Murder on Washington Square (15 page)

Brian was showing Frank the cast, trying with gestures to convince him to take it off. “In good time, son,” he said, even though Brian couldn’t hear him. “Then you’ll be able to walk.”

His mother made a rude noise. “I’ll get your supper.”

“Are you going with me when I take Brian to get the cast off?” Frank asked.

She just gave him one of her looks and retreated into the kitchen.

 

The next morning Frank decided to begin his day with a visit to the morgue. It was Saturday, but he was sure to find someone around, and he wanted to learn all he could about how Anna Blake had died. Chances were slim he’d discover anything that would help him identify her killer, but it was worth a chance. Besides, he now had two men who could possibly have been the father of her child. Maybe if the coroner could tell him how far along she was, he could figure out which one really was. He wasn’t sure what that would tell him, but the more information he had, the better off he’d be.

The entire morgue smelled of death, even the offices, and Frank steeled himself against the grimness of the place. The gray walls and barren corridors seemed to stretch for miles and echo with the sound of his footsteps. He found the coroner in his shabby little office, writing a report. Dr. Haynes looked up, his eyes weary behind his glasses.

“Which one is yours?” he asked, not bothering with a greeting. In a place like this, social amenities were meaningless.

“Anna Blake, stabbed in Washington Square,” he added, in case the name meant nothing.

Dr. Haynes shuffled through some papers on his desk and found the one he was looking for. He peered closely at it for a moment. “I thought that one was Brougham’s.”

“I’m helping him,” Frank said without blinking.

Haynes stared at him in amazement but made no comment on this astonishing bit of news. “What do you want to know, besides that somebody stabbed her and she’s dead?”

“Do you know what she was stabbed with?”

“A knife,” Haynes said just to be aggravating.

“You’re better than that,” Frank chided, trying to stir what might remain of the man’s pride. “Big, small, butcher knife, stiletto, or what?”

“Bigger than a stiletto. She wasn’t killed by the Black Hand,” he said, referring to the Italian secret society famous for using the thin-bladed knife. “Smaller than a butcher knife. The blade was no longer than six inches. Probably just an ordinary kitchen knife, in fact. They didn’t find it, whatever it was.”

“If it was lying around, someone would’ve taken it. That’s a pretty desperate bunch in the Square after dark. What else can you tell me about her?”

Haynes studied the report another moment, his forehead wrinkled in thought. Frank imagined him picturing the dead woman in his mind, trying to recall what she looked like. But maybe he was just being fanciful.

“She didn’t get stabbed where she was found,” he said after a moment.

“What makes you think that?” No one had even suggested such a thing until now.

“The way she bled. She’d bunched up her shawl and held it against the wound for a while, to keep it from bleeding, I guess. You could see where it was wrinkled and the one end was soaked with blood. But blood seeped down the whole front of her skirt anyway. That means she was on her feet for a while before she got too weak. I don’t think somebody who got stabbed would just stand still in the middle of the Square on a dark night if they could stand at all, so she was probably trying to get herself some help.”

“Why didn’t she just call out?” Frank wondered aloud.

“Who there would help her?” Haynes replied.

“You’re right. She’d be a fool to let that bunch know she was wounded. They’d fall on her like vultures, taking whatever she had and leaving her to die. She must’ve been trying to get back home, where she’s be safe.”

“Did she live close by?”

“Just a couple blocks from the Square. How far could she have gone with a wound like that?”

“Not far. You could check for blood stains on the ground. She probably left some along the way.”

Frank shook his head. “It rained that morning. Even still, after three days, I doubt there’d be any trace left. The Square is a busy place.”

Haynes nodded. “But if she was walking, maybe somebody saw her.”

“In the dark? And if they did, how will I find them?” Frank replied in disgust. “Decent people would’ve been locked in their houses, and the others wouldn’t tell a cop anything.” He sighed. “What else can you tell me about her?”

“What else do you need to know?”

“How far along was she?”

“How far along?” Haynes echoed in confusion.

“She was expecting a child. How far along was she?”

“She wasn’t expecting a child.”

