Murder on Lenox Hill

WHEN SHE GOT BACK TO THE CHURCH AFTER LEAVING Rachel Upchurch wallowing in her guilt, Sarah found Malloy in Upchurch’s office alone. He didn’t look happy, but then he apparently hadn’t taken anyone off to The Tombs, either.

“Yeah, Mrs. York was trying to protect her mother, who was trying to protect her, near as I can figure.”

“Rachel Upchurch was trying to protect Isaiah. She thought he must’ve done it because he was the one who set up the communion table, I guess, and because he’s in love with her and might’ve wanted her to be a widow, although I don’t think he knows about the baby. Rachel admitted that he’s the father.”

“I figured, and I’m sure he doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know that what they did makes babies,” he said in exasperation. “Even still, he confessed to protect her, but he didn’t do it, either.”

“The same reason I knew all of them were lying. See, all they knew was what happened. They knew nobody from the congregation went forward to take communion, and Upchurch was the only one who drank from the cup. They also knew the wine was poisoned with rat poison, thanks to Dr. Thomas, who told them. It’s easy to figure out that the cup was sitting there for a while with nobody around, and somebody put the poison in it during that time.”

“Because,” he said, rubbing both hands over his face. “First of all, none of them knew that nobody was going to take communion this morning.”

“So did I, but they didn’t, or at least nobody I talked to had heard anything about it. So as far as they knew, a lot of people would’ve drunk from the cup before Upchurch, and according to Doc Thomas, none of them would’ve gotten enough to be a fatal dose unless they happened to be elderly or sick already. That goes for Upchurch, too, who usually would only have taken a sip like everybody else.”

“That doesn’t make poisoning the communion cup a very reliable way of killing Upchurch then,” she realized.

“If they wanted to kill Upchurch, why would somebody bring rat poison from home to put in the communion cup that everybody in the church might drink out of? The killer might not even have known that a little sip wouldn’t necessarily be fatal. He’d be putting the whole congregation at risk.”

“You’re right,” Sarah agreed, trying to put herself in the killer’s place. “Bringing poison from home would require planning ahead, and if you thought about it at all, you’d know it was a stupid idea. Did everybody claim they’d brought the poison from home?”

“Everybody except Isaiah. He said he used the poison they keep downstairs in the church kitchen, but when he took me down to show me where it was kept, it wasn’t there.”

“No, he was surprised it wasn’t there. He claimed he’d used it this morning and put it back on the shelf. Since I don’t believe he used it, that means the killer might have and then not put it away again.”

He sounded discouraged. Sarah had seldom seen him discouraged. “You could give up,” she suggested. “A lot of murderers are never caught, and in this case—”

“I can’t take that chance. Too many people already know what went on here today. What if the newspapers find out four people confessed and the police didn’t arrest anybody?” Sarah knew the newspapers would love a story like that. It would sell thousands of copies. “I’d be out of a job, and they’d arrest the wrong person just to close the case.”

He was right, and they both knew it. Sarah sighed, and they sat in silence for a few minutes while she tried to think of something to help or at least something to say to make him feel better. Before she could, he turned to her and said, “I’ve been trying to remember the last time I had a case where somebody was poisoned by cyanide, but I can’t.”

“I get my share, between murders and suicides, but they’re usually arsenic. In fact, I thought that’s what rat poison was.”

“It’s odd you should say that. I was thinking the same thing when Dr. Thomas told you cyanide was in rat poison. I’m certain every rat poison I’ve ever used has been arsenic.”

“That’s right, he did!” she remembered. “If it’s only in some of them, then all we have to do is find out who has the right kind, the kind with cyanide, and we’ll probably find the real killer!”

He gave her one of his looks that told her this wasn’t a good idea. “Do you suggest we go door to door in the city until we find somebody with the right kind?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, but we could check the families in the church, or at least the ones who were here today. You have a list of the names. You could start with the people who confessed, to make sure they’re eliminated, then go from there.”

She could see that he thought this was a good idea but didn’t want to admit it. “Do you know how long that would take?”

“Do what?” Kelly asked from the doorway. Sarah was happy to see he didn’t look as irreverent as he had this morning. She hadn’t thought he was taking the case seriously enough earlier.

“No, just that everybody agrees they didn’t decide ahead of time not to take communion. What about the lady that confessed?”

Kelly frowned. “The old one who confessed to us out there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the sanctuary.

