Murder on Washington Square

by Victoria Thompson

  “You know who killed Anna?”

  Nelson’s face fell. “I wish to God I did. No, it’s not that. It was about the bank and the missing money. You said Mr. Dennis discovered it when he asked the auditors to check our accounts.”

  “That’s what he told Mrs. Brandt.”

  “But that’s just it, Mr. Malloy. She only spoke with him on Sunday, and he told her on Tuesday night that they’d discovered the missing money. Even if he’d been able to get auditors into the bank first thing on Monday morning—which would have been very difficult—they would have only had two days to work. Two days at the most! Mr. Malloy, there is no way they could have made a determination like that so quickly!”

  12

  SARAH WENT TO HER PARENTS’ HOUSE EARLY, HOPING TO catch her father before he left for the day. She didn’t question why she needed to see him so badly. She only knew she did. She’d spent a restless night after the unpleasant scene at the Ellsworths. Lying awake, she’d remembered every word they’d said, how Mrs. Ellsworth had wept, and how devastated Nelson had looked when he realized that even if he was cleared of murder, he would most certainly lose his position. Most likely, he’d also never get another, no matter how discreet Richard Dennis was.

  Only in the wee hours of the morning, when she was exhausted and half-sick with worry, did she remember what was probably the most remarkable part of a very remarkable day. How could she have forgotten? As distracted as she was by everything else, surely having Frank Malloy call her beautiful was the most memorable event she could recall in her recent history.

  How extraordinary that he should say such a thing! Especially so because Sarah wasn’t beautiful at all. She’d long ago come to terms with that. In her youth she’d been pretty enough, she supposed, because health and youth and good nature combined to make one attractive. But then her sister had died so horribly, and Sarah had grown solemn. Determined not to waste her life, she’d put aside vanities that had no place in her new world.

  Tom, of course, had thought her beautiful, but he had been blinded by love. What could have possessed Malloy, however, was a mystery. A delightful mystery, though. When Sarah remembered Malloy’s outrage over Richard Dennis’s behavior, she felt the strangest heat building inside of her. She needed a moment to recognize it for what it was—pure pleasure! And to her dismay, she realized she was actually blushing just at the memory of it!

  She glanced around the crowded railroad car to see if anyone had noticed the color rising in her face, but fortunately, no one was paying her the slightest attention. Quickly, she put her gloved hands on her cheeks to cool them and glanced out the window at the houses passing so quickly and so closely by. To distract herself from disturbing thoughts, she watched for a glimpse of the occupants of the third-floor apartments passing by at eye level and tried to imagine a history for each of them.

  By the time she reached her parents’ town house on the Upper West Side, she had almost succeeded in forgetting Malloy’s strange behavior.

  As she had expected, her mother hadn’t roused herself yet, but her father was still at breakfast, reading the morning newspapers in solitary splendor in the dining room.

  “Sarah,” he said, rising to his feet when the maid announced her. He seemed pleased to see her, although his natural reserve made it hard to tell. “What brings you out so early?”

  “I was hoping to have a word with you,” she said, taking a seat in the chair he pulled out for her at the table.

  “You’ll join me for breakfast, I hope.”

  “I’ve already eaten, thank you.”

  He instructed the maid to bring her some tea anyway and resumed his own seat. “This sounds serious,” he said with a frown. “I don’t believe you’ve ever made a special effort to have a word with me about anything.”

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” she assured him. “I just have some questions to ask you about . . . about embezzlement.”

  “Embezzlement?” he echoed in surprise. “Why? Are you thinking of trying your hand at it?”

  Sarah couldn’t help smiling at the thought, in spite of the seriousness of the situation. “Of course not, Father. It’s just that . . . well, my friend Mr. Ellsworth has now been accused of it, in addition to everything else.”

  He absorbed this information. “The accusation, did it come from Richard Dennis?”

