Murder On Waverly Place

The kitchen door opened again and this time O’Toole stuck his head in. “What’s going on here?”

“Officer Donatelli caught this fellow trying to sneak out the back door,” Frank reported.

“Sneak out?” O’Toole asked. “That’s impossible. We searched the whole house when we got here, and he wasn’t in it. He must’ve been sneaking in.”

Frank looked questioningly at Donatelli.

“He was definitely inside when I got here. I caught him just as he slipped out the back door,” the officer insisted.

Frank turned back to the young man. “Which is it? Were you inside or out?”

The fellow’s dark eyes darted to O’Toole and back to Frank again. He’d chosen Frank as the more dangerous adversary. “I was inside. Hiding,” he added when O’Toole started to protest.

Before Frank could reply, they could hear shouting coming from the front of the house. The young man Frank had left in the parlor was starting to demand his right to leave the premises. He was likely to get away if Frank didn’t tend to him immediately.

“O’Toole, would you look after this fellow for me while I take care of that loud gentleman?” He passed the young man to O’Toole, who dragged him out as he demanded to know where he had been hiding himself. Frank turned to Donatelli, who asked, “What’s going on here?”

Frank told him as briefly as he could.

“Talking to spirits?” Donatelli asked in amazement.

“That’s not the worst of it. Mrs. Brandt’s mother is here.”

“Mrs. Brandt?” Donatelli worshipped Sarah Brandt.

“That’s right. She’s a rich society lady, and we don’t want her name to get in the newspapers. She told the cops who got here first that she’s Sarah Brandt, so I want you to go get Mrs. Brandt and bring her here so she can take her mother home. Can you do that?”

“What if she’s off delivering a baby or something?”

“Then find her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Donatelli was gone in an instant, and Frank turned his attention back to his suspects. The well-dressed young man was still shouting when Frank found him in the parlor. He had the grace to stop when he saw Frank glaring at him.

“I… I demand to be released,” he tried.

“Just as soon as you’ve answered some questions. Come with me.” As he waited for the young man to join him, Frank glanced at the two remaining occupants of the parlor. Madame Serafina was beginning to look a little less composed than she had before, and the Professor was positively ashen. He was standing by the door, as if on guard, although there were two patrolmen standing right outside in the hallway. “You, sit down someplace,” Frank told him, and then he pointed the young man to the dining room.

When they were seated with the door safely shut, Frank asked him his name.

“Albert Cunningham,” he said, less sure of himself now that he was alone with Frank. He was younger than Frank had initially guessed, maybe not even twenty-one or -two, but just as neatly groomed and well dressed as Sharpe. He might be considered handsome in a few more years, when life had etched some character into his well- formed face. Now he was merely young. He gave an address not quite as fine as the other seance attendees boasted, but still in a very good neighborhood of the city.

“What were you doing here today, Mr. Cunningham?” Frank asked without expression.

Cunningham was instantly suspicious or perhaps just a bit guilty. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I asked. What were you doing here? The others said they were trying to contact some dead relatives.”

“I… I wanted to speak with my late father,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Did you?”

“Well, no, not today.”

“Have you spoken to him before?” Frank asked curiously.

“Yes, a number of times,” he reported somewhat defensively.

“So you’ve been here many times in the past?”

“I… I suppose you could say that.”

“And you knew Mrs. Gittings very well?”

“No, not well… at least, not very well. I… she’s always here, of course, but we don’t… I can’t say we’re exactly acquainted.”

Frank nodded. This was what he’d been expecting. Nobody, it seemed, knew the mysterious Mrs. Gittings. “Tell me what happened today.”

Cunningham ran a hand nervously over his well-oiled hair. “Well, let’s see, we were all in the seance room…”

“Sitting around the table, trying to contact the spirits,” Frank supplied. “Who were you holding hands with?”

“We don’t hold hands-”

“I know, you hold wrists,” Frank corrected himself, annoyed. “Whose wrist were you holding?”

“I was holding Madame’s wrist, and Mrs. Decker was holding mine.”

Frank frowned. “Don’t you mean Mrs. Brandt?”

“Who?” Cunningham asked in genuine confusion.

“Mrs. Brandt,” Frank repeated. “The lady who was holding your wrist.”

Cunningham finally remembered. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Brandt,” he hastily confirmed.

“Don’t forget again,” Frank warned him and was gratified to see Cunningham swallow nervously. He quickly got back to the subject at hand. “What was happening just before Mrs. Burke screamed?”

This time Cunningham passed a hand over his mouth, then twisted his soft, young hands in his lap. “We were… Yellow Feather was trying to contact the spirits for us. He had quite a crowd of them, which is very unusual. Sometimes he can’t get even one! But today… Well, he was getting messages from all of them, and he couldn’t make out what they were trying to tell him.”

“There was a lot of noise?”

“Oh, yes, we were all shouting out questions, in case someone had a message for one of us.”

“I thought Mrs. Decker was the one asking questions.”

He didn’t notice that Frank had used her real name. “She was, but when Yellow Feather said so many spirits were there, we… I’m afraid we weren’t very polite. We all started shouting at once.”

“What else did you hear?”

“Hear? I… I don’t know. Oftentimes we hear noises, but I’m not sure if I heard anything like that today. It was so confusing.”

“Did you hear Mrs. Gittings asking questions?”

His smooth brow furrowed at that as he tried to recall. “I can’t say if she did or not. Like I said, we were all-”

“Being rude, yes, I know,” Frank said. “When did you realize something was wrong?”

“When Mrs. Burke screamed, of course. That’s when we all realized something was wrong.”

“What did you do when she screamed?”

“I… I jumped up, I know.”

“Did you let go of Madame’s hand?”

“I suppose I did. I don’t remember, but I must have.”

“Did you open the door?”

“No, Madame opened it. She was calling for the Professor to bring smelling salts.”

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing, I… I looked over, across the table, to see what was wrong with Mrs. Gittings. Mrs. Burke was screaming that she’d fainted.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw…” His face suddenly went white as he recalled what he had seen.

Frank jumped up and forced Cunningham’s head down between his knees. “Take a deep breath, that’s right,