“Four. I think that’s a record for me. Did you find any trace of the bag of poison Mrs. Evans said she threw outside?”

“He claimed they keep rat poison down there, but it wasn’t in its usual place, even though he claimed he’d put it back there when he was finished with it.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “You still have plenty of time to check people’s homes this afternoon,” she reminded him.

“He said that cyanide killed him, and that it’s in some kinds of rat poison. If we check each family in the church to see what kind they have, then we can narrow down the list of suspects to those who have the right kind.”

Kelly’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head at such a suggestion. Malloy just grunted. “You’re staying here.”

“You can go comfort the widow if you want, or you can look for the rat poison that Isaiah said was in the kitchen. If it’s the right kind, we’ll have it checked to see if it matches what was in the wine, which reminds me . . .”

He pushed himself out of his chair and went out into the sanctuary. Sarah and Kelly followed, having nothing left to do in the office. Malloy called for the two patrolmen who had been left on duty to provide assistance. He found them sleeping on a back pew. After making sure they were properly chastised, he sent one of them off with the wine bottle and communion cup to have the contents tested. That wouldn’t happen until the police laboratory opened tomorrow, but at least the evidence would be where it needed to be.

Then he, Kelly, and the remaining patrolman got the list of attendees from this morning’s service and began dividing it up after consulting a city directory they found in Upchurch’s office for addresses.

Before they left, Malloy warned Sarah not to get in trouble, and she returned the warning, to Kelly’s amusement.

FRANK HAD TAKEN THE OTHER THREE CONFESSED SUSPECTS for himself, and he’d left them for last. So far, he’d found only one box of rat poison containing cyanide in his visits, and the elderly couple who owned it hadn’t even known it was in the house, much less where to find it if they’d decided to poison a minister. Their cook had finally produced it, grumbling about being pestered and confirming no one had moved it from the cupboard where she kept it in weeks.

He smiled a little as he knocked on Isaiah Wilkins’s door. The boy was going to be mad when Frank didn’t arrest him. The maid escorted him into the parlor where Isaiah and his mother sat. He was on his feet instantly, his young face pale but determined. His mother looked a bit alarmed, but not unduly so. She obviously had no idea her son expected to be carted off to jail.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Wilkins, but we’re checking with everyone who was at church this morning to see what kind of rat poison they keep in their house,” Frank explained, not looking at Isaiah.

He used his diplomatic smile. “We’re trying to find out where the poison that killed Reverend Upchurch came from,” he said. “It’s an unusual kind, and we think that when we find it, we’ll have found the killer.”

She glanced at her son, then back at Frank. “Surely, you don’t suspect any of us here?” she asked anxiously.

His mother thought he was talking to her. “Of course I do, dear,” she said. “I want Mr. Malloy to know that we had nothing to do with that man’s death.”

The boy gave Frank a desperate look, but he ignored it and allowed Mrs. Wilkins to take him to the kitchen where he found, much to his relief, an arsenic poison.

“We’re still looking for it,” Frank said mildly. “We think the killer might’ve taken it with him, though.” He thanked Mrs. Wilkins for her help and apologized again for bothering her. Then he let her show him to the door, with Isaiah following doggedly in their wake.

“Is that all?” the boy asked when Frank started out the door. He still looked terrified, but now he was desperate, too.

“No, it’s not all,” Frank said, turning to Mrs. Wilkins. “You should be very proud of your son. He’s a little head-strong, but he’s got a good heart.” He looked at Isaiah. “You’re old enough to make your own decisions now, Isaiah. Be sure that from now on, you make good ones.”

“Stop bothering Mr. Malloy,” Mrs. Wilkins chided him. “He has work to do, and I’m sure he’d like to be on his way.”

“Yes, I would,” Frank said and left, aware of Isaiah’s frustration and taking a perverse satisfaction in it.

RACHEL UPCHURCH ANSWERED HER OWN DOOR, AND she seemed relieved to see Sarah again. “What happened to Isaiah?” she demanded as she stood aside for Sarah to enter. “Do you know? Has he been arrested?” To her credit, she looked as tortured as a woman who might have driven a boy to murder should have.

“Oh, thank God,” Rachel breathed, laying a hand on her heart. “Thank you for coming to tell me.”

“That’s not why I came,” Sarah said, feeling no sympathy for her. “I came to see what kind of rat poison you keep in your house.”

