Murder on Washington Square (7 page)

“I only read the
News
,” she said haughtily, naming the penny scandal sheet that circulated mainly in the tenements, and tried to force her way past them.

She got a few steps farther when someone called, “Nelson Ellsworth killed a woman last night. What do you have to say about that?”

Sarah gave him her most withering glare. “I say that’s preposterous! Now get out of my way before I start screaming. I assure you there are many people on this street who will immediately come to my rescue.”

She didn’t know if it was her tone or her threat that moved them, but they let her pass, although they kept close, hovering at the foot of the porch steps. Sarah pounded on the front door and called, “Mrs. Ellsworth, it’s Sarah! Let me in!”

The door opened almost instantly, telling Sarah that her neighbor had witnessed her approach. By the time she had slipped inside and Mrs. Ellsworth had slammed the door shut, the reporters were on the porch, screaming their questions. The old woman drove home the bolt an instant before they started pounding on the door.

Mrs. Ellsworth looked as if she were ready to collapse, and Sarah took her arm and led her through the house to the kitchen in the rear, as far from the front door as they could get. The pounding lasted only another minute or two before the reporters gave up and went back to their vigil. They probably thought they’d lie in wait for Sarah to come out again. She’d worry about that later.

“Nelson?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked weakly when Sarah had seated her at her kitchen table.

“He’s sitting at my kitchen table at this very moment. Malloy is with him.”

She covered her face with both hands. “Thank God! I’ve been so frightened. I should have known Mr. Malloy would help us, though. He’ll straighten everything out.” Then she dropped her hands and turned her moist gaze to Sarah. “Why didn’t you bring him here, though?”

“Because of the reporters,” Sarah said. “We came in the back door so they wouldn’t see us. We’ll bring him over when it gets dark,” she added rashly. She’d have to get Malloy to agree to that first, but what other choice did he have? The two men could hardly stay at her house all night. Of course, Malloy might also decide to lock Nelson up again.

“How could this have happened?” Mrs. Ellsworth was saying. “Nelson doesn’t even know this woman—what was her name?”

“Anna Blake,” Sarah supplied, “and I’m afraid he
did
know her, very well, in fact.”

“That’s impossible! He never said a thing to me!” she insisted. “I know all of Nelson’s friends.”

“I don’t know why he didn’t introduce her to you,” Sarah said, although she had a very good idea. “But I met her.”

“You? Why?” Mrs. Ellsworth was obviously overwhelmed by all of this and now she was also offended by what Sarah was telling her.

“You’ll have to discuss that with Nelson. He asked for my . . . discretion.”

“He didn’t want me to know about her?” The old woman was incredulous. “What kind of a woman was she?”

“The kind who gets murdered in Washington Square in the middle of the night,” Sarah said baldly.

“Oh, my poor Nelson!” she wailed. “What has he done?”

Sarah wished she could answer “nothing,” but instead she took the old woman in her arms and offered what comfort she could.

 

“So when Anna told me about . . . about the child . . . I . . . I . . .”

Frank signed impatiently. Nelson was making the whole sordid story even worse with his delicacy. He wasn’t sure why Nelson should care about protecting Anna Blake’s good name now that she was dead, but he supposed that’s what a gentleman might do.

“What did you do?” he prompted with more patience than he felt.

“I . . . You aren’t going to like this part,” he warned nervously.

Frank hadn’t liked any of it so far. Ellsworth had pretty much given him more than enough reason to suspect him of murdering Anna Blake. Broughan would’ve had him locked in a cell down at The Tombs by now. “Tell me anyway,” he said, not bothering to sound patient.

“I . . . Well, naturally, when Anna told me there might be a child, I . . . I went to Mrs. Brandt.”

“You
what
?” Frank nearly shouted.

Ellsworth flinched. “She’s a midwife,” he reminded Frank unnecessarily. “I thought . . . Well, Anna was an innocent girl. How could she be sure? I don’t know much about these things, but I do know . . . I mean, I’ve heard my friends talk. The ones who are married. Sometimes a woman thinks . . . but then she finds out she’s wrong. I would’ve married her either way, of course,” he added hastily, “but she was so frightened. And she had this idea that she wasn’t good enough for me, or at least that’s what she said. I know, it doesn’t make any sense,” he said to Frank’s skepticism, “but I thought maybe she just couldn’t stand the thought of being married to a man like me. I’m not very exciting or romantic. Not at all the sort of man a young woman would be interested in.”

