Murder on Washington Square (23 page)

“And which night of the week was that?” he pressed, testing her since her answers had come too easily.

She took a moment to consider. “Tuesday,” she said finally.

“Your son gets paid on Tuesday?”

If he’d thought to catch her in a lie, he was disappointed. She was either a good liar or was telling the truth. “Harold does day labor. Sometimes he gets paid at the end of the day and must get another job the next morning.”

Frank nodded. He could check on what the son had been doing that day, but it might not be easy. The people he was working for could be hard to find, since they probably would have moved on to new jobs by now. He might not even know their names, and even if he did and Frank could find them, they might not remember him. In any case, they’d have no idea whether Harold or his father had been at home that night or not.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go see if I can hurry my husband along,” she said. “I don’t want to keep you any longer than necessary,” she added with more than a trace of malice.

Frank didn’t take offense, however. He’d been insulted by far more talented people than Mrs. Giddings. He took a seat on the worn sofa to wait, and finally, he was rewarded by the sound of shuffling footsteps in the hallway.

Frank literally winced at the sight of Gilbert Giddings. The man looked as if he’d be better off dead. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his face ashen. He held himself closely, as if he were extremely old and feeble—or were afraid of jarring his aching head. He wore a collarless shirt, wrinkled trousers, and carpet slippers. His hair was uncombed and his face unshaven.

“Good morning,” Frank said more loudly than necessary.

Giddings grabbed his head with both hands and groaned. This was going to be even easier than he’d hoped.

“Better have a seat, Giddings,” Frank suggested in a more moderate tone. “I’ve got a few questions to ask you.”

“I’ve already told you all I know,” Giddings said in a hoarse whisper as he shuffled to a chair and carefully lowered himself into it.

“Where were you the night Anna Blake was killed?” Frank asked, getting up from his seat and walking over to where Giddings sat. Standing over someone, even if they were in fine fettle, was always a good tactic when interrogating them.

“What did my wife say?” Giddings asked, looking up through squinted eyes.

“Don’t
you
know where you were?” Frank asked in amazement. “Or are you two trying to get your stories straight?”

“No, I—” Giddings started to say, but he’d forgotten to moderate his tone, and he had to grab his head again. “She told me I was home but . . .”

“But what?” Frank asked, making as if to grab Giddings by the shirt front.

He cringed away, as terrified of being manhandled as he was of loud noises. “Please, don’t hurt me,” he begged. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”

“Where were you the night Anna Blake was killed?” he repeated with far less patience.

“I don’t know,” Giddings whined. “I don’t remember!”

“What do you mean, you don’t remember? It was only a week ago.”

“I know, but I . . . sometimes, I forget things.”

“What kind of things?” Frank asked skeptically.

“Things that happen when I’m drunk,” Giddings admitted as tears filled his eyes. “She drove me to this. I can’t help myself!”

“Your wife?” Frank guessed.

“No,” Giddings said, starting to shake his head vehemently but stopping abruptly when he realized how much pain that would cause him. “No,” he repeated more softly, hands bracing his head again. “Anna did it. She was never satisfied. She said she’d go to my wife and my employer and ruin me! I had no choice! So I borrowed the money from a couple of the estates our firm handles. I was going to pay it back, just as soon as I . . .”

“As soon as you what?” Frank asked curiously when he hesitated. “As soon as you killed Anna?”

“No!” Giddings said too loudly and winced at the pain. “I didn’t kill her,” he added softly.

“I thought you couldn’t remember what happened that night,” Frank reminded him.

“I don’t. I mean, I don’t know.” Giddings blubbered, awash in self-pity. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

“I guess that means you also don’t know if your wife and son were home that night, either,” Frank said.

Even through his haze of pain, Giddings heard the implication. “My wife and son had nothing to do with this. How can you even suggest such a thing?”

“They had a very good reason to want Anna Blake out of the way,” Frank pointed out. “She’d taken everything they had and ruined you. They both must have hated her.”

