Victoria Thompson - Murder On Astor Place

Well, she’d decide what to do next when she found out. If Alicia’s own family didn’t care enough to find her killer, Sarah wasn’t sure what she could do, but she would do something. Or die trying.

SARAH LOOKED OUT of the hansom cab and frowned up at the slightly tawdry, marble-fronted building on Mulberry Street that served as police headquarters for the city of New York.

“Here you are, ma’am,” the driver called down from his perch above her. Quickly, she paid him through the window overhead and climbed out. The driver wasted no time in clucking his horse into motion again and moving out into the early morning traffic, leaving her standing alone on the sidewalk. Oddly enough, police headquarters was located in a rather rough neighborhood, one in which Sarah didn’t feel comfortable walking unescorted, which was why she’d taken a cab. The hansoms, which were one-seated carriages with the driver mounted above and behind the passenger compartment, were a relatively new addition to the streets of New York, although they had been popular in England for over fifty years. Sarah had felt perfectly safe inside the cab, but as she watched it pull away, her sense of well-being evaporated, and she began to regret her decision to confront Detective Malloy.

She shouldn’t have felt so very uneasy. The tenement buildings around her were just the kind of buildings she frequently visited to deliver babies. The women hanging out of the windows, gossiping and arguing, were the kinds of women who had those babies. And the children playing in the streets, the vendors pushing their cards and shouting for customers, and all the other sights and smells of poverty were only too familiar. No, it wasn’t the neighborhood that worried her, but rather the building that should have provided a sanctuary amid the squalor of the tenements.

Well, what was the worst that could happen to her? Malloy had already said he didn’t consider her a suspect, so she most likely wouldn’t be arrested. Smiling grimly at this small comfort, she looked up at the fanlight window over the green, double entry doors and read the words, “New-York Police Headquarters.” Pretty forbidding. Walking in and brazenly asking for Malloy would also be embarrassing, but Sarah had been embarrassed before and survived. Thinking of poor Alicia renewed her courage, and ignoring the stares of the suspicious looking characters loafing nearby, she made her way up the steep stairs to the front door. Then she had to explain her mission to the doorkeeper who only grudgingly admitted her.

The place smelled of unwashed bodies and tobacco juice. The floor was littered with battered spittoons, but no one seemed able to hit them with their streams of juice because the floor was brown with it. Before her stood a high desk, and behind it sat an enormously fat man in a police uniform. His bald head gleamed brightly in the early morning sunlight.

Sarah tried to ignore the men seated on the benches that lined the walls, all of whom were shackled and some of whom bore signs of a recent beating, but they had most certainly noticed her.

“Hey, O’Shaughnessy, you got the whores making house calls now?” one hollered.

“Is this one of them reforms that Roosvelt’s making?” another cried. “No wonder he wanted to get rid of Byrnes,” he added, naming the recently resigned chief of police.

“If I gotta get measured, I want her to do it!” another called, making reference to the newly instituted Bertillion system of identifying criminals by taking measurements of various body parts and keeping them on file along with their photographs for identification purposes.

“Shaddup,” the desk sergeant commanded, but the suggestive banter kept on anyway. Sarah simply ignored it.

“I’d like to see Detective Sergeant Malloy, if he’s in,” she told the desk sergeant over the din.

“Malloy, is it?” He peered down at her, turning his double chin into a triple. “He expecting you?”

Not likely, she thought, but she said, “Yes, I have some information for him about a case he’s working on.”

He didn’t seem to believe her. Probably, the usual police informants looked nothing like Sarah. “I ain’t sure he’s here,” he said skeptically.

“Perhaps you could check and see. Or send someone to find him. My information is very important. He won’t want to miss it.” There, if that didn’t make Malloy furious with her, nothing would. Sarah didn’t particularly care, however, so long as he listened to what she had to tell him when he got here.

The desk sergeant was scowling at her now, his face a lot redder than it had been, and it had been pretty red before. Plainly, he didn’t like having a woman tell him what to do, no matter how gently she phrased it.

For a moment, she thought he was going to vent his wrath on her, but suddenly, his fury faded into something more sinister. “O’Brien!” he shouted without warning, startling her.

A scrawny young man who hardly looked old enough to shave but who nevertheless wore a police uniform, appeared from a nearby doorway. “Yes, Sergeant?”

“Take this here lady downstairs to one of the waiting rooms.” He used the word “lady” as if he didn’t really mean it.

O’Brien looked Sarah over in surprise. His eyes were very blue and a little frightened, and his pale blond hair was plastered to his skull with hair tonic. “Downstairs?” he echoed uncertainly.

“That’s right, O’Brien, downstairs. She’s waiting for Malloy. Maybe when you’re done, you can go find him for her.”

“Where is he?”

“How the hell…? Oh, sorry, ma’am,” the sergeant said, not sounding sorry at all. “How should I know? If he’s expecting her like she says, he won’t be far now, will he? And in the meantime, the lady can wait for him downstairs.”

Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what was “downstairs,” but she also didn’t want to leave without seeing Malloy since she had no illusions he would ever come to her, no matter how much information she promised him.

“I’ll be happy to wait, Officer O’Brien,” she assured him.

For a long moment, O’Brien seemed torn between doing his duty and obeying some higher instinct, but in the end, duty won. Or perhaps the Sergeant won. He certainly looked intimidating. Sarah wouldn’t want him angry with her, or at least no angrier than he already was.

“Come with me, then,” Officer O’Brien said, not letting himself look at Sarah again. Sarah knew she was probably making a terrible mistake by going with him, but she’d already come this far. Her chances of getting Malloy to her place were probably nil, she reminded herself, unless she killed someone herself, so this was her only option.

Determined not to show any hesitation, she followed Officer O’Brien down the long, dingy hallway. The walls were painted dark green beneath layers of dirt, and even though the sun shone brightly outside the many windows, the exterior awnings kept the interior dim.

O‘Brien led her down some rickety stairs that were littered with decades of dirt and refuse. Holding the rail, Sarah was glad she’d kept her gloves on. As they reached the basement, new and fouler odors assailed her, the origins of which she didn’t want to know. She was beginning to understand why O’Brien hadn’t wanted to bring her down here.

Through another hall, this one dirtier than the one upstairs, past several doors. Sarah thought she heard the sound of moaning coming from behind one, but she didn’t let herself think about it. Finally, they reached a door that Officer O’Brien opened and indicated she should enter. Unfurnished except for a small table and several wooden chairs, the brick-walled room was illuminated by a single gas jet that cast strange shadows into the corners. Although the sergeant had called this a “waiting room,” Sarah was pretty sure it wasn’t typically used for waiting.