Murder on Marble Row (19 page)

Sarah glanced speculatively at her mother, then turned back to Frank. “I didn't want to say anything about this, but it might be important.”

Frank's grip tightened on his chopsticks. He respected Sarah's powers of observation enough to know she was probably right. He glanced at Mrs. Decker, too. Sarah plainly was hesitant to say anything in front of her, but what could it matter now? The woman already knew far too much about the case. “What is it?”

She looked down at her half-empty plate and carefully framed her reply. “The way Tad treats Lilly,” she said, looking up with misery in her eyes. “I think his feelings for her are . . . deeper than would be appropriate for their relationship.”

“Sarah, what are you saying?” Mrs. Decker asked in alarm.

She sighed. “Remember we thought Lilly might have influenced someone weaker than herself to murder her husband? Someone who thought getting rid of Mr. Van Dyke would win him Lilly? Someone who would have no other hope of attaining her?” Mrs. Decker nodded reluctantly. “Tad fits that description.”

“What makes you think he's in love with her?” Frank challenged.

“The way he took her in his arms when she was crying. There's a subtle difference between comforting someone and embracing them. And the expression on his face . . . He's besotted with her, Malloy. I'm certain of that. I have no idea if she knows, however.”

“And even if she does know, would she have used him to kill her husband?” Frank said.

“And what kind of a man would he have to be to murder his own father?” Sarah agreed.

“I think that settles it for Tad,” Mrs. Decker said decisively. “Patricide is a heinous crime, no matter how one might profess to hate one's father. A young man might have unnatural desires toward his lovely young stepmother. I'm sure it happens with alarming frequency, since wealthy men often take younger wives when they are widowed. But how many of them end up murdered?”

“On the other hand,” Frank said, mulling over the possibilities in his mind, “he did have access to his father's office and the basement storeroom.”

“Why would he need access to the storeroom?” Sarah asked.

Once again Frank had let something slip. He was losing his grip. “The killer set up the bomb so it could be triggered by pulling a wire in the basement,” he said, surrendering to the inevitable.

“That would have taken a lot of time,” Sarah said. “How would someone get into the building who didn't have the right to be there without anyone noticing?”

“There's a window into the storage area that opens into the alley. It has a broken latch. The killer could've gotten in that way during the night, when no one was there.”

Mrs. Decker had been paying close attention to their conversation. “Even if the killer was someone with a right to be in the building, he couldn't have set up the bomb during working hours, anyway. Too many people would have seen him going into the storage area and wondered what he was doing there, so the killer could very well have been someone who didn't work there.”

Frank hated to admit it, but she was right. She really
was
too much like her daughter.

“I guess we've established that anyone could have managed to plant the bomb without anyone seeing them,” Sarah said. “The question is, who had the best reason for killing Mr. Van Dyke?”

“The person with the best reason isn't always the killer,” Frank reminded her.

“Why, Mr. Malloy, how very profound,” Mrs. Decker said with some surprise. “I'd never thought of it that way.

Although I don't suppose I've given a lot of thought to murder at all, come to that. But I'm sure you're right. Simply having a good reason to kill someone couldn't possibly be enough to make someone actually do the deed. If it were, there'd hardly be a soul left alive on earth!”

Frank's astonishment at her compliment lasted only a moment because her observation reminded him of a conversation he'd had with Allen Snowberger. Van Dyke's partner had remarked that if businessmen settled disagreements with bombs, the city would be rubble.

“You're absolutely right, Mother,” Sarah was saying. “We have to figure out who had the most
compelling
reason to want Mr. Van Dyke dead. What are all the reasons we've discovered so far?”

“Creighton still has a good one,” Frank pointed out stubbornly.

“So he would inherit a lot of money and be able to support Katya and their anarchist friends,” Sarah agreed.

“And if he didn't do it, their anarchist friends could've done it for him,” Frank added.