Frank stared at him in amazement. “Are you sure?”

“Sure as I can be. I saw her insides, you know. Not only that, she was using a sponge.”

“Where would she be wearing a sponge?” he asked in confusion.

Haynes grinned and shook his head. “I forget you Catholic boys don’t believe in those things.”

“What things?”

“Things that keep a woman from getting pregnant.”

“How would a sponge do that?”

Haynes’s grinned widened. “A woman puts it up inside of her. Keeps the man’s . . . uh, seed from getting in to make a baby. From what I saw, this one had seen some recent use, too.”

Frank sank down in the dingy metal chair in front of Haynes’s desk. This was very interesting information. “Can I see that report for myself, Doc?”

“Help yourself, if you can read my chicken scratching.” Haynes handed the paper to him.

This changed everything, Frank realized as he painstakingly deciphered the crabbed handwriting. Anna Blake wasn’t what she’d seemed at all, and Frank had a good idea he’d uncover some even more unsavory facts now that he knew the truth about her. He also had a feeling he might find a lot more people who wanted her dead besides poor Nelson.

But the biggest problem he had now was how he was going to tell Sarah Brandt about the sponge.

 

Sarah looked up at the imposing building on Park Row that housed the
World
. Mr. Joseph Pulitzer had spared no expense in making his building the most ostentatious on the street where all the major newspapers in the city had their offices. Standing twenty-six stories, it had been the tallest building in the world when it was built a few short years ago, and it still towered over most of the city. The title of tallest building hadn’t stood very long before someone built a taller one in Chicago, but the building’s dome was covered with copper that glittered like gold in the morning sunlight. Surely that would distinguish it for a longer time. Outside on the sidewalk, a lighted globe, seventeen feet in diameter, showed the points of the compass. People loved a spectacle, and Pulitzer gave it to them with his building and with his newspapers.

Sarah had to thread her way through the jumble of pushcart vendors displaying their fruits and vegetables to the hoards of people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in both directions. The entrance to the bridge was nearby, and between the crowds of workers coming and going on the bridge and those employed in the newspaper offices, the vendors did a brisk business.

Inside, Sarah could feel the rumble of the giant presses that churned out the morning and evening editions of the
World.
The sensation made the building feel as if it were alive and trembling. Everywhere people, mostly men, were coming and going in a great hurry, either off to find news or coming in to write it. She’d thought that Saturday morning would be a good time to catch Webster Prescott in, but now she was afraid she’d been mistaken. Did reporters ever go to their offices? She realized she was woefully ignorant of the habits of newspapermen. For all she knew, he spent all his time standing on the sidewalk outside the homes of those unfortunate enough to have made themselves newsworthy.

Sarah made her way to the elevators, checked the building directory, and gave the correct floor number to the operator when the car arrived. A few moments later, the operator opened the doors on an enormous room that covered the entire floor of the building. Sarah stepped off the elevator with a confidence she didn’t feel, and the elevator doors slammed shut behind her.

The room was lined with row after row of desks, broken only by the columns that supported the ceiling. Tall windows on all four sides let in the sunlight and revealed a breathtaking view of the city in every direction. No one else seemed aware of the view, however. About a third of the desks were occupied by men writing furiously or typing on typewriters. Others, most of whom were hardly old enough to be called men, were hurrying here and there, carrying sheaves of papers, depositing them on desks and picking up more.

One of these boys glanced at her curiously as he passed, and she stopped him. “Excuse me, but could you tell me where Webster Prescott would be?”

“Pres? Sure,” the boy said, scanning the room. “His desk’s over there and . . . looks like he’s sitting at it, too. Can you see him?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, peering in the direction he indicated. “Thank you.”

She made her way through the noisy room, drawing more curious stares which she ignored. This far above the presses, she could no longer feel the vibrations of them, but the clatter of typewriters and the rumble of men’s voices were equally loud and disturbing. She tried to imagine sitting in a room like this all day and cringed at the thought. But then, the reporters would be out a lot, getting their stories, so perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it might seem.

