Murder on Washington Square

by Victoria Thompson

  “And if you can’t order them to, I can,” Mrs. Beasley said tartly, sounding very much like Mrs. Ellsworth. “If they don’t, I’ll contact another newspaper and give them the story in exchange for a guard!”

  “Aunt Orpah!” Prescott protested feebly, but his aunt paid him no attention.

  Fortunately, the editor at the World immediately saw the news story potential in Prescott’s situation. Arrangements were quickly made by telephone to dispatch someone from the newspaper both to protect Prescott and to get the full story.

  “You mustn’t allow them to tire Mr. Prescott,” Mrs. Brandt instructed his aunt when the arrangements had been made. “He’s still in danger and needs lots of rest.”

  “I can talk,” Prescott protested feebly, but no one seemed interested in hearing him do so.

  The three women consulted on what the best course of treatment would be for the reporter. By the time the representatives from The World arrived—three of them and all very excited at the prospect of reporting the second attempt on Prescott’s life—Mrs. Brandt was finally satisfied that she could safely leave Prescott in his aunt’s care.

  Frank’s goal was to get Sarah Brandt home as quickly as possible since he was afraid she might keel over from exhaustion at any moment. Taking her on the train seemed the most difficult means of travel, but a Hansom cab could barely hold two passengers, and he had to return Mrs. Ellsworth to her home as well. Besides, the train was faster, even if it meant walking some distance both to and from the stations. They managed to make the trip without any mishaps.

  Just in case the reporters were still keeping their vigil on Bank Street, however, Frank led the women down the alley behind their houses. A stray dog was rooting through a pile of garbage, and he looked up and growled as they approached. The animal was mangy and scrawny, and Frank hoped it wasn’t also rabid. He shouted and clapped his hands, advancing threateningly, and to his relief, the dog tucked his tail and ran.

  “You’re much better at that than I am,” Mrs. Brandt remarked.

  “I’m louder,” he said.

  “And bigger,” Mrs. Ellsworth added.

  They reached the rear of their houses without further incident. “We’ll wait here until you’re safely inside,” he told the old woman.

  Mrs. Ellsworth wasn’t eager to be dismissed, however.

  “Mrs. Brandt, you need to get some rest immediately,” she said. “I’ll be happy to come in and fix you something to eat so you don’t have to exert yourself.”

  Frank opened his mouth to protest, but Sarah Brandt beat him to it.

  “Thank you so much for the offer, but I’m afraid I must consult with Mr. Malloy before I can even think of resting. I have a lot of things to tell him . . . and to ask him, too,” she added with a meaningful look he didn’t even try to interpret.

  “But you must eat,” Mrs. Ellsworth insisted. “You probably haven’t even had any breakfast.”

  “I’ll fix her something,” Frank said, earning an amazed look from both women. “And if anyone comes looking for Mrs. Brandt to deliver a baby, tell them she’s already out on a call,” he added to Mrs. Ellsworth.

  “Malloy!” Mrs. Brandt protested, but Frank wasn’t going to argue that point.

  “Don’t you want to hear all about Mrs. Giddings’s confession?” he asked provocatively, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward her back gate.

  “Thank you for your help,” she called over her shoulder to the old woman. “I’ll check on you this afternoon.” Then she said, “Ouch!” because Frank was squeezing her elbow pretty tightly.

  But he didn’t let her go until he was sure she was safely in her yard with the gate closed behind them, away from Mrs. Ellsworth.

  As soon as they were inside her house and the back door was shut, she said, “You better not have used the third degree on Mrs. Giddings.”

  Frank pulled off his bowler hat and hung it on a hook by the back door before trusting himself to respond to that. “I didn’t lay a hand on the woman, or on her son either, for that matter. I figured out from what he told me that he didn’t kill Anna Blake. I wasn’t even going to arrest him, but I guess his mother didn’t know that, which is why she decided to confess.”