“I still need to check. He’s checking everyone who attended church this morning. Will I find it in the kitchen?” Sarah asked, heading in that direction without waiting for a reply.

“I’m sure you will,” Rachel said, following. “Our maid quit the other day—I told you I have trouble keeping servants—so I’m not sure, but it shouldn’t be hard to find it.”

Apparently, she wasn’t lying about not being sure. She helped Sarah look, throwing open cupboards and searching through the pantry until they located a half-empty box.

“No, but as I said, we have to be sure. Isaiah said they keep rat poison at the church. Do you know where it would be?”

Rachel gave her a pained look. “And that must mean I know everything that goes on at the church, I suppose. It might if I were the typical minister’s wife, but as you well know, I’m not. The only time I ever went over there was for Sunday services.”

She flinched, but she didn’t back down. “I don’t know anything about rat poison at the church,” she insisted, her eyes filled with a pain Sarah felt she deserved to feel.

As angry as she was with Rachel Upchurch, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, too. Her entire life had been lonely and loveless, and now she was more alone than she had ever been.

“If you’re worried that I’m going to get Isaiah to marry me, don’t be concerned,” she replied defensively. “He doesn’t know about the baby, and I have no intention of telling him.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Sarah replied tartly. “He wouldn’t be much of a provider in any case. You’ll have to go someplace, though. They won’t let you stay here.”

“I know. Actually, I’ve been trying to figure that out while you were gone. If Mr. Malloy doesn’t change his mind and put me in jail, I suppose I’ll contact my aunt and uncle. He’s my mother’s brother. When they hear I’ve been widowed and am expecting a child, they’ll most likely feel obligated to take me in. They live near Albany, so it’s unlikely the scandal of Oliver’s murder will follow me there.”

“He’s just a child,” she said dismissively. “What could he do to stop me? I’ll simply tell him I no longer care for him. He’ll recover soon enough.”

Sarah wondered if he’d ever recover from what both of the Upchurchs had put him through, but she wasn’t going to argue. She knew Rachel’s leaving him was the best thing for him. “I have to get back to the church,” she said.

JUST A BLOCK AWAY FROM THE WILKINS’S HOUSE, FRANK came to the Evans-York household, his last stop. Mrs. Evans greeted him when the maid showed him into the parlor. She looked tired and much older than she had the first time he’d met her.

“She’s resting. I’m sure she’ll be fine now that she knows I’m not going to prison. You were right, Mr. Malloy. I did think she’d killed that awful man. I couldn’t bear the thought of her going to prison, so I lied. I was very angry when I found out she’d confessed to protect me, of all things, but I also have to be grateful for the love that motivated her.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “Not many people would sacrifice themselves like that for somebody else.”

He chose not to respond to that. “The reason I’m here is that I have to make sure there’s no real evidence against you and your daughter, in case somebody else gets assigned to this case later. Can you show me where you keep your rat poison?”

“Because not many kinds of rat poison are cyanide. Most of them are arsenic. Do you know which kind you have?”

“I wonder if another detective would have taken the time to check my story,” she mused as she walked him back to the parlor.

“I don’t think anybody would believe you’re a killer in the first place, Mrs. Evans,” he told her. “I just need to ask you one more thing. Do you know if there was rat poison in the church kitchen?”

She looked up at him in surprise. “Why, yes, now that you mention it. I think we kept a box there. The rats get in everywhere,” she added almost apologetically. “We tried to keep the church clean and not tempt them, but even a crumb is enough to draw them.”

“There’s a cabinet in the kitchen. The last time I saw it was on the top shelf, so the children couldn’t reach it, you understand. I can show you, if you like.”

She considered. “Any of the women who worked in the kitchen could have seen it, and that’s all of us at one time or another.”

This made her frown. “I couldn’t really say. I can’t actually recall her ever helping us down there, so she might not have known it was there, but then, she’s the minister’s wife, and she’s got access to the church all the time. I have no idea what she knows and doesn’t know.”

“You said Isaiah knew about it,” she said. “Some of the other boys might have, too, I suppose. I don’t know who else might have. The men seldom go into the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t know about it.”

It was the echo of the story he’d heard over and over this afternoon. He thanked Mrs. Evans and took his leave. As he walked back to the church, he hoped Kelly or the patrolman or even Sarah had been more successful.

