Murder in Murray Hill (Gaslight Mystery) (14 page)

“But I went out and met him. I went to his house with him. I should never have written those letters. It’s all my fault!”

“Why
did
you write the letters?” Sarah asked gently.

“What?”

“Why did you start reading the ads in the newspapers in the first place and then decide to answer them?”

Her face twisted with some inner agony. “It seems so ridiculous now!”

“I don’t think it was ridiculous.”

“But you don’t know what my reasons were.”

“I think I do. Try me.”

“I . . . I wanted to be married. I wanted to be like other women. But look at me. I’m not pretty, and I’m not charming. Men never look twice at me. But when I read those ads, I thought . . . Oh, it sounds so stupid!”

“You thought there were men who were as anxious for a wife as you were for a husband. Maybe they weren’t handsome or charming, so they had a difficult time winning a woman’s heart in the usual way.”

“It even sounds stupid when you say it like that. Men don’t have a difficult time. They’re the ones who do the asking. They’re the ones who decide. If a man wants a wife, all he has to do is look around. It’s only ugly women who don’t have a choice. That’s what he said.”

“Who?”

“Him. Pendergast.” She spat the name like it left a vile taste in her mouth.

“I wouldn’t put much stock in anything he had to say.”

“He said so many hurtful things. Things I can’t even repeat. In some ways, his words hurt more than . . . than the other things he did. He told me I was ugly and stupid and no man would ever want me and I should be glad he—” She clapped a hand over her mouth to hold back the awful words.

“Did he really think you should be grateful he’d chosen to abuse you?” Sarah asked gently.

She squeezed her eyes shut and nodded her head, her hand still over her mouth.

“Grace, Pendergast was a liar, among many other things. Nothing he said was true.”

She turned her face away, and after a minute, she lowered her hand. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Do you remember what happened yesterday? Do you remember how he died?”

She turned back, her muddy brown eyes shining with fury. “Yes.”

“Oh, Grace, did you see who did it? Do you know who cut his throat?”

“Yes,” she said, suddenly calm and more confident than Sarah could have imagined. “I did.”

F
rank and Livingston sat in silence for a few MINUTES after Sarah left with the maid.

Finally, Livingston said, “They won’t really arrest her? Put her in jail? I don’t know how she’d—”

“I don’t know what Broghan might do, but I think we’d better plan for the worst, at least until we can figure out what’s going on. Do you have a place you could take her? Somewhere out of the city or at least a place where she’d be away from here?”

“When my wife was alive, we sometimes spent time at the shore. I’d rent a cottage and—”

“Do that, then. Take Grace away as quickly as possible. Today if you can. Meanwhile, I’ll try to find out what the police are planning to do, and see if we can locate this fellow, Andy.”

“Who’s Andy?”

“He worked for Pendergast as some sort of servant, I think. He’s missing, though, which makes me think he’s involved in Pendergast’s death.”

“Do you think he’s the one who killed him?”

“I won’t know until we hear Grace’s story, if she remembers at all. Or until we find Andy and question him.”

“But you aren’t with the police anymore, Mr. Malloy. Why would you do this for us?”

Frank opened his mouth to reply but found he had no answer.

Livingston smiled sadly. “I’m a businessman, Mr. Malloy. I’ve learned that men seldom do anything that is not in their own self-interest. I’ve been successful by learning to judge what men want and figuring out a way to benefit from helping them achieve it.”

“I had promised you I’d find your daughter” was all Frank could come up with

“Yes, you did, and perhaps you felt honor bound to follow through on your original plan when Pendergast arranged the meeting with your young lady. But Grace is found, so your duty is discharged.”

“I don’t see it that way, not if she might end up arrested and charged with murder.”

“A horrible possibility for me as her father, but not something that would affect you in any way. No, Mr. Malloy, don’t protest. You may be a kind person at heart, but I can’t depend on your kindness if I want to protect my daughter. You told me you had left the police department, but you did not say you had taken another position. Allow me to offer you one. I would like to hire you as a private investigator to find out what happened to this Pendergast and ensure that my daughter isn’t prosecuted after all she has already endured.”

Frank’s mind was racing. Livingston had no way of knowing why Frank had left the police department, and he’d be justified in thinking Frank would need a job of some kind to replace his old one. Frank was just getting used to the idea that he no longer needed to worry about such things, and while the idea of never again having to earn a living was appealing, the prospect of having nothing to do with himself weighed heavily. This was probably the real reason he was so eager to keep working on Grace Livingston’s case. The surge of emotion he felt at Livingston’s offer was certainly proof of that. He didn’t examine the emotion too closely, because he thought it might be joy, and that was hardly an appropriate feeling to have, considering the seriousness of Grace Livingston’s situation. “I haven’t really had time to consider my future employment, but I will accept your offer. I can’t promise the police won’t do something really stupid, but I can help you protect Grace from the consequences. I’ll also do my best to figure out who really killed Pendergast to clear Grace’s name completely.”

