Murder on St. Mark's Place (5 page)

“The shoes?” Sarah echoed stupidly.

“The red shoes,” the plump girl clarified. “They was brand-new. Seems a shame to put them in the ground with her, don’t it? Bertha here was wondering—”

“Me!”
the girl in the plaid jacket cried in outrage. “You was the one said it first!”

“I was only agreeing with you!” the plump girl insisted.

“Bertha and Hetty both want the shoes,” the blond girl explained patiently, her disapproval obvious.

“To remember her by,” Hetty added hastily, lest Sarah think them ghouls.

Which of course she did, although she decided not to betray her true sentiments. “I can understand that. You were good friends, then?” she guessed.

“We all were,” Hetty said, determined to make Sarah believe her. “Since the day she come to work at Faircloths.”

“She couldn’t hardly talk a word of English,” Bertha added, “but we didn’t care about that. She learned quick, she did. Wanted to be an American, like us. That’s what she always said.”

“You were very kind to befriend her,” Sarah said, and allowed the girls a moment to absorb the compliment before adding, “Since there isn’t going to be a wake, perhaps you’d allow me to buy you ladies a cup of coffee. There’s a shop just around the corner.”

“It’s a little warm for coffee,” Hetty said. “How about some lemonade?”

Sarah was more than happy to supply them with champagne if it meant she’d be able to learn more about the dead girl, so she readily greed. By the time they found the shop, Sarah had learned that the girls were named Hetty Hall, Bertha Hoffman, and the blond girl was Lisle Lasher. They were fascinated to learn Sarah was a midwife, although they couldn’t understand why she’d taken up a trade instead of remarrying. Plainly, they believed—as did most of the population—that a woman needed a man to look after her.

Sarah treated them to cake as well as lemonade, knowing full well their meager salaries would hardly stretch to such an extravagance and figuring they’d be more talkative if they were fed. They sat in the café, glad to be out of the sun, and Sarah tried to imagine what questions Malloy would ask these girls if he were here.

“Does anyone have any idea who might have killed Gerda?” she tried, starting with the most important matters.

“I think it was a robbery,” Hetty said between mouthfuls of cake.

“Are you crazy?” Bertha demanded. “What would a robber want with Gerda? She didn’t have anything worth stealing except them shoes, and they was left right on her feet!”

“Which is why he killed her,” Hetty reasoned. “He got mad when she didn’t have any money, and he killed her.”

Sarah glanced at Lisle while Bertha and Hetty continued to bicker over the theory of the robber. She sipped her lemonade delicately, listening but unmoved by their arguments. She was remarkably self-possessed for a girl of her class, her intelligence obvious. Dressed properly, she would have looked at home in Mrs. Astor’s parlor. When she met Sarah’s gaze, she smiled slightly, as if to acknowledge Sarah’s good opinion of her.

“And what do you think, Lisle?” Sarah asked, interrupting Bertha and Hetty’s squabbling.

Both of the other girls fell silent, waiting for Lisle’s opinion. She was the leader of the group, her delicate appearance notwithstanding.

“I don’t think it was no robber,” she said. “A robber wouldn’t of bothered with Gerda, and if he did, he’d never take the time to beat her up. He might smack her a bit, but they said she was beat to death. That takes time, and a robber wouldn’t take the chance of getting caught.”

Sarah hadn’t been mistaken about her intelligence. “I was thinking that it must have been someone who knew her. Someone who was very angry with her, so angry he didn’t even think about getting caught.”

But Lisle didn’t agree. Her red lips turned downward in a frown. “You might think that except ...” She glanced at the other girls who shifted uneasily.

“What is it?” Sarah asked. “Do you know something I don’t?”

The girls exchanged wary glances, silently debating whether to share their knowledge with her. Finally, Lisle said, “Gerda ain’t the first girl ended up that way.”

Of course not. Women were beaten to death every day in the city, usually by their husbands or lovers or fathers. Men who took out their frustrations with life by beating those closest to them, those weaker and defenseless. Women who would conceal this violence by telling stories about walking into a door or falling down stairs to explain the bruises. Women so afraid of not being able to support themselves without a man that they would tolerate any abuse in exchange for a roof over their heads.

