Victoria Thompson: Murder on St. Mark’s place

Sarah knew this was true, so she had few words of comfort to offer. “At least Gerda has you to mourn her,” she offered.

“She was not a bad girl,” Agnes insisted, trying to make Sarah understand. “She only wanted to be free. That is what she says, all the time. She wants to be free, with no one telling her what to do. That is why she left Germany. She did not want our father telling her what to do and what man to marry. She wanted to make a new life for herself here in America where she could decide for herself what she did.”

The same way Sarah had left her own father’s house and married the man of her own choice instead of her father’s. When Tom had died, again Sarah had decided to make her own way instead of moving back to her father’s house. She’d wanted to be free, just like Gerda. She’d found a way to make her own living and her own life, just the way Gerda had tried to do. She’d simply been more successful at it than the dead girl had, because Gerda had met a man who had stolen her choices from her. There but for the grace of God go I, Sarah couldn’t help thinking.

“The police, they will not care who killed my Gerda, will they?” Agnes asked.

Sarah could have lied to escape an awkward moment, to make Agnes feel better even though she knew the lie would do more harm than good. But because she did know, she told the truth. “The police might investigate if you could offer them a reward for finding Gerda’s killer.”

Agnes shook her head, tears running down her face. “We have no money for a reward.”

Of course they didn’t. And justice in New York City was only for the rich. Unless…

“I have a friend,” Sarah heard herself saying. A small lie. She and Frank Malloy weren’t exactly friends. “He’s a police detective. I could ask him to help. He might be able to do something.”

Agnes clasped Sarah’s hand in both of hers. “Please!” she begged. “It is all we can do for Gerda now.”

SOMEONE in THE building was cooking cabbage for supper. Or maybe everyone was. With cabbage, it was hard to tell. The thin walls were also little barrier to the sounds of life within the flats she passed as she climbed the stairs to the second floor. A baby was crying in one, a mother screamed at her child in another. Pots clanged against each other as women prepared the evening meal, and the smells of cooking combined with the smells of rotting garbage from the streets to form a miasma of decay that seemed to hang over the entire city.

Sarah remembered the door. She remembered the last and only time she’d come here, just after she and Malloy had solved the murder of a young girl Sarah had known all her life. She’d left on good terms with Malloy that day, but certainly, he’d never expected to see her again. Just as she’d never expected to see him either. Not that she was going to see him now, of course. She’d been fairly certain he wouldn’t be at home in the middle of the day. No, she just wanted to get word to him, and going to his home seemed much more sensible than going to police headquarters. The last time she’d sought him out at the Mulberry Street station, she’d found herself locked in an interrogation room!

Besides, she had another, very good reason for coming to his home: his son, Brian.

She raised her gloved hand and knocked more loudly than she’d intended to. From the other side of the door, she could hear the sound of grumbling, and then the door opened. The woman on the other side was small and sturdily built, her iron-gray hair pulled fiercely back into a bun. She looked ready for anything, but she was not ready to see Sarah Brandt. Her wrinkled face grew slack with surprise for an instant before it hardened into anger.

“He ain’t here, and he ain’t expected,” Mrs. Malloy said, turning up her nose. Or maybe she was just looking up. Sarah was much taller.

Sarah feigned surprise. “Brian isn’t here? Where is he, then?”

Now Mrs. Malloy was surprised again. And confused. “Brian? What would you be wanting with the boy?”

“I brought him a present,” Sarah informed her with a smile as genuine as she could make it, knowing full well that Frank Malloy’s mother would rather push her down the stairs than allow her inside their apartment. “Oh, here he comes!” Indeed, Brian was crawling over to where his grandmother was trying to block the door with her black-clad body.

His beautiful face was alive with happiness at having a visitor. Surely, he didn’t remember Sarah. He’d seen her only once, for a few minutes, and that had been over two months ago. And he was feebleminded, as his grandmother had explained to Sarah with perverse satisfaction on her first visit, in addition to being crippled by a clubfoot. But Brian’s life would be very uneventful, and the arrival of anyone at all would be a cause for joy.

Mrs. Malloy instinctively turned to see what Brian was doing, and Sarah took shameless advantage of her momentary distraction to slip past her guard and into the flat.

“Hello, Brian,” Sarah said, leaning over to greet him. She ignored Mrs. Malloy’s gasp of outrage. “Look what I’ve brought for you.” She reached into her satchel and pulled out a small wooden horse and rider. The horse had been fitted with a miniature leather saddle and bridle, and the rider was done up in someone’s idea of what a western cowboy would wear. It was designed to delight any little boy, and Brian was no exception.

“He don’t need no toys from the likes of you,” Mrs. Malloy tried, but Brian was already snatching the horse from Sarah’s hand, his luminous green eyes huge with wonder. He sat back on his haunches and began to examine his prize.

“It won’t make no difference,” Mrs. Malloy told her fiercely. “You can bring the boy a cartload of toys, and it won’t make no difference to Frances. He don’t have no use for any woman but Brian’s mam, God rest her soul, so don’t go thinking you’ll win him through the boy.”

Sarah was hard-pressed not to laugh out loud at the ridiculous notion that she had designs on Frank Malloy. “I’m not looking for a husband, Mrs. Malloy,” she said instead, even though the old woman plainly didn’t believe her. “But I do need the services of a police detective once again, so I thought I’d stop by and leave word for him. Would you mind telling him I need to speak with him?”

“I’ll do no such thing! I’m not some servant you can order around and-”

She stopped speaking for the same reason Sarah stopped listening to her. They were both distracted by the realization that Brian had, within seconds, figured out how to remove the toy rider from his saddle, unbuckle the saddle and remove it, and then put everything back together again.

“Aren’t you clever, Brian,” Sarah told him, expecting him to beam his glorious smile at her. Instead he didn’t even look up. He had already started working on removing the horse’s delicate bridle.

Perhaps he was simply engrossed in his project, but Sarah didn’t think so.

“That’s a horse, Brian. You probably see them in the street when you look out the window,” she tried.

“That’s right, Bri, don’t pay her no mind,” Mrs. Malloy said, and the boy paid her no mind either. “He won’t talk to you,” she told Sarah with just a trace of satisfaction. “If he won’t talk to me in three years, he ain’t going to talk to you just because you brought him a present.”

Sarah didn’t acknowledge her. She was too busy studying the boy. His tiny hands were nimble as he worked the intricacies of the horse’s tack. He’d needed no more than a moment of study to figure out how to remove and replace it. And yet his grandmother claimed he’d never uttered a word.

“Has he always been mute?” Sarah asked as the tiny seed of an idea sprouted in her mind.