Murder on St. Mark's Place

by Victoria Thompson

  Indeed, the child was plump and much healthier looking than she’d been the last time Sarah was allowed to see her.

  “Sounds like she’s hungry,” Sarah suggested.

  “I will feed her as soon as I am done here. Lars wants his supper on the table when he comes home.”

  Oh, yes, she had forgotten about the charming Mr. Otto. “I won’t keep you. I was just wondering ... Perhaps you heard that another girl was murdered last night.”

  Agnes’s eyes grew large, and she murmured something that sounded like a prayer in German. Then she noticed her other two children, who had come from the other room to see who their visitor was. She spoke to them sharply in German, and they retreated. Then she turned back to Sarah. “I did not know. Who was it?”

  “Gerda’s friend Lisle.”

  Agnes paled, and she sank down into one of the chairs. She was murmuring in German again. The baby was wailing louder now, and Agnes automatically unbuttoned her shirtwaist and offered her breast.

  “It was the same? The same as Gerda?” she asked, not quite meeting Sarah’s eye.

  Sarah hardly heard the question. She was too busy looking at the nasty bruise on Agnes’s chest, right above her breast.

  Seeing Sarah staring, she quickly pulled her shirtwaist to cover it. “My skin makes the black spots so easy,” she said self-consciously. “Is that the reason why you come here? Just to tell me about Lisle?”

  It made her sound so cold. “No, not exactly. I wanted to pay my condolences to Bertha and Hetty, but I don’t know where they live. I thought maybe you could help me.”

  She seemed relieved and gave Sarah an address on Seventh Street. “That is where Hetty lives. I do not know about Bertha. Please, you must go now. Lars will be home soon, and he does not want you here.”

  How well Sarah remembered. “I brought some gifts for the children,” she said. “Just some toys,” she added when Agnes would have objected.

  “I cannot take them,” she said, her eyes frightened again. “Lars would want to know where they came from. He would be angry. Please, you must go now.” She sounded almost desperate.

  Sarah was beginning to understand. How she could have been so dense, she had no idea. Agnes was afraid of her husband, and probably for good reason, if the bruise had come from his hand, as Sarah strongly suspected. Well, she certainly didn’t want to be the cause of another beating.

  “I understand,” she said. “Thank you for the information. I’m glad to see the baby is doing so well.”

  Agnes’s eyes begged her to be gone, so she turned to go, but just as she reached the door, Agnes called, “Do they know ... ? Do they know who the killer is yet?” She could hardly get the words out.

  Sarah was only too happy to be able to ease her mind, if only a little bit. “We have a good idea. I think it won’t be long until he’s arrested.”

  She’d expected Agnes to be relieved. Instead, she looked alarmed, almost frightened. “You know who it is?”

  “Yes, or at least we’re fairly sure it’s a man named Will. Gerda and the other girls all met a man named Will just before they died.”

  “Will?” She repeated the name carefully. “You are sure?”

  “As sure as we can be without catching him in the act,” Sarah said, exaggerating slightly.

  Agnes closed her eyes for a moment, as if offering a silent prayer. Perhaps she was giving thanks that Gerda’s killer would soon be caught. “Thank you,” she said when she opened her eyes again.

  Sarah marveled at Agnes’s gratitude, but she also remembered that Lars would be home soon and wouldn’t be happy to find her there. “Send for me if you need me,” she said, and left. Moving more quickly than she ordinarily would have, she felt a strong sense of relief when she reached the street without encountering Lars Otto.

  Good thing for him, too. She wasn’t certain she could have been civil to him just then. She could be wrong, of course, but if he was responsible for the bruise she’d seen on Agnes, he was despicable. And now she also remembered how Agnes had clutched at her side the last time Sarah was here. Could that have been another injury inflicted by her husband? She’d seen too many abused wives to be shocked, but she would never be complacent about that kind of violence. She always had an urge to go after men like that with a bullwhip, although she was well aware of the irony of her desire to punish violence with violence. Not that she would ever have the opportunity to punish anyone, but she could enjoy her fantasies all the same.

