Murder on Amsterdam Avenue (11 page)

“In a guest room.”

“Hannah insisted,” she said. “She didn't want him near her. She said she was afraid of catching whatever he had, but I believe she just didn't want him being sick in her room.”

Frank could understand that, although it wasn't very wifely, he supposed. He'd have to ask Sarah what she'd do in a situation like that. It might be a good idea to be prepared. “You said Daisy never left his side.”

“I told you, she's very fond of him. Was. Was very fond of him,” she corrected herself, and Frank saw the first flicker of real grief cross her face. “He asked for her,” she added softly.

“And you were there, too?”

“Not the entire time. Several of the other girls were helping Daisy, and I was in their way. Besides, he seemed to be getting better.”

“I understand he asked for the milk?”

“That's what I was told. I wasn't there.”

“And you have no idea who prepared it and brought it up?”

“No, although they could tell you in the kitchen, I'm sure.”

“And after he drank the milk, he got much worse.”

“Yes, he started thrashing uncontrollably, and Daisy called for help.”

“Daisy did? Not one of the other girls?”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm trying to figure out who was in the room when your son drank the milk.”

“I told you, I wasn't there, so I don't know.”

“When Daisy called for help, who came?”

“I did. Zeller, too.”

“And who was there with Daisy when you got there?”

She still betrayed no emotion, but her cheeks were red. “I . . . I don't remember.”

“Was she alone with him?”

“I told you, I don't remember!”

“Someone put arsenic in the milk, Mrs. Oakes.”

“You don't know that for certain! He was sick for two days before that.”

“Which only means he'd gotten a dose or two before, but he definitely got one that evening and it killed him.”

“How can you be sure? He got sick again that afternoon, when he wasn't even here. He could have gotten it anywhere!” Her voice broke but she blinked furiously, refusing to weep.

“We know because of the cat, Mrs. Oakes. The cat that drank what was left of the milk and died under his bed.”

“You're wrong, Mr. Malloy. If someone poisoned my son, they did it outside of this house and for reasons we don't know. I have no idea how it was done, but I know no one in this house would have harmed him.”

“Not even his wife?”

To Frank's surprise, she laughed. It was a grating sound, full of anger and bitterness and grief. “If I thought for a moment she could have done it, I would tear her heart from her chest with my bare hands and leave you nothing for your courts of law. Unfortunately, no matter how much Hannah might have regretted her marriage and might have wanted to be free, she was never close enough to Charles during those last days to have done it. And no one else in this house would have dreamed of it. No, Mr. Malloy, if you want to find my son's killer, you'll have to look elsewhere.”

D
aisy looked terrified when Zeller escorted her into the room Gino now understood was the butler's pantry. Her hair was streaked with gray, and the hands she kept wringing in distress were knobby from hard work and age. He could see she had once been an attractive woman, although the same trials that had ruined her hands had stolen all but a trace of her former beauty. Her skin was lighter than he'd expected. So light, in fact, that he might have passed her on the street and not realized she was colored.

“Don't be frightened, Daisy,” Zeller was saying. “This young man just wants to ask you some questions about the night Mr. Charles died.”

“Sit down, Daisy,” Gino said as gently as he could. He didn't need to intimidate Daisy to get her information. In fact, if he couldn't put her at ease, he probably wouldn't get anything out of her at all.

She glanced up at Zeller, as if asking for permission to obey Gino's command. Zeller nodded and pulled out a chair for her. She sank down onto it quickly, as if she was afraid her legs would give out.

“You aren't in any trouble, Daisy,” Gino said. He'd dealt with lots of people who were terrified of the police and had good reason to be. She had probably seen the police beating her neighbors and arresting them for no good reason, which they frequently did in colored neighborhoods.

She glanced up at Zeller, who still hovered over her. “You ain't going to leave me, are you, Mr. Zeller?”

Zeller glanced at Gino, who said, “He can stay if it makes you feel better, Daisy.”

She nodded vigorously and clasped her hands tightly on the tabletop in a visible effort to get control of herself.

Gino tried a smile. “I just need to know what happened in Mr. Oakes's room the night he died. You were there, weren't you?”

She nodded again, then glanced at Zeller as if for approval.

“Mr. Zeller said Mr. Oakes asked for you to take care of him. Do you know why he wanted you especially, over the other maids?”

She frowned at that. “I . . .” Another glance at Zeller. “I guess 'cause I'm older than them.”

Which made Gino wonder why Mrs. Oakes would have hired such an old woman as a maid. Nobody could expect her to do much work, not as much as you could get from a young woman and not for as long either. “So he thought you'd take better care of him.”

“I . . . I guess so.”

“Did the other girls help you?”

“They did, sir.”

“Do you remember who helped?”

“Mary and Patsy. They came and . . . They helped me change the bedclothes a time or two. Mr. Charles was powerful sick.” She blinked as her eyes glistened with tears, but she didn't weep.

“When Mr. Charles asked for some milk, who brought it upstairs?”

