Murder on Fifth Avenue

“What?”

“Kill herself! That’s what she meant! When the maid came and told us you wanted to see her, she got very maudlin, and she started talking about my father and how she’d missed him so much and how much she loved me, but she had to do the right thing and not cause me any scandal and I was hardly listening because I felt so sick, and then she kissed me. She kissed me! She was only going down to the kitchen, but she kissed me good-bye! Oh, Mrs. Brandt, that must be why she left. You have to stop her!”

“Of course I will. We’ll go right back to her boardinghouse—”

“No, that’s not where she’ll go. She was talking about Father and how much she missed him. She’ll go to the bridge like he did. He jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. Did I tell you that? They never found his body. She’ll just disappear like he did, so there won’t be a scandal over a suicide and no one will ever know what became of her. Please, you must stop her!”

Garnet was frantic now, nearly hysterical, and Sarah rang for the maid.

“Go!” Garnet said. “Find her! Stop her!”

Sarah ran out into the hall. The maid was coming, and Sarah shouted at her to look after Garnet before racing down the stairs. When she reached the bottom of the first flight, Paul Devries and Hugh Zeller had come out of the parlor to see what the commotion was about.

“Mrs. Brandt, what’s going on?” Paul asked.

“I don’t have time to explain it all, but we think Mrs. Richmond has gone to the Brooklyn Bridge to kill herself.” Sarah didn’t stop. She was running down the second flight of stairs, now with Paul and Hugh in her wake.

“Why would she do a thing like that?” Paul asked.

“She’s the one who stabbed your father, and she thinks Malloy is here to arrest her for it.”

“Dear God,” Paul said. “Did she know what he’d done to Garnet? Is that why?”

Sarah didn’t have time to explain. Malloy had met her at the bottom of the stairs.

“Did you hear?” she asked him.

“Yes, but why the bridge?”

“That’s where her husband killed himself.”

“We’ll go with you,” Paul said.

Malloy was pulling their coats from the rack by the front door.

“Someone should probably go to her boardinghouse, just in case,” Sarah said. “And ask Garnet if there’s someplace else she might go, too. We need to find her and let her know she won’t go to prison.”

“I won’t let her be punished for it,” Malloy told them. “Tell her that, if you find her.”

Malloy pulled on his coat while Paul helped Sarah with hers.

“I will,” Paul promised. “Do you need the carriage?”

Zeller pulled open the front door for them.

“No, the El will be faster,” Malloy said.

“Tell Garnet we’ll bring her back here if we find her,” Sarah said.

Then they were outside, fairly running down the walk in the direction of the Third Avenue Elevated Train.

They didn’t waste breath on conversation until they’d reached the train platform two stories above the street. They had to wait for what seemed an eternity for the next train. Sarah wanted to run back down the stairs and keep running, but she forced herself to stay there. They had a long way to go, and the train would get them there faster than any other mode of transportation.

“You’re sure about this?” Malloy asked as she paced in a circle.

“Garnet is sure. Mrs. Richmond was talking about her husband and how she didn’t want to cause a scandal. She even kissed Garnet good-bye.”

“But to kill herself …”

“She’s a proud woman. Remember what she said about doing what she must for those she loved? All she wanted was for Garnet to be happy. With Devries dead, she would have a chance at that, but not if her mother was tried and convicted for his murder.”

“I should’ve refused when your father asked me to find out what happened to Devries,” he said.

“You couldn’t know. What if he’d been a saintly man whose greedy heir had decided he wanted his inheritance sooner?”

“But he wasn’t, and your father must have known that.”

“Well, we’ll take that up with Father at a later time.”

“We?” he asked with interest.

Sarah smiled at him. “You can’t think I’d let you have all the fun.”

The slight vibration in the floor told them the train was coming. They hurried to the edge of the platform, craning and watching and willing it to hurry. They could hardly wait for the doors to be opened once it finally stopped.

At last the train was moving again, carrying them down and down to almost the very tip of Manhattan Island to where the majestic bridge stretched out across the water to Brooklyn.

“What if we’re too late?” Sarah said.

“What if this is a wild-goose chase, and Mrs. Richmond is just on a train back to Virginia?”

“Oh, Malloy, do you really think that?”

“No, and I don’t think Paul’s going to find her at the boardinghouse, either. I wish I did, but I keep thinking how Mrs. Richmond looked that first time I met her, sitting there in that shabby parlor. Devries had taken almost everything from her, but she still had her pride. She’d killed him to keep it, and she’ll never let him take it now that he’s dead.”

“What a horrible man. I wish he was still alive. I’d like to kill him myself.”

Malloy widened his eyes at her but she refused to relent.

They rode on in silence for a while, Sarah staring unseeing at the windows they passed where ordinary people lived their lives in full view of the passengers who rode the trains that ran down several of the main streets of the city. Finally, she said, “I can’t figure out how she could jump from the bridge when the walkway is in the middle.”

Unlike most bridges, where pedestrians walked along the sides, the Brooklyn Bridge had been built with an elevated walkway down the center. A jump from there would only land a person on the tracks of the train that ran along the inside traffic lanes on either side.

“You said her husband managed to jump off of it. She must know how he did it.”

“I guess that’s possible.”

“Even if she tries, she might not be able to go through with it. Lots of people think they want to jump until they get up there and see how high it is and how cold the water looks. They’re happy when the authorities come and get them down.”

Sarah remembered Mrs. Richmond’s pride and prayed they’d get there in time.

When they reached the stop closest to the bridge, they hurried off and clattered down the station stairs to the street.

“Don’t wait for me,” Sarah said, knowing Malloy could move faster than she, hampered as she was by her long skirts. “I’ll catch up.”

Grim-faced, he pushed his way through the pedestrians clogging the sidewalk and disappeared. Sarah followed as best she could, pushing and shoving as necessary and paying no heed to the shouted curses she left in her wake.

The wind on the bridge nearly took her breath as she finally made her way out onto the walkway. Below her, one of the elevated trains rumbled along, returning to Manhattan. She scanned both sides of the bridge, looking for anyone who might be Terry Richmond. How would she find her? How would she get to her? And how would she stop her from jumping?

Sarah took heart at the way the people around her were calmly going about their business. She was the only one who seemed upset or harried. Surely, if someone had jumped from the bridge, someone would have seen, and the horror of it would have caused the hundreds of people nearby to react. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary, at least not yet.