• • •

D
id you say
you
killed Pendergast?” Sarah asked, trying not to let her shock show on her face.

“I must have. I was with him. His blood . . .” She shuddered and covered her mouth again, this time as if to keep from being sick at the memory.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I remember pieces of it. I see things, a scene like a photograph and then another one, but nothing makes sense.”

“What do you see in these ‘photographs’?”

“He . . .” She shook her head, shuddering.

“All right, let’s start with earlier in the day. Do you remember waking up that morning?”

Grace nodded. “It was . . . the same as all the other mornings. I woke up, expecting to be home in this bed, but I wasn’t. I was in a nightmare that wouldn’t end.”

“Where were you?”

“In the cage. The one upstairs.”

“You know about the one in the cellar?”

She shuddered again. “Oh yes. That’s where he put me first, after . . .” She closed her eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me everything if you don’t want to, but remember what I told you about sharing your burdens with others.”

Grace lay there, staring at Sarah for what felt like an hour. She studied Sarah’s face for something. Sarah wasn’t sure what Grace was looking for, but she stared back, trying to let Grace see only kindness.

Finally, Grace said, “He invited me to his house to meet his mother.”

Sarah nodded. “Mr. Malloy had been investigating your disappearance, and he’d found out that was how he got women into his house.”

“He brought me there. The house looks respectable from the outside.”

“Perfectly respectable.”

“But when we were inside . . .” She closed her eyes again.

“It wasn’t your fault, Grace.”

“I was so stupid.”

“He lied to you. He tricked you. He took advantage of your innocence.”

She shuddered again, but when she opened her eyes, Sarah saw determination in them. “He hit me. Across the face. As soon as we were in the house, he changed into a different person. Nobody had ever hit me, Mrs. Brandt.”

Sarah nodded, understanding how shocked she must have been.

“He made me take off my clothes. Right there in the hallway. When I didn’t do it fast enough, he hit me again. He said terrible things to me, how ugly I was and how no one would ever care about me.”

“That isn’t true. Many people care about you, Grace.”

She didn’t seem to hear. She stared at something Sarah couldn’t see. “Then he . . . he raped me. I was screaming, begging him to stop, but that seemed to please him somehow. I thought it would never end. And then he dragged me down to the cellar and locked me in this filthy cage and left me in the dark.” Her eyes, when she turned back to Sarah, were haunted with the horrors she had endured. “I was . . . naked. Naked and . . . and bleeding. And all alone with the rats and the spiders, and no one came for days. It seemed like days at least. I think it was two days. I didn’t have anything to eat or drink, and I thought I was going to die there and no one would ever know what happened to me. My poor father . . .” Her voice broke on a sob and she wept for a bit.

Sarah marveled at how cruel Pendergast had been, and how calculating. He must have worked out how to break the women’s spirits so they would be more malleable and completely under his control. Violating Grace would have completely terrorized her, and locking her in that horrible place with no food or water would have crushed her.

When she’d composed herself again, Sarah said, “You don’t have to go on if you don’t want to.”

“You’re right. It helps to talk about it. I didn’t think it would, but it does. I wasn’t sure anyone would even believe me.”

“I saw that cellar.” Sarah thought about the woman she’d found in that cell, but she’d wait to ask Grace about her.

Grace nodded. “After I had given up all hope, Andy came and brought me some food.”

Sarah decided to feign ignorance. “Who is Andy?”

“Didn’t you find him?”

“No, although we did find a room in the attic where it looked like a servant lived. Is Andy Pendergast’s servant?”

“I suppose you’d call him that.”

“He was kind to you?”

Grace’s eyes widened. “Oh no! He brought me food, and by then I was starving, but he wouldn’t give it to me until I . . . until I did something for him. I refused at first. I just couldn’t bear the thought of . . . of doing what he wanted, so he left the tray sitting there, just out of my reach, taunting me. And then he left. The rats came and ate the food, and I had to watch them. I was so hungry and so thirsty, and I had to watch them.”

Tears leaked out of her eyes, her silent weeping somehow more awful than the sobs that had racked her before. Sarah squeezed her hand, which seemed to give her courage.

“He came back. A long time later, he came back. He had another tray, and this time I . . . I did what he wanted, even though it made me sick. But I didn’t want to die, Mrs. Brandt.”

“Of course not. You were brave to do what you needed to in order to survive.”

“I didn’t feel brave. I felt like a coward.”

“You survived. That took courage, Grace.”

