Murder in Morningside Heights (A Gaslight Mystery) (27 page)

“I didn’t intend to be mean. And you’re right, I did know that, but I had to make sure you did. Why do you think he wanted to marry her?”

“You mean besides being in love with her?” she asked with a sad little smile.

“We both know he wasn’t. What was his real reason?”

Irene sighed and her eyes grew moist again. “Cory is . . . Well, he isn’t like Luther. Luther just isn’t very bright, so he’ll never amount to much. But Cory
is
bright. He could do anything he wanted in life. The problem is, he doesn’t want to do anything for more than a day or two and then he gets bored. He’s supposed to be learning our family’s business from Father, but he hardly ever even goes to the office. He prefers to be in the city doing whatever it is he does there.”

Sarah could have told her about the girl at the brothel, but she didn’t. “What did Abigail have to do with this?”

“Father has been telling him he needs to settle down, and I think Cory thought if he married Abigail, that would make our parents happy. He’d be married and he could have his own home, and he wouldn’t have to pay attention to what our parents wanted anymore.”

“Do you think Abigail knew this?”

“I’m sure she suspected. Cory had never paid her any particular attention before, and then suddenly, he was begging for her hand.”

“I wonder why she didn’t just turn him down and be done with it,” Sarah said.

Irene shook her head. “I think she took some perverse pleasure in teasing him. She knew he didn’t love her and she
didn’t believe anything he said, so she was probably getting a little revenge before she turned him down completely.” Irene’s face suddenly lightened. “So you see, Cory didn’t have any real reason to kill Abby. He didn’t love her, so he wouldn’t have cared if she turned him down. That means he couldn’t possibly have done it.”

Sarah simply stared back at her. If Abby had just been teasing him and finally admitted it, his wounded pride and his hot temper could have driven him to murder her.

F
rank was happy to note that his presence at the Normal School today hardly caused a stir. The young ladies were obviously becoming used to seeing him, although they still whispered behind their hands after he passed by. He wondered what Hatch and the other teachers were saying to the students about him and the murders. How did they calm the girls’ fears? How did they reassure the parents that the girls weren’t going to be murdered after class one day?

He was awfully happy not to be a college president.

Frank found Professor Pelletier in his office, but he wasn’t alone. A student sat in the wooden chair beside his desk. She’d been explaining something to him when they heard Frank approaching and looked up.

“Oh,” she said, startled.

“
Excusez-moi
, Mr. Malloy, but I am occupied at the moment,” Pelletier said. “If you would like to return later—”

“Oh, I was just leaving,” the girl said, jumping to her feet with a distinct expression of alarm. “I . . . I can come back later, Professor.” She scurried off, being careful to give Frank a wide berth as she passed, as if afraid he would grab her and do something untoward.

“I didn’t mean to scare her,” he said with a smile.

“The students, they are nervous with all the . . . unpleasantness.”

“I’m sure they are. Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

“
Mais oui
, sit down.”

Frank took the chair the girl had occupied.

“What may I do for you?” Pelletier asked.

“I guess you know about Miss Wilson.”

Pelletier made a distressed sound and lifted his hand to his forehead. “So sad. So tragic.”

“Yes, and for two of the teachers here to be killed so close together, naturally, we think there must be some connection.”

“And they lived in the same house. The connection is to be expected, yes?”

“Yes. So President Hatch has asked me to investigate both of the murders.”

“He has told us this.”

“Good. So I’m trying to figure out what the connection might be between the two deaths, if there’s a reason somebody might want both of them dead.”

Pelletier nodded, listening closely, almost as if he was afraid to miss a word.

“Someone told me they saw you and Miss Wilson talking on Friday, the day before she died.”

Pelletier gave one of those shrugs Frank thought were so silly. “Miss Wilson, she and I would often talk.”

“But they said she seemed upset that day, and that you were trying to calm her down.”

He frowned, puzzled. “I am trying to remember, but . . .” He shrugged again.

“You see, it might help if I knew what she’d been doing and thinking in the days before she died. It might tell me what the connection was between her murder and Miss Northrup’s. So I’d really appreciate it if you could try to remember what she said that day.”

“I see. Ah, then let me think.” He took a minute, furrowing his brow as he did so. “Oh, now it comes. She was . . . It was nothing. She was make the apology to me. She was sorry to suggest Miss Northrup be hired. If she did not, Miss Northrup would still be alive.”

“Why would she apologize to
you
for that?”