“Lilly probably wanted to be free of her marriage,” Mrs. Decker said. “Divorce would have ruined her and left her penniless and disgraced, but if Gregory died, she'd have a comfortable income and no husband to control her anymore.”

“I doubt Mrs. Van Dyke built the bomb,” Frank said.

“So she would have had to influence someone to do it for her,” Mrs. Decker said, undeterred.

“Someone who was in love with her and foolish enough to believe murder would be a reasonable solution to his problems,” Sarah said.

“Someone young and impressionable,” Mrs. Decker guessed.

“Or naïve,” Sarah said. “Or desperately in love.”

“Or maybe just stupid,” Frank said impatiently.

“We're only trying to help you, Malloy,” Sarah reminded him. “What other reason might someone have wanted Mr. Van Dyke dead?”

Frank glared at both women for a long moment, but they didn't seem to notice. They were too busy trying to figure out another motive for Van Dyke's death.

“He must have been standing in someone's way,” Mrs. Decker finally said.

“What do you mean, Mother?” Sarah asked.

“The killer wanted something he couldn't have as long as Gregory was alive.”

“Lilly,” Sarah guessed. “No one else could have her if she was married to him.”

“Or his money,” Mrs. Decker said. “Lilly wanted to spend far more than he allowed her, and of course, there's Creighton and the anarchists who needed money.”

“What other reasons do people kill?” Sarah asked Frank. “For love and money and what else?”

“Revenge,” he offered idly, just to see if she could assign that motive to anyone in this case.

“Could he have cheated someone?” Sarah asked. “In a business deal? What about Mr. Snowberger? They were partners. Maybe Mr. Van Dyke did something dishonest to him. Would Father know about it if he had?” she asked her mother.

“Only if one of them told him or it was public knowledge,” Mrs. Decker said.

“We've heard a rumor about that,” Frank informed them, “but the story was that Snowberger cheated Van Dyke.”

“Oh, dear, that doesn't help,” said Mrs. Decker.

Frank decided he might as well get their opinions of yet another possible motive. “Lilly wasn't the only person he controlled.”

Sarah looked at him with a frown, but it cleared almost instantly. “Alberta!”

“What about Alberta?” Mrs. Decker asked.

“He refused to allow the man she loved to court her,” Sarah said.

But her mother was shaking her head. “Nonsense. Gregory would have been thrilled if
anyone
had courted her. He would have been very generous to her husband, too.”

“What if the man she wanted wasn't socially acceptable to him, though?” Sarah asked. “He wouldn't have been generous then. He wouldn't have even allowed her to see him.”

Mrs. Decker wasn't impressed. “Thwarted lovers usually elope instead of committing murder.”

Frank watched Sarah's expression grow grim. “But if the girl's father is a powerful man, they'd risk his wrath if they eloped.”

He saw the memories claim Mrs. Decker, sucking the color from her cheeks and the light from her eyes. Both women were remembering the Deckers' other daughter, Maggie. She'd fallen in love with the wrong man, gotten herself with child, and defied her parents to elope with him. Felix Decker had ruined the man's job prospects, hoping to drive Maggie back home, but instead she had refused to leave her husband—and died in childbirth in a squalid tenement.

“Alberta is nothing like Maggie,” Mrs. Decker said, her voice hoarse with emotion.

“She's with child by a man her family knows nothing about,” Sarah replied.

Mrs. Decker gasped aloud.

“It's Reed,” Frank said to pull them all the way back from their dark past. “Lewis Reed, Van Dyke's secretary.”

Sarah turned to him in amazement, the shadows of her sister's memory gone from her blue eyes. “How do you know?”

“I saw them together today. As you said, there's a subtle difference between comforting someone and embracing them. They were definitely embracing.”

 
 
F
RANK WALKED SLOWLY BACK TO POLICE HEADQUARTERS after escorting Sarah and her mother to the El station for the trip back uptown. He didn't believe for a moment that Sarah would really forget all about the Van Dyke murder, but at least he'd gotten her and Mrs. Decker out of the Lower East Side for today.