“That doesn’t mean they killed her!” Giddings protested in a horrified whisper. “Harold is only a boy and my wife could never harm another human being!”

Frank figured his wife was very close to harming Gilbert very seriously if he didn’t sober up and start taking responsibility for his family again. That was only an opinion, however, and try as he might, he had a difficult time imagining a lady like Mrs. Giddings stealing through the darkened city streets with a knife concealed in the folds of her cloak so she could murder her husband’s mistress. Women hardly ever killed with knives except in the heat of passion or self-defense. They didn’t like making a mess. And Anna Blake wasn’t killed in the heat of passion or self-defense, as far as Frank could determine, certainly not if her killer had arranged to meet her for just the purpose of killing her.

“Would your wife lie to protect you, Giddings?” Frank asked.

He looked up with his rheumy eyes and frowned. “I have no idea.”

“Would she lie to protect your son?” Frank asked.

Giddings face drained of what little color was left. “No,” he said, his eyes filled with horror.

Frank didn’t think he was answering the question.

 

 

 

S
ARAH MADE HER WAY QUICKLY DOWN BANK STREET, clutching her umbrella against the rains that had returned and trying not to look at the Ellsworths’ front porch. Not seeing Mrs. Ellsworth there, waiting to speak a cheery word and commiserate with her, was too depressing after the day she’d had. At least the baby she had delivered today had been born healthy. This morning, upon returning home from her parents’ home where she’d spent the night, she’d been trying to decide what she could do that would help exonerate Nelson Ellsworth when an elderly gentleman had come to her door. He’d begged her to come immediately.

His granddaughter was giving birth, he told her, and indeed she was, even though she was only thirteen and hardly more than a baby herself. The girl was, in fact, his great-granddaughter, the illegitimate child of his granddaughter who’d died giving birth to her. He and his wife had taken the child to raise, since their daughter had long since deserted the family. They’d hoped to be able to keep this girl-child from the fates of her mother and grand-mother, but she’d been seduced—or raped, the difference was slight for a girl so young—by some older boys in the neighborhood. Even the girl herself had no idea which of them had fathered the child. In spite of all odds, the baby and the mother appeared to be doing well, however, and the baby was a boy. If nothing else, he’d never give birth to a child before even reaching maturity. Of course, he might die of disease or neglect before reaching maturity, too. Sarah couldn’t allow herself to think of such things, though. If she did, she’d give up completely.

She’d purchased a copy of the
Evening World
from a newsboy on Fifth Avenue, but she hadn’t looked at it yet. If Webster Prescott had written another story about Anna and Nelson, she didn’t want to discover it until she was sitting down in the privacy of her own home.

To her relief, no reporters loitered in front of the Ellsworth house this evening. She wondered if they had just taken shelter from the weather or if they were following other threads of the story. She could even go knock on the Ellsworths’ front door today without risking making a public spectacle, but she decided to wait until she’d had time to get a bite of supper first. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, having refused the offer of a meal at the flat where she’d delivered the baby today. They hadn’t looked as if they could spare any food, and only the fear of wounding their pride had induced her to accept a payment for her services. Fortunately, they hadn’t suspected that the amount she’d charged them was only a fraction of her usual fee.

From habit, she glanced over at the Ellsworths’ porch as she unlocked her own door and stepped inside. She would never complain again about her neighbor being nosy, she vowed.

She found some bread and cheese and made herself a sandwich. As she sat to eat it, she spread the newspaper on the table in front of her. The headline she was looking for was prominently displayed: ACTRESS PLAYS A DEADLY ROLE.

“Malloy,” Sarah muttered, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Although the newspapers did not identify the reporter who had written each particular story, Sarah easily recognized Webster Prescott’s handiwork by the content. The article revealed that prior to her death, Anna Blake had made her living “on the boards,” playing a succession of minor roles in minor productions produced by minor production companies in obscure theaters. The titles of the plays were suggestive, such as
Molly, Girl of the Streets
and
The Rape of the Sabine Women.
If Anna Blake had appeared in anything like a serious drama, Prescott hadn’t seen fit to mention it. He was more interested in sensationalizing her past and making her sound like a scarlet woman who had seduced innocent gentlemen and deserved her awful fate.