Pelletier’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I did not want it. She convinced President Hatch.”

That sounded a little strange to Frank. Miss Wilson didn’t seem like the kind to apologize, because she probably never thought she’d been wrong. Of course, she’d never had her lover murdered before, either. “And what did you say?”

“I tell her we do not know and it is not her fault. This is what you say, even if you do not believe it,” he added.

He was right about that, of course, although Pelletier would be a true gentleman indeed to say that to a woman who had forced him to accept Miss Northrup against his will. “That was very kind of you.”

“I am glad now that I did, because she is gone.”

Was that all it took to clear Pelletier’s conscience? “Well, thank you for your time,” he said, rising to his feet.

“Did you find anything to help when you look in Miss Northrup’s desk?” Pelletier asked before Frank could leave.

“Not really, although whoever returned her keys also returned some letters.”

“Letters?”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, some of them were in French.”

“Were they? She had friends there, I think, from her trip. She did a tour last summer.”

“That’s what her mother told us.”

“She visited my home when she was there,” Pelletier said, his voice a little rough.

“Your home?”

“My . . . the place I was born.”

“Your hometown.”

“That is it. She was able to tell me about my family, how they are.”

“That was nice of her.”

“
Oui
. I was pleased.”

“She was an outstanding young lady,” Frank said, quoting her parents. “She’ll be missed.”

Pelletier smiled sadly. “She already is.”

*   *   *

S
arah had begun to regret her impulse to come to Tarrytown. Malloy would tease her unmercifully when he found out how she’d wasted all this time talking to Irene Raymond, unless she could figure out something useful the girl might be able to tell her.

Their tea and sandwiches had arrived, and that gave Sarah some time to think. Then she remembered, Irene was the one who had first told her about the scandal Abigail had uncovered.

“Miss Raymond, you said that Abigail had discovered some sort of scandal.”

“Yes, have you found out what it was yet?”

“No, but maybe you can help us some more. I don’t think we know enough about it to figure it out yet.”

“I told you, she wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

“Can you remember exactly what she said when she told you?”

“I told you before, it was something about someone at the school and when people found out, they’d be shocked.”

“Do you think it could have involved Miss Wilson?”

This confused her. “Miss Wilson? Why would you think that?”

Sarah debated telling her and realized that with Miss Wilson dead, there was no reason to hesitate. “Miss Wilson is the one who gave Abigail the ring she was wearing when she died.”

“Why would she have given Abigail a ring?”

“Because she was in love with her.”

She needed a few moments, and Sarah watched her face as the truth dawned on her. “Dear heaven.”

“Yes.”

“But they were both females,” she argued, her eyes begging Sarah to tell her she was mistaken.

“Miss Wilson and Miss Billingsly are both females, and they have lived together for many years.”

“But they were friends,” Irene said.

“More than friends, I believe.”

“You mean . . . they were in love, too?”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “And Abigail had come between them. That’s the real reason Abigail would never have married your brother.”

Irene covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head in silent denial. Sarah sipped her tea and gave her some time to think it through.

After a few minutes of stunned silence, Irene lowered her hands. “I had no idea. You must believe me.”

“I do. I was just wondering if this was the scandal she had discovered. It would certainly be shocking.”

“But if Abigail was involved . . .” Irene shook her head.
“Abigail would never embarrass herself. You must understand. She had to be the best. She had to be the one everyone looked up to. She was always above reproach, and she had no pity for anyone who didn’t meet her standards. She would happily have revealed someone else’s weaknesses, but not if it reflected badly on her, too. And I think she also would not have lived in that house if she didn’t approve of . . . of what was happening there. Mrs. Malloy, Abigail would have packed up her bags and carried them down the street herself if she had to in order to separate herself from something she considered scandalous.”

So President Hatch had been correct, even though his reasons for dismissing their theories had been completely different. “Then who else at the college might have been behaving in a way Abigail considered scandalous?”

“I told you, I have no idea! Abigail wouldn’t tell me, but she thought it was delicious.”

“Delicious?” Sarah echoed in amazement.

“Oh yes, didn’t I say that before? She was absolutely delighted over whatever it was that she had learned, and she was going to take great pleasure in exposing this person.”

“But who did she hate at the school? Whose downfall would she have celebrated?”

Irene only shook her head. “No one that I knew of from my time there. Of course, I wasn’t there when she was a teacher. Other teachers were jealous of her, you know, but that just meant they hated her, not the other way around. Abigail wasn’t petty. She only cared about important things.”