“I know,” Sarah agreed. “Lots of women end up like Gerda did. That’s why you should be careful about the men you become involved with—”

“No, you don’t understand,” Lisle explained, her voice patient and confident with her certainty. “Gerda ain’t the first girl to get murdered just that way.”

“The same way exactly,” Bertha added, her brown eyes wide with fright.

“They go out to a dance and never come home,” Hetty added, her full lips quivering a bit.

“Somebody beats them and leaves them in an alley, just like a dead cat,” Lisle said bitterly.

“You mean ... other girls have died the same way?” Sarah asked, unable to grasp this completely.

“That’s what we just said,” Hetty pointed out, a little insulted. “Somebody’s looking for girls to kill. At least that’s what everybody at Faircloths is saying. The other girls, they was at dances, too, and they leaves their friends to walk home, but they never got there.”

“How many other girls?” Sarah asked, a strange sense of foreboding quivering inside of her.

“Three others,” Lisle said.

“That we know about,” Hetty added.

“Might be more, not from the neighborhood, that we didn’t hear about,” Bertha said.

Their fear was a palpable thing, and Sarah could feel a shiver of it herself. Was it possible that one man was responsible for all these deaths? Sarah understood crimes of passion, where the killer knew his victim and murdered for one of the usual reasons—jealousy, hatred, lust, or greed. But if someone was selecting victims at random and killing them for no apparent reason, then how would anyone ever catch him? She recalled a similar set of murders in London a decade ago and the difficulties the police had encountered in trying to solve them.

Solving a crime when the circle of suspects was small and the motives were discernible was difficult enough, as Sarah knew from her experience last spring, helping Malloy discover the killer of another young woman. Finding a killer whose only connection with the victims was meeting them at a dance seemed impossible! They’d certainly never found Jack the Ripper.

But maybe it wouldn’t be as difficult as she thought. If the connection was the dances, perhaps someone with a trained eye could spot the killer. Sarah’s eye wasn’t exactly trained, but she did have some experience identifying a killer. “Where did Gerda go dancing the night she died?”

The girls looked at each other, as if they were trying to remember. Surely, that shouldn’t be so difficult. Sarah could remember everyplace she’d ever gone dancing in her life.

“Was that the night we was at New Irving Hall?” Hetty asked the others.

Bertha shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that big. Someplace small, I think. I remember we was thinking there wasn’t enough room to dance there.”

“It was Harmony Hall,” Lisle said. “Gerda said she wasn’t having any fun, but she’d met a swell who was going to blow a lot of money on her, so she left with him.”

“Did any of you see who he was?”

They shook their heads.

“It didn’t seem important then.” Bertha sighed. “We didn’t know ... what was going to happen.”

“Maybe...” Sarah hesitated, wondering if she dared do what she was thinking. “Could you take me there with you the next time there’s a dance?”

“There’s a dance every night,” Hetty said, surprised she wouldn’t know that.

“Every night?” Sarah could hardly credit it.

“Well, maybe not there, but somewhere,” Lisle corrected. “I think there’s one at the Harmony tomorrow, though. The Barn Stormers are having it,” she added, naming a local social club.

“On a weeknight?” Sarah asked in surprise.

“I told you, there’s dancing every night,” Hetty reminded her.

“Were you planning to go?” Sarah asked, then immediately realized how cold she sounded. “I mean, if you wouldn’t feel...” She let her voice trail off, knowing she was making it worse.

Bertha and Hetty looked away, uncertain. Plainly, they were leaving the decision up to Lisle.

“Why would you want to go?” Lisle asked her suspiciously.

“I... I told you I knew Gerda slightly. Last spring, another girl I knew was killed. The police weren’t able to solve the case, so I helped, and we were able to find the killer. I don’t think the police will be very interested in solving Gerda’s murder, either, and I don’t want her killer to go free.”

“You solved a murder?” Hetty asked, fascinated and seeing Sarah in a whole new light.

“A police detective helped me,” Sarah admitted, wondering what Malloy would have to say to that. He’d probably say that
she
had helped
him,
which was more correct but less likely to impress these girls.