SARAH WAS SITTING IN UPCHURCH’S OFFICE, TAKING ADVANTAGE of the comfortable chairs in there, when she heard the sanctuary door open and close. She tensed for a moment, realizing she was alone in the building where a murder had taken place. If the killer had returned . . .

He looked even more discouraged than he had before, and Sarah’s heart ached for him. “No, and I met Kelly and that idiot patrolman a couple blocks from here. Neither of them did, either, so I sent them home. You should go home, too.”

Sarah sighed. “I will. I just wanted to let you know that I searched every nook and cranny in this building, and I didn’t find any rat poison. Oh, except for Upchurch’s desk, which is locked. I couldn’t find any keys, either.”

“Upchurch probably had them in his pocket, in which case they’re at the morgue. I’ll take a look, though. Maybe I won’t need any keys.”

Before Sarah could ask what he meant by that, he was on his way to Upchurch’s office. Did police officers learn how to pick locks the same way burglars did? She wondered idly as she watched him examine the end of a letter opener that had been lying on the desk. He leaned down and inserted it into the slot above the center drawer. A little jiggle produced a click and the drawer slid open.

The tone of his voice made the hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck stand up. She hurried over as he pulled a box out of the drawer.

“Yeah, it is,” he confirmed, setting the box down in the middle of the cluttered desk top. “Says so right here: cyanide.” He pointed to the boldly printed words.

“Why would it be in Upchurch’s desk?” Sarah asked, hardly able to believe it had been right there under their noses all along.

“Something’s been bothering me about this case from the beginning, and I couldn’t figure out what it was, but now . . . now I think I might have it.”

“Remember when I told you that the confessions didn’t make sense with what really happened?” he asked.

“Yes, because putting the poison in the communion wine probably wouldn’t have killed Upchurch, and it could’ve made everyone else who drank out of the cup sick.”

“But the killer couldn’t have known that when he put the poison in the cup. Nobody knew the people weren’t going to come up for communion, and nobody knew Upchurch would drink it all himself.”

“Unless the person who put the poison in the cup wanted to make the people in the congregation sick,” he said.

“He thought maybe Upchurch had tricked Grace the way he’d tricked the boys. He wanted to find out before the church members confronted him because he wouldn’t be likely to cooperate after that.”

“Not from what he said to Linton. Linton didn’t intend to let him know what was going to happen, but Upchurch got a little self-righteous and threatened to report Linton to the church elders for making false accusations. Linton got mad and told him everybody knew the truth about him.”

Sarah thought back to that morning and how Upchurch had looked when he came out to lead the service. He’d seemed composed at first, but he’d rapidly lost that composure as things began to go awry. “He was upset when no one sang and the offering plates came back empty, but I thought that was because he didn’t know what was wrong.”

“He knew, all right,” Malloy confirmed, still trying to put all the pieces together. “He knew they’d turned against him. He knew they were going to run him out of the church and probably out of the city.”

“Who knows what his reason was, but he must’ve wanted to get back at them somehow,” Malloy suggested. “Maybe he hoped they’d all die, but he knew they’d get sick at least.

He could even drink some to divert suspicion from himself. He wouldn’t even have to swallow it, just pretend to, and then pretend to be sick like the others.”

“But no one came forward.” Sarah remembered the scene too well. “He called for them twice, but no one moved. I’ll never forget the expression on his face. I thought he was just humiliated.”

She pictured it in her mind. “He looked desperate. That’s the only word to describe it. He offered the cup to Isaiah. He’d offered him the bread first, and he didn’t take it, so Upchurch ate it himself. Isaiah wouldn’t take the cup, either. He even took a step backward. I remember thinking how embarrassing it was for Upchurch to have even his assistant refuse him. And then . . .”

“Then he looked around the room. His eyes were terrible, almost crazed. I actually felt sorry for him. Then he lifted the cup to his lips and drank it down.”

“Oh, no. He tipped the cup up like he wanted to empty it. Some of the wine even ran down his face and stained his stole, that thing he wears around his neck. You probably noticed those stains.”

“Because he saw his life crumbling around him,” Malloy said with a sigh. “He knew they’d expose him and ruin him. He might never get another church, and he might even go to prison. He’d wanted to punish them for what they were going to do to him, but they even ruined that by refusing to cooperate. He must have been desperate, just like you thought. He didn’t see any way out, and he knew the wine was poisoned, so he drank it. That’s why they call suicide the coward’s way out.”