Murder on Washington Square

Sarah did groan aloud this time. He was right, of course. Far too many women had been falsely vilified in death so that their killers could escape punishment. “I don’t care what Anna Blake did, she didn’t deserve to die!” Sarah insisted. “And even if she did, Nelson wasn’t the one who killed her!”

“What did you offer this reporter to change his story?” Malloy said, his eyes fairly crackling with rage.

“What are you suggesting?” she countered, stung by his implication.

Malloy sighed in exasperation. “You must have promised him something. Reporters are like dogs. They never let go of a bone unless they see a bigger one.”

“I simply told him the truth, that Anna Blake had other lovers, so Nelson wasn’t necessarily the father of her child, and that she’d refused Nelson’s offer of marriage in favor of blackmail.”

“That’s all?” Plainly he didn’t believe it.

“That’s all,” she confirmed. “What other proof did I need that Anna Blake wasn’t an honest woman when she refused an offer of marriage to give her child a name?”

“There was no child,” Malloy said.

Sarah gaped at him. “What do you mean, no child?”

“Just that. Anna Blake wasn’t expecting a child. Do you have any coffee?” He headed off toward her kitchen without waiting for a reply.

She followed in his wake, looking at the story again, trying to find even a hint that Prescott had believed her that Nelson was innocent. She found none.

Malloy sat down at her kitchen table without being invited and waited for her to serve him. She lifted the pot and judged there was enough for one cup in it. It had been sitting for quite a while, but she figured Malloy wouldn’t care. She poured it into a cup and set it before him. “Do you want something to eat?”

He waved off her offer. “I’m on my way home.”

“How is Brian doing?” she asked, instantly picturing his sweet face.

Malloy shrugged. “He doesn’t like the cast, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting him much anymore.”

Sarah smiled. “He’ll be so excited when he finds out he can walk.”

Malloy nodded, apparently too superstitious to talk about it.

She decided to let the matter drop for now and sat down in front of him. “All right, what did you mean Anna Blake wasn’t with child?” she asked him again.

“The coroner said she wasn’t, and he looked pretty close. Besides, she was wearing a… a thing.” He got very interested in his coffee and wouldn’t meet her eye.

“What kind of thing?” she pressed.

He made a vague gesture with his hand, still not meeting her eye. “To keep her from…” He waved his hand again.

“From what?” she asked in exasperation.

“So she wouldn’t get with child in the first place,” he said impatiently.

Sarah let this information sink in. “What was she using? A sponge?” she asked in amazement.

Was Malloy blushing? “Yeah, that’s… that’s what the coroner said,” he mumbled, still looking intently at his coffee.

Sarah bit back a smile. For someone who spent his life investigating the worst aspect of the human condition, he was awfully prudish. “She lied to Nelson about the baby, then.”

“She lied to Giddings, too.”

“Was she blackmailing him as well?”

“A lot more successfully than she was Nelson, from the looks of it. He lost his job when he got caught stealing from the law firm where he worked.”

“Oh, dear. Do you know what this means? She probably would have tried to get Nelson to steal from the bank, too.”

“Why would he? He didn’t have a reputation or a family to protect.”

He had a good point. “It just doesn’t make any sense for her to have been trying to blackmail Nelson, does it?”

“A lot of this doesn’t make any sense. I need to talk to her landlady and that other woman who lives there. I’m sure they know more than they’re telling, and from what the old woman next door said, that other woman might be doing the same thing Anna was, only with different men.”

“How would a neighbor know that?” Sarah asked.

Malloy gave her a pitying look. “Doesn’t Mrs. Ellsworth know everything you do?”

“She doesn’t know everything I do. She knows you call on me, but if I was seducing you and trying to blackmail you, she couldn’t know that unless one of us told her,” she pointed out.

He gave her one of his looks. “All right, the old woman didn’t know about everything, but she did see several different men coming and going at the house, more than Anna could have accommodated by herself. They never stepped out with the women, either.”

“If they were married, they couldn’t risk being seen,” Sarah guessed.

“That’s what I thought.”

“And if several men were calling on each of the women, the landlords had to know about it,” Sarah said.

“Especially if they were entertaining the men in their rooms,” Malloy pointed out.

“I thought you were going to see Mrs. Walcott today to find out about this.”

“She wasn’t home. Nobody was home when I called there this morning, and then I got a case of my own to work on. This isn’t my case, remember, and I’ve got to at least pretend I’m doing my own work. Otherwise, they might get a little annoyed with me down at Mulberry Street.”

“If it would help, I could call on her tomorrow with you,” Sarah offered. “A Sunday afternoon call would be just the thing.”

“Just the thing for what?” he asked with another of his looks.

“Just the thing to get her talking about her tenants.”

“If she’s running what amounts to a bawdy house, she’s not likely to confide it in you,” he pointed out.

“She’s even less likely to confide it in you,” Sarah pointed out right back. “And have you searched Anna’s room yet? There might be a diary or some letters or something else. And the maid probably knows a lot, too. She just wouldn’t say anything in front of that other woman, Catherine Porter. I’m sure I could get Catherine to talk, too, if I just had the chance.”

“Are you going to ask them to line up and take their turns answering your questions?” Malloy asked sarcastically.

He was right, of course. She couldn’t just show up on their doorstep and question them, one by one. Only Malloy could do that. “At least let me search her room. You know I’m good at that!”

She could see he was remembering the first time they’d met, when she’d found a vital clue for him while searching a murder victim’s room.

“What excuse will you use for turning up on their doorstep?” he asked, downing the last of his coffee.

“I’ll be coming as your assistant,” she countered.

This drew the blackest look yet, but she merely smiled serenely.

“Mrs. Brandt,” he said sternly, “you do not work for the police department, and you are not my assistant. You have no right to be investigating a murder at all. Besides, they already know you’re a midwife.”

“You know perfectly well you could bring a trained monkey along with you to question people and no one would dare challenge you. The police do whatever they want. If you say I can search the entire house and ask people whatever I want, then I can. What time should I meet you there?”

Someone started pounding at her door, a frantic sound she knew only too well.

“Sounds like someone wants to see you,” Malloy observed.

“It’s a baby. They always knock like that when it’s a baby.”

“Go ahead, then. I’ll let myself out the back. I need to talk to Nelson Ellsworth again. There’s something about this whole thing that smells bad, and maybe he can help me understand it.”

“You aren’t leaving until you tell me what time you’ll be at the boardinghouse tomorrow,” she warned when he got up and started for the back door.

His grin told her she didn’t stand much chance of stopping him, even if he didn’t tell her anything, but he said, “I’ll probably be there around one o’clock, if you’re finished with your duties by then.”