“You said the police didn’t want to solve it,” Lisle reminded her shrewdly.

“They didn’t. In fact, this detective was ordered to stop the investigation. That’s why he needed my help. I’ve already asked my friend to look into Gerda’s case, but he didn’t think much would be done.”

The girls nodded sagely. “They didn’t care about them other girls that was killed,” Hetty said. “Why should they care about Gerda? She wasn’t even an American.”

A very good point, and Sarah knew she didn’t have to say so. The girls, young as they were, probably knew more about the realities of life than she did.

“Will you take me to the dance?” Sarah asked.

“You won’t find out nothing,” Lisle warned her.

“You might be surprised,” Sarah said, feeling the familiar surge of emotion. Not excitement, surely not that, but something closer to power and purpose. A feeling she hadn’t experienced since the other time she’d worked so hard to find a young woman’s killer.

“You’re way too old for these dances,” Hetty pointed out unkindly. “They’ll think you’re somebody’s mother.”

Sarah ignored the flash of annoyance she felt. After all, she
was
nearly twice their age, so she shouldn’t feel insulted.

“You’d have to fix yourself up some, too,” Lisle said. “You need some flash if you want to get noticed.”

“I don’t want to get noticed,” Sarah assured her. Just the opposite, in fact. “I only want to look around and see who comes to these dances.”

“You think he’ll be there? The killer. I mean,” Bertha asked uneasily.

“He must go to these dances. How else would he find his victims?” Sarah pointed out. “And I hope you girls are being careful.”

“We’re always careful.” Bertha sniffed. “We go in pairs. If a girl has a friend with her, they can help each other out, in case a fellow gets too friendly.”

Sarah decided not to point out that having a friend hadn’t saved Gerda. “Then you’ll need a fourth person along, won’t you? So you each have a companion. Why not take me?”

Lisle was considering. She didn’t know whether to trust Sarah or not, but she must also know that Sarah was the only person who had displayed the slightest interest in finding Gerda’s killer—and the killer of several other young girls, too, if what they had told her was true. If nothing else, at least Sarah would be able to prevent these girls from making the same mistake Gerda did in going out with someone she didn’t know.

“We’ll take you, then,” Lisle said at last, “but you’ve got to get some flash whether you want it or not. It won’t do for you to be so plain. You’d draw attention to yourself for that, won’t you?”

Sarah thought perhaps she was right. “And what, exactly, must I do to get some flash?” she asked with a smile.

 

FRANK MALLOY FOUND the man he wanted slumped over his desk in the detectives’ office. The large, untidy room was crammed with desks which were usually deserted because their owners were out on cases. Bill Broughan could be counted upon to spend as much time as possible at his desk, however. He avoided work whenever he could.

“Broughan!” Frank shouted right beside the sleeping man’s ear.

Broughan jerked awake, blinking furiously until he brought Frank’s face into focus. “Malloy, I’d kill you for that, but if I move that sudden, my head’ll explode.”

“Bad night?” Frank asked without much sympathy. He’d had a bad night himself. He could thank Sarah Brandt for that.

Broughan clamped both hands on his head, as if he really were trying to keep it all in one piece. “My nephew Andrew had a baby boy yesterday. We was celebrating till the wee hours.”

“Congratulations to the proud father,” Frank said with more courtesy than sincerity. He didn’t know Bill’s nephew. “Look, Bill, somebody asked me about a case, the one where the girl was wearing red shoes.”

Bill squinted, as if the act of trying to remember caused him pain. Broughan was a portly man, his round face flushed from too many years of “celebrating.” His thinning brown hair was mussed, as if he hadn’t combed it this morning. He probably hadn’t. There was a yellow stain on his lapel. “Oh, yeah, the red shoes,” he recalled after a moment. “German girl. Hadn’t been here long, from what I heard. Damnedest thing. I never heard of nobody wearing red shoes. Not even a German. You ask me, she got ’em whoring. Who else would have red shoes?”

Frank agreed, but he didn’t want to say so. He’d get more information if he argued with Bill. “A friend of mine knows the family. Says they’re respectable.”

“Maybe they are, but that never stopped a girl from whoring if she needed money.”