She frowned, obviously sensing this was an important question and not wanting to give the wrong answer. “I . . .”

“It's all right, Daisy. You can tell him,” Zeller said.

“It was Patsy, I think. She brought it up.”

“Did she heat it, too?” Gino asked.

“Oh no, sir. Cook wouldn't never allow that. She would've fixed Mr. Charles's milk her ownself.”

“And did Patsy help him drink it?”

“No, sir. Mr. Charles didn't want nobody but me to help him that night.” She blinked back her tears again.

“How was Mr. Charles feeling when you gave him the milk? Before he drank it, I mean.”

“Some better. He'd stopped . . . being sick and all. He said he'd feel even better if he had himself some . . . some milk.”

She'd caught herself. She'd started to say something else and caught herself. Gino hoped he hadn't betrayed the fact that he'd noticed. “Was the milk all Mr. Charles had to eat or drink that evening?”

“Oh yes, sir,” she said too quickly. “He . . . he couldn't hold nothing down at all from the time he came home until he asked for the milk.” She'd started wringing her hands again, twisting them on the tabletop. She wasn't glancing at Zeller anymore, though. He couldn't help her with this. She'd lied about something important, but Zeller didn't know about it, so he couldn't help.

Gino tried to think what Malloy would do now. What would he ask her to keep her talking so he could put her at ease again before trying to figure out the lie?

“Mr. Zeller said you haven't worked here long.”

She blinked in surprise at the change of subject. “No, sir. Only a few months.”

“You seem very fond of Mr. Charles for not knowing him very long.”

Her eyes welled again, and this time a tear slipped out. She dashed it away with a fingertip. “I . . . He was a very nice young gentleman.”

“You sound like you're from the South, Daisy. Did you just come to New York?”

Another blink at this new change of subject. “No, sir. I been here a few years now.”

“Did you come here to work because Mrs. Oakes is from the South herself?”

To Gino's surprise, this made her sit up straight and turn to Zeller in alarm.

“It's all right to tell him, Daisy,” he said.

“It ain't his business,” she protested.

“Mr. Gerald told us to tell the truth to these men.”

When she turned back to Gino, her fear had melted into wariness. “I come here to work because I used to know Mrs. Oakes when she . . . when she lived in the South.”

“Daisy used to be a . . . She worked at the plantation where Mrs. Oakes grew up,” Zeller said.

So Daisy had been a slave, and Mrs. Oakes had owned her. Now her reaction made some sense. “Did she remember you after all that time?”

“Of course she remembered me.”

Gino didn't know much about slavery, but he wondered
how many society women in New York would remember a maid who had worked for them over thirty years ago. Not many, he'd guess, but Mrs. Oakes had recognized Daisy. Then he recalled something else. “You said you'd been in New York a few years, but you just came to work here a few months ago. Why did you wait so long to find Mrs. Oakes?”

“I didn't wait. I just couldn't find her before is all. In the South, when you come to a town, looking for somebody, you ask around and somebody will know them and point you in the right direction. Here, well, I never saw so many people, and none of them ever heard of Mrs. Oakes. I didn't have no idea where to find her until Mr. Charles got hisself the job at the hospital. It was in the newspapers, and my pastor, Mr. Nicely, saw his name.”

“Did the newspaper say where Mr. Charles lived?”

“Oh no, sir. I'd told my pastor the name of the gentleman Miss Jenny had married. I remembered it from all those years ago, and Mr. Nicely thought maybe Mr. Charles was related to her, so he helped me find the house.”

Gino nodded. “So what was it that made Mr. Charles so sick that last time? You said he'd tried to eat something.”

He'd thought to catch her off guard, but Daisy stared at him for a long moment, her face still and as expressionless as she could make it. “I didn't say that, sir. I said all he had was the milk that Cook had heated up and Patsy carried upstairs to him.”

“Oh, I must've misunderstood you. And what happened after he drank it?”

“He . . . Well, at first he seemed fine, like maybe it did him some good. He was glad to get it, too, he said. He . . .” Her voice broke, and she needed a moment to gather herself. “He thanked me for it. But it wasn't long before he started
getting sick again, and he was talking, out of his head. I tried to calm him down, but he just got worse, so I called for help.”

“And who came to help you?”

“Miss Jenny and Mr. Zeller came right away. Then the other girls come, too, but there was nothing they could do, so Mr. Zeller sent them away.”

“Mr. Oakes didn't come?”

This time she did glance at Zeller, not sure what she should say.

“I'm not sure Mr. Oakes knew Mr. Charles had been taken so bad,” Zeller said quickly. “He was downstairs, you see, and probably didn't hear Daisy calling.”

Gino thought that sounded reasonable, so he couldn't figure out why Daisy wouldn't have realized that, too. He wanted to press her about the milk and what else she knew about it, but he figured Zeller wasn't going to let him frighten her. He'd made a mistake in letting the man stay, but he still needed Zeller's help questioning the rest of the staff, so he couldn't send him off now and risk offending him. There would be time later to question Daisy again when he didn't have to be quite so nice. Or when Mr. Malloy could be there to terrify her with one of his glares.