She stopped in front of Prescott’s desk. He was engrossed in the story he was writing, but when her shadow fell across it, he looked up. She saw the recognition register on his face and the frown as he tried to dredge up a name to go with her face.

“Sarah Brandt,” she supplied.

“Nelson Ellsworth’s neighbor,” he added happily. He obviously thought her presence meant something good for him, a scoop perhaps. “Please, sit down, Mrs. Brandt. Let me find you a chair.”

He borrowed one from a neighboring desk where no one was sitting and pulled it up for her. “What brings you here this fine morning?” he asked pleasantly when she was settled and he’d taken his own seat.

“I’ve come to ask you a favor,” she said.

His smile evaporated. He’d be wanting
her
to do a favor for
him
. “I’ll be happy to help if I can,” he said, although she could see he was only being polite so as not to alienate a potential source of news.

“I want you to print the truth about Nelson Ellsworth.”

Now she had his attention again. “What truth do you want me to tell?” He reached blindly for the notebook that lay open on his desk and pulled a pencil from over his ear.

“First of all, Nelson didn’t kill that woman.”

This wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “But the evidence—”

“—is misleading. It seems that Mr. Ellsworth wasn’t the only man with whom Miss Blake was involved.”

“She had another lover?” he asked, brightening again.

“Yes, and this one is married.”

He began to scribble notes in his book. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know,” she lied. “But he’s certainly an even likelier candidate than Nelson, and unless the newspapers stop blackening Nelson’s name, he might well be convicted of the killing anyway, even though he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Nelson was genuinely in love with Anna Blake and wanted to marry her. She’s the one who refused. She wanted him to give her money instead.”

Prescott’s young face creased into a frown. “That’s very strange.”

“I thought so. No honest woman would prefer money to respectability. Nelson Ellsworth is an innocent victim in this. I think Anna Blake deliberately chose him, thinking he would be easy to fool. I’m not exactly sure what her plan was, but she wasn’t interested in snagging an eligible husband. She could have had one in Nelson, and she refused him.”

“Even though she was . . . well, in a family way?”

“So it appears. I came down here to tell you that there’s a better story here than the one all the newspapers have been telling about Nelson, and it also happens to be the true one. You could make quite a name for yourself if you’re the first one to discover it, Mr. Prescott.”

His eyes were sparkling with anticipation, but he hadn’t forgotten his instincts. “Why are you going to all this trouble to protect Ellsworth, Mrs. Brandt?”

Malloy had warned her about the danger of doing this, but she’d hoped Prescott was too naive or inexperienced to think of it. She’d been wrong about that, but she still might be able to convince him of her good intentions. “Because his mother once saved my life, and I owe her a debt of gratitude. Nelson is her only son, and I can’t stand by and see him ruined and maybe even executed, especially when I know he’s innocent.”

Prescott wasn’t as easily dissuaded. “How can you be so sure? Can you give him an alibi for that night?” he asked with a suggestive grin.

“No, I cannot,” she replied, refusing to be ruffled. “An innocent man doesn’t need an alibi.”

Prescott shook his head sadly. “Oh, Mrs. Brandt, an innocent man needs an alibi most of all.”

 

 

 

S
ATURDAY MORNING WAS PROBABLY A GOOD TIME TO catch her mother alone, Sarah thought. She’d made two promises to Mrs. Ellsworth, and seeing Webster Prescott was just the first. She’d also agreed to convince the bank not to fire Nelson. For that she’d need more than the gumption that had taken her into the
World.
For that she’d need Felix Decker. Since the best way to influence her father was through her mother, that’s where Sarah headed next.

As she rode the Sixth Avenue Elevated uptown, she wondered whether she’d made the right decision in going to Prescott. He’d seemed enthusiastic about her story and had promised to investigate. Of course, that might mean he’d come up with something even more outlandish than the reports of Nelson being a killer. It might even mean involving herself in this scandal. That was, however, a chance she’d been willing to take. If her good name was completely ruined in this cause and decent women no longer hired her to deliver their babies, she could always throw herself on her father’s mercy. He’d be only too glad to take her back into his home—and his control—once again, she thought grimly.