Murder On GramercyPark

“Why should Potter care?”

“Because he’s in love with Letitia.”

“Then he wouldn’t have to kill Blackwell. All he’d have to do was wait until her life was ruined by the scandal and be her sole remaining support. Then he could have her all to himself,” Malloy pointed out.

“Only if she’d have him in return, and that doesn’t seem likely. No, her father is a much more logical choice if Blackwell was killed because of his bigamy. Symington would want to save his daughter from the scandal and get revenge on Blackwell, too. Blackwell’s death would ensure that the scandal never became public. He seems like the best suspect to me.”

“Only if he knew about the Brown family, though,” Malloy pointed out.

“You could ask him if he did,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, if I want to be out of a job tomorrow.”

He was right, of course. Having the audacity to question a man as powerful as Symington about whether he’d killed his son-in-law was a sure way to draw the wrong sort of attention to yourself if you were a police detective.

“Could Potter have told him?” Sarah asked. “Or even Calvin himself?”

“Calvin wouldn’t even know who Letitia’s father is, much less how to find him.”

Sarah sighed. This was getting them nowhere.

Then Malloy said, “Wait, you said Symington spoke at Blackwell’s lectures. Calvin told me he went to one of those lectures. Someone had sent his mother one of the advertising posters so he would know where to find his father. That’s what brought him to New York in the first place.”

“Who sent him the poster?” Sarah asked eagerly. “That person would be a likely suspect.”

“Calvin doesn’t know. It was sent anonymously. Anyway, when Calvin went to the lecture, he heard Symington speak. The boy was upset because Symington said Blackwell was married to his daughter.”

“So he did know who Symington was,” Sarah said in triumph. “Could he have gone to see him, too?”

Malloy smiled grimly. “I think I’ll pay young Calvin a visit and ask him that very thing.”

7

MALLOY KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF THE ROOMING house early Sunday morning. The landlady, a blowsy woman past her prime named Mrs. Zimmerman, opened the door.

“’Morning to you, Mr. Malloy. How are you this fine day?” she inquired cheerfully. She’d been a good-looking woman once, Malloy judged, but the years were showing on her now. Her dark hair was streaked with gray, and the smile lines on her face had become permanent wrinkles.

“I’m well, thanks for asking. Is young Calvin in?”

“He’s always in, Mr. Malloy. That boy hardly ever goes anyplace except for church, and he hasn’t left yet, I don’t think. I tell him he ought to see something of the city while he’s here, but to tell you the truth, I think he’s a bit scared by all the noise and such. He’s awake, though. Up with the sun, our Calvin is, like he was still in the country. Come right on in.”

Malloy knew the way to the boy’s room on the second floor of the house. Mrs. Zimmerman wasn’t much of a housekeeper, he noticed, seeing the dust on the edges of the stairs, but Calvin had said she was a good cook. Frank found her pleasant enough, too, when he’d paid the boy’s rent for a week in advance and asked her to send him word if Calvin didn’t come back some evening. She was more than happy to be of service to the police, she assured him. As a business woman, she needed their goodwill.

Calvin’s door stood open, and Frank surprised him whittling something at the small table in his room. He jumped up and gave the detective a welcoming smile.

“Mr. Malloy, do you have any news about who killed my father?”

He certainly didn’t look like a killer, Frank noted again. Or a liar, either. His eyes were clear and met Frank’s unflinchingly. And killers weren’t usually so eager for him to find the guilty party.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Calvin,” he said, “but I only came to ask you a few more questions.”

“Come on in, then, and sit down. I’ll tell you what I can, but I don’t think I know anything besides what I already told you.”

There was only one chair in the room, and Calvin had been sitting in it. He offered it to Frank now, however, after carefully brushing the sawdust off the seat. Frank glanced at what he’d been working on. It looked like a small, wooden face.

“It’s a doll’s head,” Calvin explained, seeing Frank looking at it. “For one of my sisters. My ma makes the body out of rags.”

“You’re pretty good at it,” Frank remarked.

Calvin shrugged self-consciously. “It keeps me busy. There’s not much to do here.”

Frank didn’t point out that there were plenty of things to do in New York City if a person looked around.

Calvin sat down on the bed, which he had apparently made this morning. The covers were smooth and tightly tucked, just as the boy’s extra clothes hung neatly on pegs along the wall. His mother had taught him well.

“What did you come to ask me?” Calvin asked, only too happy to be of assistance, just the way an innocent man would be.

“Did you by any chance meet with anybody besides your father while you were in town? To talk about your problems with him, I mean?”

Calvin blinked. “I did go to see that Mr. Symington,” he said guilelessly.

Only years of practice enabled Frank to remain expressionless. “Was this before or after you saw your father?”

“I guess you’d say before. I went to my father’s house that first day, right after the lecture, and told that fellow who answers the door that I needed to see Dr. Blackwell, but he wouldn’t let me in. He said I could knock on the kitchen door, and they’d give me some food scraps. I tried to tell him I didn’t want any food scraps, but he just slammed the door in my face. I even tried at the kitchen, but they wouldn’t let me in there either. I didn’t know what to do, but when I told Mrs. Zimmerman, the landlady, all about it, she found out for me where Mr. Symington’s office was.”

“That was nice of her.”

“She’s been real helpful to me,” Calvin said. “She’s real nice.”

“I could tell,” Frank said. “Go on. When did you see Mr. Symington?”

“The next day. Mrs. Zimmerman said I should tell the fellow who’d be working at Mr. Symington’s office that I had something important to tell Mr. Symington about his daughter. She said he’d probably at least let me talk to somebody, even if he wouldn’t see me himself. They made me wait on the front stoop until they talked to Mr. Symington, but then they let me right in.”

“You got to see Symington personally?” Frank asked in amazement. Surely, Symington’s household staff would be better trained than Blackwell’s. Why had Calvin been able to get past them?

“Yes, sir. I went right into the room where he was. He was sitting behind this great big desk and he looked up when I come in. It was funny because he seemed real surprised, even though he knew I was coming in because they’d told him. He got over it real quick, though, and then he asked me what did I have to tell him about his daughter.”

“What do you mean, he looked surprised?”

“I don’t know. Just surprised. Like maybe I wasn’t the person he was expecting to see or something. So I told him all about how Dr. Blackwell was my father and how he couldn’t be married to his daughter because he was still married to my mother.”

“I guess he was even more surprised then.”

“I’d say he was more mad than anything. At first I was scared he’d hit me or something. At least throw me out of the house. He was that mad. But he didn’t even shout. He just asked me what I wanted from him. I said I just wanted to see my father and make him take care of our family again.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He wanted to know why I come to him instead of going to my father, so I told him how they wouldn’t let me in