Murder in Murray Hill (Gaslight Mystery)

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Victoria Thompson

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

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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Copyright © 2014 by Victoria Thompson.

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eBook ISBN 978-0-698-14302-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thompson, Victoria (Victoria E.) author.

Murder in Murray Hill : a Gaslight Mystery / Victoria Thompson.

pages cm.—(Gaslight Mystery; 16)

ISBN 978-0-425-26042-5 (hardback)

1. Brandt, Sarah (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Malloy, Frank (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 4. Murray Hill (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—19th century—Fiction. 6. Mystery fiction. 7. Historical fiction. I. Title.

PS3570.H6442M8655 2014

813'.54—dc23

2013050772

F
IRST EDITION:
May 2014

Cover illustration by Karen Chandler.

Cover design by Rita Frangie.

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 all my friends at the LSS Foundation

B
eing rich wasn’t nearly as much fun as Frank had always been led to believe. Of course he wasn’t really rich yet, and he was in no hurry about it either. Oh, the money would be nice, he supposed. Never having to worry about the future sounded appealing. And, of course, he’d have Sarah as his wife. The rest of it, though, that’s the part he didn’t like. His life was going to change in a hundred ways, only a few of them good, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

“Malloy?”

Frank looked up from the paperwork he’d been pretending to work on at one of the battered desks in the detectives’ room at Police Headquarters.

The desk sergeant had trudged up the stairs to find him, and he didn’t look happy about it. “There’s a man here says his daughter’s gone missing. Wants to report it.”

Frank almost smiled. A case. Maybe his last one, but a case. “Send him up.”

The sergeant motioned to someone in the hallway, and a neatly dressed, middle-aged man stepped into the doorway. He was average height and a little too thin. His brownish hair barely covered his scalp, and he had a little brush of a mustache. “This here is Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy,” the sergeant said. “He’ll take care of you.”

The sergeant didn’t wait for a reply and disappeared back down the stairs to his post.

Frank rose and pulled over a chair from one of the other desks. “Have a seat, Mister . . . ?”

The man approached cautiously, obviously appalled by the unkempt condition of the large room full of old desks covered with the detritus of scores of unfinished reports and half-smoked cigarettes.

“Thank you,” the man said as he gingerly sat in the rickety chair. When he was fairly confident it would hold him, he relaxed slightly but not completely.

Now Frank could see the tension radiating from the man and the unspoken fear in his eyes. His daughter was missing, the sergeant had said. Frank knew how that felt. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his notebook. A pencil stub lay on the desk. He picked it up, licked the tip, and said, “What’s your name, sir?”

“Livingston. Henry Livingston.” Frank took in the details of his appearance with a practiced eye. A good quality suit, but not extravagant. His shirt was crisp, his tie proper. His shoes showed wear but not heavy use. The hands nervously clutching the brim of his bowler hat were clean and not callused.

“Where do you live, Mr. Livingston?”

He gave Frank an address on Fortieth Street, in the Murray Hill neighborhood. Once the location of millionaires’ mansions, it had fallen out of fashion as the wealthy moved farther uptown. Now comfortable middle-class businessmen were building modern brownstones there.

Maybe he and Sarah should think about moving to Murray Hill when they got married.

“The desk sergeant said something about your daughter?” Frank prodded when Mr. Livingston offered nothing more.

“Yes, Grace. That’s her name, Grace. She’s gone missing.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“Since yesterday. Overnight. I mean, I wasn’t too worried about it until she didn’t come home last night. She never stays out all night. She’s not that kind of girl, Mr. Malloy.”

He seemed very anxious for Frank to believe that. Frank nodded. “How old is she?”

“She’s . . .” He closed his eyes, squinting them in his effort to remember. Or maybe he was doing the math. “She’s twenty-eight. Not a flighty young girl, my Grace. Very sensible. Not the kind of girl who stays out all night without saying a word to anyone.”

“Have you looked for her?”

“Of course I did,” he almost snapped, then caught himself. “I’m sorry. Yes, I contacted all her friends, but none of them had seen her. I went to the church to see if she’d been there. She volunteers, you see, and I thought perhaps . . . Well, if she’d been taken ill and no one knew . . .”

“But she wasn’t there.”

“She wasn’t there or at the library or any other place she might have gone.”

“She’s not married?”

“No. An unclaimed blessing we always said. She’d make some man a wonderful wife, but . . .”

