Murder on Fifth Avenue

still held as many as Frank remembered from his previous visit. The implements stood neatly in their holders, polished and gleaming. Frank plucked one of them from its place, a nut pick, to examine it more closely.

Something long and thin, like an ice pick, Haynes had said. Testing the point with his thumb, he easily punctured the skin and drew a drop of crimson blood.

“What are you doing?” Winston asked in alarm.

Frank ignored him. He was noticing something else. “One of the nut picks is missing.”

“You’ve got it in your hand,” Winston said, hurrying over.

“No, there’s an empty hole where another one should be. Where is it?”

“How should I know? Ask…Oh, I was going to say, ask Roderick,” he said in dismay.

“I’d like to,” Frank muttered.

“It seems like a strange thing to steal. It wouldn’t be worth much.”

“It’s probably just lost,” Frank said.

Winston brightened. “That’s it. Mr. Devries, he was always walking around, eating his walnuts and dropping the shells everywhere. The maids complained about it all the time. He probably carried it with him someplace and left it.”

He had, Frank remembered Roderick saying, been eating walnuts the morning he died.

SARAH AND THE GIRLS HAD JUST FINISHED WASHING UP their Sunday dinner dishes when the front doorbell rang. Maeve and Catherine ran to answer it, and from the laughter, Sarah knew she wasn’t being summoned to a birth. She found the girls happily hanging up Malloy’s coat and helping his son, Brian, off with his.

When Brian saw Sarah, he ran over and threw his arms around her. She caught him up and returned his hug, smiling as widely as she could to let him know how happy she was to see him, since she knew he couldn’t hear her words. His small hands started making the signs he had learned at the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb where he attended school. Plainly, he had learned a lot, and Sarah sighed when she realized she could make little sense of them.

“Do you know what he’s saying?” she asked Malloy.

“He’s happy. I know that sign, at least.”

“I’m happy, too,” Sarah said, hugging him again.

But Catherine was tugging on Brian’s arm. When he looked at her, she pointed at the stairs, and when Sarah released him, the two children raced away, clattering up the stairs to visit the toys in Catherine’s room.

“They don’t need words or signs,” Maeve said, following them upstairs. “They understand each other just fine.”

“Thank you for bringing Brian,” Sarah said to Malloy. “Catherine loves playing with him.”

“It makes him pretty happy, too.”

“Come into the kitchen and tell me what you found out from the valet.”

To her surprise, his expression darkened, but he followed her obediently. She set out cups and poured them some coffee. She thought he’d start talking the minute he sat down, but he waited until she’d served them both and taken a seat at the table herself.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Roderick is dead.”

“The valet? What happened?”

“Someone poisoned him.”

Sarah needed a minute for the words to register and another for the awful truth to dawn on her. “Oh, no!” she cried, covering her mouth as tears sprang to her eyes. “It’s all my fault!”

“No, it’s not!” Malloy said, taking her hand in a grip just short of painful. “It’s not your fault, Sarah. You didn’t kill him. Someone else killed him, and that’s who’s to blame.”

“But if I hadn’t said anything about him—”

“The killer would’ve thought of him sooner or later.”

“But maybe not until later and maybe he still would’ve been alive when you arrested the killer.”

“Stop it! You can’t know that. You can’t know anything, and you didn’t kill him. Somebody else did, and that’s whose fault it is. I won’t have you taking on somebody else’s guilt.”

He was right, of course, but Sarah knew she would never forgive herself for losing her temper with Mrs. Devries. “That means Mrs. Devries must be the one who stabbed him!”

“I know that’s what we were all hoping, but from what I’ve been able to find out, Paul seems to be the one who gave him the poison.”

“Paul? I can’t even imagine that. How could he have done it?”

“I don’t even know for sure what the poison was yet, but the medical examiner and I think it was arsenic.”

“Rat poison.”

“Probably. It’s pretty easy to find.”

“But how—”

“Somebody gave him a decanter of whiskey.”

“Who would do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know that either, at least not for sure, but here is what I do know. Roderick seemed to think Paul was going to fire his own valet and keep Roderick on.”

“Why did he think that?”

“I’m guessing, you understand, but remember we thought Roderick knew more about what happened the morning Devries got stabbed than he was saying. Maybe he knew who had stabbed him, and he thought that knowledge would protect him.”

Sarah sighed. “When it really put him in mortal danger.”

“Right after supper last night, Paul met with Roderick. Afterwards, Roderick went straight to his room, and an hour or so later, I arrived to question him. We found him writhing in agony, and a few minutes later he was dead.”

“Didn’t you ask him what happened?”

“Of course I did, but he couldn’t speak. I saw the decanter of whiskey in his room. It was real fancy, not the regular kind of bottle whiskey comes in, but the kind rich people put it in to sit around and look nice.”

“He might have borrowed it. Servants do that, you know.”

“One of the maids said he’d probably pinched it, but Roderick managed to say someone had given it to him. Of course I asked him who,” he added when she would have interrupted, “but he was too far gone. He never said another word before he died.”

“How awful!”

“I’ve been trying to figure out what happened before I question Paul Devries, and here’s what I think: I think Roderick knew who killed Devries, so when Paul realized it, he put the rat poison in the whiskey. Then he called Roderick in and told him he was going to let him go. Roderick would’ve been pretty disappointed. Maybe he even threatened Paul, but maybe he was afraid to. Whatever happened between them, Paul knew he’d be upset so he told Roderick to take the decanter of whiskey to his room to drown his sorrows. What do you think?”

“It sounds logical, but do you really believe Paul Devries is a cold-blooded killer?”

Malloy frowned. “That’s the part that bothers me, too, but if he killed his father—even by accident—he might be feeling desperate. He might be willing to do whatever he could to protect himself.”

Sarah considered the possibilities. “Or maybe to protect someone he loves.”

“His mother?” Malloy asked skeptically.

“We don’t like her, but she’s his mother, after all, and she apparently adores him.”

“Winston said he’s fond of his wife, too.”

“He did?”

“He could’ve been lying, but I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure they don’t hate each other, at least. Paul was angry at his father for treating Garnet badly, remember.”

“But why would he have to protect Garnet unless she was the one who stabbed Devries?”

“Maybe she was.”