Sarah knew perfectly well that Anna Blake
was
a scarlet woman, of course, but she hated seeing the newspaper say so. Too many people already judged females too harshly. Girls like the one whose baby she’d delivered today were branded as harlots and worse, as if they’d chosen their fates instead of being victimized, since men seemed to delight in blaming females for their own debauchery. Heaven knew, the boy who had fathered that girl’s baby would never suffer any stigma because of it.

How curious, then, that Mr. Giddings and Nelson Ellsworth had truly fallen prey to a seductress. Women who fell from grace were always branded as evil, but few really were the kind of schemer that Anna Blake was. And oddly enough, such women could only dupe unworldly, middle-class men. Wealthy men would either pay them off or laugh at their threats—if you were rich enough, you need fear nothing. Poor men would also laugh—the poor could not afford niceties like honor and responsibility. Only men who had something worth protecting but little means of protecting it were susceptible to the Anna Blakes of the world.

She had, Sarah reflected, chosen her victims well, however. While Giddings wasn’t personally wealthy, he was comfortable enough and so positioned in life that he couldn’t afford a scandal. He also had access to ample funds, and if pushed far enough, as he was, he would steal them to protect his good name.

But what still didn’t make sense, at least to Sarah, was why Anna had chosen Nelson Ellsworth. Like Giddings, he did have access to vast amounts of money, even though he wasn’t wealthy himself. But as a bachelor, he needn’t fear scandal, and if his better nature demanded that he provide for his child, he could marry the mother, which he had offered to do. No matter how many times Sarah thought about it, she couldn’t make sense of it. Why choose Nelson?

She’d finished up her sandwich and washed it down with some cider that was beginning to turn. She’d have to offer it to Malloy when he came next. He wouldn’t mind hard cider, she thought with a smile.

Briefly, she considered taking the newspaper over to her neighbors, but then she decided against it. She could tell them the information. They didn’t have to know Nelson was still being mentioned prominently on the front page of every scandal sheet in town.

 

Frank cursed under his breath as he made his way through the crowded hospital ward at Bellevue the next morning. Rows of beds lined the walls, most of them filled with men in various stages of dying. No one came to the hospital unless they were dying. The odors of rotting limbs and diseased bowels and God knew what nearly gagged him, but he set his teeth and refused to display any weakness. The smell wasn’t really any worse than an ordinary flophouse, he told himself, and he’d certainly seen his share of them, looking for suspects. At least the floors were reasonably clean and the beds had laundered linen and no lice.

But it wasn’t really the odors. It was the dying. Frank knew that smell, and it brought back far too many memories.

Finally, he saw the face he’d been looking for. It was paler than it had been the last time he saw it, but he recognized it easily.

“Prescott!” Frank called, hoping the eyes would open. To his great relief, they did.

Webster Prescott smiled wanly at the sight of him. “How’d you find me?” he asked, his voice faint and breathy.

“You asked for me, remember? The cop who found you in that alley said you just kept begging him to send for me. Said you wouldn’t get in the ambulance until he promised. So what in the hell happened to you?”

Prescott’s young face wrinkled in pain. “Somebody stabbed me.” He gestured toward his left side, and Frank managed not to wince at the thought of how close his attacker had come to his heart.

“I knew that much,” Frank said. “You wouldn’t say who did it, though. Or why. At least to the cop who found you. He’s pretty mad about it, too.”

“I didn’t want to tell anybody,” he said, his voice so faint Frank had to lean closer to hear. “Somebody else might get the story.”

Frank shook his head in disgust. “You reporters. All you think about is getting the story. I guess you thought you were safe telling
me
, though. You know how I hate you lot, so I wouldn’t go telling your competitors.”