Sarah smiled with satisfaction and went to answer the anxious summons.
Frank stood where Mrs. Ellsworth could see him through her back window in the fading sunlight. The door opened only a few seconds after he’d knocked, and Mrs. Ellsworth greeted him as if he were the Prodigal Son.
“Oh, Mr. Malloy, how good of you to come. I dropped a knife this afternoon, so I knew a gentleman would be calling. I hoped it was you, and not another of those awful reporters. Do you have any word? Have you found the killer yet?” she asked as he came into her kitchen. Now that he had a good look at her, he realized this ordeal was taking a toll. Her eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, and her whole body seemed to have shrunken, as if she were drawing up into herself under the weight of this terrible burden.
“Not yet, I’m afraid,” he told her, wishing he had better news. “But I have a few questions that Nelson might be able to answer.”
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to,” she said. “He’s been so upset. He hardly eats, and I have to beg him to come out of his room.”
“Maybe he’d make an exception for me,” Frank suggested.
“I’ll be sure he does,” the old woman promised. “Please, come in and have a seat in the parlor. I’ll fetch him down.”
Mrs. Ellsworth’s parlor looked exactly as Frank would have imagined it. Immaculately clean and cluttered with figurines and ornaments and crocheted doilies, it had the look of a room kept for “good,” and rarely used. Over the mantle hung a portrait of a man Frank assumed must be the elder Mr. Ellsworth. The painting made him look dyspeptic.
Frank seated himself on the horsehair sofa to wait.
A few minutes later, he heard footsteps on the stairs. Mrs. Ellsworth came down first to tell him Nelson would be following, and he did in another moment, moving as if he were the older of the two. If Mrs. Ellsworth looked tired, Nelson looked positively ill. He hadn’t shaved in days, his hair had been carelessly combed, and his clothes were rumpled, like he’d been sleeping in them. His face was the worst, though. Haggard and pale, he stared at Frank with the hopelessness of a condemned man.
“If you’ll excuse us, Mrs. Ellsworth,” Frank said, rising to usher her out of the room. Plainly she didn’t want to leave.
“Can I get you anything? Are you hungry?” she asked anxiously, looking for an excuse to return.
“No, we won’t need anything,” Frank assured her, closing the parlor door practically in her face. He hoped she wouldn’t listen outside the door. She wouldn’t want to hear the answers to the questions Frank had to ask.
Nelson had seated himself in one of the chairs and was staring up at him with resignation. “You’re here to arrest me, aren’t you?” he said.
“Not yet,” Frank replied cheerfully. “We’re still working on the case, and some questions have come up that I’m hoping you can answer.”
“Questions about what?”
“About you and Anna Blake. When was the last time you were with her?”
“I saw her Monday evening, the night I went there with Mrs. Brandt. I stayed for a while after Mrs. Brandt left, but Anna was so upset, I finally left.”
“You didn’t see her the next night, the night she was killed?” Frank asked.
Nelson shook his head. “No, she told me not to come back, that she never wanted to see me again.”
“So you weren’t ever going to see her again?” Frank asked incredulously.
“Oh, no, she said that often, whenever she was upset. I would give her a day or two to calm down, then call on her again. She never seemed to remember that she’d told me not to come back, you see. This time I planned to give her several days, and then…”
His voice broke and he covered his eyes with his hand. Frank stared at him in pity, but he had no time for such indulgences. He needed Nelson to accept the truth about the dead woman. The sooner he did, the sooner he’d be a help in solving her murder.
“Nelson, this is very important. When was the last time you… uh… screwed Anna Blake?”
Nelson’s eyes widened in shock. Plainly, no one had ever asked him such a thing. “Really, Mr. Malloy, that’s hardly-” he began in outrage, but Frank didn’t have the patience for his finer feelings.
“You’ve already told me you did it. How else could she have convinced you that you’d gotten her in a family way? Now just tell me when was the last time?”
“I… I don’t really remember exactly,” he hedged. “I mean, there was just the one time and-”
“Just
Nelson flushed. “What kind of am man do you think I am? I couldn’t take advantage of her like that!”
“You did it once, why not again?” Frank countered reasonably.
Nelson grew even redder, if that was possible. “The first time it was… Well, it was a mistake, a terrible mistake. I’ll never forgive myself, but I wasn’t myself at all, you see, and-”
“Who were you, if you weren’t yourself?” Frank asked a little sarcastically.
Nelson had a the grace to look chagrinned. “It was the wine,” he admitted reluctantly.
“What wine?”
“The wine that… Anna wasn’t feeling well, and…” He gestured helplessly.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me how it happened,” Frank suggested.
“It’s so ungentlemanly,” Nelson protested.
“Seducing her was ungentlemanly,” Frank countered. “Telling me how it happened might save your neck.”
Nelson winced, but he couldn’t argue with such logic. “I came to call on her, just the way I had been for several weeks. I was concerned about her, you see. She didn’t have a friend in the world, and I didn’t want her to end up on the street the way so many other girls do.”
“Of course not,” Frank said encouragingly. “And of course you had to give her money.”
“It was just a loan,” he insisted. “She was going to pay me back. She didn’t want to take charity.”
“That’s very commendable, “Frank said, the irony lost on Nelson.
“One evening I stopped by on my way home from the bank, just to say hello, you understand. But Mrs. Walcott told me Anna was ill. She seemed very upset. She thought Anna might be going into a decline. Having lost her mother and no longer being able to provide for herself, Mrs. Walcott thought Anna might simply die to avoid what she considered a worse fate.”
“Was she really sick?” Frank asked when he hesitated, lost in his memories.
“She seemed to be. Although it was highly improper, and Mrs. Walcott assured me she never allowed gentleman callers above stairs, she asked me to go to Anna’s room to see if I could help in some way. That’s how concerned she was.”
This was starting to make a lot of sense to Frank. Seducing a woman wasn’t as easy as people made it sound. Women were usually trussed up in so many layers of corsets and clothing that just getting to them was half-a-day’s work. Even rape required a lot of determination to dig through all those petticoats. But if Anna were ill, she’d be in her nightclothes, simplifying the process considerably.
“So you went to her room,” Frank prodded.
“Yes, she was very ill indeed. I wanted to call a doctor immediately, but she begged me not to. She said she felt much better just having me there and knowing I cared about her. Mrs. Walcott had sent up a bottle of wine, thinking that might make Anna feel better. She didn’t want to drink it. Her mother had been a temperance worker, you see, so I took some myself, just to encourage her. I don’t know how much I drank before I finally convinced her to try some, but it must have been too much. By the time I realized I wasn’t myself, it was too late.”
“Are you telling me you turned into a raging beast?” Frank asked skeptically.
“Certainly not!” Nelson cried, but his outrage evaporated instantly. “At least I didn’t realize I did. Later, Anna told me… Well, I started to feel a little unsteady, and Anna tried to help me to my feet so I could go back downstairs. The last thing I remember, my arms were around her and…”
“You don’t remember what happened?” Frank asked in amazement.
“If I’d been in my right mind, it never
“What did you do then?”
