Murder on Washington Square (14 page)

The question had cost her a great deal of effort, and Frank didn’t like the feeling of pity that stirred in his chest. Pity was an emotion that could get him in trouble if he let it blind him to the truth. Still, he had no intention of telling her his real reason for wanting to find her husband. He’d promised Giddings not to say anything to ruin him for at least a few days. He’d broken that promise with Smythe only because Smythe obviously knew about Giddings’s faults and the old attorney had no intention of making the news public. Mrs. Giddings would be hurt by the knowledge, however, so until it was absolutely necessary for her to know, he was determined to keep it from her.

“It’s a private matter,” he told her. “Nothing to concern you. I just need some information from him.”

He saw the muscles in her jaw work, as if she were clenching it to help maintain her composure. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dim interior light, he could see that her dark hair, which was pulled severely back from her face and knotted at her neck, had streaks of silver running through it. Her eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, and tension practically radiated from her. “Did Mr. Smythe send you?” she asked.

“He gave me your address,” Frank admitted.

He’d thought the reply harmless enough, but Mrs. Giddings cried out. The sound was short and sharp, as if someone had struck her, and she instantly covered her mouth with one hand. “He said he wouldn’t prosecute!” she said when she’d regained a little of her composure. “He said if Gilbert resigned quietly, he wouldn’t press charges! Surely he hasn’t changed his mind. He only cares about his good name. He must know Gilbert would never say a thing!” She looked as if she might faint.

“Maybe you should call your maid or something,” Frank suggested, knowing he didn’t want to deal with a fainting woman.

“I don’t have a maid!” she said, her voice almost strangled with bitterness. “I’ve let all the servants go. Can’t you see? Why do you think I answered my own door? And we paid the money back. We had to sell almost everything we owned, but we paid back every penny. What more does he want from us?”

“What money is that?” Frank asked.

“The money Gilbert st—” she began, but caught herself. “You don’t know about the money?” she asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “I thought you said you’re from the police.”

“I am,” Frank said, his mind racing for a way to ease her suspicions and keep her talking at the same time, “but Mr. Smythe didn’t give me any details.”

She took a step backward. “Why did you want to see Gilbert, then?”

“I told you, I need to ask him some questions.”

“About what?”

“It’s a private matter,” Frank repeated.

She wasn’t going to tell him a thing, he knew. She was probably going to order him out, too, but the sound of a door closing in the back of the house distracted her.

“Mother, where are you?” a male voice called.

She turned to Frank, nearly desperate now. “Get out of here,” she said in an urgent whisper. “Go before he sees you.”

But it was too late. A tall young man came into the hallway from the door behind the stairs, and he stopped when he saw Frank. “Who are you?” he asked with a frown.

His clothes were shabby and dirty, and he wore sturdy work boots. Giddings the Lawyer’s son was doing manual labor. Giddings had been fired from his job, his family had sold everything of value that they owned to pay Smythe a debt, and his young son was struggling to help. This was not a happy home.

“He’s no one,” Mrs. Giddings replied for Frank. “He was just leaving.”

“If you’re a bill collector, you can talk to me,” the boy said, striding belligerently up to Frank. He was still gangly with youth, probably no more than sixteen, but in spite of his ragged appearance, he had a dignity about him. He was like his mother in that. Determined to protect her, he lifted his hairless chin and glared at Frank. “You don’t have any right to come here. We’ve told you we’ll pay you as soon as we’ve sold the house.”

“I’m not a bill collector,” Frank said. He couldn’t help admiring the way the boy had assumed his manhood and all the responsibilities that went with it.

“Who are you, then?” he asked, looking him up and down with contempt.

“Harold, don’t get involved in this,” his mother begged. “Go to your room. I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ve taken care of enough,” Harold said stubbornly. “What do you want?” he asked Frank again.

“I came to see your father. If you’ll just tell me where to find him—”

“He’s probably at some bar,” the boy said, his lip curling with distaste. “He’ll be there until they throw him out and he doesn’t have any choice but to come home. But at least he won’t be with that woman anymore,” he said to his mother, laying a comforting arm across her shoulders. “I can promise you that.”

“What woman are you talking about?” Frank asked, wondering how the boy knew Anna Blake would no longer be receiving visitors.

“Stop it, Harold,” Mrs. Giddings said, this time in a tone that brooked no argument. “This man is from the police. Mr. Smythe sent him.”

“The police,” the boy echoed in alarm, all his bravado evaporating. “What do you want with my father?”

“What do you think he wants?” his mother asked, no longer bothering to hide her bitterness. “Smythe wasn’t satisfied with getting the money back. Now he’s going to put your father in prison.” A lesser woman would have broken under this weight, but Mrs. Giddings hung on to her composure with the last vestiges of her strength, determined not to humiliate herself in front of a stranger.

“I’m not going to arrest him,” Frank tried in an attempt to ease her anguish, but the boy wasn’t listening.

“It’s that woman,” Harold said, his voice shrill with rage. “She did this. She made him steal that money, and now he’s going to shame us by going to prison. I’m going to kill him!” he cried and would have made for the front door if Frank hadn’t grabbed him.

He put up a struggle, but he was no match for Frank’s superior size and strength, and his mother’s pleas. By the time Frank had subdued him, he was sobbing with fury and shame.

“Where can I take him?” he asked Mrs. Giddings, as he held the boy up on his feet. She led them down the hallway to the back parlor.

This room had also been scavenged for salable items, but a few pieces of furniture remained, among them a well-worn sofa. Frank sat the boy down on it. He slumped over, head in his hands, still weeping.

His mother sat down beside him, holding him to her and offering what comfort she could.

