Murder on St. Mark's Place

by Victoria Thompson

  “Mrs. Brandt, you should go,” Agnes said, her fear plain. “Lars does not want you here.”

  “There’s no reason for him to know I was,” Sarah reminded her. “I certainly won’t tell anyone. Just please, promise me you’ll take the children outside for some fresh air every day and make sure they get plenty of water to drink. Otherwise, the heat can make them sick.”

  Agnes nodded absently, glancing at the door to her flat. She was probably worried that her husband might be coming soon. If he found Sarah there ... But he wouldn’t. She was leaving. She gathered her things. Before she let herself out, however, she said, “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to send for me, Agnes. And if you’re ever afraid, you can come to me. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  Agnes wouldn’t even look at her.

  As Sarah made her way down the stairs to the front door of the building, she knew her only hope was to find Malloy and send him after Lars Otto. If he really was the one who’d killed Gerda, then Agnes and her children would be safe. Safe from Lars Otto, that is. Sarah would have to figure out how to keep them safe after that as well.

  MERCIFULLY. MRS. ELSWORTH was nowhere in sight when Sarah finally made her way home that evening. Unutterably weary after leaving Agnes’s flat, she’d had to walk over to Fifth Avenue to find a cab. Then she’d had to go to police headquarters on Mulberry Street to leave word for Malloy, and since no cab would wait for her in that neighborhood, she’d had another long walk ahead of her. Now, at last, she was home.

  Too tired to cook, Sarah made herself a sandwich with some cheese and drank what was left of the elderberry wine. She’d earned the indulgence. Only when she felt the warmth of the alcohol seeping into her blood did she begin to question her actions that day.

  What right did she have to try to convince Agnes to leave her home? Many would condemn her actions. She had, after all, tried to break up a marriage. Not many people would consider the fact that Lars had beaten his wife savagely as grounds for such a desertion. Many men beat their wives, and they considered it their right. The law, in most cases, supported them, too. A man might go to jail for beating up a total stranger, but if he did the same thing to his wife, the law would turn a blind eye, even if she died from her injuries. Just one more injustice to feel outrage about in an unjust world. Sarah would go mad if she allowed herself to feel outrage for all of them, so she had to focus on righting the ones she could. If she was able to put Lars Otto in jail for murder, she would have won another battle.

  She wished Malloy were here. She’d just discovered that this was the answer to his question about how she coped with losing patients: she coped by saving the ones she could.

  Unutterably weary, she decided to go to bed, even though it wasn’t very late. She’d taken down her hair and begun to brush it when she heard someone pounding on the front door. It was the unmistakable sound of a panicked man whose wife had just gone into labor. Suddenly her weariness vanished. She always had the energy to bring a new life into the world.

  She was almost to the front door when she realized that the pounding wasn’t quite right. Usually, they stopped after a while to give her a chance to answer the door, but this pounding hadn’t stopped. In fact, it seemed to be getting even more frantic. Her instincts had just warned her not to open the door when it burst open on its own, the wood splintering around the lock as Lars Otto stumbled in.

  “You!” he cried, pointing at her. “You tried to take my family away!”

  “You’re crazy!” she tried. “Get out of my house this instant before I call the police!” Sarah only wished she didn’t sound quite so frightened. He’d startled her, bursting in that way, and now he glared at her with utter contempt.

  “I know what you tried to do! You tried to make Agnes run away with my children! You were going to hide them from me!”

  “I was worried about Agnes’s safety,” she tried. “You hurt her very badly.”

  “She will not listen!” he roared. “She makes me hit her. I cannot help myself.”

  “You can help yourself now,” Sarah said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Get out of here before the police come and arrest you.”

  His face contorted with hatred. “Why would the police arrest me?”

  Sarah wanted to accuse him of murder but decided that would be foolish. “For breaking into my house.”

  “When they find out what you have done, they will praise me! A man must protect his home.”

  “And you protect yours by beating your wife?” Sarah asked before she could stop herself.

  “What happens in my home is none of your business, you meddling bitch!”