Frank was hardly listening to his protests because something suddenly didn’t make any sense at all. “She didn’t want to marry you? Even after you’d seduced her?”

A pained expression twisted his face. “I can’t blame her, of course, and as much as I would have gladly taken her as my wife, I didn’t want to force her. If she married me and then found out there wasn’t a . . . a necessity for it, well, she’d hate me, don’t you think? How could I live with myself?”

“So you told Mrs. Brandt your problem. What did she do?” Frank prodded, hoping that if he heard more, the story would start to make sense again.

“She accompanied me to Anna’s rooming house. I thought perhaps she could . . . well, make sure of Anna’s condition.”

Ellsworth was right. Frank really didn’t like this part. “And did she?”

“She didn’t have a chance. Anna was terribly upset when I introduced her. She thought . . .”

“She thought what?” Frank was very much afraid he was going to have to get rough with Ellsworth after all, just to hurry things along.

“I know this will sound ridiculous to you, but Anna thought that Mrs. Brandt and I were . . . romantically involved.”

Frank did think it sounded ridiculous. “Why would she think that?”

“I told you, she’s very innocent,” Nelson said, unconsciously using the present tense. “She couldn’t imagine any other reason why another woman would have accompanied me there. And nothing I said would reassure her, so Mrs. Brandt didn’t get to speak with her at all.”

“If this woman didn’t marry you, what was she going to do?” Frank asked, wondering if Sarah Brandt had been as suspicious of this story as Frank was becoming.

“She . . . well, you understand her parents were dead. Her mother had just passed away, of course, and she had no one to turn to.”

Which was a very good reason to marry someone like Nelson, who had a steady job and a comfortable income. And an even better reason to trick him into marriage with an imaginary pregnancy, if necessary. “She had
you
to turn to,” Frank reminded him.

“She was an honorable woman, Mr. Malloy,” Nelson said defensively. “She felt unworthy, after what had happened between us. She was even too embarrassed to meet my mother. She just wanted to go away where no one knew her.”

“So she and the baby could starve to death?” Frank suggested curiously.

A scarlet flush flooded Nelson’s face. “I would have helped her financially, of course. In fact, that’s all she wanted of me. I told you she was honorable.”

Or crazy, Frank thought. Why take money to raise an illegitimate child alone when you could be married? What was wrong with the woman? Could she possibly have been so stupid? He’d have to find out more about this Anna Blake. Maybe when he had, he’d be able to make sense of this. Meanwhile, he’d break one of his cardinal rules and have a taste of Sarah Brandt’s whiskey. After this, he’d earned it.

He and Nelson sat in silence for what seemed a long time until they heard a commotion at the front door.

“Stay here,” Frank warned. “We don’t want anyone to see you.”

He got to the front room just as Sarah Brandt slammed the door behind her. The shadows of the clamoring reporters danced on the other side of the frosted glass window, and their voices were muffled shouts. “They found out who I am,” she said accusingly.

“That was pretty easy to do, considering they know you live next door,” Frank replied.

“No,” she said in disgust, “I don’t mean they found out I’m Nelson’s neighbor. They found out I’m
your
‘lady friend.’ ”

“My what?” he asked with a frown, but she was already stomping past him on her way back to the kitchen, leaving him no choice but to follow.

“How are you doing?” she asked Ellsworth in a gentle tone she had never used with Frank.

“I’m fine,” he said, although he was obviously far from fine. “How is my mother taking all of this? She isn’t strong, you know. The shock must have been awful.”

“Now that she knows you aren’t locked in jail, she’s doing much better. I promised her you’d come home after it gets dark and no one can see you.” She looked up at Frank, daring him to contradict her.

“I don’t see any reason why he can’t go home tonight,” he said mildly, “so long as he gives me his word he won’t try to run away.”