“Thank you for answering my questions, Daisy,” he said. “I'm sure Mrs. Oakes is grateful to you for trying to take care of Mr. Charles.”

Daisy frowned, not at all reassured by this. She looked up at Zeller. “Can I go now?”

“Yes, you may,” Zeller said.

She stood up and gave a little bob of a curtsy to Gino, then fled.

“She didn't poison Mr. Charles,” Zeller said.

Gino stared at the man, seeing him in a whole new light now. Why would the family's longtime butler vouch for a maid who'd only been with them a few months? “How can you be sure?”

“She was devoted to Mr. Charles and his mother. You asked if Mrs. Oakes recognized Daisy when she came to the house a few months ago. I'm not sure you understand, Mr. Donatelli. In the South, when the white people owned slaves, those slaves were often born and lived their entire lives on the very same plantation. Mrs. Oakes and Daisy grew up together as children and knew each other their whole lives until Mrs. Oakes married and came North.”

Even still, Gino thought, they hadn't seen each other in over thirty years. People could change a lot in thirty years. Even if they recognized each other, how could Mrs. Oakes just take this woman into her house? For all she knew, Daisy was a thief or something even worse. She'd certainly lived a hard life since the War of the Great Rebellion. Then she'd come to New York, where Negroes didn't exactly have an easy time of it either. How could she know Daisy would be grateful and not harbor a grudge?

“Are you ready to see someone else now, sir?” Zeller asked, all polite now that he'd successfully protected Daisy from whatever he'd thought Gino might do to her.

“Yes, send in Patsy next.”

•   •   •

F
rank had been sitting alone for the past few minutes, reviewing his interview with Jenny Oakes and wondering what he had really learned from her, when the parlor door opened and an older woman came in.

Tall and thin, her sharp features put Frank in mind of a bird. Not a harmless sparrow, though. A bird of prey.

Although he hadn't sent for her, he knew this must be Gerald's mother. Like the two previous Mrs. Oakeses, she wore black, but she wore it well, as if she were most comfortable in its protective embrace. Her hair was a silvery swirl on her head, still thick and lustrous. Her eyes were icy blue, and her lips pursed in a perpetual frown of disapproval.

He'd risen to his feet instinctively as she entered the room, and now he nodded. “Mrs. Oakes, thank you for coming to see me.”

“You're the detective, I take it,” she said, closing the parlor door behind her with a decisive click. “Weren't you going to send for me?”

“I was hoping you'd be able to meet with me, but I thought you might not feel up to it.”

“Why? Because Charles died?” she scoffed. “I've buried my parents, my husband, three children, and a brother. If I allowed death to overwhelm me, I'd have been in my own grave long ago, Mr. . . . Whatever is your name? No one bothered to tell me.”

“Malloy.”

She sniffed, as if she'd expected nothing better. “Well, Mr. Malloy, you'd better ask me some questions before I decide to have a case of the vapors or whatever it is delicate females do when they don't want to be bothered.”

“Then please, sit down.” He indicated the easy chair where his first two visitors had sat.

“Thank you for inviting me to sit down in my own house,” she snapped. “And I'll invite you to sit down, too. Then we'll be even.”

When they had both taken their seats, she studied Frank for a long moment, and he let her because he wanted to study her in return. Like many older women, she'd grown thinner than was good for her. Maybe she'd been sick, although he had
no intention of asking her that. He'd find out from Sarah or her mother. The crepey skin of her face sagged now, without the underlying flesh to support it. Her hands clutching the arms of the chair were spotted and clawlike, the bones showing through the papery skin. He realized she hadn't brought a cane with her, although she'd used one yesterday at the funeral.

“I've heard about you, Mr. Malloy,” she said. “It's a very interesting story.”

“Yes, I'm a bouncer,” he said, using a derogatory term used to describe the “new money” people in the city.

“I prefer the term
arriviste
. It sounds less energetic, don't you think?”

Frank shrugged.

“Besides,” she said, still pinning him with her daggerlike gaze, “Felix Decker would never allow his daughter to marry a bouncer.”

“And yet she's engaged to me.”

“Oh, Mr. Malloy, don't play the bumpkin with me. There's much more to you than meets the eye, or Gerald would never have brought you here.”

And there was much more to Mrs. Oakes than met the eye, Frank realized. “Did you come to see me because you know who killed your grandson?”

“But I don't know who killed him, and if I did, I most certainly would not tell you. I think you should earn your fee on your own, Mr. Malloy.”

Frank bit back a smile. He didn't want her to think he was laughing at her, although he found her amusing. “Charles's wife was a lot more obliging. She told me before I even asked.”

“Hannah? She's a fool, and I doubt very much she knows anything about it. Whom did she name as the dastardly villain?”