  “I’m afraid so. He called in auditors to check the books on Monday morning, just to be certain everything was in order since . . . You see, the murdered woman was trying to blackmail Mr. Ellsworth.”

  “I see. Then that would be a sensible precaution for the bank to take. And the auditors did find some discrepancies, I presume.”

  “According to Mr. Dennis, they found ten thousand dollars missing.”

  Her father frowned. “That’s a lot of blackmail.”

  “Exactly my reaction. The woman had only asked for one thousand. I can’t believe Nelson would have been so foolish. He’s honest to a fault, Father. He’d never take money that didn’t belong to him, but even if he did, he certainly would have more sense than to take so much, particularly when he didn’t need it. He would know that someone would eventually discover the theft, and he’d be caught.”

  “But if he was desperate . . .”

  “He wasn’t desperate. Father, the woman claimed to be carrying his child, and he was willing and able to marry her. Why would he steal money from his employer to pay blackmail when he wanted to marry the woman?”

  “You’re right, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “But Nelson Ellsworth isn’t in a position to prove his innocence of anything at the moment. Mr. Dennis isn’t planning to press charges against him, but he’ll still dismiss him from the bank because of the missing money. Nelson will be ruined, and he’ll never be able to find a decent job again.”

  Her father took a sip of his coffee and studied her. “I suppose there’s something you want me to do about all this.”

  Sarah sighed. “I’m not even sure there’s anything you can do. I guess I was just hoping you might have some advice to offer.”

  Her father stared at her for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet in a way she’d never heard it before. “I’m gratified that you have come to me, Sarah. A father wants his children to have confidence in his abilities to handle difficult situations.”

  She hadn’t realized it, but that’s exactly what she’d done. Once her father had seemed the most powerful person on earth to her. She’d lost respect for that power when she’d seen him misuse it with her sister, but still, deep down where her childhood memories were buried, she believed he could do anything. “I do have confidence in you, Father,” she admitted. “But it isn’t fair of me to ask you to help with this.”

  “Quite truthfully, I’m not certain I can. Young Dennis isn’t likely to take advice from me about how to run his business. He’d see it as interference, and he’d be right. Going to his father about this would be even worse. I’m not sure I could even make discreet inquiries without offending them.”

  “I guess I knew that,” she said. “I just didn’t want to believe it. Please forgive me for putting you in an awkward position.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, brushing away her apology. “I’ll give the matter some thought and see what I can do. I can’t make any promises, mind you, but—”

  “Oh, Father, I’m not asking for any promises. But I don’t even know anything about embezzlement. If I did, perhaps I could . . . I don’t know, do something,” she said in exasperation.

  “I’m glad to say I know very little about it myself, but I can at least obtain that information with relative ease. I’ll take lunch at my club today. Someone there will be only too happy to enlighten me on the subject, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you, Father. I’d be so grateful.”

  He peered at her over his coffee cup. “No reason to be grateful, my dear. Now go upstairs and see your mother. I’ll send you word when I’ve learned somet
hing useful.”

  Frank wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the information Nelson Ellsworth had given him about the missing money. But first he had to clear the man of murder, or stolen money would be the least of his problems.

  Frank had gotten out of the cab, leaving Nelson to make his way home alone, and headed for Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street. He wanted to find Harold Giddings, but he knew he’d have to wait until the end of the work-day. His mother would never tell him where he was working today, even if she knew, which was unlikely. In the meantime, he might as well do the job he was being paid to do.

  A black Maria was pulling up at the door of Police Headquarters when Frank arrived at Mulberry Street. The closed carriage held the last of the drunks that had been collected off the city streets from the night before. The boys from the press shacks across the street leaned out their windows to see if they recognized any of the faces as someone who might make a good story. Frank pulled his hat lower in an attempt to escape notice as he made his way quickly inside, just in case someone recognized him as being a good source for a story about Anna Blake’s murder.

  The desk sergeant looked up when he entered, nodding his greeting with a bored expression. Frank wished him good morning.

