Murder on Washington Square

3

MAKING THEIR ESCAPE FROM POLICE HEADQUARTERS was far easier than getting in had been for Sarah. Malloy brought Nelson up from the basement where he’d been held since being picked up from his job at the bank. He looked a little worse for wear, but at least he didn’t seem to be bloody or bruised. Malloy led them both to a back door that opened into an alley. Cabs wouldn’t normally be cruising in this neighborhood looking for potential customers, and they couldn’t risk drawing attention to themselves at any rate, so they started out on foot.

Walking as quickly as Sarah’s skirts would allow, they made their way over to Broadway, where they were soon lost in the crowds of people heading home for their evening meals.

Only then did Sarah begin to feel safe.

“How are you?” she asked Nelson when they had reached the corner of Fourth Street and turned toward Washington Square. Now that she had a chance to look at him more closely, she could see that he looked terrible. His face was pale and his tie was askew. He had a streak of dirt on the sleeve of his suit coat, and his eyes were haunted.

“Anna is dead,” he said, as if that were his only concern.

“I know, Nelson,” she said kindly, realizing that he was in no condition to discuss this on a public street. She glanced at Malloy, who frowned and shook his head slightly, warning her against saying more.

None of them spoke again until they’d reached the northeast corner of the Square, where the hanging tree stood. Nelson’s steps slowed, and he stopped completely when they came abreast of the tree.

“They said they found her there,” he said, gazing at the ground at the foot of the tree. There was no indication someone had died on the spot only a few hours ago. “But what was she doing here in the middle of the night?”

Sarah looked at Malloy, expecting to see some sign that he recognized this wasn’t the reaction of a guilty man. Instead, she saw that his expression was closed, betraying none of his own opinions.

“Come on, Ellsworth,” he said. “We need to get you off the street before some of those reporters catch up with us.”

Nelson acted as if he didn’t even hear Malloy, so Sarah took his arm. “Nelson, your mother will be worried about you. Come along, now.”

Reluctantly, he allowed Sarah to urge him on his way again. They were now well within a neighborhood where they could have found a cab, but Sarah realized they’d be home sooner if they kept walking. In a cab they would be captives of the traffic that clogged every intersection and often moved at a snail’s pace. Besides, she thought the exercise was probably good for Nelson. If he sat down for a moment, he might fall apart.

They were almost to Bank Street when Sarah remembered Webster Prescott. “A reporter came to Nelson’s house,” she told Malloy. “That’s how I found out about the murder. There might be more waiting there by now.”

Malloy nodded. “We’d better go down the alley then. We can go into your house. They won’t expect to find him there.”

Sarah led the two men into her small rear garden. The flowers were all dead now, but the remaining greenery gave an air of sanctuary to the place. Sarah glanced over the fence to the Ellsworths’ house, hoping Mrs. Ellsworth might be looking out and see them, but all the curtains were tightly drawn. The trio made their way up to her back door. Once inside, she helped Malloy seat Nelson at her kitchen table, then hurried to the front room of the house to peek out at the street. Just as she’d suspected, several men stood on the sidewalk in front of the Ellsworth house, waiting and talking among themselves. At least Mrs. Ellsworth had managed to hold them at bay while Sarah was gone. The poor woman must be nearly frantic by now.

She turned to find Malloy had followed her. “I’ve got to go over and tell Mrs. Ellsworth that Nelson is here and safe.”

“You can’t go over there. Those reporters will eat you alive.”

Sarah couldn’t help but smile at the image. “I managed to get through a whole crowd of them on Mulberry Street,” she reminded him.

“They didn’t know who you were.”

“Well, I’ve got to tell Mrs. Ellsworth everything is all right, and I don’t want to go sneaking around the back. If those reporters see me, they’ll surround the place, and we’ll never get Nelson out of here. Don’t worry, I have a plan.”

Malloy made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a groan.

