Victoria Thompson: Murder On Astor Place

While she walked, she replayed the events of the other night and recalled the girl she’d called “Mina.” Sarah knew exactly who she’d been thinking of. Mina VanDamm had been a classmate of hers at the exclusive private girls’ school she’d attended. They’d also traveled in the same social circles, something that Sarah had once considered important, but which she now knew mattered not a wit. Perhaps Mina VanDamm had looked like that girl back when they were sixteen, but she certainly didn’t look like that any longer. Mina was Sarah’s age, over thirty now, and probably a plump matron with a houseful of children of her own.

As this girl would be, before long. Because Sarah knew something else about her, too. Something she hadn’t realized until this moment. She was still mulling over her realization when she rounded the comer and saw the crowd gathered in front of the Higgins’s boardinghouse. Several women, still in their plain housedresses beneath their heavy shawls, were huddled together on the sidewalk, which meant an emergency had called them out. Otherwise, they would have changed into their street clothes.

The women talked quietly while children ran around, playing games and rolling hoops, oblivious to whatever unfortunate event had brought their mothers together. Sarah thought of Mrs. Higgins and her new baby inside the house. If there was trouble, why hadn’t they sent for her?

She hurried up to the nearest woman, Bertha Peabody. Sarah had delivered her of the fat baby now perched on her hip and contentedly sucking on his middle two fingers.

“What’s happened?” she asked Bertha.

“There’s been a murder,” Bertha said, her shock obvious.

“Mrs. Higgins?” Sarah gasped in horror.

“Oh, no,” Bertha hastily assured her. “One of her lodgers. A young girl. Hadn’t been there long, only a few weeks, and this morning she turns up dead. One of the children found her when she didn’t come down for breakfast.”

“A girl with blonde hair?” Sarah didn’t want to believe it.

“Yes, that’s her.”

“Terrible thing, just terrible,” another woman declared, and the others murmured their assent.

Sarah couldn’t have agreed more. People died every day in the city, often by violent means, but hardly ever did someone in this neighborhood die by another’s hand, and certainly not someone as young and innocent as this girl had been. And if Sarah was upset, imagine how Mrs. Higgins must be affected. “I’ve got to check on Mrs. Higgins. All this trouble can’t be good for her or the baby.”

“They ain’t letting anybody inside,” Bertha warned her, but Sarah was already climbing the front steps to where a portly police officer stood guard at the door.

CAN WE TAKE her out now?” the fellow from the medical examiner’s office wanted to know.

Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy took one last look at the crumpled body of the girl and nodded wearily. This wasn’t the way he had planned on spending his morning, not today or any other day. Finding out who murdered this slip of a girl wasn’t going to accomplish anything, and it certainly wouldn’t help advance Frank Malloy in the world one little bit.

He’d seen hundreds of girls just like this, new in town, trying in vain to find honest work that would support them until their money ran out and then being forced onto the streets-or into a bawdy house if they were lucky. This one would’ve been lucky. She was pretty enough to go into one of the better houses on Fifth Avenue. She might even have caught the eye of some rich man looking for a mistress, someone who would’ve set her up in style. Maybe she would’ve been smart and saved her money and eventually opened a house of her own. That was the mark of success for a woman of pleasure, although few whores ever achieved it. Most of them ended up dead in a gutter somewhere, the victim of disease or a dissatisfied customer.

Instead, this one had ended up dead on a boardinghouse floor. And a respectable boardinghouse, too, not one simply calling itself that but functioning as a brothel in reality. And this girl never would’ve become the successful whore of Frank’s fantasy. She wasn’t smart enough. He knew because she’d apparently just begun to engage in the flesh trade and no sooner had she started than she’d chosen the wrong man and gotten herself killed.

It was a pity, a pretty girl like that, but Frank couldn’t afford the luxury of pity. He had a job to do. And responsibilities. He needed to make Captain, and he was carefully saving his money to bribe his way up to that exalted position-the only method of advancement that had ever been possible in the New York City police force until the recent wave of reform had swept the city. Of course, Frank figured the wave would pass, just like every other attempt to change the system that had been in place for centuries. He’d continued to save in the meantime so he’d be ready when the reformers gave up and went back to their gentlemen’s clubs. No one was going to give him a little extra under the table for solving this girl’s murder, though, and solving it would take up valuable time that could better be spent serving people who were willing to show their appreciation in a practical manner.

“There’s a lady on the stoop trying to get in. Says she has to see Mrs. Higgins,” the officer he’d left guarding the front door reported as Frank made his way down the stairs into the front hall. This wasn’t unusual. There was always at least one old biddy in the neighborhood who felt compelled to get some firsthand knowledge when a crime had been committed.

“Who is she?”

“A Mrs. Brandt.”

“Does she know anything about the dead girl?”

“I didn’t ask her.”

Frank sighed. He’d reached the bottom of the steps. “Let her in. I’ll talk to her in the parlor.” The old biddies also usually knew all the gossip. Whatever he could learn might help get this case over with sooner.

The officer nodded and opened the front door. Frank was surprised at the woman who entered. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but certainly not this. Mrs. Brandt was a handsome woman whose fine figure was encased in clothes that, while a little shabby, had once been expensive and well-made, and she was carrying what looked like a black medical bag. She was also much younger than the type of harridan who usually insisted on being admitted to a crime scene, much too young at least to have acquired the kind of brass it took to challenge the police. And most certainly too young to be quite as sure of herself as she appeared to be. Her amazing blue-gray eyes met his with the kind of defiance that set Frank’s teeth on edge. This was the last thing he needed. She was probably one of those suffragettes, intent on making every man’s life miserable just on general principles.

“This here’s Detective Sergeant Malloy,” the officer was saying. “He wants to talk to you.”

“I’m Sarah Brandt,” she told Frank without being asked.“I’m the midwife who delivered Mrs. Higgins’s baby yesterday, and I need to make sure she’s all right.”

Midwife? No one had told him about this. Higgins had simply explained that his wife was indisposed and hadn’t seen or heard a thing, so Frank hadn’t bothered to question her yet. But she wasn’t really ill; she’d just had a baby. A baby this Sarah Brandt had delivered. The knowledge tore at the old wound in his soul, bringing a pain he couldn’t allow himself to feel while at the same time sparking a rage he didn’t dare express. From habit, however, he managed to keep his reaction to himself.

At least he’d be prepared when he had to meet Mrs. Higgins. Or as prepared as he could be.

He forced himself not to sigh. “Step into the parlor for a minute, Mrs. Brandt. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”