north of the city. “If you live in Tarrytown, what was Abigail doing in the city?”

“Oh, she’s lived here for years now, ever since she came here to attend college.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have let her come.” Mrs. Northrup dabbed at tears. “If we’d kept her at home, she’d still be alive.”

“Now, Mother, you know we couldn’t have kept her in Tarrytown.”

“She should’ve gotten married like her friends did. Why does a girl need to go to college anyway?”

Frank was getting a good picture of Abigail Northrup in his mind. She was a headstrong young woman, smart and ambitious. A New Woman. He knew all about them. He was
married to one. “But she was too bright for Tarrytown,” he said, echoing Northrup’s own words.

They looked up at him in surprise.

“That’s it exactly,” Northrup said, obviously forgetting he’d given Frank that image. “She wanted to do something important with her life.”

“Being a mother is important,” Mrs. Northrup said.

Northrup ignored her. “She wanted an education.”

“Where did she go to college?”

“The Normal School of Manhattan.”

“The teacher’s college,” Frank said, picturing the impressive building in Morningside Heights.

“That’s right. We investigated it very thoroughly before we allowed her to come, of course. All the girls live right there, together, in a dormitory, and they are well chaperoned. She couldn’t have been safer in her own home.”

“And that’s where she should have been,” Mrs. Northrup said, dabbing her eyes again. “We should have made her come home when she graduated instead of letting her stay in this awful city!”

“So she wasn’t a student anymore?” Frank asked, a little confused now.

“Oh no,” Northrup said. “I guess Mr. Donatelli didn’t mention it. She graduated last spring, and they offered her a teaching job at the college, so she stayed on. It was quite an honor and she was very proud. I told you, she was an outstanding girl.”

“And she still lived in the dormitory?”

“Oh no, she . . . Well, we would have preferred that, of course, and she could have become one of the chaperones who live there, I suppose, but she wanted to feel more grown-up, I think.”

“She wanted to be
independent
,” her mother said, as if the word left a bad taste in her mouth.

“One of the female professors offered to rent her a room in her own house,” Northrup said. “Miss Wilson already shares her house with another professor, Miss Billingsly, so we thought . . .” His voice trailed off, but Frank knew what they’d thought. They’d thought their girl would be safe with two older women.

“So your daughter was teaching at the college?” Frank said to break the strained silence.

“Yes, since school started in the fall.”

“She taught French,” Mrs. Northrup said. “She spoke it beautifully. We sent her to France last summer as a graduation gift. She said it helped her perfect her accent, whatever that means.”

Frank and his new bride had honeymooned in Europe. The one thing he hadn’t liked about France was the French accents. Why couldn’t they learn English? But he nodded his understanding. “She was teaching at the college and living with these two lady professors. Now tell me what happened the day she died.”

Mrs. Northrup made that distressed sound again, and Northrup needed a moment to compose himself. “She . . . Well, nobody knows exactly what happened, of course. One of the students found her . . . her body. She was lying in this gazebo thing they have in the courtyard behind the college. It’s a quiet place for the girls to sit, I guess.”

“Do they know why she was there?”

“No. She taught her classes in the morning, and nobody remembers seeing her after that. Someone found her in the early afternoon. She’d been . . . stabbed.”

“And what do the police say?”

Mrs. Northrup was sobbing quietly into her handkerchief by now, but Northrup’s expression hardened. “They said she was probably killed by a stranger trying to rob her or something.”

“On the grounds of the college?”

“That’s what they said. They said it would be very difficult to find the killer.”

The anger roiled in his chest in a hot ball, but he didn’t let the Northrups see his reaction. The cops would have taken one look at the Northrups and figured them for bumpkins, which they were, of course. They were also bumpkins with money, which meant they’d be good for a substantial “reward,” and nobody was going to exert themselves to find Abigail’s killer until the reward was offered. “Do you know what they wanted?”

“Yes, they wanted a bribe, Mr. Malloy,” Northrup said just as angrily as Frank could have hoped. “They made that pretty clear.”

“You may find it shocking, but this is common practice in the city.”

“And how common is it for them to actually find the killer in a case like this?”

Well, now, Mr. Northrup wasn’t quite the bumpkin he appeared to be. “It could be difficult. If the killer really was a stranger, it could be impossible.”

“And if the killer was someone my daughter knew, someone at the college, for example, how likely is it the police will be able to identify them?”

