“But it’s not very likely, is it?” Sarah admitted.
Malloy shrugged. “There’s always a chance. But I think Giddings is a better chance. He had very good reason to want Anna Blake dead.”
“Except he didn’t act like a killer that day he came to the house looking for her. He was genuinely distraught when he found out she was dead.”
“Or maybe he’s as good an actor as Anna Blake. He wasn’t home when I went to his house, so I didn’t get a chance to question him any more. I’ll try again tomorrow, and if he’s not home, I’ll find him this time.”
Sarah remembered something else. “Who do you think the young man was who visited Anna that night?”
“I think it was Giddings’s son, Harold. He knew about Anna, and he wasn’t happy about her. His family lost everything because of her. When Giddings got caught stealing from his law firm, he had to sell everything he owned to repay the debt, including their furniture.”
Sarah winced. “How humiliating. His wife must be devastated.”
“She’s hiding it pretty well, trying to keep up a good front for the boy, I guess. But she’s got to hate Anna Blake, too.”
“Oh, my, do you think
“Women commit murder, too,” he reminded her.
She knew that only too well. “Did Mrs. Giddings strike you as a murderess?”
“Not really, but you can never tell about that kind of woman. They’re good at hiding their real feelings.”
Sarah could have given him a thousand examples of women of
“Anna wasn’t killed in the Square.”
“What do you mean? That’s where she was found,” Sarah reminded him.
“The coroner also told me that she walked a ways after she was stabbed. He could tell by the way she’d bled on her dress. She was stabbed somewhere else and was probably trying to get back home to get help when she collapsed in the Square.”
“So she could have been stabbed anywhere,” Sarah said, trying to figure out what this might mean. “Even someplace where she might have met Mrs. Giddings.”
“Or her son,” Malloy said.
Washington Square was just across the street, but they had to wait for a break in the steady stream of carriages and wagons to give them an opportunity to cross. The wind had started to stir up clouds of dust and dirt, and Sarah began to think this might not be an ordinary storm. While they stood there, squinting their eyes against the gritty wind, they heard someone calling Malloy’s name.
Malloy muttered something under his breath that might have been a curse when he turned and saw who was running toward them. “Even God took a day of rest, Prescott,” he grumbled when the gangly reporter reached them.
“I went to the boarding house where Miss Blake lived, and they said you’d just been there,” Webster Prescott said. He was breathless from running, and his fair face had pinkened from the exertion. He looked like a very tall child who had been chasing his hoop in the street. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Brandt,” he added with a gesture that might have been a tip of his straw hat if he hadn’t been struggling to hold it on his head. “How nice to see you again.”
Sarah could see the speculation in his eyes, but she wasn’t about to confirm or deny anything about her relationship with Malloy, especially when she had no idea in what direction he might be speculating. “It’s nice to see you, too, Mr. Prescott. I’ve been wanting to have a word with you about that story you wrote about Mr. Ellsworth,” she added grimly.
He didn’t seem to sense her anger. “My editor was very pleased with it, too. We sold out of last night’s edition, and I ran a longer piece this morning. Now I need some more information, and I thought I might get it from Miss Blake’s landlady.”
“But she sent you packing,” Malloy guessed.
Prescott wouldn’t admit such a thing. “She said you had just questioned her and warned her against speaking to the press.” He managed to appear offended.
“And you thought you’d get some information out of me?” Malloy asked incredulously.
Prescott smiled guilelessly. “No, but I thought Mrs. Brandt might be willing to share some with me.”
“I certainly am not!” Sarah informed him. “I told you Nelson Ellsworth was
“But after what I revealed about Anna Blake, he’ll never be convicted,” Prescott argued. “Most of the other papers have also started reporting that Anna Blake was a seductress who tried to ruin Ellsworth. By the time he goes to trial, there won’t be a man in the city who’d judge him guilty.”
“But he shouldn’t go to trial at all!” Sarah fairly shouted. “He didn’t kill her!”
Prescott opened his mouth, no doubt intending to say something even more infuriating, but Malloy interrupted him.
“Anna Blake was not expecting a child,” he said.
“She wasn’t? How do you know?” Prescott asked in amazement.
“The coroner told me, and he should know. She was only pretending to be distraught about her condition, but that was pretty easy for her, because she also happened to be an actress.”
Sarah wanted to slap him. Why was he telling this traitorous reporter anything at all, much less information they’d gathered with such difficulty?
“An actress?” Prescott repeated, pulling a notebook out of his pocket. He snatched the pencil from behind his ear and had to remove his hat and tuck it under his arm because he no longer had a free hand with which to hold it while he wrote. “Where did she perform?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to you to find out, but it shouldn’t be too hard. You probably have a lot of friends in the theater.”
“Was Anna Blake her stage name?” Prescott asked, scribbling furiously in his notebook.
“That’s something else you’ll have to find out on your own.”
“How did you discover that she was an actress?” Prescott asked.
“I’m a detective,” Malloy reminded him with only a trace of irony. “Finding things out is my job.”
“What else do you know about her that you’re not telling?” Prescott asked, including Sarah in the inquiry.
She almost told him what she thought of his cheekiness, but Malloy grabbed her elbow in a bruising grip to silence her.
“I know I’m going to start telling any other reporters who ask me everything I just told you, so if you want to scoop them, you’d better get busy.”
Prescott’s pink face split into a triumphant grin. “Thanks, Malloy. Mrs. Brandt,” he added with another quick tip of his hat as he placed it back on his head, and he vanished into the crowd of people leaning against the wind while they waited to cross the street.
“Why did you tell him about Anna being an actress?” Sarah demanded, now almost as angry with Malloy as she was with Prescott.
“To get rid of him. We don’t want him following us around. He might tip off the real killer once we start getting closer. And if he and the rest of the press are nosing around the theaters, they won’t be bothering the Ellsworths.”
“But what if Anna’s killer is someone she knew at the theater?” Sarah asked indignantly.
“Then maybe he’ll get frightened and make a mistake, and I’ll catch him. But chances are it was somebody from Anna’s present life who killed her. She was living very dangerously, after all. When you start ruining men’s lives, you make people desperate. One of those people got desperate enough to kill her.”
Suddenly, there was a break in the traffic, and Malloy fairly dragged her across the street, somehow managing to dodge the piles of horse droppings that had accumulated since the street cleaners had finished their duties early that morning. When they had arrived safely on the other side, in the Square, they paused for breath, turning their backs to the wind, and Malloy released her arm. Sarah rubbed her elbow and glared at him, but he wasn’t paying attention.