“Does she have any gentlemen friends? Anyone she might’ve eloped with?”

Livingston’s pale blue eyes widened. “Eloped?”

“Maybe you didn’t approve of him, so they decided to run off together. It happens.”

For a moment hope sparked in his eyes, but it died quickly. “No, I’m afraid not. Grace doesn’t have any gentlemen friends, suitable or not.”

Of course, if the gentleman was unsuitable, Grace probably wouldn’t have brought him home to meet her father. But Frank would find out for sure from her friends. He hoped that was it, because the other reasons a young woman might go missing in New York City weren’t good.

“When did you see her last, Mr. Livingston?”

“Yesterday morning. We had breakfast together. I asked her what she was going to do that day, and she said she had some errands.”

“Did she say what the errands were?”

“No. I’ve been racking my brain all night trying to recall, but that’s all she said. Just errands.”

“Did she say anything to your wife?”

A shadow crossed his face. “My wife died several years ago. Grace is our only child.”

“I’m sorry,” Frank murmured. “What about your servants?”

“I asked them, of course. We live very simply, with just a cook and two maids. They said she went out around eleven o’clock.”

“Did she tell them where she was going?”

“She had some errands, she said. That’s all.”

So, plainly she had something important to do that she didn’t want anyone to know about, Frank thought, but he said, “I’d like to question them myself, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t mind. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help. They love Grace.”

Frank would reserve judgment on that until he’d talked to them himself. “I’ll also need to see her room.”

“Her room? Her
bedroom
?” The very idea shocked him.

“She may have left something behind that would tell us where she was going. She may even have left a note.”

“A note? I didn’t think of that.”

Frank doubted that she had, but he wasn’t going to tell Mr. Livingston. “Maybe she was going someplace she didn’t think you’d approve of, so she left you a note.”

“Do you really think so? My goodness, we should go right now, then, shouldn’t we?”

Frank saw no reason to delay. The two men left Police Headquarters, walked down Houston Street and caught the Third Avenue Elevated Train up to Forty-second Street. While the El rattled uptown, Mr. Livingston explained that he didn’t keep a carriage. The cost and bother was too much in New York City, where you could usually walk faster than a horse could pull you through the streets.

Frank decided he wouldn’t keep a carriage either, when the time came. But maybe Sarah had other ideas about that.

Livingston didn’t want to discuss his daughter on a crowded railway platform or in an even more crowded railway car, so they rode the rest of the way in silence. A short walk from Forty-second Street Station brought them to a fairly new brownstone in a row of equally new brownstone town houses.

A maid came rushing down the hallway as they entered, but she stopped dead when she saw Frank enter behind her employer. She was a young girl with no claim to beauty and probably not much wit either.

“Have you heard anything from Miss Grace?” Livingston asked.

“No, sir. I was hoping . . . that is, when I heard the door . . .” Her anxious gaze darted to Frank and away again.

“This is Detective Sergeant Malloy from the New York City Police,” he said. “He’s going to help us find Miss Grace.”

“The police?” she said, wringing her hands.

Like most people in the city, she obviously believed that nothing good ever happened when the police were involved.

“Mr. Malloy is going to ask all of us some questions. I want you to tell him everything you know.”

Her eyes widened. “We don’t know anything about where Miss Grace went, Mr. Livingston. We already told you that.”

Frank stepped forward and gave the girl his friendliest smile. “Yes, you did, but she may have said something that would give us a clue as to where she went, something you don’t even remember or maybe something that didn’t seem important at the time.”

His smile obviously didn’t reassure her, and his words only seemed to upset her more. “I don’t know anything, I tell you.”

Frank nodded. “Maybe you could show me Miss Livingston’s room first, then.”

“Her room?” She glanced at Livingston for his opinion of such an outrageous request.

“Please take Mr. Malloy up to Miss Grace’s room, Daisy.”

Daisy pulled a face, but she took Frank’s hat, then led him up the stairs.

“Should I come, too, Mr. Malloy?” Livingston called when they had reached the first landing.

“Why don’t you look around downstairs and in your own room to see if she left you a note,” Frank said.

Livingston nodded and turned away, as Frank had hoped.

Frank caught Daisy giving him a disapproving frown. “She didn’t leave no note,” she whispered.

“I know, but he needs something to keep him busy.”