  In the meantime, she had a grim job to do.

  SARAH EASILY FOUND the address that Agnes had given her, but Hetty wasn’t at home. The woman who answered the door, whom Sarah guessed was Hetty’s mother, looked Sarah up and down suspiciously before giving her that information.

  “I’m Sarah Brandt,” she said, as if that would impress the woman somehow. “I just heard about Hetty’s friend being killed, and I wanted to express my condolences. Do you know where—?”

  “She’ll be with Bertha. The two of them was carrying on so loud, I made them leave. Don’t know where they went.”

  “Could they have gone to Bertha’s?”

  The woman shrugged a shoulder, indicating she had no idea and cared less. Sarah was able to convince her to give her the address, however. A few minutes later she was walking down Avenue A and found Hetty and Bertha sitting on the front stoop of one of the tenement buildings. They were no longer “carrying on,” but they were slumped against each other, their young faces ravaged by tears. They were the very picture of despair.

  “Hello,” she greeted them gently.

  Bertha looked up and her red-rimmed eyes widened in surprise. “It’s Mrs. Brandt,” she said, poking Hetty in the ribs.

  The other girl looked up without much interest, then slowly her expression hardened into anger. “You did this to her. You killed Lisle!”

  “What?” Sarah asked in surprise.

  “You made her lead that policeman to George, and now he’s done for her just like he did for Gerda!”

  “George didn’t do this,” Sarah told them. “Mr. Malloy questioned him first thing. He was with a group of his friends all night. He’s not the killer.”

  Hetty snorted derisively. “So you say. How do we know his friends ain’t in on it, too! Maybe there’s a bunch of them that goes around killing girls!”

  “If there was, we’d have found them out by now. They’d be bragging and fighting among themselves. It’s impossible to keep a secret like that when more than one person knows it.”

  Hetty didn’t want to be wrong. She wanted this to be Sarah’s fault so she could put the blame somewhere. She couldn’t think of a valid argument, so she simply glared at Sarah.

  “Could I buy you girls something to drink?” Sarah suggested. “You look like you could use something.”

  “You just want to ask us more questions,” Hetty said bitterly.

  “I want to find out who killed your friends,” Sarah agreed. “Maybe you know something that will help.”

  Bertha was crying again. “I want to find out who it is,” she told Hetty, scrubbing at her cheeks with her sleeve. “I’m going to help her.” She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.

  “I don’t know nothing, and neither do you!” Hetty insisted, her chin jutting rebelliously even though her lower lip quivered suspiciously.

  “Then you won’t be able to help. But my offer is still good. There’s a beer garden just around the comer, isn’t there?”

  Grudgingly, Hetty rose from the stoop and followed as Sarah and Bertha started down the street. In a few minutes the girls each had a stein of beer—which Sarah felt they needed for medicinal purposes—and Sarah had a lemonade.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Sarah was loath to intrude upon their grief, but finally she said, “Can you tell me what happened last night?”

  “Nothing happened,” Hetty said, her anger still fierce.

  “She means nothing bad,” Bertha explained. “We went to Harmony Hall, just
like we usually do. There was a dance, but we none of us met anybody we liked, so we left together. We walked home, and Lisle went off by herself, just like she always does, when we got to her street. That’s the last we know.”

  “Then she wasn’t with any particular fellow? Nobody she would have willingly gone with?”

  “We ain’t done that since Gerda died,” Hetty informed her haughtily. “We ain’t stupid!”

  “Then someone must have followed her or seen her alone and accosted her.”

  “She would’ve screamed,” Bertha insisted. “There’s lots of people out on the streets and sleeping on the roofs and porches. Somebody would’ve heard if she screamed.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t scream,” Sarah suggested, thinking out loud. “Maybe he grabbed her too quickly.”

  “Or maybe it was somebody she knew,” Hetty said with surprising insight. “Maybe she wasn’t even afraid at first.”