“Your husband stole money from his employer to pay off his mistress,” Frank said. He wasn’t asking a question.

Mrs. Giddings looked up from consoling her son, her eyes dark with hatred. “You already knew that.”

Frank wasn’t going to contradict her. Besides, he now knew that Giddings had stolen money to pay off Anna Blake and ruined himself and his family in the process, which meant Giddings had more reason to want Anna Blake dead than Nelson Ellsworth did.

“How long did your husband know this young woman?” Frank asked.

“I have no idea,” Mrs. Giddings said, patting her son’s back as he continued to weep out his grief on her shoulder. “Don’t you have any decency? And what does any of this matter? Leave us alone!”

Frank could have told her how it mattered, but he still wanted to spare her unnecessary anguish. If Giddings wasn’t the killer . . . He also wanted to ask the boy some questions, but he figured this wasn’t the time to get a straight answer out of him. Better to wait and catch him alone, without his mother to protect him. It wouldn’t take much at all to frighten the boy into telling everything he knew.

“Which bar does your husband usually go to?”

“He doesn’t consult me,” Mrs. Giddings told him, still stubbornly clinging to her pride. “I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

Or wouldn’t, at least. Frank figured she wasn’t going to make it easy for him to put her husband in jail, if that’s what he intended, no matter how angry she might be at him.

“Just tell your husband I called,” Frank said, and showed himself out.

So Giddings’s family knew all about his affair with Anna Blake. And Frank knew some interesting information about Giddings. He was desperate indeed if he’d stolen from his own law firm to pay her off. Unlike Nelson, he had a family and a reputation to protect from the scandal she could cause him, so he’d been ripe for blackmail. Frank was beginning to regret never having met Anna Blake in life. She must have been an interesting woman to have inspired such foolish devotion.

“I knew something terrible was going to happen,” Mrs. Ellsworth confided to Sarah as they cleaned up the kitchen after their meager supper. “Remember I asked if you’d heard knocking the other night?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, not really certain. She didn’t make an effort to remember all of Mrs. Ellsworth’s superstitions.

“I heard it three nights in a row. That means someone is going to die. I knew it was going to happen, and I was so afraid it would be someone I knew,” she said sadly as she took the dishes off the tray she’d taken up to Nelson earlier.

He hadn’t come down, and he’d barely touched the food on the tray. Sarah hoped it wasn’t only grief for such an undeserving woman that had him so upset.

“The things you worry about never happen,” Sarah said, quoting her mother. “It’s the things you never imagine that hurt you the worst.”

“That’s the truth,” Mrs. Ellsworth said with a sigh and looked up, as if she might be able to see her son if she did. “I just wish he could go to work. If he had something to take his mind off all of this, but . . .”

“But the reporters would never give him a moment’s peace,” Sarah said.

“I’m so afraid he’s going to lose his job,” the old woman said. “The people at the bank are only concerned about the good name of the bank. No one wants to leave their money in a place run by scoundrels and . . . and murderers.” She shuddered.

“Nelson isn’t a murderer,” Sarah reminded her.

“What difference does it make? The newspapers say he is, and so people believe that. Next I expect the neighbors to come and tell me we have to move because we’re giving the place a bad name.”

“That isn’t going to happen. Malloy and I are going to find who really did this so all our lives can get back to normal again. But first I’m going to track down that reporter Webster Prescott and make him write the truth about Nelson.”

Mrs. Ellsworth’s eyes lit up with hope. “Can you do that?”

“I’m certainly going to try. And if I have to, I’ll go to the bank and ask them to give Nelson the benefit of the doubt until we can get this thing settled.”

“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, I couldn’t ask you to do that!” she protested.

“You didn’t ask me; I volunteered. Besides, I’m sure my father knows the bank’s owner personally. He’ll be happy to put in a good word for Nelson,” she promised rashly. Her father certainly wouldn’t be happy to do any such thing, but Sarah felt certain she could prevail upon him to do it anyway.

“What on earth would we do without you?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked, taking Sarah’s hand in both of hers.

 

Frank wearily climbed the stairs to his flat. The sounds of family arguments and babies crying echoed faintly in the stairwell. He reached the door and knocked, not bothering to find his key. His mother opened the door without asking who it was.

“Ma, I’ve told you it’s not safe—”

“I saw you coming,” she said, waving away his protests. “Or rather the boy did. He watches for you every night.”

Frank felt a twinge of guilt, but he forgot it the instant Brian managed to crawl around her to reach him. His little face was so full of joy at seeing his father, Frank felt guilty again, this time because he knew he wasn’t worthy of such adoration. That didn’t stop him from picking the boy up and hugging him fiercely. Brian hugged him back, his thin arms clinging with amazing strength around Frank’s neck.

Brian’s red-gold curls were silken against Frank’s cheek, and he smelled sweet and clean and innocent when Frank buried his face in the soft curve of his neck. The only thing missing was Brian crying, “Papa! Papa!” the way other boys his age would have. Of course, other boys his age would have run, not crawled, to greet their fathers, but soon that should change as well.

“How’s he doing?” he asked his mother as he carried Brian over to the sofa and sat down, setting the boy on his lap. He inspected the cast, which was growing dirtier every day.

“He don’t cry so much or try to get it off,” she reported, disapproval thick in her voice just the same. “I don’t think it hurts him much anymore. Or maybe he’s just used to it.”

“How’ll you keep up when Brian starts running around the place?” Frank asked, only half in jest. “It won’t be long now.”

She crossed herself, as if to ward off a curse. “It ain’t good to wish for too much,” she reminded him. “You’ll just be disappointed.”