She seemed to be considering Sarah’s words, weighing the truth of them. Then she said, “Pendergast came later. He told me I was being a good girl, and he was going to let me come upstairs. I was grateful. I can’t believe how grateful I was to that man, but I was so frightened in that cellar, in the dark with the rats. You can’t know how frightened I was.”

“Of course you were. That was his plan, to terrorize you.”

“And he told me if I was good and did everything he said, he would let me go. So I was . . . good.” She closed her eyes and turned her face away.

“Of course you were. You had no choice, did you?”

“I could have refused. I knew I could, because . . . But I didn’t want him to put me back in the cellar. I thought I would die if he put me back in that cellar.”

“So you really had no choice,” Sarah insisted, trying to make Grace believe it.

She still refused to meet Sarah’s eye, though, and stared at the wall instead. “After a while, he let me have my shift, so I didn’t have to be naked all the time. I was pathetically grateful for that, too.”

“Of course you were. How could you not be?”

“I just wanted to go home. I prayed and prayed. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my father to always wonder what had become of me.”

“You were strong and brave, Grace. You survived an ordeal that many women could not.”

She just shook her head, unwilling to accept Sarah’s praise. “It went on and on, day after day. I thought it would never end. I thought I’d always be his prisoner.”

“What about that last day? Do you remember that morning?”

“I woke up in the cage, like I said. The one upstairs. Andy came to let me out. He took me to Pendergast and . . . Well, usually Pendergast made me do something to earn my breakfast, but he seemed distracted that morning. He didn’t pay any attention to me, so I just sat down on the floor, in a corner of his bedroom, and waited until he went downstairs. I got very good at that, at sitting quietly and not drawing attention. I think he sometimes forgot I was there, which was fine with me.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I waited and then followed him downstairs. He’d let me eat after he was finished. I had to sit on the floor in the dining room.”

Sarah managed not to wince. She was beginning to regret the fact that Pendergast was dead. He deserved a far worse fate than that for the way he had dehumanized his victims. “Then what happened?”

“I . . . I followed him when he went to his study. He wanted me nearby all the time, in case he . . . he wanted me for something. But I was quiet and I just sat out in the hall, praying he would forget I was there. He was working at his desk. He was always reading letters, the letters he got from women. And he’d write letters, too, replies to the ones he got. I wanted to sneak in there and tear them to shreds, but of course I didn’t. I thought he’d kill me if I tried. So I just sat there all morning, not moving, not making a noise.”

“What was the next thing that he did?”

She considered the question for a time. “Andy came to tell him it was time to eat. He finished up in his study and put all the letters away. Sometimes he’d have a letter or two with him that he wanted to mail, but I don’t think he had one this time. He went to the dining room, and I followed. I sat in the corner, waiting until he told me I could eat. But he . . . he forgot. He seemed to forget about me completely. When he went out, he didn’t even look at me.”

“He must have had something on his mind.” Sarah realized he was probably worried about Neth. He’d sent his friend to meet Maeve, so he must have suspected something wasn’t quite right with Maeve’s letter. Why hadn’t he just not met her at all? If he hadn’t, they would have lost the opportunity of tracking the kidnapper back to his lair—even though Neth had led them to the wrong lair—and they might never have found Pendergast at all. The thought chilled her.

“I didn’t know about your plan, of course,” Grace said. “Father told me all about it in the cab after we left Pendergast’s house. He was so impressed with the way Mr. Malloy had tricked Pendergast into meeting another girl.”

“Except he wasn’t really tricked, but at least we were able to find you eventually.”

She nodded, but without much enthusiasm. Being found hadn’t won her the kind of freedom she’d imagined, since she would always carry the memories of her ordeal.

“So Pendergast seemed preoccupied that day,” Sarah reminded her.

“Yes, he went back to his office, I think. I grabbed some food and ate it before Andy could take it away. He said some nasty things to me, but I’d learned to ignore him. I just ran out and found a corner to hide in again until Pendergast remembered and called for me.”

“And did he?”

“Not for a long time. I . . . I must’ve fallen asleep. I think I was dreaming I was home. I did that a lot. Fall asleep, I mean. At least when I was asleep, I wasn’t afraid. Then something woke me up. Shouting, I think. Someone was shouting.”

“Pendergast?”

“No. Wait, yes. They were arguing. Pendergast and someone else.”

“Do you know who?”

She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to remember. “I . . . I didn’t know him.”

“Did you see him?”

“I . . . Yes. Pendergast called me and I went in. They were in the parlor.”

“Do you know what they were arguing about? Can you remember what they said?”

She shook her head as if trying to dislodge the memories. “Something about Pendergast tricking him, I think. It didn’t make sense that he’d tricked a man. I thought that was strange.”