  Sarah had been mentally plotting her escape, and when he lunged for her, she bolted, heading for the kitchen and the back door. Once outside, he wouldn’t dare harm her, and if he tried, neighbors would come running.

  She dodged around the kitchen table, but her foot caught on the leg of a chair, throwing her off balance. She grabbed the edge of the sink and righted herself, but before she could take another step, Otto grabbed her by the hair that was hanging loose down her back.

  Sarah screamed with both terror and pain as he yanked savagely on the fall of her hair, dragging her backward to the ground. She reached up, instinctively trying to grab his hands, but he wrapped her long hair around his fist and dragged her across the floor. She was screaming in pain now, fighting and clawing and trying to get at him, but the worst damage she could do was a few scratches to his hands. He hardly seemed to feel them.

  “You cannot steal a man’s family away! I will get the law after you!” he was saying.

  “The law is on their way right now!” Sarah cried. “I sent for Detective Sergeant Malloy! He knows what you did!”

  Twisting in a vain attempt to free herself, Sarah caught sight of the poker she kept beside her kitchen stove. If she could reach it ...

  But Otto jerked her head back and put his face right against hers so that she could feel the spittle when he shouted, “What did I do, you whore? Tell me what I did!”

  “You killed Gerda!” she shouted right back.

  She shocked him so much that he reared back, loosening his hold on her just enough that she could lunge for the poker. Her fingers closed around the cool metal just as he dragged her back again, wrenching a scream from her throat.

  But she had the poker now and the element of surprise. She swung it, aiming for his knee, the most vulnerable part of the leg. The angle was poor, but she felt the satisfying thump of solid metal hitting solid flesh and heard his answering grunt of pain.

  He swore as she lunged for freedom, but she hadn’t hurt him badly enough or else his fingers were too tightly woven into her hair, because he pulled her back with a howl of triumph. She swung the poker again, unable to aim, just hoping for a good, solid hit, but this time he grabbed the end of it with his free hand.

  Although she clung with both hands, he was stronger than she, in spite of his lanky frame, and he wrenched it from her fingers and flung it away. Lars Otto didn’t need a weapon to hurt a mere woman.

  When she looked up, she saw his eyes blazing with a hatred she could only imagine. He drew back his fist, and Sarah covered her head with both arms.

  “If you hurt me, they’ll know who did it! I left word at the police station that you’re Gerda’s killer!”

  “You’re lying!” he cried, but at least he didn’t hit her.

  “Agnes told me you killed Gerda! She said you came back that night with your hands all bruised and bloody. She said you were nervous, and you’ve been angry ever since Gerda died.”

  “She was a whore! I saw her that night. She was in an alley with a man. She lifted her skirts for him like it was nothing! She had no shame!”

  “And she wouldn’t lift her skirts for you, would she?” Sarah guessed. “Is that why you killed her? Because she wouldn’t give you what she gave others so freely?”

  “You do not know what it was like. You do not know how she fomented me. Sh
owing herself like a harlot, telling me the things she did with other men! She wanted me to lust after her. She was not happy unless every man lusted after her.”

  “And so you started hitting her, just the way you hit your wife, but you couldn’t stop yourself, could you?” Sarah said. “You kept hitting her and hitting her until she was dead.”

  “She deserved to die!”

  “And what about Agnes? Does she deserve to die, too?” Sarah tried, trying to break through his blood lust. “Are you going to kill her next?”

  Sarah watched in horror as his expression changed from fury to evil satisfaction. “No,” he said, suddenly very calm. “I am going to kill you next.”

  Sarah screamed as loudly as she could as she watched his doubled fist draw back to strike her, and she lashed out herself, aiming a punch at the vulnerable area between his legs.

  He howled with pain and released his grip on her hair enough that she was able to scramble to her knees. Still his fingers tangled in her hair too tightly for complete escape, but ignoring the tearing in her scalp, she made a lunge for the poker, now lying in the comer where he had flung it.

  This time she caught it with both hands and swung wildly, hoping for any kind of contact that would allow her a precious second to escape. But once again, he caught the other end of the poker, and for what seemed an etemity, they struggled for it, Sarah grasping the pointed end with both hands while he grasped the handle with one and tried to tear out her hair with the other.

