Victoria Thompson - Murder On Astor Place

“No, but I’m sure the family can give you a description. They may even have paste copies of the pieces. People sometimes have their jewelry copied so they can wear the fakes and keep the real ones safely locked up. If you find out who pawned her jewelry, you’ll probably find her killer.”

“Unless…” Frank muttered, thinking aloud.

“Unless what?”

Frank didn’t particularly want to share his thoughts with her, but he was too tired to get into an argument about it. “Unless she sold them herself. To get money to live on. Would she have had any money of her own otherwise?”

“I can’t know for sure, of course, but she probably wouldn’t have. Mina didn’t think so, and in fact, she thought Alicia had probably taken the jewelry to sell since she had no other source of money. Girls of that class don’t usually need access to money. Their families provide everything for them.”

“Even when they go shopping?”

“The family would have accounts at all the stores. And if she ever did need to buy something, she’d have a servant along to handle the transaction. It’s considered vulgar for a female to carry cash.”

The more Frank learned about the upper classes, the less he liked them, and he hadn’t liked them very much to begin with. “Which means her sister was right, she probably took the jewelry to sell, so it was probably long gone by the time she was killed.”

“Except that I also can’t imagine Alicia would have known where to sell the jewelry herself or how to go about it even if she did. Girls of her class don’t go to pawnshops, Mr. Malloy. If she did sell the jewelry, someone would have had to help her.”

“I’ll check it out,” he said, “in case she hadn’t sold all the pieces yet. If her killer did steal something, at least that would give us a reason why she was killed.”

“I think I may know who her killer was, too, Detective.”

Frank seriously doubted this, but he could use a good laugh. “And who was it?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

She bristled a little at his tone, but she said, “Hamilton Fisher. He was a lodger at the Higgins’s house, too, and-”

“And he disappeared the night she was killed,” he finished for her. Did she really think he wouldn’t know this most basic piece of information? Now Frank was bristling, too.

“Did you know that he’d been paying her particular attention?” she asked.

“A natural enough thing. She was a pretty girl.”

“And did you know he didn’t have a job? Yet he’d paid his rent a month in advance, and he moved in just a few days before she died. And he started paying Alicia marked attentions from the moment he-”

“So?” Frank’s patience was wearing dangerously thin.

“So, he was probably a cadet,” she said as blandly as if she’d just accused the fellow of being a Methodist.

“A cadet ?” Frank didn’t know what was more shocking, that he hadn’t thought of it himself or that Sarah Brandt even knew what a cadet was. “What makes you think so?”

“Didn’t I already explain that?” she shot back.

Actually, she had. A “cadet” was a young man who used his charms to seduce naive or desperate young women into prostitution. The laws of supply and demand required a constant supply of fresh, young females to satisfy the enormous demand of a profession that used them up at an alarming rate. Young men supplemented their meager incomes by working as cadets and helping the pimps fill their need for replacements in the brothels and on the streets.

A girl as lovely and alone as Alicia VanDamm would have seemed a logical target. Maybe Fisher had grown frustrated with his failure to attract her attentions and gone to her room and been a little more forceful than he’d intended in trying to recruit her.

Not wanting to admit he’d missed all the clues, Frank said, “We’re already looking for Mr. Fisher.”

She didn’t seem cheered by that information. Maybe she guessed that Frank hadn’t exactly made Hamilton Fisher a priority in this investigation. “Perhaps now you’ll be looking for him in some different places.”

He probably would, but he didn’t want to admit it to Mrs. Brandt. “Do you think the VanDamms will offer a reward for the missing jewelry?”

“Mina seemed very anxious to get it back. Is it absolutely necessary to have a reward, though?”

Oh, yes, Frank wanted to say, but instead he said, “Without it, I doubt we’ll see the jewelry again. If it was pawned, the pawnbroker will want his investment back. Even though it’s illegal to buy stolen goods, I won’t be able to prove he did unless he tells me. Since he’s not likely to do that, I can’t arrest him for it.”

“So if he’s not afraid of being arrested, your only leverage is to bribe him,” she guessed. She didn’t approve, but Frank couldn’t help that. That’s the way the world worked. Sarah Brandt could reform it on someone else’s time.

“I do what I have to do.” He only hoped she didn’t know that the customary arrangement was for the pawnbroker to split the reward with the police, too. Which, of course, gave the police an incentive for finding missing property in the first place. In fact, some thieves didn’t bother with fences at all. They just held onto the stolen goods until the reward was offered, then turned it in and split the proceeds with the cops. Easy work, but a little too uncertain for Frank’s taste.

“Has Mr. VanDamm offered a reward for the murderer?” she asked.

“I haven’t actually approached him about it yet,” Frank admitted. He didn’t like to rush into something so delicate. If you asked too soon, people thought you were unfeeling, and the VanDamms seemed like just the kind of folks who could get offended.

“I suggested he offer one,” she said, thoroughly shocking him. “I saw him when I called on Mina, and I tried to explain to him why it’s necessary. You won’t find her killer without one, will you?”

Frank didn’t think the answer to that question would do him credit, so he ignored it. “A man like that, with plenty of money, I guess he’ll do whatever it takes to catch the killer.”

To Frank’s surprise, she frowned as if she didn’t agree.

“You don’t think so?”

“He didn’t say anything, one way or the other, when I mentioned it to him,” she admitted, “and I didn’t want to press him. He was still very upset.”

“How could you tell?” Frank asked, honestly wanting to know.

She shrugged one shoulder, a distinctively feminine gesture that Frank found far more appealing than he should have. “He’s very reserved by nature. Most men are, I think, but men in his position must be even more so. Cornelius VanDamm probably wouldn’t shout if his house was on fire, but when I saw him the other day, he looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping at all, and his eyes were… well, they were haunted. There’s no other word for it.”

“Then he’ll pay whatever it takes to find the man responsible.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Why?” Frank challenged, not liking her theories at all. “You can’t think he doesn’t want the killer found.”

To his surprise, she didn’t protest. “It’s not that so much as… He might be afraid of the scandal.”

“How much more scandal could there be? His kid was murdered.”

“Does anyone know that? Anyone except you and I and the police, I mean? I haven’t seen anything about it in the papers, have you?”

Frank really hadn’t had time to look. “So?”

“So he’s been able to keep the circumstances of her death a secret. He probably has a story he’s been telling to explain her death, a tragic accident perhaps, since the truth would be too awful to admit. The funeral will be private and no one will ever know the truth… unless the killer is caught.”