Victoria Thompson - Murder On Fifth Avenue

“I believe he visited her.”

“Oh, yes, he was the one who told her about the child. But I don’t think I know why he went to see her in the first place.”

“Didn’t she tell you?”

“She doesn’t like to distress me,” Garnet said with a small smile. “But you’ve never seemed to mind, so tell me.”

In spite of what Garnet thought, Sarah didn’t want to distress her either. “I’d rather wait until she comes.”

“Ring for the maid to fetch her, then. She might stay downstairs until she thinks you’ve left. I told you she really did not want to see you.”

Sarah pulled the bell rope and in a few moments, the maid came in.

“Would you ask my mother to come back up?” Garnet asked.

“Mrs. Richmond left, ma’am.”

“What do you mean, she left?”

“She left the house.”

“When?”

“Right after she came downstairs.”

“How strange.” Garnet dismissed the maid and turned back to Sarah. “I didn’t want to tell you, but she actually seemed afraid when she heard you were here to see her. Why would she be afraid?”

Sarah still didn’t want to tell her, but Garnet would find out soon anyway. “We believe your mother is the one who stabbed Devries.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I’m perfectly serious.”

“Why would she do a thing like that? And how? She hasn’t seen him in years!”

“We believe she saw him on the day he died, and she had a very good reason to stab him. He was trying to kill her.”

“Dear God!” Garnet clamped her eyes shut and covered her mouth with both hands.

Sarah grabbed a bowl sitting on the bedside table and held it ready in case Garnet was sick, but after a moment, she opened her eyes and lowered her hands. “Why on earth would he try to kill her?”

“We suspect he was afraid she would encourage you to leave Paul. He was desperate to keep Paul’s secret, which is why he arranged your marriage in the first place. If you left him, people would want to know why.”

“I didn’t want to leave Paul, you know. I just wanted to leave this house, to get away from him .”

“I know that now, and maybe that was another reason he wanted your mother out of the way. You couldn’t leave if you didn’t have a place to go.”

“Which explains why he wanted her dead, but it doesn’t explain how she could have stabbed him.”

“We don’t know for sure, but we believe that after Devries visited Angotti-”

“Who’s Angotti?”

“He’s an Italian gentleman who…uh…arranges things for people. Devries tried to hire him to murder your mother.”

“Dear God,” she murmured again.

“Mr. Angotti doesn’t do these things himself, you understand, but even so, he didn’t have much stomach for having a woman killed, so he went to see your mother. When he heard her story, he decided not to accept Devries’s offer, and he apparently gave your mother a small knife to use in case Devries decided to try to do the job himself.”

Garnet groaned. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“I’m sure she didn’t want to distress you,” Sarah said without irony.

“You still haven’t told me how it happened.”

“As I said, we don’t know for sure, but on the day he died, Devries went to see Angotti, and Mr. Angotti told him he wouldn’t accept his offer. Devries was angry and he went someplace for a few hours before eventually turning up at his club, where he died.”

“What makes you think he saw my mother?”

“The fact that Mr. Angotti probably gave your mother a knife that could have killed him, and the fact that she received a telegram shortly after Devries left Angotti.”

“I send her telegrams all the time.”

“Did you send her one that day?”

Garnet had no reply.

“This telegram upset her very much, and she went out and didn’t come back for a long time. We think Devries arranged to meet her someplace, intending to kill her himself perhaps.”

“Or force himself on her.”

Sarah blinked in surprise. “Do you really think…?”

“Of course I think he’d do something like that! He’d done it to me, and that morning…Well, he didn’t expect me to fight back, but I just couldn’t let him use me again, so I screamed. I’d never done that before, and of course Paul came rushing in, and…Well, he left without getting what he’d come for. He was angry, and if he did want to kill Mother, he’d want to humiliate her first. Oh, no, do you think he raped her? I couldn’t stand the thought of that! Poor Mother!”

Garnet started to weep.

“She stabbed him, Garnet. I’m sure she stabbed him to prevent him from hurting her.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked brokenly.

“Yes, I do. I’m sure of it.”

Garnet dashed the tears from her eyes. “And now Mr. Malloy has come to arrest her.”

“He just wants to find out what happened. If Devries was going to harm her, it was self-defense. She won’t be arrested for that.”

Garnet stared back at her for a long moment, absorbing the truth of Sarah’s words, but then her eyes widened. “Dear heaven, she’s going to kill herself!”

“What?”

“Kill herself! That’s what she meant! When the maid came and told us you wanted to see her, she got very maudlin, and she started talking about my father and how she’d missed him so much and how much she loved me, but she had to do the right thing and not cause me any scandal and I was hardly listening because I felt so sick, and then she kissed me. She kissed me! She was only going down to the kitchen, but she kissed me good-bye! Oh, Mrs. Brandt, that must be why she left. You have to stop her!”

“Of course I will. We’ll go right back to her boardinghouse-”

“No, that’s not where she’ll go. She was talking about Father and how much she missed him. She’ll go to the bridge like he did. He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. Did I tell you that? They never found his body. She’ll just disappear like he did, so there won’t be a scandal over a suicide and no one will ever know what became of her. Please, you must stop her!”

Garnet was frantic now, nearly hysterical, and Sarah rang for the maid.

“Go!” Garnet said. “Find her! Stop her!”

Sarah ran out into the hall. The maid was coming, and Sarah shouted at her to look after Garnet before racing down the stairs. When she reached the bottom of the first flight, Paul Devries and Hugh Zeller had come out of the parlor to see what the commotion was about.

“Mrs. Brandt, what’s going on?” Paul asked.

“I don’t have time to explain it all, but we think Mrs. Richmond has gone to the Brooklyn Bridge to kill herself.” Sarah didn’t stop. She was running down the second flight of stairs, now with Paul and Hugh in her wake.

“Why would she do a thing like that?” Paul asked.

“She’s the one who stabbed your father, and she thinks Malloy is here to arrest her for it.”

“Dear God,” Paul said. “Did she know what he’d done to Garnet? Is that why?”

Sarah didn’t have time to explain. Malloy had met her at the bottom of the stairs.

“Did you hear?” she asked him.

“Yes, but why the bridge?”

“That’s where her husband killed himself.”

“We’ll go with you,” Paul said.

Malloy was pulling their coats from the rack by the front door.

“Someone should probably go to her boardinghouse, just in case,” Sarah said. “And ask Garnet if there’s someplace else she might go, too. We need to find her and let her know she won’t go to prison.”

“I won’t let her be punished for it,” Malloy told them. “Tell her that, if you find her.”

Malloy pulled on his coat while Paul helped Sarah with hers.