with it, she’s a bigger fool than I thought!”
“Mrs. Walker didn’t kill her.”
“Why did she kidnap her, then?” Van Orner demanded.
“She wanted revenge, I tell you. She’d know I’d never stand for her taking Amy. I would’ve torn her house down brick by brick if I had to! She couldn’t hope to keep her, so she must’ve intended to kill her all along. It’s the only explanation.”
Frank glanced at Miss Yingling. She still don’t look worried. “Mrs. Walker kidnapped Amy because she thought you wanted her to,” he said.
Now Van Orner was confused again. “How could she think that?”
Frank reached into his coat pocket, pulled out the note Mrs. Walker had received, and handed it to Van Orner.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded when he’d read it. He seemed completely baffled.
“She thought it was from you, telling her you were tired of Amy and wanted her to take the girl back.”
“I can see that! But I didn’t write it!”
“I know you didn’t. You wouldn’t have sent me to get Amy away from her if you did.”
Van Orner looked at the note again. “She probably wrote it up herself, to throw you off the scent.”
“I thought of that, too, but she wouldn’t have known I’d be coming after Amy. And besides, how would she have known exactly where Amy was going to be this morning?” Frank looked at Miss Yingling, and this time she took offense.
“Why do you keep looking at me? I didn’t tell her where Amy was going to be!”
“Someone did. Someone who knew. Someone who wanted to get rid of Amy because she was causing too many problems.”
“Amy always caused problems,” Van Orner said wearily.
“But she’d never caused problems for anyone close to you because she’d always been someplace else. First she was in the house you’d provided for her,” he reminded Van Orner. “Then she was at Mrs. Walker’s house. Then she was at the rescue house. But when she showed up on your doorstep with her baby in her arms, suddenly she was causing problems for someone new.”
“Who?” Van Orner demanded.
Once again Frank looked at Miss Yingling, and this time she took a step back. “Stop looking at me! I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
“Didn’t you?” Frank asked gently, the way he did when he wanted to disarm a suspect. “You’ve been waiting a long time to get Mr. Van Orner all to yourself, haven’t you?”
Van Orner had been staring at her, too, and now he jumped to his feet. “Tamar? What’s he talking about?”
“I have no idea!” she claimed.
“Mr. Van Orner, did you know that Tamar Yingling was the first prostitute your wife ever rescued?”
Miss Yingling winced, but Van Orner wasn’t shocked. “Of course I knew. Vivian brought her here so she could keep her under my nose, a constant reminder.”
“A reminder of what?”
“Of my weakness, or what she considered my weakness. She thought it abominable that I enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, Mr. Malloy. She thought having a reformed harlot in our house would torment and shame me.”
“And did it?” Frank asked, beginning to feel disgust.
“What do you think, Tamar?” he asked her with a sly grin.
She grinned a little herself. “You didn’t seem ashamed, although I think I managed to torment you.”
Now Frank really was disgusted. “You betrayed your wife under your own roof with a woman she was trying to save?”
“Yes, and it was quite enjoyable for a while, wasn’t it, Tamar?”
Tamar Yingling smiled. “Yes, it was, especially when Vivian would lecture me on how I had to conduct myself properly to avoid any suspicion of immorality. She never suspected a thing.”
Frank’s mind was racing. “You said it was enjoyable
“Yes, but like everything else in life, it ceased to be a novelty. That’s when I met Amy, and I turned my attentions to her, leaving Tamar to become the respectable young woman Vivian believed her to be.”
Miss Yingling stared back at Frank serenely, as if she’d felt no pain at being rejected for a younger woman. But if she’d thought to convince him of her innocence, she was wrong.
“You must’ve despised Mrs. Van Orner,” he said to her.
He saw the emotions flicker across her face. “She was always very good to me,” she said, belying what Frank saw in her eyes.
“I’m sure she was, but that kind of goodness has a price, doesn’t it? You always have to earn it, and you never can be quite worthy enough, can you, no matter how hard you try?”
“What does any of this have to do with Amy’s death?” she asked, angry now.
“I’m coming to that, but first we have to think about Mrs. Van Orner’s death. She was poisoned, too, remember?”
“What does that have to do with this?” Van Orner asked.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, Mr. Van Orner, especially when two women living in the same house turn up dead from drinking the same poison.”
“You think Amy’s death has something to do with Vivian?”
Frank was starting to wonder how a man so stupid had managed to be successful enough to become rich. But maybe he’d just inherited his money. “I think somebody who wanted you all to herself decided to do away with your wife. That somebody slipped laudanum into your wife’s flask at the rescue house.”
“Amy!” Van Orner guessed.
“That’s what I thought at first. She had the opportunity to poison her and she wanted her dead. And the next day she packs up her baby and marches over here and presents herself to you, and you take her in. That made me think she’d planned it.”
“Of course she did!” Miss Yingling cried. “She planned the whole thing. Gregory had told her all about Vivian’s work, so she told the midwife her sad story and begged her to contact Vivian to rescue her. She was going to kill Vivian all along!”
“I don’t know what she planned to do, but even if she did plan it, somebody else beat her to it.”
“How can you know that?” Van Orner asked.
“Because the killer didn’t plan on Amy showing up on your doorstep or you taking her in. She intended for Amy to get blamed for the murder, because Amy had the perfect reason for wanting Mrs. Van Orner dead. But when you let Amy move in here, the killer couldn’t take the chance that you’d protect her. So Amy had to die, too.”
Now Van Orner was looking at Miss Yingling, his eyes filled with horror at what she’d done.
Her eyes widened with terror. “It’s not true! I didn’t do any of that!”
“Who else had something to gain by killing these two women?” Frank asked.
Miss Yingling looked around wildly, as if hoping to find someone to blame lurking nearby. “Mrs. Walker! She’s surely the one who killed Amy. She died in her very house.”
“That’s what you wanted us to think. That’s why you sent Mrs. Walker that note and signed Mr. Van Orner’s name. You knew you were taking Amy shopping this morning. You also knew Mrs. Walker would do what Van Orner wanted, because she’s afraid of him. In fact, she was too afraid of him to kidnap Amy unless she thought that’s just what he wanted.”
“She’s not afraid of him!” she tried, but they all knew it wasn’t true.
“And don’t forget, the person who killed Amy also killed Mrs. Van Orner,” Frank said.
“Mrs. Walker could’ve done that!” Miss Yingling cried. “She was here the morning Vivian died, remember.”
“But why would she want to kill Mrs. Van Orner?”
“I . . . Because she hated her. Because she’d stolen Amy right out of her house.”
“And isn’t it funny that you didn’t remember Mrs. Walker had visited Mrs. Van Orner until this morning.”
“That’s not true! I remembered all along.”