Remembering what Commissioner Roosevelt had said about finding out the truth made Frank slightly sick to his stomach. Usually when he was working on a murder case, his problem was finding the solution. This case was just the opposite. Here he had too many perfectly logical solutions, but none of them was one the Van Dyke family or Roosevelt would be very happy to hear.

Of course, the anarchists could still be guilty. The fact that Creighton had escaped did cast suspicion on him and the rest of them. Frank just wished his gut wasn't telling him something different or that he didn't have so many other good prospects. He tried to imagine a way he could accuse the Widow Van Dyke or son Tad or partner Snowberger of murder without getting himself fired.

Tom, the doorman at Police Headquarters, greeted him as he held the door for him. Frank mumbled something in reply, but he was still deep in thought, trying to get what he knew about Van Dyke's murder to make sense.

The moment he stepped inside, the desk sergeant called his name, distracting him from his thoughts.

“There's a message for you from Captain O'Connor,” the sergeant informed him. “Wants you to telephone him.”

Frank trudged upstairs to the detectives' office and placed the telephone call to O'Connor's office uptown, hoping his men had learned something helpful. The captain wasn't very friendly when he finally came on the line.

“Who do you think you are, telling my men what to do, Malloy?” he demanded.

“I thought they were supposed to be helping me with the investigation,” Frank replied wearily. The last thing he needed was to get into a power struggle with a captain. “Did they find out anything about Van Dyke's will?”

“The lawyer wouldn't tell them anything. Said it was confidential information. You want to find out, you'll have to talk to him yourself.”

O'Connor hung up, before Frank could even reply.

Fine. One more unpleasant thing he had to do today, right after he informed Police Chief Conlin that Emma Goldman was back in the city.

 
 
S
ARAH AND HER MOTHER SPOKE LITTLE ON THE TRIP back uptown to the Deckers' townhouse. Sarah had accepted an invitation to stay for supper, and she was looking forward to a quiet evening with her parents. She was also hoping her father might have some insight into Mr. Van Dyke's relationship with his partner.

The two women settled comfortably in the back parlor, where the maid had laid a fire and brought them tea to warm them after their long, cold afternoon. Mr. Decker found them there later.

“Sarah, how delightful to see you,” he said. He did look pleased, although it was hard to tell if one didn't know him well. He touched her mother lightly on the shoulder by way of greeting, and took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs. “How are the Van Dykes?”

“This is very difficult for them, as you can imagine,” her mother said. She briefly told him about Malloy bringing Creighton home and how he escaped.

“I suppose that proves those anarchists were behind this terrible business,” her father said. “They're the ones who use bombs, of course.”

“Unless someone wanted Creighton and his friends to get the blame,” Sarah said, “and used the bomb to cast suspicion on them.”

Her father raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Who gave you an idea like that?”

“I got it myself, Father,” Sarah said, refusing to be insulted. Her father probably couldn't help his attitudes toward women and their ability to reason. He'd been brought up with an irrational sense of male superiority, and it was rather late to change him. “After I spoke with Creighton and his friends, I don't think they're guilty.”

Now her father was alarmed. He looked inquiringly at his wife, but she had picked up some needlework and was concentrating on it, as if completely unaware of the conversation going on around her. “When did you have an opportunity to speak to Creighton's anarchist friends?” he asked sharply.

“When I went to his flat.”

Her father's face flushed scarlet with outrage, but before he could speak, her mother said, “Creighton's lady friend is with child, Felix. Sarah went in case the poor woman needed her help.” She hadn't even looked up from her needlework.

Completely disarmed, her father had no ready reply to make, so Sarah took advantage of the opportunity.

“Father, there have been rumors that Mr. Van Dyke and his partner had quarreled about business. The talk is that Mr. Snowberger had cheated Mr. Van Dyke in some way. Do you know anything about that?”