Frank gave a brief thought to tying Sarah Brandt up. That was probably the only way to keep her from causing trouble. On the other hand, the prospect of having her accosted by a bunch of rabid reporters was enormously entertaining. Of course, there weren’t many reporters out there, only five or six. They’d probably get the worst of it, and Frank certainly had no love for the boys from Newspaper Row. Maybe he should let her go.

Mrs. Brandt was pulling a lethal-looking pin from her hat and then removed the hat itself. She set it on the desk and hurried back to the kitchen. Frank followed more slowly, and by the time he got there, she’d taken off her jacket and was tying on an apron. At least she’d come to her senses.

“Can you fix something to eat? Ellsworth hasn’t had anything all day, and I don’t want him fainting on me,” he said.

She gave him one of her looks. “I’ll take care of it when I get back. Meanwhile”-she reached into the cupboard and pulled out what looked like a bottle of whiskey-“give him a shot of this.”

It was whiskey, he realized as he took the bottle from her, and by the time that registered, she’d grabbed a teacup and was heading back to the front room. “Where are you going?”

“To borrow a cup of sugar from my next-door neighbor,” she called back over her shoulder.

She was out the front door before he could stop her, and when he peeked out the front window, he saw her acting very surprised and indignant at the reporters who instantly converged on her with their questions. It took her only a minute to break away from them and make it up to Mrs. Ellsworth’s front door. In another moment, she was inside. Frank shook his head in admiration. Of course, she’d have to get back again, and that might not be so easy.

Still holding the bottle of whiskey, Frank returned to the kitchen, where he found Nelson Ellsworth still sitting exactly where he’d left him. He’d better start paying attention to his prisoner. If Ellsworth decided to escape while Frank was busy dealing with Sarah Brandt, he’d never hear the end of it. Taking Mrs. Brandt’s advice, he grabbed a glass off the shelf and poured Ellsworth two fingers’ worth.

“Here,” he said, thrusting it into Ellsworth’s hand. “Drink it down. You’ll feel better.”

Ellsworth looked at the glass as if he’d never seen one before. “I don’t drink spirits,” he said faintly.

“This is the perfect time to start.”

Ellsworth proved him wrong. He obediently, if gingerly, took a swig of the amber liquid and immediately began to choke. Frank saved him from spilling the rest of the liquor down the front of his suit and pounded him on the back until he stopped coughing.

When he’d caught his breath, he looked up accusingly with red-rimmed eyes.

“See, I told you you’d feel better,” Frank said unrepentantly and sat down at the table across from him. “All right, Ellsworth, tell me about Anna Blake.”

Nelson reached up and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I can’t believe she’s dead,” he said hoarsely.

“Believe it. Now talk to me. How did you meet her?”

He looked like he was going to start crying. “I can’t-”

“Yes, you can, because I’m the only hope you’ve got, Nelson. I promised Broughan that if he let me take you home, I’d find out who really killed the girl,” he said, naming the detective who’d been assigned to solve Anna Blake’s murder. “If you don’t help me, then I’ll have to turn you back over to him, and you don’t want that. See, Broughan is a lazy drunk, and he’d rather lock up an innocent man than find the guilty one if it means he’s going to have to exert himself. You’re real easy to catch, and I don’t think he’d be able to resist the temptation. If you don’t help me, I can’t help you. Now start talking.”

Ellsworth had gone chalk white, but he reached for the glass of whiskey and took another swallow. This time he didn’t choke, although it was a near thing. “All right,” he said, clearing his throat. “I met her when she came into the bank…”

Sarah’s plan to get into the Ellsworth house was perfect, she realized, unless Webster Prescott was one of the reporters. He’d know she wasn’t just an innocent neighbor coming over to borrow a cup of sugar. Fortunately, he wasn’t among the men who surrounded her the instant she started next door.

“Hey, miss-”

“Who are you?”

“Where are you going?”