Frank tried to picture a bunch of hoity-toity college professors even giving the time of day to some red-faced Irish detective, much less confiding the kind of embarrassing information that might help identify a killer. Not very likely. “Why have you come to me then, Mr. Northrup?” Malloy was Irish, too,
as Northrup could plainly see, and not very far from being a cop himself.

“You were recommended to me by a friend here in the city. I manage a bank in Tarrytown, and I have many business connections here. One of them belongs to the Knickerbocker Club, and he told me you handled a very sensitive matter for them.”

Frank was always surprised at how his reputation had spread. “Is your daughter’s death a sensitive matter?”

“It is to us, Mr. Malloy.” Northrup drew a deep breath as if to fortify himself. “I know what the newspapers do when a beautiful young woman is murdered. I don’t want to see my daughter’s reputation destroyed just to sell newspapers. Her reputation is all she has left now, and I’d like her to be remembered for who she really was and not what some scandal sheet would make her.”

Frank could understand that perfectly. He had children, too, and he’d do whatever he could to protect them.

“Will you help us, Mr. Malloy?”

“I will.”

*   *   *

S
arah was lounging in the comfort of the brocade recamier they had bought in France and reading a novel when Malloy joined her in their private sitting room at home.

“Ah, a lady of leisure,” he teased, giving her a kiss.

“I’m not having any trouble at all adapting to having servants, and you were right about this room.” Their house had originally had adjoining bedrooms for the husband and wife, but Malloy had felt strongly that they needed only one bedroom to share and Sarah had happily agreed. They’d furnished the other as a sitting room where they could have some privacy in their very busy household.

He sank into the overstuffed chair on the other side of the fireplace and sighed in contentment. “I know. I like being right.”

Sarah smiled. “Did you really get a case today?”

“Oh yes. Sadly, a young woman was murdered and her parents want me to find out who did it. They’re worried about a scandal.”

“As well they might be.” Sarah sighed, remembering the sensational stories they’d seen over the past few years as Hearst and Pulitzer destroyed people’s reputations trying to best each other in the newspaper business. “Can I help?” she asked hopefully. She didn’t want to admit it just yet, but being a lady of leisure could be rather boring.

He frowned, and for a moment she thought he might say something ridiculous, like solving murders wasn’t something a lady like her should be concerned with. But of course he knew better. “What do you know about college?”

“College? Why on earth do you want to know about that?”

“Because the girl . . . Well, I suppose I should call her a woman. The young woman who was murdered was a college professor.”

He told her the story of how Abigail Northrup got from being an outstanding girl in Tarrytown to being a college professor in New York City.

“How awful,” Sarah said when he’d finished. “Such a promising life cut short. And her poor parents.”

“Which is why they want to keep this from becoming a scandal. Her memory is all they have left.”

“You might not be able to prevent a scandal,” she said. “Depending on who killed her and why. Anytime a young woman is killed, the reasons tend to be pretty sordid, even if a stranger did it.”

“I know, but at least we’ll try. The police won’t. So what do you know about it?”

“Not a lot, I’m afraid. The girls in my social circle didn’t go to college.”

“I thought you had to be rich to go to college.”

Sarah shrugged. “Poor children are lucky to get any education at all, that’s true, and society families do often send their sons for higher education, but not their daughters. The girls go to Europe for a tour so they can polish their social skills and get their clothes made by the House of Worth in Paris.”

“That’s the place you got those dresses made that cost a fortune.”

“Exactly.”

“All right. If all the rich girls go to Paris, who are those girls at the Normal School?”

“Oh, their families might be wealthy, but they aren’t society people. You said her father manages a bank. They’re probably financially comfortable, but they won’t be invited to Mrs. Astor’s next ball.”

“So her parents can afford to send her to college, but why would she want to go? Don’t all girls just want to get married? She’s not going to meet any eligible young men at a women’s college.”

Sarah smiled at that. “Surprisingly, no, not all girls just want to get married. This is the modern world, Malloy. The New Women are thinking about a career.”

“Why would a New Woman want a career when she could . . . ?” He grinned, glancing meaningfully around the room. “When she could lie around reading all day?”

Sarah threw her book at him, which made him laugh, so she stuck out her tongue. “Not every woman has servants and a nursemaid to watch the children. Being a wife and mother
is hard work, and it doesn’t leave time for much of anything else. If a woman wants to do something important, like teach or be a nurse or a social worker or—”

“Or a midwife,” he supplied, naming her former profession.