Victoria Thompson: Murder On Mulberry Bend

“How are you this morning?” he asked, pulling off his bowler hat as he stepped into the foyer.

“A little bruised, but nothing that won’t heal,” she said with a rueful smile. She led him into the parlor and offered him a seat.

He chose one of the sturdier-looking chairs. She picked the rocker, as if she needed comfort.

“I’m sorry about Dennis,” he said and watched her smile vanish.

“How did you know?”

“I checked with the hospital.”

“She must have somehow managed to get the pin into his heart,” she explained. Talking about it obviously pained her. “It had to have been an accident. I don’t think she had time to plan it, and even if she did, the chances that she could pierce his clothing and slip the pin in between his ribs are very small. To hit his heart after all of that – well, as I said, it had to have been an accident.”

“She might be the first woman to meet up with Old Sparky,” he said. “Nobody cared about the poor girls she killed, but she won’t get away with murdering Dennis and his wife.”

“That’s not much comfort,” she said. “Her execution won’t bring them back.”

“At least it’ll keep her from doing it again. The old priest was right – there were other girls before Emilia. God only knows how long she’s been sending girls to heaven.”

“How on earth did she decide that was her job?” she asked, outraged.

“I spent a lot of time with her last night. Seems like she decided when her husband was sick. She had a little girl who died years ago, and she kept telling herself the girl was better off in heaven. She nursed her husband for a long time, and then she started thinking he’d be better off in heaven, too.”

“She killed her husband?” Sarah asked, her blue eyes wide with horror.

“Yeah. She thought she did him a favor, too.”

“Did she kill him the same way she killed the girls?”

“Yeah, she said she’d learned it from her father, from killing animals.”

“Oh, yes,” Sarah remembered. “She said her father was a butcher.” Why hadn’t she realized the connection then?

“After she killed her husband,” Malloy continued, “she started killing girls. She chose the ones she thought might go back to their evil ways if she didn’t stop them.”

“Emilia had already left the mission once and returned to her lover,” she reminded him. “That’s probably why she was killed.”

“And she wanted to kill you because you weren’t going to stop until you found out who murdered Emilia. She couldn’t take the chance that you’d figure out she did it. She picked the church as an insult to the priest there because he’d been so critical of her mission.”

Just saying the words made Frank’s blood run cold, and she shuddered, too.

“I’m so tired of death,” she said, and a tear rolled down her cheek. The sight of it burned his soul like acid.

Frank thought of Tom Brandt and what he now knew about the good doctor’s murder. Once he’d hoped to solve that mystery and give her peace and a touch of justice. That hope was gone. Telling her the truth would shatter the world she had built for herself, and he could never do that to her. His effort to repay her for all she’d done for his son had ended in ruin.

“What’s going to happen to this place?” he asked to change the subject.

“Some of the women who’ve been supporting the mission are going to hire someone to run it. They think the work is too important to give up on it.”

Frank nodded, figuring they had to do at least as well as Mrs. Wells had done.

“Malloy, I wanted to tell you,” she said a little tentatively. “I told Richard’s family that he died saving my life and Aggie’s. I know you didn’t think much of him,” she added hastily, “but he was a good man.”

And he’d certainly cared very deeply for Sarah, Frank knew. He’d been as desperate as Frank to save her from that madwoman. Frank shouldn’t be surprised that she’d cared for Dennis in return. He had been everything Frank was not and would never be – a man who could earn Sarah’s love. “Yes,” he agreed, “he was a good man.”

She seemed relieved, perhaps even glad. He couldn’t tell.

“I need to get back to work,” he said, rising from his chair. If he didn’t leave, he might say something that would embarrass them both.

“Thank you for coming. I needed to talk about what happened,” she said.

When he turned to take his leave, he saw an expression on her face that he’d never seen before. Probably, she was thinking of Dennis.

“Will I see you soon?” she asked.

“Sure,” he lied. He knew he couldn’t ever see her again. He loved her too much, and knowing him was far too dangerous. Each time they met, she almost died, which meant she was only safe without him. It would take a miracle to bring them together again.

Or a murder.

As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, I’ve long been aware of the prejudice the Italians endured when they began coming to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I was fascinated to learn, however, that the Irish, who had been the most recent group of immigrants to endure persecution, were among those persecuting the Italians. Everyone, it seems, must have someone over whom to feel superior. In that respect, human beings haven’t changed a bit in the last hundred years.

I’d like to thank my writer friends who helped me come up with the unique method of killing the victims in this book. In the nineteenth century, an Austrian empress actually was killed the same way Richard Dennis was, although the weapon was a thin-bladed knife and not a hat pin. Then I happened to see a display of antique hat pins while I was plotting this story, and I knew I’d found the murder weapon. Finally, thanks to Dr. Jim Hughes for explaining what would happen to someone when a hat pin was inserted into the base of her brain.

I hope you enjoyed this book. If you missed the earlier books in the Gaslight series, they are Murder on Astor Place, Murder on St. Mark’s Place, Murder on Gramercy Park, and Murder on Washington Square.

If you send me an e-mail, I will send you a reminder when the next book in the series, Murder on Marble Row, comes out next year. You can contact me through my web page at www.victoriathompson.net.