“Do you know Nelson Ellsworth?”

The questions came simultaneously, so Sarah didn’t have to feign confusion. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” she demanded with an outrage that wasn’t the least feigned.

A chorus of voices answered her, naming the Sun, the Commercial Advertiser, the Evening Post, the Mail and Express, the Daily Graphic, the Herald, the Examiner, and even the Times, virtually all of the newspapers being published in the city. If one of them was, like Webster Prescott, from the World, she didn’t hear.

“I only read the News,” she said haughtily, naming the penny scandal sheet that circulated mainly in the tenements, and tried to force her way past them.

She got a few steps farther when someone called, “Nelson Ellsworth killed a woman last night. What do you have to say about that?”

Sarah gave him her most withering glare. “I say that’s preposterous! Now get out of my way before I start screaming. I assure you there are many people on this street who will immediately come to my rescue.”

She didn’t know if it was her tone or her threat that moved them, but they let her pass, although they kept close, hovering at the foot of the porch steps. Sarah pounded on the front door and called, “Mrs. Ellsworth, it’s Sarah! Let me in!”

The door opened almost instantly, telling Sarah that her neighbor had witnessed her approach. By the time she had slipped inside and Mrs. Ellsworth had slammed the door shut, the reporters were on the porch, screaming their questions. The old woman drove home the bolt an instant before they started pounding on the door.

Mrs. Ellsworth looked as if she were ready to collapse, and Sarah took her arm and led her through the house to the kitchen in the rear, as far from the front door as they could get. The pounding lasted only another minute or two before the reporters gave up and went back to their vigil. They probably thought they’d lie in wait for Sarah to come out again. She’d worry about that later.

“Nelson?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked weakly when Sarah had seated her at her kitchen table.

“He’s sitting at my kitchen table at this very moment. Malloy is with him.”

She covered her face with both hands. “Thank God! I’ve been so frightened. I should have known Mr. Malloy would help us, though. He’ll straighten everything out.” Then she dropped her hands and turned her moist gaze to Sarah. “Why didn’t you bring him here, though?”

“Because of the reporters,” Sarah said. “We came in the back door so they wouldn’t see us. We’ll bring him over when it gets dark,” she added rashly. She’d have to get Malloy to agree to that first, but what other choice did he have? The two men could hardly stay at her house all night. Of course, Malloy might also decide to lock Nelson up again.

“How could this have happened?” Mrs. Ellsworth was saying. “Nelson doesn’t even know this woman-what was her name?”

“Anna Blake,” Sarah supplied, “and I’m afraid he did know her, very well, in fact.”

“That’s impossible! He never said a thing to me!” she insisted. “I know all of Nelson’s friends.”

“I don’t know why he didn’t introduce her to you,” Sarah said, although she had a very good idea. “But I met her.”

“You? Why?” Mrs. Ellsworth was obviously overwhelmed by all of this and now she was also offended by what Sarah was telling her.

“You’ll have to discuss that with Nelson. He asked for my… discretion.”

“He didn’t want me to know about her?” The old woman was incredulous. “What kind of a woman was she?”

“The kind who gets murdered in Washington Square in the middle of the night,” Sarah said baldly.

“Oh, my poor Nelson!” she wailed. “What has he done?”

Sarah wished she could answer “nothing,” but instead she took the old woman in her arms and offered what comfort she could.

“So when Anna told me about… about the child… I… I…”

Frank signed impatiently. Nelson was making the whole sordid story even worse with his delicacy. He wasn’t sure why Nelson should care about protecting Anna Blake’s good name now that she was dead, but he supposed that’s what a gentleman might do.

“What did you do?” he prompted with more patience than he felt.

“I… You aren’t going to like this part,” he warned nervously.

Frank hadn’t liked any of it so far. Ellsworth had pretty much given him more than enough reason to suspect him of murdering Anna Blake. Broughan would’ve had him locked in a cell down at The Tombs by now. “Tell me anyway,” he said, not bothering to sound patient.