  “About time you showed up, Malloy,” the sergeant said. “Some drunk’s been asking for you all night.”

  “A drunk? What’s his name?”

  “How should I know? Just some drunk. Said you’d vouch for him and we should let him go.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t,” Frank said with a grin.

  “Hell, I figured we should send him to the Tombs for life just for knowing you,” the sergeant said, grinning back.

  Frank was going to head upstairs to the detectives’ office, but then he remembered one drunk in particular who might have had him uppermost in his mind this week. He wasn’t sure why Gilbert Giddings would think he could trade on his acquaintance with Frank for a favor, but if he was the drunk downstairs, it wouldn’t hurt to find out. He might be grateful enough to tell him where his son could be found, if he even knew. Or he might have remembered something new about Anna Blake. “Is this fellow still downstairs?”

  “Locked up tight,” the sergeant said, turning his attention to the parade of drunks and derelicts being herded in the front door.

  Frank made his way down to the cellar of the large, square building, two floors below the street, where the dark, stinking cells held those unfortunate enough to have come to the attention of the police. Strong men had been known to break down and confess to the most heinous crimes to avoid being locked in these cells—or to escape from them to the relative pleasantness of the dismal City Jail.

  A quick inquiry of the jailer on duty led him to a cell filled with slowly sobering inmates where he did, indeed, find Gilbert Giddings sleeping off his night’s revelries.

  “You know him?” the officer asked.

  Frank nodded. “Has he ever been here before?”

  “Him?” the jailer scoffed. “He’s here once a week or more. When he runs out of money, he starts bothering other patrons at whatever bar he’s at. They get annoyed, and the next thing you know, the paddy wagon takes them all away.”

  A new thought occurred to Frank. “Was he here last Tuesday night?”

  “I could check.”

  “Thanks. Meanwhile, open the door. I want to have a word with the gentleman.”

  The jailer unlocked the cell and went off to check on Giddings’s records. Frank stepped into the cell, which was crammed with men curled and huddled in varying degrees of misery on nearly every square foot. Snores alternated with snivels and groans, and the smell of unwashed bodies and vomit rose up like a miasma. Frank stepped over a mass of rags that served as clothing for the man beneath it, and kicked Gilbert Giddings sharply on the hip.

  He awoke with a start and looked around in alarm. His red-rimmed eyes quickly found Frank, looming over him, but he needed another moment to recognize him. “Mr. Malloy,” he said, his voice hoarse from sleep and excess. He tried to scramble to his feet, but quickly gave up the effort as his head protested painfully. Holding it in both hands, he looked up at Frank again.

  “Can you get me out of here? I can’t . . . this is so humiliating. A man in my position . . .”

  “You don’t have a position, remember?” Frank reminded him. “You gave it up for Anna Blake.”

  To Frank’s disgust, the bloodshot eyes filled with tears. “I loved her, Malloy. I would’ve done anything for her.”

  “Even leave your wife and son?”

  Giddings winced at that. “I wanted to, but she wouldn’t let me,” he confessed. “She was too honorable.”

  Frank didn’t bother to argue the point. Let Giddings believe what he wanted. “I guess your family was grateful for her sacrifice,” he said instead.

  “They . . . they didn’t understand. I can’t blame them, I suppose. They lost so much.”

  “You son seems more angry than your wife,” Frank observed. “He doesn’t think much of your Miss Blake.”

  “He’s young,” Giddings excused him. “He doesn’t know much about life.”

  “He knows about his life, and his mother’s. He knows how you and Anna Blake ruined both of them. He must hate her.”

  “He doesn’t even know her.”

  Frank wondered if Giddings really didn’t know. “Yes, he does. He met her at least once.”

  Giddings stared blearily at Frank, not certain he’d understood correctly. “Harold couldn’t have met her.”

  “But he did. Went to her house on the night she died. What do you suppose he wanted?” Frank asked.

