Francine anymore. “Is that what you were planning to do? Find some rich man to take care of you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Catherine pointed out. “Lots of women do it!”
Lots of women in every class did it, Sarah would have to admit. Becoming a rich man’s mistress, or his wife, was one of the few opportunities women had of escaping poverty. Sarah didn’t feel like discussing this with Catherine, however. “Did Mr. Walcott court you the way he courted Anna?” she asked to change the subject.
“I don’t know what you mean.” This time the fear in her eyes was too real to mistake. “Mr. Walcott is… he’s a married man.”
“Married or not, he used to hang around the theater, waiting for Anna and bringing her flowers. Did he do that for you, too?”
Catherine glanced at the parlor doors. Was she worried that someone might be eavesdropping? Or was she worried about something else? “He just… he offered me a place to live. That’s all. He said he ran a respectable boarding house and I’d like it here.”
“Because you could entertain your gentleman callers upstairs with his approval?” Sarah asked mildly.
Catherine didn’t like these questions. “I told you, this is a respectable house.”
“Not according to the men who used to call on Anna Blake,” Sarah said. “They were both permitted above stairs with the full knowledge of the landlords. I can’t say for certain what went on in Anna’s room, but I do know that both gentlemen in question believed they had gotten Anna with child. This would indicate to me they were intimate with her.”
“That was Anna, not me,” she insisted.
Sarah decided not to press the issue. “Did you see the young man who visited Anna the night she died?”
“Yeah, but I never saw him before. He wasn’t a regular…” She caught herself and quickly added, “I mean, he’d never been here that I ever saw.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. Young, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Looked like a common laborer, if you ask me. Mary didn’t want to let him in, but he pushed his way past her and started shouting for Anna.”
“Didn’t you ask her who he was?”
Catherine glared at Sarah. At any moment she might realize she didn’t really have to sit here and answer these questions. Sarah had no authority at all, but she didn’t betray any hint of that. She glared right back at Catherine determinedly. Finally, she said, “Anna said he was Mr. Giddings’s son.”
“Who was Mr. Giddings?” Sarah asked, managing to conceal her feeling of triumph and hoping Catherine wouldn’t remember that Sarah had been here the morning Giddings had come looking for Anna.
“One of her… a friend of hers. He helped her with some… some business matters.”
“I see,” Sarah said, seeing more than that. “And what did the boy want with her?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t my business.”
“Did he go upstairs with her?” Sarah asked, remembering that the coroner had said she’d been with a man shortly before her death.
“Not likely! Not the way they was fighting!”
“They were arguing? What about?”
“I wasn’t listening on purpose,” she said, defensive again, “but he was shouting. It was hard not to hear what he was saying.”
“And what was he saying?”
“He wanted her to leave his father alone. He said there was no more money. I think… he said something about her giving the money back, I think. And he…”
“He what?”
“He said…” Catherine took a deep breath. “He’d kill her if she didn’t.”
13
SARAH GAPED AT HER. THIS WAS EVEN MORE INFORMATION than she’d wanted to get. “Are you sure that’s what he said?” she asked, still not wanting the Giddings boy to be guilty of the crime.
“Yeah, because Anna started laughing, and he said something like she’d better believe him or she’d be sorry.”
Sarah hadn’t been trained as a detective, but that sounded like pretty good evidence to her. “And then he left?”
“Yeah, Mr. Walcott told him to leave, and he did.”
“Did you say
Catherine looked confused and then frightened again. “Did I say that? No, I meant to say
“And what time was this when he left?”
“I don’t know,” Catherine complained. “Early in the evening, I guess. Right after supper.”
“And you went to bed immediately?”
“No, I told you, it was still early.”
“So Anna didn’t leave the house right after that?”
“No, we played checkers for a while, the two of us.”
Sarah managed to conceal her surprise. This wasn’t what Mrs. Walcott had said. “Did she seem upset by the argument she’d had with the boy?”
“Not a bit. Nothing much upset her, even though…”
“Even though what?” Sarah prodded.
“Well, Mrs. Walcott… She was mad about the boy coming to the house. She didn’t like disturbances. Yelling and carrying on, she says that’s low class.”
“Did she say anything to Anna about it?”
“Not that I heard. She isn’t one to air dirty linen, you know? That’s how she always says it. No use airing our dirty linen in public. She’d wait ’til I was gone to say something, if she did.”
“And you think she did that night?”
Catherine shrugged. “Like I said, I was asleep. I didn’t hear anything.” She wouldn’t meet Sarah’s eye.
Sarah was starting to get a little impatient with Catherine, but she tried not to let it show. “Did Anna get a message that evening?”
“Not that I know of.”
Sarah was confused now. “So Anna was still here when you went to bed?”
“That’s right. Anna never would go to bed until real late. Then she’d sleep late in the morning, just like when we worked in the theater. I told her it’s hard on the complexion to stay up half the night, but she wouldn’t listen. Anna wouldn’t listen to nobody.”
“Was Anna in the habit of going out alone at night?”
Catherine looked at her like she was crazy. “Only whores go out on the street at night. Anna didn’t want to be taken for no whore.”
“Then why did she go out that particular night?”
“I don’t know, I tell you! I wish I did. Then people would stop bothering me. All I can tell you is that she did, and she got herself killed.”
“And what’s going to happen to you now?” Sarah asked.
Fear flickered in Catherine’s eyes again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you going to keep entertaining your gentlemen friends the way Anna did?”
“That ain’t none of your business,” she said. At last she jumped up from her seat on the sofa. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now you’d better leave here before Mrs. Walcott gets back.”
“Why? Don’t you think she’d like to see me?”
“She don’t like talking about Anna, especially since that reporter came here snooping around the other day.”