  Sarah hadn’t thought of that. “Somebody she wasn’t afraid of, so she went with him willingly.”

  “Maybe,” Hetty said. not quite convinced. The idea didn’t appeal to Sarah, either. Since the girls didn’t know who the killer was, how could any man have been considered safe?

  Sarah tried a different tack. “Did either of you ever hear Lisle speak of a man named Will?”

  The girls exchanged a glance. “Was he the one who ... ?” Bertha began.

  Hetty nodded. “Lisle met him a while back. In the spring, I think. He took her to Coney Island and bought her a pair of ear bobs. He seemed like the perfect beau, and then ...”

  “He hit her,” Bertha said baldly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They was...” Bertha caught herself, glancing at Hetty, whose frown held a warning.

  “I know you don’t want to speak badly of your friend, but we can’t let that stand in the way of finding out who killed her,” Sarah reminded them.

  “Lisle didn’t never want anybody to know, especially you,” Bertha told her.

  Sarah was touched. Lisle had wanted her good opinion. “I thought Lisle was a fine, brave girl,” she said, her voice unsteady as she tried to hold back her tears. “Nothing you tell me now will change my mind. And no one else will ever know.”

  Hetty still wasn’t convinced, but Bertha needed to unburden herself. “A lot of the girls do it, Mrs. Brandt. It’s the only way we can get pretty things.”

  “I understand,” she assured them. “I like pretty things, too.”

  “Lisle liked this fellow, and he treated her real good,” Hetty said, her tone daring Sarah to contradict her. “She never would’ve done it otherwise.”

  “Of course not,” Sarah agreed.

  “She went with him one night,” Bertha said. “Not to a room or anything. Just someplace private. She let him, you know, and after he was done, he slapped her. Called her a whore.”

  “He had no call to do that! He knew she weren’t no whore,” Hetty said.

  “She was scared, but she’s been beat by her stepfather, so she wasn’t going to take it from him,” Bertha said.

  “He must’ve been surprised. Maybe he thought ’cause she’s so little, she wouldn’t put up a fight,” Hetty said.

  “But she did,” Bertha reported. “Kicked him and bit him, and she got away before he could hit her again.”

  “She was mad,” Hetty remembered. “Couldn’t hardly tell us about it without spitting and hissing. Wanted to scratch his eyes out, only he never came around again.”

  Sarah was trying to put it all together, but the puzzle pieces didn’t quite fit yet. “Did Gerda know about this?”

  “Sure she did,” Bertha confirmed. “Lisle told all of us right after it happened.”

  “Do you think Gerda might’ve gone with him, even knowing he’d hit Lisle?”

  The two girls exchanged another glance. Plainly, they weren’t sure about this.

  “It’s not that Gerda was so brave,” Hetty began, feeling her way.

  “She just didn’t worry about things,” Bertha clarified. “Maybe he hit Lisle, but she’d figure he’d never hit her. She always thought she was smarter than the rest of us and could get men to do things we couldn’t.”

  “Sometimes she was right, too,” Hetty said, “and that only made her worse. She went with anybody who’d treat her. We tried to tell her that was stupid and maybe even dangerous, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  Now it was beginning to make a sort of sense. “So if Gerda had met this Will and realized he was the same one Lisle had warned her about, then you think it’s possible she’d have gone with him anyway if he wanted to treat her?”

  “Sure. She didn’t care.” Hetty still sounded angry.

  “But she probably wouldn’t want the rest of you to know that she was seeing him,” Sarah guessed.

  “Not unless she wanted us to give her what for,” Hetty said.

  That explained how the killer had been able to get to Gerda, but not how he’d gotten to Lisle, who would have been more wary.

  “I suspect Lisle wouldn’t have been likely to go with this Will willingly if he came up on her in the dark,” Sarah guessed.

  “Not even in the daylight,” Hetty confirmed. “Not after the other girls got themselves killed.”