  She pulled off her gloves and then her hat, jabbing the lethal-looking hat pin back into it with far more force than necessary. “Something’s not right about this, Malloy,” she insisted, making her way into the kitchen without bothering to invite him to follow. He did anyway.

  “I don’t know why you can’t just accept that the woman killed Anna Blake,” he tried. “She had every reason to, and she admitted it.”

  “How did she even know where Anna lived?”

  “She followed her son there that night. The boy had followed his father before, so he knew where the house was. Harold wanted to confront her. He wanted her to give back the money she’d taken from his father.”

  She was stuffing kindling into the stove. “I’m sure Anna found that amusing.”

  “The boy said she laughed at him, if that’s what you mean. Then he left, but his mother waited for a while, so the boy wouldn’t see her, and when she saw Anna leave the house, she realized this was her chance. She followed her to the park and stabbed her.”

  Mrs. Brandt had lit the kindling and looked up while she waited for it to catch. “She stabbed her in broad daylight?” she asked.

  “They were standing off by themselves. No one paid them any attention.”

  “And Anna just lay there until morning?” She was feeding small sticks into the growing flames. “No one noticed her?”

  “She must’ve walked a bit, trying to find some help. But if anyone saw her, they probably just thought she was drunk.”

  “Wouldn’t they have seen the blood?”

  “The coroner said she covered the wound with her shawl, probably trying to stop the bleeding.”

  “And what about the man?”

  “What man?”

  “The man the coroner said Anna had been with before she died. The sponge, remember?”

  He’d been trying not to think about it. “She probably had a liaison with somebody we don’t know anything about,” Frank suggested.

  “Malloy, this doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Murder doesn’t have to make sense,” he reminded her in exasperation. “In fact, it hardly ever does!”

  “I’m not talking about the why. I’m talking about the how. Mrs. Giddings couldn’t have killed Anna Blake.”

  “She confessed!” Frank reminded her angrily. “Why would she do that if she didn’t kill her?”

  “You said it yourself, she thought you were going to arrest her son. She might have done it to protect him. But whatever her reason, she was lying. Mrs. Giddings did not kill Anna Blake.”

  15

  SARAH STUCK A LOG INTO THE STOVE AND SLAMMED THE door shut more loudly than necessary. Malloy was glaring at her, but she didn’t care. She was right, and she knew it.

  “All right,” he said, pretending to be reasonable, “if Mrs. Giddings didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “The same person who tried to kill Mr. Prescott.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Yes, I do! The person who stabbed him promised him information about Anna Blake’s killer. And why would anyone else want to kill him?”

  “A hundred reasons! He’s a newspaper reporter!” Malloy was shouting now.

  “Keep your voice down,” she cautioned. “You don’t want Mrs. Ellsworth to hear you. She’d be over here in a second to find out what’s wrong.”

  He looked like he might explode, but he drew a deep breath, let it out on a long sigh, and forced himself to sit down at the kitchen table.

  Sarah started making coffee while Malloy got his temper under control.

  As she set the pot on the warming stove, he said, “Just because the person—and I’m glad you’re willing to admit it might not have been a female—who stabbed Prescott lured him with a promise of informatio
n about Anna Blake, that doesn’t mean he—or she—had any or even knew anything about the murder at all. It just means that person knew this was a sure way to get Prescott to a private meeting.”

  Sarah didn’t like this. He was starting to make sense. “Maybe you’re right, but maybe I’m right, too. What if the person who killed Anna was afraid Prescott was getting too close to the truth?”

  “How would he—or she—know that?”

  “Because of Prescott’s stories in the paper,” she reminded him impatiently. “He was the one who discovered that Anna was an actress and—”

  “You were the one who discovered that. Prescott just happened to be the only reporter we told.”

  “Fair enough, but still, he was the first one to write about it. If someone was afraid of what he was finding out, they could have decided the safest thing to do was kill him.”

  “Wait a minute,” Malloy said, holding up his hand. “How would they know it was Prescott writing the stories?”