  One of the drunks nearby started coughing. The sound was raw and painful to hear, and Frank couldn’t help wondering what disease he might be carrying.

  Giddings was looking at the coughing drunk with distaste, probably unaware that he himself looked no better than the filthy, unshaven wretch. At last the coughing stopped, and Giddings looked up at Frank again. “Harold didn’t know her,” he insisted.

  “Then why did he kill her?”

  This time Giddings reacted in a normal way. His eyes grew large, first with surprise, then with fury. He even made a valiant effort to rise, ready to confront Frank, but Frank hooked his foot behind Giddings’s heel and sent him sprawling back to the floor again.

  Gasping with pain from his aching head and his bruised ego, Giddings glared at Frank. “Harold couldn’t kill anyone. He’s just a boy.”

  “You better take a good look at him next time you’re home,” Frank advised. “He’s not a boy anymore. He’s taken your place as the man of the family.”

  Giddings winced at the accusation, but he didn’t back down. “He didn’t kill Anna!” he insisted.

  “How do you know? Is it because you killed her yourself?”

  Giddings’s jaw dropped, but before he could speak, the jailer called to Frank.

  “He was here Tuesday night. Came in around nine o’clock.”

  “That’s pretty early,” Frank said, a little disappointed. Of course, that still would have given him time to kill Anna, since the landlady had said she’d left the house before dark.

  “He got into a bar fight. He’d been hanging around all evening, cadging drinks, but he didn’t have any money of his own, so the crowd got tired of him. Threw him out into the street, but he kept coming back in. The beat cop took him in.”

  Frank looked down at Giddings. “That was the night Anna died. You told me you couldn’t remember what happened that night. What were you doing in the bar?”

  He looked up, his eyes resentful. “I didn’t remember everything. I went to visit Anna that day, but she wouldn’t see me. They wouldn’t even let me in. That woman, Mrs. Walcott, told me not to come back again, that Anna was going away.”

  “So you went to the bar?”

  “I couldn’t go home. My wife . . . she doesn’t understand. So I went out.”

  “How did you get into a fight?”


  “I told you, I don’t remember anything after I left her house until I woke up here the next morning.”

  “Did you try to see Anna that day?”

  “I wanted to, but I was too sick. I had to wait until the next morning.”

  “That’s when we met,” Frank guessed, remembering how frantic Giddings had been to find her.

  Giddings nodded and rubbed his head again, unable to meet Frank’s penetrating gaze.

  “So that means even if you could remember, you wouldn’t know if your son went out to see Anna Blake that night or not,” Frank said.

  This brought Giddings’s head up, his eyes wild with fury. “My son didn’t even know where she lived! If you try to blame him for this, just because you can’t find her real killer, I’ll have your job!”

  Frank didn’t bother to point out that he was no longer in a position to be any danger to Frank’s job. He had more important things to think about. Frank had been hoping that Giddings would turn out to be the one who’d killed Anna. It was still possible, since Giddings claimed not to remember what he’d done that evening. He’d had time to find her and kill her before going to the bar. And if he couldn’t remember killing Anna, he could have been truly surprised to learn later that she was dead. That would explain why he’d acted like an innocent man the morning Frank had first seen him. But the boy was still a good suspect, too, and Frank knew for certain he’d seen Anna that night. “Your wife said you were home with her and your son the night Anna died, Giddings,” Frank said. “Now why would she say that?”

  Giddings rubbed his temples. “She’s a good woman. She doesn’t deserve this.”

  Frank gave him another light kick to get his attention. “Where is your son working today?”

  Giddings started up stupidly. “How should I know?”

  That’s what he’d expected, but he still didn’t like it. He stepped back over the ragged bundle of a man sleeping between him and the door. The fellow hadn’t stirred during the entire conversation, which meant he was either dead drunk or just dead. Frank walked out of the cell, and the jailer closed the door behind him.