Daisy sniffed her disgust and climbed the rest of the stairs, reluctance radiating off her like a bad smell. They reached the second floor, where the parlor and other public rooms would be, then continued up to the third floor and the family’s bedrooms. Frank figured the servants would occupy the fourth floor, where they’d freeze in winter and bake in summer. She took him to one of several doors opening off the short hallway.

“This here’s her room, and I know everything that she’s got in there, so if any of it goes missing, I’ll tell Mr. Livingston.”

“Thank you for the warning,” Frank said, trying not to take offense. After all, lots of cops would think nothing of helping themselves to whatever they found.

“Don’t get smart with me,” she said. “And don’t think you can get any money out of Mr. Livingston either. He ain’t rich, and he never paid a bribe in his life.”

Frank had no intention of asking for a bribe, of course, but she couldn’t know that. Bribes were the only way most cops could earn a living, since the city didn’t pay them enough to survive. “You can watch me, if you want, but you should know, I have to go through everything. You can complain about what I’m doing, but I still have to do it.”

She sniffed again, but she opened the door and stood aside for him to enter.

Grace Livingston’s room surprised him. He’d expected white-and-gold French furniture covered with flounces and ruffles and wallpaper with buxom shepherdesses. Instead he found a neatly made single bed covered with a rather worn quilt and plain pine furniture—a washstand, a wardrobe, a dressing table, and a nightstand. A faded rag rug covered the center of the floor, and a slipper chair had been pulled up near the grate. Its small footstool bore a needlepoint pattern too ancient to make out. Except for the once-vibrant colors in the quilt, the room was all in shades of brown.

Frank glared at Daisy. “You were supposed to take me to Miss Livingston’s room.”

“This
is
her room.”

Frank looked around again, then turned back to Daisy, giving her a glimpse of how angry he could get.

“You can call Mr. Livingston if you don’t believe me,” she said, wringing her hands again. “I know it ain’t pretty, but that’s how Miss Grace wanted it. She never was one for fancy things.”

Still not convinced, Frank strode over to the wardrobe and threw open the doors. A paltry few items of women’s clothing hung there. Several shirtwaists. Two skirts—one brown, one dark blue—and matching jackets. A black mourning dress that looked a bit dusty, as if it hadn’t been worn recently. A pair of ladies’ boots sat slumped in the bottom of the cabinet, and some battered carpet slippers lay beside them.

Grace Livingston didn’t waste a lot of time or money on her personal appearance any more than she did on her bedroom furnishings. “What’s missing from here?”

Daisy came over and looked, staying as far from Frank as she possibly could and still see into the cabinet. “Just the clothes she was wearing yesterday, looks like.”

She hadn’t packed then, which meant she hadn’t meant to be gone very long. He pulled out his notebook and a pencil. “And what was she wearing yesterday?”

“What’s it to you?” She was back to being snippy.

Frank sighed. He appreciated her loyalty to Miss Livingston, but he didn’t have time for this. “It might help us identify her if we pull her out of the East River and the fish have eaten her face.”

Daisy widened her eyes again, going chalk white this time, and she swayed on her feet.

Frank grabbed her arm and steered her toward the slipper chair. “Take deep breaths,” he said as he settled her into it.

After a few moments, she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Do you really think she’s dead?”

“I have no idea, but if she’s not, I’ll need all the help I can get to find her. Now stop protecting her and tell me what she was wearing.”

“It was her Sunday best,” Daisy said, no longer reluctant at all. “A bottle green skirt and matching bolero jacket and a white shirtwaist with ruffles on the front. Her nice shoes, too, all polished up.”

“Did she usually dress up like that to run errands?”

“Oh no! She wasn’t one for dressing up at all, except for church on Sunday, which is why I thought it was strange. Oh!” she added, clamping a hand over her mouth.

“What is it?”

She lowered her hand an inch or two. “I just told you something I didn’t know I remembered.”

He rewarded her with a smile. “That’s good, Daisy. That’s very good. What else do you remember? Did you say anything to Miss Livingston about being dressed up?”

“Oh no, I’d never do that. I did ask where she was going, though. I thought maybe she was visiting somebody special.”

“What did she say? What did she say
exactly
?”

Daisy frowned in concentration. “She said, ‘I have some things to do today, and I won’t be home for luncheon.’”

“Was it unusual for her to be gone for lunch?”

“She’d sometimes go to visit a friend. She knows some ladies from her church. But not real often.”