Murder on Washington Square

When he’d caught his breath, he looked up accusingly with red-rimmed eyes.

“See, I told you you’d feel better,” Frank said unrepentantly and sat down at the table across from him. “All right, Ellsworth, tell me about Anna Blake.”

Nelson reached up and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I can’t believe she’s dead,” he said hoarsely.

“Believe it. Now talk to me. How did you meet her?”

He looked like he was going to start crying. “I can’t-”

“Yes, you can, because I’m the only hope you’ve got, Nelson. I promised Broughan that if he let me take you home, I’d find out who really killed the girl,” he said, naming the detective who’d been assigned to solve Anna Blake’s murder. “If you don’t help me, then I’ll have to turn you back over to him, and you don’t want that. See, Broughan is a lazy drunk, and he’d rather lock up an innocent man than find the guilty one if it means he’s going to have to exert himself. You’re real easy to catch, and I don’t think he’d be able to resist the temptation. If you don’t help me, I can’t help you. Now start talking.”

Ellsworth had gone chalk white, but he reached for the glass of whiskey and took another swallow. This time he didn’t choke, although it was a near thing. “All right,” he said, clearing his throat. “I met her when she came into the bank…”

Sarah’s plan to get into the Ellsworth house was perfect, she realized, unless Webster Prescott was one of the reporters. He’d know she wasn’t just an innocent neighbor coming over to borrow a cup of sugar. Fortunately, he wasn’t among the men who surrounded her the instant she started next door.

“Hey, miss-”

“Who are you?”

“Where are you going?”

“Do you know Nelson Ellsworth?”

The questions came simultaneously, so Sarah didn’t have to feign confusion. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” she demanded with an outrage that wasn’t the least feigned.

A chorus of voices answered her, naming the Sun, the Commercial Advertiser, the Evening Post, the Mail and Express, the Daily Graphic, the Herald, the Examiner, and even the Times, virtually all of the newspapers being published in the city. If one of them was, like Webster Prescott, from the World, she didn’t hear.

“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.