Victoria Thompson: Murder On Astor Place

The door to the girl’s bedroom stood open, and Sarah stopped in the opening, looking around. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet here, as if the girl’s death had muffled even the ordinary sounds of the city. The room was oddly neat for being the scene of a murder, too. Somehow Sarah had pictured overturned furniture and smashed and broken crockery. But nothing here had been disturbed at all except the plain, iron bed. The coverlet was rumpled, as if someone had laid down on it, and what appeared to be a red shawl lay casually discarded at the foot of it. Other than the bed, there was little else in the room to disturb. A stuffed chair, a dresser and a cabinet for clothes. It looked, in fact, hardly more inhabited than the unoccupied room downstairs where Sarah had delivered Mrs. Higgins’s baby the morning before.

“Go on in,” Malloy said.

Sarah bit back a sharp retort. Good breeding forbade her from speaking rudely to anyone, but good sense played a part in her self-control as well. He might not have been bluffing about taking her down to the station house. She entered the room.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. Could there be an uncovered chamber pot in here? But then she remembered that sudden death loosened control over bodily functions, adding one final humiliation to the process. She thought of the girl she had seen, dying in her own excrement, and she shuddered.

“You all right?” Malloy asked.

Sarah bristled at his feigned concern. “How did she die?” she asked, looking around reluctantly for any evidence of foul play. Mercifully, she saw no blood.

“Strangled.”

“Was it someone who broke into the house?”

“No sign of a break-in.”

The top drawer of the dresser was half-opened, as if someone had already been rummaging through it. Probably Malloy. Unable to bring herself to rummage, Sarah went over and examined the articles that were readily visible. At first she couldn’t believe her eyes, and without meaning to, she reached down and fingered the topmost garment. She hadn’t been mistaken, she realized as she rubbed the fabric between her thumb and fingers and noted the fine hand-stitching. Silk. For an instant, she pictured the cloth lying against the girl’s flawless skin and snatched her hand away.

“She’s dead,” Malloy reminded her crudely. “You can’t offend her.”

Sarah gave him what she hoped was a quelling glare. He was the kind of man her mother would have called common. A man who lacked education and refinement. Even his body seemed designed for manual labor with its broad chest and powerful shoulders. She thought of her father and the other men she’d known in her old life, slightly built men whose power came from wealth and knowledge. They were dangerous, able to crush anyone who stood in their way, but Detective Malloy was dangerous, too, in a very different way. Sarah would do well to remember that.

She glanced back at the dresser. Nothing on it but a brush, a comb and some stray hairpins. Except that the brush, when Sarah turned it over, had a silver back, and the comb was tortoiseshell.

Something was very wrong here. Very wrong indeed. Forgetting Detective Malloy, who still watched her from the bedroom doorway, Sarah pushed the top drawer shut and opened the next one. It was empty.

“All the others are empty, too,” Malloy said.

Sarah didn’t even acknowledge him. She was too busy trying to make sense of something. She went to the clothespress and pulled the doors open. Only a few garments hung inside. “Was she in her nightclothes when she died?” Sarah asked.

“No. She was still completely dressed. Even had her shoes on.”

Only two spare shirtwaists and a jacket in the clothespress, and just enough underclothes to fill one drawer. Those details told her something, although she wasn’t yet sure what. The waists were simply made, but Sarah instantly recognized the work of a skilled seamstress in the delicate tucks across the bodice of one. She reached for the jacket, trying not to think of the girl who had so recently worn it. Sarah could still catch what must have been the girl’s scent in the folds of the finely woven wool, and for a moment her head swam. She fought off the momentary weakness and examined the jacket. Mother-of-pearl buttons and intricate braiding down the front. She turned the garment in her hands, knowing what she would find or at least what she should find, unless the girl had been clever enough to remove it. But she hadn’t, and there it was, embroidered into the lining by the seamstress who had custom made it, the name of the person for whom it had been designed.

Alicia VanDamm.

With a cry, she dropped the jacket as if it had burned her.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Malloy demanded, crossing the room with long strides.

Sarah hardly heard him. She was too lost in memories, visions of a tiny girl with long, golden curls and enormous blue eyes. A girl of delicate beauty who always seemed much older than her years and who hardly ever smiled. Mina’s baby sister.

“Sit down,” Malloy was saying, and he put his big, workman’s hands on her and forced her down into the chair. “Don’t go fainting on me now. Put your head down.”

Before she could stop him, he’d forced her head down almost to her knees.

“Let go of me!” she cried with as much dignity as she could muster with her face practically in her lap. She had to twist her head from side to side to dislodge his grip, losing her hat in the process, but finally he released her.

Sputtering in outrage, she sat upright and glared at him again. If she’d been a man, she would’ve punched him, policeman or not. As if guessing her thoughts, he backed up a step and put up his hands as if to ward her off. Or maybe he was just letting her know he was finished manhandling her.

“Good, you’ve got your color back,” he said. “For a minute there, I thought you was gonna go all vaporish on me.”

“I don’t get the vapors, Detective,” she informed him.

“If you say so,” he replied, unconvinced. He picked up the jacket from where she’d dropped it. “What did you see on this?”

Sarah swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “Inside, in the lining.”

He turned the jacket and found the embroidery. “This her name?”

Sarah nodded.

“You know her? Is that why…? But you said you didn’t know her,” he recalled.

“I said I thought she looked like an old friend. The old friend is Mina VanDamm. Alicia is her baby sister. Or was.”

“Unless the girl stole the jacket.”

Sarah only wished that were true. She shook her head. “No, I’m sure it was she. I haven’t seen her since she was a child, but she looks… looked,” she corrected herself, “too much like Mina for there to be any mistake.”

“What would she have been doing here all by herself, then?” he asked, staring at the jacket as if it would give him the answer. “Did the father die? The family break up? Lose all their money?”

“Not that I know of.” Indeed, she was certain Cornelius VanDamm was very much alive and well and still a millionaire. Suddenly, Sarah had to get out of that room. She rose to her feet. Where was her hat?

She saw where it had rolled over beside the bed. She went for it in the same instant Detective Sergeant Malloy guessed her purpose and went for it as well. He beat her there, and in his haste, brushed against the shawl that lay at the foot of the bed. It slid to the floor and something metal tumbled from its folds, clanging to the uncarpeted floor between them.

“What’s this?” he asked of no one in particular. Since he still held the jacket in one hand and had picked up her hat with the other, he shoved the hat at her and bent to pick up the long, slender object. When he rose, he held it up to examine it.