  Sarah was thinking, trying to picture how it must have been. He’d been looking for Lisle. Maybe he’d been following her, waiting to catch her alone. Or maybe he saw her by chance and remembered that she’d escaped him once. He’d somehow dragged her into an alley without her managing to scream and attract attention. Then he’d beaten the life out of her, taking revenge for her earlier escape. One strategically placed blow to her stomach would have robbed her of breath and effectively silenced her. By the time she recovered from that, he could have beaten her senseless. Sarah only hoped oblivion had come quickly. She couldn’t stand the thought that Lisle had suffered for long.

  “Did either of you ever see this man?” Sarah asked. “Do you know what he looks like?”

  They considered, trying to remember.

  “I saw him that first night,” Bertha said, “when he came to ask Lisle to dance. But I wasn’t paying much attention. He was just another fellow in the crowd. I didn’t know ...” She shrugged helplessly.

  “And you don’t remember much about him?” Sarah asked, her hopes dying.

  “I doubt I’d know him again,” she confirmed.

  Sarah thought of the storekeeper who had sold Gerda the red shoes. He’d been so busy looking at her ankles, he probably hadn’t even noticed the man who’d paid for the shoes. The only people who could have identified him for sure were dead. And nobody even knew his last name.

  Sarah was starting to believe they would never find him.

  LISLE’S FUNERAL THE next day was better attended than Gerda’s had been. Her family had more friends, it seemed. They filled the United German Lutheran Church, and many of them were weeping audibly. Sarah wondered if it was out of genuine grief over Lisle’s death or simply to show support for the family.

  Lisle’s mother was a tired-looking woman who probably wasn’t nearly as old as she looked. Three young boys sat in the pew between her and the man who must have been Lisle’s stepfather. He looked like the kind of brute who would beat his stepdaughter. Or maybe he’d just wanted to keep her from going bad and used the only method he knew. Sarah couldn’t judge others. Her own shortcomings were too real.

  Sitting near the back, she was surprised when Malloy walked in just as the service began. He slipped into the pew beside her, forcing her to move over to make room for him.

  “Thought I’d find you here,” he said before the organ music drowned any attempt at conversation.

  Sarah wasn’t sure if she was glad to see him or not, but the expression on his face warned her he did not have good news to share. In fact, he looked haggard, as if he hadn’t slept well. He wouldn’t meet her eye, either. Another bad sign.

  She studied him as the service progressed. He needed a shave. And a haircut,
too. His clothes were rumpled, but then, they always were. Probably, he cultivated his slovenliness so he wouldn’t stand out in the poorer neighborhoods where crimes usually occurred.

  She tried to concentrate on the minister’s words of comfort, but Malloy’s presence was too disturbing. He’d come looking for her. What did he know?

  Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to share it. He could’ve pulled her out of the church. She would have willingly gone if he’d had something to tell her. Instead, he seemed intent on studying the crowd. What was he looking for?

  Then she realized he was probably looking for someone who might have been Lisle’s killer. Was it possible? Would the killer be brazen enough to attend his victim’s funeral? Then she realized that a man who would beat young women to death within spitting distance of a public street would probably be brazen enough to do just about anything. But brass didn’t count in this instance. He’d have to be a fool to show his face where someone might recognize him or notice that he didn’t belong. Sarah doubted he was a fool, but Malloy was looking around anyway. Just in case.

  The service seemed interminable, probably because Sarah was so aware of Malloy and so anxious to speak with him alone. No words of comfort would bring the dead back to life, nor could they make the pain of loss more bearable, as Sarah well knew. She didn’t want comfort, in any case. She wanted vengeance. While the others prayed for Lisle’s soul, Sarah prayed that Malloy had learned something about the killer. While the others sang of a life hereafter, walking the streets of heaven, Sarah’s heart thrummed with a desire to send one particular man to the fires of hell.

  Finally, the service ended. The family filed out, following the casket, and Sarah and Malloy waited until the last of the guests had gone. In the quiet of the now empty church, Sarah clutched at his sleeve when he would have followed the others.

  “You know something. What is it? Tell me!”