Murder On Astor Place

secret. “Perhaps a friend. Can you think of anyone who would have done that? A young man perhaps, someone her own age who might have been smitten with her.” Someone who could have gotten her with child, she added silently, praying it wasn’t Sylvester Mattingly, as she suspected. The thought was simply too awful to contemplate, although it would have explained Alicia’s flight perfectly.

But Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head helplessly. “I can’t think of anyone. Our neighbors at Greentree had some boys, I think, but they’re away at school. I don’t believe Alicia knows them, either.”

Plainly, all this thinking was too much for her. She lifted a hand to her head and closed her eyes as if in pain.

“Are you all right? Can I get you something?” Sarah asked, instantly contrite. Morphine addict or not, Mrs. VanDamm was still a grieving mother.

“My salts,” she said, motioning vaguely toward the assortment of medicine bottles on the table.

Sarah picked through the bottles, seeing Lydia Pink-ham’s Remedy, which claimed to cure all manner of female ills but which merely masked them with a morphine fog. After a moment, she located the bottle of smelling salts. Lifting the stopper, she passed the foul-smelling bottle under Mrs. VanDamm’s nose until her eyes popped open again and her color returned.

“Oh, thank you, my dear. I get these spells where I get so weak and…” Her voice trailed off as her unfocused gaze suddenly focused on Sarah. “Did Bridget tell me that you’re a midwife?”

“Yes, that’s right. And a trained nurse, as well.”

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” she asked of no one in particular. “I’ve been wasting my time with doctors. The doctors are all men. What do men know about female problems?”

“Are you having female problems?” Sarah asked solicitously, thinking that she might gain Mrs. VanDamm’s confidence by giving her some medical advice. If she was consulting with Sarah, she would certainly welcome her back for another visit if Sarah needed more information later.

“Oh, yes, for years now, and nothing helps. I have these spells when I feel weak and I can’t get my breath, and other times my head feels like it’s coming off my body. And sometimes, if I’m very still and quiet, I can actually hear my heart beating. That isn’t natural, is it, to hear one’s own heart beating?”

Sarah thought it probably was if you were listening for it, but she chose to humor Mrs. VanDamm. Perhaps she did have some problem that Sarah’s training could help. Sarah began to question her about her symptoms, and Mrs. VanDamm was only too happy to describe them in great detail. Apparently, she had nothing more to occupy her time than to sit here alone in the semidarkness and concentrate on every sensation of her own body.

She quickly learned that Mrs. VanDamm, who was not quite fifty, had completed menopause and was probably just experiencing the effects of it. “Do you find marital relations uncomfortable?” Sarah asked, ready to give Mrs. VanDamm some tips on how to alleviate that discomfort, but Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head.

“Oh, dear, I always found marital relations uncomfortable,” she confessed, rolling her eyes. “I can’t imagine how other women manage. After Mina was born, I told Mr. VanDamm I couldn’t endure his attentions anymore, and to his credit, he hasn’t bothered me since. It’s been over thirty years now, and I haven’t missed it at all, I assure you.”

Sarah was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even remember what they’d been discussing. She wasn’t shocked to learn that Mrs. VanDamm didn’t have intercourse with her husband. Many women of her class felt as she did, which was why so many men of her class kept mistresses. No, what shocked her was the realization that if Mrs. VanDamm hadn’t had sexual relations since Mina was born, she couldn’t possibly have been Alicia’s mother.

12

FRANK LOOKED AROUND THE VANDAMM ESTATE in Mamoraneck with new eyes. He thought of Alicia VanDamm and wondered if she had been violated in this very house. If what Sarah Brandt believed was true, and Sylvester Mattingly had raped her and gotten her with child, then it might well have happened here, far away from prying eyes and ears.

Frank hesitated a moment before knocking on the front door, wondering if one reason he’d been taken off the case was because of his last, unauthorized visit here. But this time when the housekeeper opened the door, she looked more resigned than outraged at his presence.

“Just like a bad penny, ain’t you?” she said. “You keep turning up.”

“I’d like to look around Miss VanDamm’s room again,” he said, telling only a partial truth.

“You already did that. What do you think, that she came back from the dead and put something there you couldn’t’ve found before?”

“This time I know what I’m looking for,” he replied, concealing his surprise that she didn’t seem to be aware that VanDamm hadn’t authorized his previous visit. Could the woman have neglected to mention it to her employer?

“And what would that be?” she asked skeptically.

“A diary.”

Mrs. Hightower’s eyes grew large in her homely face. “What would you be wanting with that?” she demanded.

“I think it might give me some clues about the identity of her killer. You knew the girl kept a diary, I take it.”

Mrs. Hightower sniffed derisively. “Everybody knew it. She wrote in it all the time. For a girl who never went anywhere or did anything except ride that mare of hers, she sure found a lot to write about, I’ll tell you that.”

“Did you ever read what she wrote?”

“Of course not!” She was thoroughly outraged at the very suggestion. “Nobody would do a thing like that.”

“Not even her personal maid? Maybe Lizzie knows what it said. Maybe Lizzie knows where it is.”

“Not likely,” Mrs. Hightower insisted, “but I guess we won’t see the back of you until we ask her, now will we?”

Frank merely smiled expectantly until Mrs. Hightower finally admitted him.

This time she put him in a small front room where he waited until Lizzie had been summoned.

“Mr. Detective,” the maid said in dismay when she saw him. “Have you found out who killed Miss Alicia yet?” She was wringing her hands in her apron and looked on the verge of tears.

“Not yet,” Frank said, trying to sound kind while knowing he wasn’t being very reassuring, “but I’m hoping you can give me some help. Do you know where Miss Alicia kept her diary?”

“Oh, cor, she kept it locked up, nice and safe, because she didn’t want anybody never to read it but her, but it ain’t there now.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they sent me to look for it right after she disappeared.”

“Who sent you?”

“Why, Mrs. Hightower, who else?”

Who else, indeed. Frank could think of many possibilities, but the truth was probably that Mrs. Hightower would only have acted on orders from the VanDamms. This meant they knew what the diary must contain, and that would explain why they’d ordered Sylvester Mattingly to find it. Now if only Frank could find out what it said, too.

“Can you show me where she kept it?” Frank asked.

“I can, but only if Mrs. Hightower says it’s all right,” she said, glancing nervously toward the door, at which Mrs. Hightower might well be listening.

Mrs. Hightower seemed willing to do anything if it would get Frank closer to leaving, so Lizzie escorted him upstairs to Alicia’s room. She showed him a small chest which he’d searched on his last visit. It held mementos of Alicia’s childhood, awards won in school, some trinkets that had probably held some sentimental value, but nothing that could remotely be called a diary.

By now Lizzie was openly weeping, not making a sound but allowing the tears to flow freely down her face. Frank felt a twinge of guilt and wondered when he had become so sentimental. In other days, he would have been jubilant at the sight of those tears, knowing they would make the person he was questioning more open and