  Her eyes streaming with tears from the pain, Sarah hung on for dear life, until, from out of nowhere, his boot struck her in the ribs. The pain knocked the breath from her body, and he easily wrested the poker from her now nerveless hands.

  The expression on his face was chilling, eyes gleaming with pleasure, teeth bared in a feral grin. Holding her fast by the hair of her head, he raised the poker over his head while she struggled helplessly, fighting for the breath for one last scream. In the second before the poker came slamming down into her head, her last thought was that at least Malloy would know who’d killed her, and she threw up her hands in a futile effort to ward off the blow.

  The sound was like nothing she could have imagined, a dull thud and oddly far away. She waited for the searing pain and instead felt nothing at all. Then something very large and very heavy came toppling over on top of her.

  “Mrs. Brandt, Mrs. Brandt, are you all right?”

  Sarah needed a second to realize that the large, heavy weight lying on top of her was Lars Otto’s now unconscious body, and the voice she was hearing was ... no, it couldn’t be!

  “Mrs. Brandt, did he hurt you? Can you help me get him off of you? He’s awfully heavy!”

  “Mrs. Elsworth?” Sarah said, still not quite certain she wasn’t mistaken.

  Suddenly her strength returned, and she was able to push herself free of Otto’s weight. His hand was still tangled in her hair, but Mrs. Elsworth’s nimble fingers quickly freed her, leaving an alarming number of broken strands still locked in his motionless fist.

  Only when she was free could Sarah finally see that Lars Otto did, indeed, lie unconscious on her kitchen floor.

  “How on earth... ?” she started to ask, and then she saw that Mrs. Elsworth still clutched her cast-iron skillet in her other hand. “Did you hit him with that?”

  “He was going to hit you with the poker!” Mrs. Elsworth replied defensively. “What else could I do?”

  Sarah looked at the back of Otto’s head. His skull didn’t seem to be misshapen, so perhaps he was only unconscious and not even very seriously injured. Gingerly, as if touching a live snake, she placed her fingertips on the inside of his wrist and found a pulse.

  “We’d better get him tied up before he wakes up,” Sarah said. “He won’t be in a very good mood when he does, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, my,” Mrs. Elsworth said. “Perhaps I should hit him again.”

  Sarah felt an hysterical urge to laugh. “I’d much rather let the police take care of him. I’m sure they’ll be more thorough. Now, let me see, I think I have some clothes rope around here somewhere.”

  MOTHER, REALLY. I think you should go home. All this excitement can’t be good for you,” Nelson Elsworth said for what Sarah guessed was the tenth time in as many minutes.

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Elsworth said to her son, also for the tenth time. “I’ve never felt better in my life. Besides, I have to tell Detective Sergeant Malloy what happened, don’t I?”

  “He can come to our house to speak with you,” Nelson insisted. Nelson Elsworth was a tall, slender man approaching forty who wore wire-rimmed glasses and was trying to disguise the way his hair was thinning on top by growing the hair on the sides longer and combing it over the bald spot. He’d arrived home from his job at the bank a short while ago to find his neighbors gathered in the street in front of Sarah’s house and his mother inside enjoying the attentions of a red-faced police officer who didn’t quite know what to make of the entire situation.

  “Officer O’Brien,” Nelson said to the policeman, “Can’t you tell my mother it’s all right if she goes to her own home? We only live next door.”

  O’Brien shrugged. “I’d stay around if I was her. Malloy can be awful testy if he’s irritated, and it irritates him to have to go chasing down witnesses.” He’d used a call box to notify police headquarters of the incident, and they were trying to track down Frank Malloy to handle the investigation.

  “I’m not a witness, young man!” Mrs. Elsworth reminded him indignantly. “I am the one who subdued this miscreant!”

  “Yes, ma‘am,” O’Brien said, coughing to hide a chuckle.

  Sarah was coughing, too. She knew she must be in shock. Why else would she be fighting the urge to laugh when a semiconscious killer was lying trussed like a Christmas turkey in her kitchen?