“I… Well, naturally, when Anna told me there might be a child, I… I went to Mrs. Brandt.”

“You what?” Frank nearly shouted.

Ellsworth flinched. “She’s a midwife,” he reminded Frank unnecessarily. “I thought… Well, Anna was an innocent girl. How could she be sure? I don’t know much about these things, but I do know… I mean, I’ve heard my friends talk. The ones who are married. Sometimes a woman thinks… but then she finds out she’s wrong. I would’ve married her either way, of course,” he added hastily, “but she was so frightened. And she had this idea that she wasn’t good enough for me, or at least that’s what she said. I know, it doesn’t make any sense,” he said to Frank’s skepticism, “but I thought maybe she just couldn’t stand the thought of being married to a man like me. I’m not very exciting or romantic. Not at all the sort of man a young woman would be interested in.”

Frank was hardly listening to his protests because something suddenly didn’t make any sense at all. “She didn’t want to marry you? Even after you’d seduced her?”

A pained expression twisted his face. “I can’t blame her, of course, and as much as I would have gladly taken her as my wife, I didn’t want to force her. If she married me and then found out there wasn’t a… a necessity for it, well, she’d hate me, don’t you think? How could I live with myself?”

“So you told Mrs. Brandt your problem. What did she do?” Frank prodded, hoping that if he heard more, the story would start to make sense again.

“She accompanied me to Anna’s rooming house. I thought perhaps she could… well, make sure of Anna’s condition.”

Ellsworth was right. Frank really didn’t like this part. “And did she?”

“She didn’t have a chance. Anna was terribly upset when I introduced her. She thought…”

“She thought what?” Frank was very much afraid he was going to have to get rough with Ellsworth after all, just to hurry things along.

“I know this will sound ridiculous to you, but Anna thought that Mrs. Brandt and I were… romantically involved.”

Frank did think it sounded ridiculous. “Why would she think that?”

“I told you, she’s very innocent,” Nelson said, unconsciously using the present tense. “She couldn’t imagine any other reason why another woman would have accompanied me there. And nothing I said would reassure her, so Mrs. Brandt didn’t get to speak with her at all.”

“If this woman didn’t marry you, what was she going to do?” Frank asked, wondering if Sarah Brandt had been as suspicious of this story as Frank was becoming.

“She… well, you understand her parents were dead. Her mother had just passed away, of course, and she had no one to turn to.”

Which was a very good reason to marry someone like Nelson, who had a steady job and a comfortable income. And an even better reason to trick him into marriage with an imaginary pregnancy, if necessary. “She had you to turn to,” Frank reminded him.

“She was an honorable woman, Mr. Malloy,” Nelson said defensively. “She felt unworthy, after what had happened between us. She was even too embarrassed to meet my mother. She just wanted to go away where no one knew her.”

“So she and the baby could starve to death?” Frank suggested curiously.

A scarlet flush flooded Nelson’s face. “I would have helped her financially, of course. In fact, that’s all she wanted of me. I told you she was honorable.”

Or crazy, Frank thought. Why take money to raise an illegitimate child alone when you could be married? What was wrong with the woman? Could she possibly have been so stupid? He’d have to find out more about this Anna Blake. Maybe when he had, he’d be able to make sense of this. Meanwhile, he’d break one of his cardinal rules and have a taste of Sarah Brandt’s whiskey. After this, he’d earned it.

He and Nelson sat in silence for what seemed a long time until they heard a commotion at the front door.

“Stay here,” Frank warned. “We don’t want anyone to see you.”

He got to the front room just as Sarah Brandt slammed the door behind her. The shadows of the clamoring reporters danced on the other side of the frosted glass window, and their voices were muffled shouts. “They found out who I am,” she said accusingly.

“That was pretty easy to do, considering they know you live next door,” Frank replied.

