sounded oddly defensive.
Frank did not betray his surprise. “Then I suppose you haven’t seen the morning papers.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Giddings asked impatiently.
“Because if you had, then you’d know… Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you, but Anna Blake was murdered the night before last.”
Frank watched his face carefully. He’d interrogated enough people that he knew a genuine reaction from a phony one, and the emotions played across Giddings’s face in exactly the right order. First shock, then disbelief.
“There must be some mistake,” he insisted, his mind unable to grasp such a horrible truth. “She was… She couldn’t be…”
“I assure you, there is no mistake. Anna Blake is dead.”
For a moment, Giddings couldn’t seem to get his breath. He reached out blindly for the doorframe and grabbed it for support. “How? When?” he asked faintly, the blood draining from his face as he slowly accepted what Frank had told him.
“Maybe you should sit down first,” Frank suggested. He glanced down the stairs and saw Walcott waiting, listening intently to every word. “Is this Anna’s room?” he asked Giddings, nodding toward the doorway where he stood.
The man nodded. Frank found it interesting he knew this fact if he’d never visited Anna’s room, as Walcott had insisted. He took Giddings’s arm and led him inside, closing the door behind him. Walcott would have to come upstairs and put his ear to the panel if he wanted to eavesdrop.
There was a chair in the corner of the sparsely furnished room, by the window, and Frank deposited Giddings into it. Then he perched on the edge of Anna’s carelessly made bed and waited. Human nature being what it was, he knew Giddings would break the silence very soon.
Frank took the time to study Giddings. His clothes were good quality. He was a man accustomed to dressing well, although his suit was a bit wrinkled, and his linen far from fresh. He’d been wearing it more than one day, which was probably unusual for a man of his obvious position in life. His hat was on crooked, and he hadn’t thought to remove it, a gesture that would have come naturally to him under other circumstances. He was well-fed but haggard, with dark circles under his eyes and a tightness around his mouth. A man of comfortable circumstances who found himself dealing with a crisis he couldn’t resolve.
Then, to Frank’s surprise, Giddings reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a silver flash. With practiced ease, he removed the top and took a healthy swallow. He didn’t offer to share before placing the flask safely back into his pocket.
“How did she die?” he asked when he’d given the whiskey a moment to work.
“Someone stabbed her. It happened in Washington Square.”
He started in surprise. “Who did it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“But if someone stabbed her in a public place like that, someone must have seen who did it!”
“It happened at night. No one found her until morning.” He let that sink in, and then he said, “Do you know why she was out alone at that hour?”
“Of course not!”
“She wasn’t going to meet you, then?”
“I’d never expect a female to go out alone at night to meet me,” he insisted, affronted. “That wouldn’t be safe. I always called on Anna here at the house.”
“You said you were engaged,” Frank reminded him. “When were you planning to get married?”
Giddings blanched again, proving Frank’s theory that this had been a lie. “I… We… we hadn’t yet set a date,” he hedged.
“Is that because you’re already married, Mr. Giddings?” Frank inquired.
Now Giddings was frightened. “I can’t imagine why that’s any of your business,” he tried.
“When a woman is murdered, everything about her is my business. Now tell me how you met Anna Blake and what your relationship with her really was.”
Giddings rubbed a hand across his forehead. When his fingers bumped the brim of his hat, he quickly reached up and removed it, looking at it in amazement, as if he’d never seen it before.
“How did you meet her, Mr. Giddings?” he prodded.
“I’m an attorney,” he said, losing what little of Frank’s respect he still had. “Miss Blake came to me with a legal problem. She… something to do with a will. She was supposed to have received a legacy when her mother died, but an uncle had produced a more recent will which left everything to him. Anna insisted the second will had been forged, and she needed some legal advice.”
Anna Blake, Frank realized, had been a woman with a lively imagination. “Let me guess, she couldn’t pay your fee.”
“Of course not! She was penniless,” Giddings said defensively. “Her mother had died and her uncle had stolen her inheritance. She had sold all of her possessions to keep herself while she tried to find work, but you know how difficult it would be for a young woman of good family to find a suitable position. She couldn’t earn enough to keep a roof over her head. By the time she came to me, she was desperate. The only choice open to her was to… to sell herself. I couldn’t allow that to happen! What decent man could?”
“So as a decent man, you took her as your mistress instead,” Frank said.
Somehow, Giddings managed to work up some outrage. The color rose in his face and he started sputtering in protest, but his bluster soon evaporated under Frank’s unrelenting glare.
“You took her as your mistress,” Frank repeated.
“No, it didn’t happen like that!”
“How did it happen?”
Giddings had nearly ruined his well-made hat in his agitation, but Frank resisted the urge to take it from him. Instead, he sat still and waited. As he expected, Giddings came up with words to fill the silence.
“At first I just gave her some money. To keep her from the streets, you understand. I felt it was my Christian duty.”
Anna Blake had inspired Christian duty in many men, apparently. Frank nodded encouragingly.
“She was very grateful,” Giddings continued more confidently. “She promised she would repay me when she found work, but even when she found a place to take her on, they turned her out after only a few days. She didn’t know how to operate mechanical equipment, and the other girls treated her badly because she was so obviously better than they. The experience completely broke her spirit.”
“So you gave her some more money,” Frank said. “And eventually you became lovers.”
“No man had ever been kind to her before,” Giddings explained anxiously. “She fell in love with me! I was all she had in the world. How could a man resist such a temptation?”
“How indeed,” Frank agreed solemnly. “I expect any decent man would’ve done the same in your position.”
Giddings had the grace to flush and look ashamed. Frank enjoyed his humiliation for a moment before returning to the business at hand.
“Did she ask you to divorce your wife and marry her?” he asked.
“My wife would never consent to a divorce. The scandal…”
“Your wife wouldn’t
“I have a son to think of,” Giddings tried. “I couldn’t ruin his life.”
“So you paid her off,” Frank guessed.
“Her demands were small at first. She had simple needs, she said. But then…”
“Then she found out she was with child,” Frank supplied.
Giddings looked up in genuine terror. “I couldn’t allow my family to find out! Or my partners! Our clients wouldn’t tolerate immoral behavior from a member of the firm.”
“So you paid her to keep silent.”
“But it was never enough! She kept wanting more and more. She thought I was rich, but I’m not. I earn a comfortable living, but I have a family to support and a home and servants and-”