  “You know,” Mrs. Elsworth was saying, “it’s the oddest thing. I didn’t see a single omen today, either. You’d think that with something this important, I would’ve seen something, wouldn’t you? But not a hint! However was I supposed to be prepared?”

  Sarah could think of no reasonable answer to that. Luckily, Malloy chose that moment to arrive, so she didn’t have to. He, too, was red-faced, probably from rushing in this heat. Sarah and Mrs. Elsworth were sitting in chairs in Sarah’s front office, while O’Brien, the beat cop, and Nelson Elsworth stood around helplessly.

  Frank took in the scene with one swift glance. His main concern was making sure that Sarah Brandt was all right, and she appeared to be, although her hair was loose and tangled, something he’d never expected to see. He found the sight more than a little disturbing.

  Before he could ask her what had happened, she said, “Lars Otto killed Gerda. He’d gone out looking for her that night, and he saw her go into an alley with a man. That made him furious, so he apparently accosted her afterward and started beating her. He may not have intended to kill her, but he did. His wife saw that his hands were all bruised when he came home that night, but he told her some men had tried to rob him, and he’d fought with them. She wanted to believe him, so she did. Oh!” she added as a new and apparently very disturbing thought occurred to her. “He also beat his wife. We should send someone to make sure she and the children are all right. I went to see Agnes Otto this afternoon, and she told me what happened. He may have beaten her again, too!”

  Malloy glanced at O‘Brien, who nodded his understanding. “What’s the address, ma’am?” he asked Sarah.

  Sarah gave it to him, and he went out to use the call box again.

  Frank walked over to the kitchen doorway and looked down at where Lars Otto lay, moaning softly. Blood was oozing from the back of his scalp, and he was tied hand and foot with what appeared to be about a mile of clothes rope. “Somebody want to tell me what happened here tonight?”

  “I heard Mrs. Brandt screaming,” Mrs. Elsworth said rather proudly. Plainly, she couldn’t wait to tell him her story. “So I ran over to see what was the matter. Luc
kily,” she added with a twinkle, “I thought to take my cast-iron skillet with me, just in case.”

  Frank glanced at where the skillet now sat on the kitchen table. “You hit him with that?” he asked incredulously.

  “My mother isn’t a very strong woman,” Nelson Elsworth said, rushing to his mother’s defense. “I’m sure no permanent damage has been done to this gentleman.”

  “I can’t say I’d mind if there was, if what Mrs. Brandt here says about him is true,” Frank allowed. “I’m just amazed that he held still for you to do it, Mrs. Elsworth.”

  “Oh, he was rather busy trying to kill Mrs. Brandt with that poker at the time,” Mrs. Elsworth informed him cheerfully. “I don’t think he even knew I was there.”

  Frank felt the impact of her words like a blow to his gut. He struggled to get his breath, but before he could, Sarah jumped in with her version.

  “He broke in,” she told him somewhat defensively, pointing toward the smashed door lock. “He was quite angry that I’d tried to convince his wife to leave him for her own safety. I think he also must have realized that she’d told me enough to make me realize he’d killed Gerda. He must have thought if he killed me, no one would ever find out what he’d done.”

  Somehow Frank managed to find enough breath to speak in a fairly normal voice. “He told you he killed the Reinhard girl?”

  She nodded.

  Frank looked down at Otto again and noticed something he’d missed the first time. He bent and retrieved a hank of long, golden hair that clung to the man’s trousers. It had been pulled out by the roots. Impotent rage twisted in his stomach at the thought of how Sarah’s hair had come to be clinging to Otto’s trousers.

  “Mrs. Brandt put, up quite a struggle,” Mrs. Elsworth informed him. “He was dragging her around by her hair and trying to hit her with the poker when I came in.”

  Sarah reached up and rubbed the back of her head. Frank swallowed hard on the gorge that rose in his throat. At the thought of Otto putting his hands on Sarah, he wanted to do murder himself, and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to kick the life out of the man lying bound on the floor. At least he would have the satisfaction of watching him pay the ultimate price for his crimes in New York’s new electric chair.