Victoria Thompson - Murder On Astor Place

“Francisca, that’s enough.”

The rebuke was mild, in Frank’s opinion, but it was enough to make her stop and gape at her husband in confusion. He didn’t even spare her a glance. The color was coming back to his face, which meant that he was over whatever shock he’d felt at his daughter’s death.

“Detective,” he said in a perfectly reasonable voice, the one he probably used to seal million-dollar business deals. “As you’ve no doubt guessed, my daughter really isn’t at our country house.” His wife sputtered in protest, but neither man paid her any heed. “Although we sent her there, she ran away a few weeks ago, disappeared completely. Alicia has always been a willful girl-”

“Willful?” his wife echoed incredulously. “Alicia is the most sweet tempered girl alive! Never a harsh word to say to anyone. And obedient! I can’t remember the last time I had to scold her. If anything, she’s too agreeable. I always tell her-”

VanDamm seemed not to even hear her protests, any more than he seemed to feel any emotion. His expression was still controlled, and even his flush had faded again. “How did she…? Who did it?” he finally asked, interrupting his wife’s ramblings.

He was saying all the right things, asking all the right questions, but Frank didn’t like his steely reserve. Is that the way members of the Four Hundred handled tragedy? Frank had precious little experience breaking bad news to them, so he had no way of judging. Still, he knew how ordinary bereaved parents acted. Oddly, Mrs. VanDamm’s behavior was the most normal. Shock invariably produced denial in most people.

“She was strangled,” Frank said. “And we don’t know who did it. Yet,” he added, in case VanDamm was going to make assumptions about him the way Sarah Brandt had. “I was hoping you could help me there. Do you have any idea why your daughter ran away? Did she have a lover-?”

“A lover?” Mrs. VanDamm echoed in outrage. “Alicia most certainly does not have a lover! She isn’t even out yet!”

For a minute, Frank couldn’t think what she might have been out of, but then he realized she meant the girl hadn’t made her debut into society yet.

“Alicia is just sixteen!” Mrs. VanDamm was saying. “She has no suitors. She’s never even been alone with a young man! A lover, indeed! Cornelius, why are you standing there listening to this rubbish?”

“Francisca, go back to your room,” VanDamm said coldly. “I’ll explain everything to you later.”

“I certainly hope so. And I fully intend to complain to your superiors,” she told Frank as she floated and fluttered her way out of the room, murmuring her outrage at Frank’s effrontery.

Frank couldn’t help wishing she really would complain to Commissioner Roosevelt about him. Everyone on the force hated the playboy-turned-reformer who had gotten himself appointed to the Police Commission with an eye toward cleaning up the corruption in the department. A rebuke from Roosevelt would likely propel him to Captain even without paying the requisite bribes as soon as Roosevelt got bored and went back to his old life and things in the department returned to normal.

“I’m afraid I can’t be of any assistance to you, Detective,” VanDamm said when she was gone. The only sign of whatever emotional distress he was experiencing was the way he idly fingered his gold watch chain. “I have no idea why my daughter chose to run away from the safety and comfort of her home and family. And my wife is right, Alicia doesn’t know any young men, certainly no one who could have lured her away.”

He was lying, of course. Parents always lied at first. Either they didn’t want their children to look bad or they didn’t want to look like irresponsible parents. Frank figured a cold fish like VanDamm would be more worried about his own reputation.

And VanDamm hadn’t seemed the least bit surprised that his daughter was living in a rooming house in Greenwich Village. Hadn’t even questioned the identification of the body, as most parents did. As his wife had done. She was sure Frank had made some mistake.

VanDamm didn’t think Frank had made a mistake. He’d known where she was. Certainly he knew her condition, which was why she’d been banished to the country house in the first place, and he might also know with whom she’d run away. He wouldn’t tell Frank, though, at least not today.

Frank was just about to suggest that VanDamm go with him to the morgue to identify the girl’s body when once again the parlor doors opened. This time a younger woman entered. She must have just come in from outside, because she was still wearing her hat. She was large-boned and tall for a female, almost as tall as Frank’s five feet, eight inches, and she was dressed in the most outlandish outfit Frank had ever seen. Probably considered the height of fashion, the bold plaid of her skirt and matching jacket made him dizzy. Or maybe it was the woman herself, who came in with the force of a whirl-wind.

“What’s going on here, Father? Alfred said the police are here!”

VanDamm didn’t seem too happy to see his daughter, although with VanDamm it was a little hard to tell exactly what he was feeling. Frank figured this must be the one Sarah Brandt knew, the one she’d mistaken Alicia for. The one VanDamm obviously thought Frank had come to tell him about. Frank could imagine this one getting into some kind of scrape. She looked like one of those suffragettes, always looking to cause trouble. He tried to see the resemblance Mrs. Brandt had noticed, but if this woman had ever looked like the dead girl, it was a long time ago.

“Mina, I’m afraid Alicia has been murdered.” There it was, bald and brutal, but Mina VanDamm could obviously take it.

“I knew it!” she declared, pulling off her gloves with furious motions. “I knew she’d come to no good. Didn’t I tell you that when she ran away?”

So much for sisterly affection, Frank thought. So much for any normal human reaction at all. The mother, whom Frank had pretty much decided was crazy as a bedbug, was the most regular person in the bunch.

“Do you know why your sister ran away?” Frank asked her, hoping to catch her off guard.

But Mina VanDamm was never off guard. She looked at him as if he was something that had just crawled out from under a rock for having dared to speak to her directly without benefit of a formal introduction.

“Mina, this is Detective…” VanDamm realized he hadn’t bothered to get Frank’s name.

“Detective Sergeant Malloy,” Frank supplied. If he’d hoped to impress them with his title, he failed.

Mina simply stared at him in acknowledgment.

“Mina doesn’t know the reason Alicia ran away either. It’s a mystery to us all,” VanDamm assured him.

“She ran away because she’s an ungrateful little baggage,” Mina said, making her father a liar. “After all Father has done for her, this is the way she repays us. Running away, getting herself murdered and bringing disgrace down on all our heads. How will we ever go out in polite society again?”

“I doubt she got herself murdered just to ruin your social life,” Frank tried, unable to resist. But it was obviously impossible to insult the VanDamms, at least by criticizing their finer feelings. They merely stared back at him blankly. He sighed in defeat. “Mr. VanDamm, I’ll need for you to go down to the morgue and identify the body.”

He frowned at that, but Mina was positively outraged. “How dare you ask my father to go to a place like that? Don’t you know who he is?”

“He’s the father of a murdered girl,” Frank said. “We need positive identification of the victim. You wouldn’t want to bury some stranger, would you?”