facts in the case of Alicia VanDamm’s murder. He hadn’t reached any enlightening conclusions, but perhaps the woman for whom he was waiting would be able to help.
Emma Petrovka was a middle-aged woman of substantial girth who made her way laboriously down the street using a silver-headed cane for support. Such canes had come into fashion when Queen Victoria started using one in her old age, but Frank suspected Mrs. Petrovka didn’t use one because it was stylish. More likely, her knees had given out under the strain of supporting her enormous weight, and she needed the extra support.
At first Frank thought her hearing must have gone, too, because she seemed oblivious to the chanting of the hoard of street Arabs who descended upon her. They were the filthy, ragged, barefoot urchins who sold newspapers or shoe shines to earn their daily bread and who slept in culverts and alleys because their own families had turned them out to fend for themselves.
“Baby killer! Baby killer!” they cried.
They had, it seemed, found someone lower than themselves whom they were free to torment. Because in spite of her rich gown, which she held up in the typically feminine “skirt clutch” with her free hand to protect it from the dirt of the street, and her luxurious home, Emma Petrovka was socially no better than these homeless waifs.
But if Frank thought she couldn’t hear the taunts, he was wrong. She was simply ignoring them. As she reached the house, she stopped, patiently opened her purse and withdrew something in her clenched fist. For an instant, Frank thought she meant to harm her tormentors, although what she could have thrown at them to hurt them, he couldn’t imagine. But when she cocked her arm and threw, she released a shower of pennies that clattered musically onto the cobblestones.
In an instant the guttersnipes were scrambling and pushing and shoving, trying to snatch up as many coins as they could before their fellows got to them. Forgotten, Emma Petrovka turned and started up her front steps.
Only then did she notice Frank, who rose to meet her.
“That only encourages them to taunt you again,” he pointed out mildly.
“No, it prevents them from doing even worse,” she said, heaving her weight up first one step and then another. “Who are you and what do you want? I don’t talk to no newspaper reporters, so if that’s who you are-”
“I’m with the police,” Frank said, showing her his badge. “I’m Detective Sergeant Malloy.”
If she was afraid-as well she might have been, since her profession was patently illegal-she gave no indication. Instead she sniffed in derision. “I pay my protection money every month. You ask the captain. He will tell you not to bother me.”
“I’m not here to bother you. I want to ask you some questions. About a girl you may have seen.”
“I have seen many girls, Mr. Detective Sergeant. That is the nature of my profession.” She had reached the front door, her sheer bulk forcing Malloy to step aside, and she was fitting a key into the lock.
“This girl was murdered.”
Emma Petrovka looked up at him. Her eyes were the color of mud, peering out like two dull marbles from the folds of fat that made up her face. She had a large mole on her cheek with several long hairs growing out of it, and her small mouth was pursed into a frown. “If a girl dies after one of my procedures, that is not murder,” she informed him, and returned to the task of unlocking her front door.
“That’s not how she died. Someone strangled her. But we know she was going to have a baby and an abortionist visited her the night she was killed.”
Emma Petrovka pushed open her front door, then gave Frank a pitying look. “Do you think I killed this girl?”
Plainly, such a thing was impossible, so Frank didn’t even consider replying. “I think whoever sent you there killed her. Her name was Alicia VanDamm.”
She raised her bushy, black eyebrows but gave no other indication that she recognized the name. “I do not know this person, Mr. Detective Sergeant. I cannot help you.”
Before Frank could pose another question, Emma Petrovka had passed through the doorway, and now she slammed the door shut in his face. For an instant he stood staring at the lace curtains swinging on the other side of the glass and considered forcing his way inside. Except he wasn’t really that interested in talking to her anymore. She was an ugly, unpleasant old woman. If he wanted to talk to an ugly, unpleasant old woman, he’d go home.
Sighing wearily, he turned and sauntered down her steps. The boys who had been tormenting her were gone now, scattered after cleaning the coins from the street to find other sources of amusement. Frank reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the list of names he had culled from various sources. The list was surprisingly short. He would have thought a city the size of New York could provide work for hundreds of abortionists, and he would have thought they’d all be willing to cooperate with the police on any matter. He would’ve been wrong on both counts. The half dozen women he had visited today had all been as tight-lipped as Emma Petrovka.
He was wasting his time, of course. No one was going to admit having attempted an illegal procedure on a girl who was later murdered. But as thin as this thread was, it was the only one he had. Checking the next address on the list, he headed off downtown.
SARAH WAS PLEASED to see that the “Room for Rent” sign was gone from the front window of the Higgins’s house. Several of the Higgins children were playing on the front stoop. Sarah greeted them by name.
“How do you like your new baby brother?” she asked them.
“He sleeps all the time,” Mary Grace informed her disdainfully. As the eldest, Mary Grace apparently felt it was her responsibility to speak first. Her brown eyes were large in her delicate face and much too serious for a girl who had only known ten summers.
“He’s too little to play,” Robert complained. Robert was only five but much sturdier than his slender sister.
“He’ll grow,” Sarah said. “But he’ll never catch up with you. You’ll always be bigger than he is.”
“I will?” Plainly, this idea delighted Robert.
Eight-year-old Sally looked up from rocking her rag doll and said, “But you’ll never be as big as me and Mary Grace. You’ll always be our baby brother.”
“I’m not a baby!” Robert cried in outrage and began to howl.
Sarah would have comforted him, but Mary Grace was apparently used to such outbursts and wrapped her frail arms around his husky body and patted his shoulder for a few seconds until he’d forgotten why he was crying and ran off to find something else to do.
“Is your mother staying in bed?” Sarah asked Mary Grace, figuring the girl would tell the truth while the mother might lie.
“Most of the time,” Mary Grace said. “I try to make her rest.”
“Remind her that if she gets sick she’ll make double work, because then the rest of you will have to take care of her on top of doing her work for her. Maybe that will help.”
Mary Grace nodded solemnly. “I’ll do that. Thank you, Mrs. Brandt.”
Sarah wished Mary Grace would smile. She looked far too old for her years. Just the way she remembered Alicia VanDamm. She knew why Mary Grace was so serious. Her mother was overwhelmed, and a lot of her burdens fell on the child. But Sarah couldn’t imagine why Alicia VanDamm, a child of wealth and privilege, had seemed so troubled. Now she might never find out.
Inside, in the cluttered family quarters, she discovered Mrs. Higgins in bed, just where she should have been, and looking better than the last time Sarah had seen her.
“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, you don’t know the trouble we’ve had. The police were here asking everybody questions and going door to door on the street, asking did anybody see or hear anything. As if they’d tell the police if they had! And then we packed up that poor girl’s things because we had to rent out her room-had to charge a dollar a week less because somebody was murdered there! Can you imagine?-and then a man came to collect her belongings. He was the strangest creature. So formal and polite. I asked was he a relative, but he said no, just an employee of the family. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Sending the hired help to collect her things? What kind of people are they? Everybody says they’re rich, that her father owns a bank or something. Could that be true? But why was she living here? I mean, she always paid her rent on time every week, but she never went out or acted like she had anything extra to spend. If her family was rich, why was she on her own?”
“How’s the baby doing?” Sarah asked, determined not to spread any gossip about Alicia VanDamm and her sad history. The infant was sleeping on the bed beside his mother, and Sarah carefully unwrapped his blanket to
