“What do you mean?” Sarah asked, trying to sound innocent.
“You know what I mean. By the time I found some of these people, they’d already talked to you.”
“I was only trying to help. I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to find all the girls’ friends.”
“You could’ve just told me who they were.”
“I was also trying to save you some time.”
He gave her one of his looks. “Then you should’ve told me to stop investigating. I wasted a lot of time following in your footsteps.”
He didn’t seem too annoyed, though. He was only pretending. How and when she had become an expert on Malloy’s moods, she had no idea. “Stop complaining, Malloy. I know you talked to a lot of people I didn’t. Just as I talked to people you didn’t. Let’s see your list.”
Malloy opened his notebook and handed it to her, then slid her papers over so he could look at them in turn.
Malloy’s handwriting was surprisingly small and neat. “You wrote descriptions of the men,” Sarah observed.
“A lot of them don’t tell the girls their last names. Do you know how many men there are in the city named Frank? I didn’t want you thinking I was the killer just because my name turned up on the list.”
Sarah looked at him in amazement. His expression was bland, and he was pretending to study her list. Since when had he developed a sense of humor?
“That’s a good idea,” she admitted. “The descriptions, I mean. That way we’d know immediately if any of these fellows with the same names are the same men.”
“Except there aren’t a lot of men with the same names.”
Sarah had noticed this also. “I made a chart, you see?” she said, pointing to a piece of paper on which she had made four columns, one for each of the dead girls. In each column, she had listed the names of all the men their friends had mentioned. She hadn’t done as thorough an investigation as Malloy, of course. She hadn’t questioned any friends of Eva Bower, for instance, because the girls hadn’t known her. Luisa Isenberg had been fairly easy since she worked at Faircloths and the girls knew her friends. She’d found only a few people who knew Fredrika Lutz. Sarah picked up a pencil and began filling in her chart with the names Malloy had gleaned from his interviews. When she was finished, she made a startling discovery.
“There isn’t one single name that appears on all four lists!”
“That would make this job easy, Mrs. Brandt. If it was that easy, they wouldn’t need someone with my abilities to solve cases,” he told her smugly.
Sarah had to admit he was probably right, even though she could see it gave him great satisfaction that she knew it. “All right, Mr. Detective Sergeant, what do we do now?”
He gloated for a moment, but only for a moment. “We pick out the names that occur most often. Then I find the men-or as many of them as I can-and ask them where they were when these girls were murdered.”
“They’re hardly likely to remember,” Sarah pointed out. “Except for Gerda, the killings happened weeks and even months ago.”
“You’re right. The average person won’t remember where he was on a particular evening even just a week ago, at least not without giving the manner some serious thought. But the killer will know exactly where he was on those evenings. Unless he’s very clever, he’ll make up alibis for those evenings. He’ll pretend to remember exactly where he was those nights and give me an elaborate story to explain it.”
Sarah was amazed. “So being clever can be a trap in itself.”
“If the police are even more clever.”
He was enjoying this too much. “But what if the killer is very smart, too. What if he’s smart enough to know he shouldn’t be able to remember where he was on a particular night three months ago?”
“Killers aren’t that smart, Mrs. Brandt. If they were, they wouldn’t be killers.”
Sarah certainly hoped he was right, but so far the killer had behaved with unusual intelligence. He’d chosen girls whose deaths would excite no interest in the police and who moved in social circles where they encountered numerous unfamiliar males. He’d killed them far enough apart that no one noticed the connection between the deaths until now, and that was only by accident. He may even have given his victims a false name or made certain the victims’ friends didn’t see them together. If no one knew they were acquainted, then no one could name him as a suspect. But Malloy had said killers weren’t that smart, or they wouldn’t be killers in the first place. She clung to that.
Looking over the list, she saw the name George was on three of the lists. “I don’t know what he looks like, but remember I told you that Gerda’s friends said a man name George was the one who gave her a new hat right before she died. I just found out he also got angry when she danced with another man right before she was killed.”
“Jealousy is sometimes a motive for murder, but in this case, I’m not so sure.”
“This man must have
“Maybe,” was all Malloy would give her. “Do you know this George’s last name?”
“The girls said they thought it was Smith. They did say they weren’t sure it was his real name, though,” she added at his skeptical expression.
“George Smith. That narrows it down to about a thousand men in the city.”
Sarah ignored his sarcasm. “He sells ladies’ notions to the big department stores. He has a sample case, and from what I understand, when a girl allows him, uh, certain liberties, he offers her a gift from its contents.”
She’d embarrassed him, although he was trying valiantly not to show it. The flush crawled up his neck, however, betraying him. “Is that all it takes now? A bit of ribbon or a pair of gloves?” He was appalled.
“I’m sure it takes more than that. Gerda got a hat, don’t forget.”
“And a pair of red shoes. Did this George buy them for her?”
“The girls didn’t think so. Seems Gerda took up with another man right before she died, but they never saw him. He spent money on her rather freely, so she gave George the gate. That’s when George got angry. I think you’d do well to question him, at least.”
Malloy just grunted and continued to look over the list. Sarah wished she’d gotten descriptions for the men on her list. She hadn’t even thought to ask for a description of George. It seemed so obvious now that she’d need to know what he looked like. Or rather that Malloy would.
He was making a new list of the names that occurred on three of the lists. A good place to start, she reasoned, when she heard the gate open.
“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you had company.” Mrs. Elsworth didn’t look a bit sorry. In fact, she looked as satisfied as a cat with its head in the cream pitcher. “Good evening, Detective Sergeant.”
Malloy rose reluctantly to his feet as Mrs. Elsworth made her way through the flowers to the back-porch steps. “Good evening,” he replied without the slightest trace of warmth.
“Oh, Mrs. Brandt, you’ll think me such a ninny, but this message came for you this morning, and I completely forgot about it.” She had a piece of paper in her hand that Sarah longed to snatch, but there was no point in being rude. Mrs. Elsworth would give it to her in due time. “I should’ve known,” she was saying. “I dropped a fork this morning. You know that saying, ‘knife falls, gentleman calls; fork falls, lady calls.’ ”
Sarah didn’t know the saying, but she nodded anyway. “Are you saying a lady called for me?”
“Oh, gracious, yes. I thought I’d said that. And she left this message.”
“I hope it isn’t a message about a baby being born.” That would be a disaster.
“Oh, no, of course not. I told her right away that you were out on a delivery, and heaven only knew when you’d return. Babies keep their own schedule, don’t you know. But she said it wasn’t about a baby, and she just wanted to leave a message. She didn’t look like the sort of person who usually calls on you, if you don’t mind my saying so, but she was such a little thing, I didn’t believe her to be dangerous. I let her come in and write you a note, and then I forgot all about it until just this moment.”
At last she handed over the missive to Sarah, who unfolded it quickly. The spelling was poor, but she had no trouble deciphering the message. It was from Lisle. “One of Gerda’s friends saw George at a dance hall last night,” she told Malloy.
When she looked up, Mrs. Elsworth was waiting expectantly. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Elsworth. This is a very