  Sarah had been rummaging around in her cupboard, looking for something to eat, but this brought her head up sharply. She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came for a moment while she thought this through. “You’re right!” she said finally. “We knew Prescott was writing the stories, but no one else would.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” Malloy said. “It’s not like they put the reporter’s name on his stories or anything. So it had to be someone who knew Prescott was the one writing them, or who at least had heard of him.”

  “The Walcotts knew Prescott,” she remembered. “He’d been to the house that day we told him Anna was an actress. Then he went back later, right before he was attacked, after he’d talked to her friends at the theater. He was asking a lot of questions, and Mrs. Walcott got very upset.”

  “Did Prescott tell you this?”

  “No, Catherine Porter did.”

  He frowned, surprised and not happy about it. “When did you talk to Catherine Porter?”

  “Yesterday. She told me a lot of things, and that’s why I was looking for you. I thought you needed to know them, too.”

  “You went to the boarding house?”

  “Yes. I just couldn’t make sense of what had happened that night, and I thought Catherine might be able to answer a few of my questions.”

  Malloy rubbed a hand over his face wearily, although what he had to be weary about, she had no idea. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me everything Catherine Porter told you?” he suggested tightly.

  “I want to get something to eat first,” she said. “You promised Mrs. Ellsworth you’d take care of me, but I can see you have no intention of it.” Turning her full attention to the cupboard for a few seconds, she finally found a tin of peaches and started prying it open with the can opener.

  Malloy sighed again, this time in martyrdom, and rose to his feet. “Sit down,” he commanded her.

  “But—”

  “Sit down! Or I’ll get Mrs. Ellsworth over here to make you.”

  That was an effective threat. Sarah sat, mystified as to what might happen next. To her surprise, Malloy finished opening the can of peaches, poured them out into a bowl, and set it in front of her.

  Sarah looked up at him, still not quite certain what to make of this. “I’ll need something . . . a fork,” she ventured.

  To her amazement, he located one without fumbling and put it on the table beside her. “Eat,” was all he said.

  So she did. And while she did, he found some eggs in her icebox, which was still fairly cool even though she hadn’t replenished the ice in several days. Then he located a piece of cheese that was too hard to eat and a dried-up onion. In a few minutes, he’d chopped the onion and put it in a pan to sizzle in some bacon grease he’d spooned from the container by the stove. Then he broke up the cheese and threw it into the pan with the eggs, and before Sarah could quite comprehend what was happening, Malloy set the finished concoction down in front of her.

  While he was pouring them each a cup of coffee, she looked up at him in awe and asked, “When did you learn to cook?”

  “This isn’t cooking,” he said. “This is basic survival. How do you think men keep from starving when they don’t have a woman to do for them? Now eat.”

  Sarah had forgotten to finish eating the peaches while she’d watched him, and the aroma of the frying onions had set her mouth to watering. She tucked into the omelet with shameless enthusiasm, not pausing until every bite of it was gone.

  “That was delicious,” she said, a little chagrined at her gluttony.

  “You were hungry,” he demurred.

  She looked at the bowl of peaches. “Do you want some of these? I don’t think I can eat them all after that.”

  “Try. Then tell me what you found out from Catherine Porter.”

  Sarah had been so sure she’d be able to recall every detail, but now it seemed days had passed since she’d been at the Walcotts’ house. Fatigue made her memory even more sluggish. Maybe she should just try to put things in order. “The night Anna died, the Giddings boy came to see her.”

  “We knew that.”

  “They had an argument. He threatened to kill her if she didn’t give back the money Giddings had paid her.”

  “I know, I know,” he said impatiently. “Then he left, and she got a message and went out and—”

  “No, she didn’t!”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t get a message, not that Catherine knew of, and they were together all evening. Also, Anna didn’t go out, not right away, at least. The two of them played checkers or something until Catherine went to bed much later.”

  “But the landlady said she went out right after Harold Giddings left,” Malloy protested.