“Run away?” Ellsworth echoed indignantly. “I don’t have anything to run away from!”

Frank could have given him a long list of things he should run away from, but he said, “Are you hungry, Ellsworth? Because I sure am.”

Mrs. Brandt gave him an impatient look, but she turned away and began rummaging around for something edible.

“I don’t think I could eat anything,” Ellsworth said, “but a cup of tea would be very nice.”

“You should try to eat,” Frank said, not entirely unselfishly. If Ellsworth didn’t want anything, she might not fix anything. “You’ll need your strength.”

“Malloy is right,” she said, surprising Frank. He thought this might be the first time she’d admitted he’d been right about anything. “And I think we could all use some tea.”

Soon the kitchen was uncomfortably warm, in spite of the evening chill that had settled over the city. Frank stayed there, though. He was enjoying the comfortable domesticity of the scene. For once he needed no excuse to watch Sarah Brandt to his heart’s content.

He liked the way the lamplight shone on her golden hair and the way she moved, so confidently yet so feminine. She really was a fine figure of a woman. She would fill a man’s arms quite nicely. Or his bed. The thought caused him a pain that was part longing for what could never be and part grief for what he could never have again. The loss of his wife Kathleen was a wound that would never completely heal, but lately when he dreamed he was loving a woman, she wasn’t Kathleen. Instead, she had golden hair and Sarah Brandt’s face. It was a dream that could never come true, but since no one ever need know about it, he figured it was harmless enough. And no one ever
would
know, least of all Sarah Brandt.

She turned and set a teapot on the table, then fetched two cups. She poured Ellsworth’s for him and even put some milk into it. “Do you need some sugar?” she asked in that gentle tone again.

“A spoonful, please,” he replied, and she stirred that in, too. Then she went back to her cooking.

Frank cleared his throat expectantly. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “The next time you’re falsely accused of murder, I’ll pour your tea, too,” she said with that smirk that made him want to shake her. Or at least lay his hands on her.

He didn’t really want any tea, but he took some anyway. Pouring it was a distraction of sorts. In a few more minutes, she served their supper, which was potatoes fried with onions and eggs. She put some on a plate for Ellsworth, even though he protested that he couldn’t eat a thing, and then passed the serving plates to Frank.

While Ellsworth picked at his food, Mrs. Brandt said very casually, “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted Anna out of the way?”

Ellsworth looked up in surprise. “Certainly not! She didn’t have any enemies. She hardly even know anyone in the city.”

“An old friend then, someone who knew her before she came to the city. Do you know where she was from?” she prodded.

Nelson considered a moment. “I think . . . She may have been from the Hudson Valley, but I can’t recall the name of a town. Perhaps she never actually told me the name.”

“If her mother was sick, why did they come to the city in the first place?” Frank asked between mouthfuls. Mrs. Brandt wasn’t as good a cook as his mother, but right now, that didn’t really matter.

“Her father had died and left them penniless,” Ellsworth explained. “Anna’s mother wasn’t sick at first, and they both thought they might find work in the city. But of course, the work they found only paid a pittance, and then her mother got sick . . . Poor thing, Anna was at her wit’s end when I met her.”

“She was very lucky to find someone like you, Nelson,” Sarah Brandt said sweetly. “Someone who was willing to help her without expecting anything in return.”

Even in the dim light of the gas jets, Frank could see that Ellsworth’s face had gone scarlet, because they all knew he’d eventually gotten something in return, expected or not. “I didn’t force her,” he said. “You must believe that!”

“Of course we believe that,” she assured him. “Did Anna have any other friends in the city? Perhaps she’d met someone when she came here.”

“I . . . I got the impression she was quite alone,” Ellsworth said. “Besides, she might have been killed . . .” He had to stop and fight back a rush of emotion. “By a stranger,” he finished. “At that time of night, in a public square . . .”

“But why would she have been out so late, alone?” she asked, still sweet and gentle. Frank was beginning to admire her technique. “Can you think of any reason?”

“No, I can’t,” Ellsworth wailed. “I’ve asked myself the same thing a hundred times. She would’ve known it wasn’t safe. At that time of night, the Square is filled with all sorts of dangerous people.”