“But it’s possible someone at the school had earned her bad opinion recently.”

“Anything is possible,” Irene said, “and since someone killed her, it seems very likely.”

Sarah could think of only one more question, one more
element of the case that they hadn’t figured out yet. Would Irene know anything about it?

“Do you know anything about the trip Abigail took to France last summer?”

Irene rolled her eyes. “Oh yes. I heard every glorious detail from her when she returned home.”

“Did anything happen there that she might have wanted to keep secret?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean she received some letters from there. She apparently kept most of them in her desk at the school, but she had hidden three of them. We were wondering why.”

“I don’t have any idea. What did they say? Didn’t you read them?”

“They’re in French, so we had to find someone to translate them for us.”

“You should have asked Professor Pelletier. I’m sure he would have been happy to help. Abigail was always his best student, and he had a soft spot for her, I know. Oh, I just remembered! She did have a secret about that trip!”

*   *   *

“
O
h,” Frank said, turning back to Pelletier. “I almost forgot. Do you know of any reason why Miss Northrup might’ve hidden some of the letters she got from France?”

Suddenly, Pelletier’s whole expression sharpened. “No, I do not. Why do you ask?”

“Because I found some letters that had been hidden,” he said simply.

“These letters, where were they hidden, if that is even true?”

“She had tucked them into one of her books.” Which meant that whoever took the letters out of her desk hadn’t
found them, but Frank wasn’t going to mention that to Pelletier.

“Is that really hiding? Ah, perhaps so, to a young lady. But I do not know why she might have hidden some of the letters, as you say. Perhaps the letters themselves will say.”

“They’re written in French, so I can’t read them.”

“Ah,
bien sûr.
That is too bad.”

“Yes, but you’re probably right. They might not have really been hidden. She just tucked them into the book and forgot about them.”

“
Oui
, that is most likely. Young ladies are like that. Careless.”

Except Frank knew Abigail Northrup was anything but careless.

*   *   *

“
A
bigail had a secret?” Sarah asked, trying not to get her hopes up. If this was like the rest of the conversation, it would be another waste of her time.

“Yes, she was so excited about it. She finally got Professor Pelletier to tell her the name of his hometown. We had decided he was ashamed of it because he would never say exactly where in France he was from. He’d just say ‘a small town in Bourgogne.’ Abby knew she was going to France, but she didn’t tell him, you see. She planned to visit this town while she was there, and then when she returned, to surprise him with news from his family or whomever she could find who remembered him.”

“And did she?”

“Yes, although he wasn’t as pleased as she’d expected. Or maybe she wasn’t as pleased as she’d expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the town turned out to be just a dirty little place with a crumbling church and a few old houses. She only stayed
two or three days, I gathered, and she wouldn’t say much about it. Then Professor Pelletier wasn’t happy that she’d gone there either. I think we were right, that he was ashamed, and now he was even more ashamed because Abigail knew.”

“That’s understandable, I guess.”

“Of course it is. Their relationship . . . Well, I don’t think it was the same after that. She used to talk about him with such respect, and I expected that when she was teaching with him, he would be a . . . a . . . guide or . . .”

“A mentor?” Sarah said.

“Yes, a mentor to her. But something changed.”

“Could Professor Pelletier be the one she’d discovered a scandal about?”

Irene just frowned. “Because he came from a poor little town in France? Who cares about that except him?”

“And you said Abigail wasn’t petty.”

“She would never try to embarrass someone about something like that. She would consider it beneath her. I don’t think she ever even mentioned it to anyone but me. I was also the only one who knew why she wanted to go to that town in the first place, so she had to tell me what happened, but only because I pestered her about it. She was probably sorry to have done it at all.”

*   *   *

W
hen she finally got home, Sarah had barely had time to greet Catherine and Maeve and change out of her traveling clothes before her mother arrived unexpectedly. The maid brought her straight up to Sarah’s private sitting room.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” her mother said by way of greeting. “I telephoned earlier and Maeve told me you’d gone off somewhere on the train, so I decided to just come here and wait for you to get home.”

“I was in Tarrytown, talking to Abigail Northrup’s best friend. What’s happened?”

“Madame de Béthune sent me word that she has finished with the letters and wants to see us as soon as possible.”

“But she said she’d need several days,” Sarah said, already on her feet.

“I know, but her note said she found the letters so interesting, she put everything else aside. She thinks she has some good information for us.”