  “Then one of them is wrong. I think Catherine was telling the truth, though. Remember she said she was asleep when Anna left the house. She said that long before we knew anything different. She also thought Mrs. Walcott was angry about the boy coming to the house. She doesn’t like unpleasantness, Catherine said. Maybe Mrs. Walcott and Anna argued about it after Catherine went bed. Maybe Anna left the house in a huff and got herself killed and now Mrs. Walcott feels guilty, so she made up the story about her getting a message.”

  “It would’ve had to be a pretty nasty fight for her to go out alone after dark,” Malloy observed. “Would Mrs. Walcott have been that upset about the Giddings boy’s visit?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should ask her,” Sarah suggested, earning a frown from Malloy. “Or maybe they argued about something else,” she tried. “Remember what that actress Irene said about Mr. Walcott courting the girls to get them to move into his house? Maybe his wife was jealous of Anna.”

  “I guess you want me to ask Mrs. Walcott about that, too,” Malloy asked sarcastically.

  “Oh, and I almost forgot. Anna was only wearing her housedress when she left that night. No woman would go out in her housedress under ordinary circumstances. She didn’t wear a jacket or a cape, either, and it was cold enough that she would’ve needed one.”

  “She had a shawl,” Malloy said. “I told you the coroner said she’d tried holding it against her wound to keep it from bleeding too much.”

  “Catherine said she had a shawl on when they were playing their game,” she remembered, “because it was chilly in the house. Mrs. Walcott wouldn’t light a fire. That means she didn’t change anything she was wearing before she went out. Probably, she didn’t even go up to her room. She just ran out without any preparation at all. A woman as vain about her appearance as Anna Blake wouldn’t do that unless she was very upset. Or desperate. Whatever she was feeling, she certainly wouldn’t go out like that if she were meeting someone.”

  Malloy sipped his coffee, considering all she’d told him. “You’ve been wondering why she was out alone so late. All right, maybe she had an argument with Mrs. Walcott, but that still doesn’t explain why she’d leave the house so suddenly.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Walcott threw her out,” Sarah
suggested.

  “Even so, wouldn’t she have at least packed her things and gotten properly dressed?”

  He was right, of course.

  “She might have just been going to stay with a friend for the night,” Sarah said, still thinking out loud, “until she and the landlady had time for their tempers to cool. Or maybe she was planning to return for her things later, when Mrs. Walcott wasn’t home.”

  “Then that means a stranger killed her while she was walking the streets by herself. Actually, that’s more likely, considering what the coroner said.”

  “Malloy, I’m getting very annoyed with you,” Sarah said, frowning because today was the first time he’d bothered to mention that the coroner had told him a lot more about Anna’s death than he’d bothered to share with her. “What else did the coroner say?”

  Malloy obviously felt no guilt over his omissions. “He said she walked for a distance that night after she was stabbed.”

  “A distance?” she echoed incredulously. “How far?”

  “Maybe a few blocks,” he said with a shrug. “She must’ve been trying to get back home after she was attacked.”

  “If only she’d made it,” Sarah sighed. “Maybe she could have at least told someone who stabbed her.”

  “If she even knew,” he pointed out. “If a stranger killed her, then that still means Prescott’s attack didn’t have anything to do with Anna’s murder, and my chances of catching the real killer aren’t very good. And don’t forget, I still have Mrs. Giddings locked up. No matter what you think, she claims she killed Anna.”

  “She couldn’t have,” Sarah pointed out. “Even if she’d followed her son to Anna’s house, she wouldn’t have stood around on the street waiting for hours in case Anna came out so she could follow and murder her. Why would she expect Anna to come out at all? And she especially wouldn’t have stayed there on the street until after dark, for the same reasons it’s so strange that Anna went out herself. That’s just impossible to believe.”

  Malloy didn’t look happy, and Sarah couldn’t blame him. He’d thought he’d solved the case, and now she was proving he hadn’t. “Impossible or not, Mrs. Giddings still confessed. And you also haven’t convinced me that the same person who killed Anna also stabbed Prescott.”