Victoria Thompson - Murder On Astor Place

Sarah was most happy to wait. Alfred left her sitting on an upholstered bench in the front hallway while he made his way into the nether reaches of the house to find Mina VanDamm and obtain her instructions.

The house was unnaturally still, as if even the clocks had stopped ticking in deference to the family’s grief. Abovestairs, the servants would be speaking in hushed tones, and the family would be closeted in their chambers. Sarah found it difficult to imagine that Mina was spending her time truly mourning her sister, although she would put on a good act for anyone who happened to call, as she had done for Sarah the other day. Mrs. VanDamm would undoubtedly be prostrate and probably heavily sedated. Her doctor wouldn’t need much convincing to prescribe an opiate to calm her, and many women of her class took them freely on far less provocation than the loss of a child. Finally, Sarah considered Mr. VanDamm. He’d looked haggard when she was here before, and she could easily imagine him mourning Alicia. Not, perhaps, with the obvious emotion his wife would display, but in his own way. The way her father had mourned Maggie, knowing his actions had caused her to die in such a horrible manner while still believing he had been right in those actions. How men like that could live with themselves, Sarah had no idea.

After a long time, Sarah heard Alfred’s shuffling steps returning. He emerged from a door at the end of the hallway, his expression properly somber but his eyes improperly bleak.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Brandt, but Miss Mina is unable to receive visitors today. She said she was certain you’d understand.”

Sarah understood perfectly, but she wasn’t sure exactly why she wasn’t being admitted. Perhaps Mina truly wasn’t feeling up to visitors or perhaps she simply hadn’t bothered to dress and do her hair today so she wasn’t presentable. Or perhaps-and this was the reason Sarah feared most-she had decided Sarah wasn’t worthy of her attentions. If that was the case, then Sarah wouldn’t be able to obtain any more information from the family.

Concealing her disappointment, she thanked Alfred. He was escorting her to the front door when they heard the door to one of the other rooms open, and a gentleman emerged. He was slightly past middle years, wearing a suit that fit so well, it could only have been handcrafted to fit him. His thick hair was silver and painstakingly arranged. He nodded politely at Sarah, although she saw the question in his eyes. He wondered what someone like her was doing here, especially at this time.

“Mr. Mattingly,” Alfred greeted him, and every nerve in Sarah’s body jolted to attention. “I’ll get your hat in just a moment,” he promised, opening the front door to show Sarah out.

Was it possible? Could this be the attorney for whom Hamilton Fisher had worked? And what was his connection to the VanDamm family? Could he have been asked to hire Fisher to find Alicia for them? Although this was a most logical explanation, she couldn’t help remembering Malloy’s skepticism when she’d suggested that very thing. If the VanDamms had hired Mattingly to find Alicia, why hadn’t Fisher simply informed them of her whereabouts when he located her? Why had Fisher moved into the house where she was living and tried to strike up an acquaintance with her instead? But if Mattingly was acquainted with the family, and he was obviously an intimate friend if he’d been admitted when the family was in seclusion, then why would he have sent someone to find Alicia without their knowledge and then not told them?

Alfred made no move to introduce Sarah to Mattingly. A butler would never presume to introduce visitors to each other, and even if he had, an introduction between Sarah and Mattingly would have been in questionable taste, considering their different social classes. Not for the first time, Sarah silently cursed the rigid rules that governed society. In a different time or place, she might have simply introduced herself and made some inquiries of Mr. Mattingly that would give her the information she so desperately sought. Which was probably what Malloy would do if he were here now.

As Alfred ushered her out the door, she bit back a smile at the thought of how she would enjoy the privileges of being a police detective for even one day. Malloy would be interested to know that Mattingly was at least acquainted with the VanDamm family. But what was their relationship? Was he simply a close family friend or was he VanDamm’s attorney? And would even Malloy be able to find out? He wouldn’t know how to question these people or how to win their confidence. They’d see him as an Irish thug-or worse-and might even refuse to talk with him entirely.

Did the police have the power to force someone like Mattingly to answer their questions if he didn’t choose to? Somehow, Sarah doubted it, although she found the thought of the distinguished attorney being slapped around in the filthy interrogation room she’d seen extremely interesting. She thought that perhaps Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy might, too.

Sarah lingered on the sidewalk in front of the VanDamm’s house for a while, walking slowly so Mr. Mattingly might catch up with her when he made his exit. Then she might venture to strike up a conversation with him, if she could think of something sensible to say. But in the next moment a carriage pulled up at the VanDamm’s curb, and Mr. Mattingly went straight down the VanDamm’s front steps and climbed into it.

Too bad his carriage hadn’t been waiting there when she came out. She might have been able to get some information from his driver or his footman. Servants were an invaluable source of information about their employers, as Malloy had learned. But there was an equally reliable source that Sarah had not yet tapped. One from which she had cut herself off years earlier out of anger and bitterness.

When she thought about it now, however, she found her anger and bitterness had faded considerably. Perhaps the time had finally come to reestablish those ties. She had been thinking she should for a while now, but she hadn’t had a reason. Or rather, she hadn’t had an excuse. She’d needed such an excuse to salvage her pride, and now she had the perfect one.

SARAH HADN’T BEEN to the house since Tom’s funeral, and even then it had been strange to her. Although three long years had passed since her last visit, she remembered the way well. It wasn’t far from the VanDamms’s home, just around the comer on Fifty-Seventh Street and a few blocks east, which she walked with determined strides.

The noise from Fifth Avenue faded behind her as she went. There were no tracks or horsecars on Fifty-Seventh Street, nothing to disturb the elegance and serenity of the neighborhood. The house was even more imposing than she had remembered, one of a seemingly endless row of Italianate brownstone town houses that gleamed in the warm sunlight. The neighbors were such luminaries as the Auchinclosses, the Sloanes, the Rogers, and even the Roosevelts.

Malloy would probably make fun of her for even knowing such things.

But as Sarah reached for the perfectly polished brass knocker, she forgot all about Malloy. Anxiety suddenly twisted her stomach, but she refused to acknowledge it. She had nothing to fear, she told herself. She was a grown woman who had her own life, and nothing and no one could change that, certainly nothing and no one in this house, not unless she allowed it herself. And since she had no intention of doing so, she was safe from any attack on her independence.

Besides, she was certain not to encounter the one person she least desired to see here today because he was miles away.

A maid she didn’t know answered her knock, and the girl stared at her in surprise. Sarah didn’t look like the usual visitor to this house.