“No,” she said in disgust, “I don’t mean they found out I’m Nelson’s neighbor. They found out I’m your ‘lady friend.’ ”

“My what?” he asked with a frown, but she was already stomping past him on her way back to the kitchen, leaving him no choice but to follow.

“How are you doing?” she asked Ellsworth in a gentle tone she had never used with Frank.

“I’m fine,” he said, although he was obviously far from fine. “How is my mother taking all of this? She isn’t strong, you know. The shock must have been awful.”

“Now that she knows you aren’t locked in jail, she’s doing much better. I promised her you’d come home after it gets dark and no one can see you.” She looked up at Frank, daring him to contradict her.

“I don’t see any reason why he can’t go home tonight,” he said mildly, “so long as he gives me his word he won’t try to run away.”

“Run away?” Ellsworth echoed indignantly. “I don’t have anything to run away from!”

Frank could have given him a long list of things he should run away from, but he said, “Are you hungry, Ellsworth? Because I sure am.”

Mrs. Brandt gave him an impatient look, but she turned away and began rummaging around for something edible.

“I don’t think I could eat anything,” Ellsworth said, “but a cup of tea would be very nice.”

“You should try to eat,” Frank said, not entirely unselfishly. If Ellsworth didn’t want anything, she might not fix anything. “You’ll need your strength.”

“Malloy is right,” she said, surprising Frank. He thought this might be the first time she’d admitted he’d been right about anything. “And I think we could all use some tea.”

Soon the kitchen was uncomfortably warm, in spite of the evening chill that had settled over the city. Frank stayed there, though. He was enjoying the comfortable domesticity of the scene. For once he needed no excuse to watch Sarah Brandt to his heart’s content.

He liked the way the lamplight shone on her golden hair and the way she moved, so confidently yet so feminine. She really was a fine figure of a woman. She would fill a man’s arms quite nicely. Or his bed. The thought caused him a pain that was part longing for what could never be and part grief for what he could never have again. The loss of his wife Kathleen was a wound that would never completely heal, but lately when he dreamed he was loving a woman, she wasn’t Kathleen. Instead, she had golden hair and Sarah Brandt’s face. It was a dream that could never come true, but since no one ever need know about it, he figured it was harmless enough. And no one ever would know, least of all Sarah Brandt.

She turned and set a teapot on the table, then fetched two cups. She poured Ellsworth’s for him and even put some milk into it. “Do you need some sugar?” she asked in that gentle tone again.

“A spoonful, please,” he replied, and she stirred that in, too. Then she went back to her cooking.

Frank cleared his throat expectantly. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “The next time you’re falsely accused of murder, I’ll pour your tea, too,” she said with that smirk that made him want to shake her. Or at least lay his hands on her.

He didn’t really want any tea, but he took some anyway. Pouring it was a distraction of sorts. In a few more minutes, she served their supper, which was potatoes fried with onions and eggs. She put some on a plate for Ellsworth, even though he protested that he couldn’t eat a thing, and then passed the serving plates to Frank.

While Ellsworth picked at his food, Mrs. Brandt said very casually, “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted Anna out of the way?”

Ellsworth looked up in surprise. “Certainly not! She didn’t have any enemies. She hardly even know anyone in the city.”

“An old friend then, someone who knew her before she came to the city. Do you know where she was from?” she prodded.

Nelson considered a moment. “I think… She may have been from the Hudson Valley, but I can’t recall the name of a town. Perhaps she never actually told me the name.”

“If her mother was sick, why did they come to the city in the first place?” Frank asked between mouthfuls. Mrs. Brandt wasn’t as good a cook as his mother, but right now, that didn’t really matter.

“Her father had died and left them penniless,” Ellsworth explained. “Anna’s mother wasn’t sick at first, and they both thought they might find work in the city. But of course, the work they found only paid a pittance, and then her mother got sick… Poor thing, Anna was at her wit’s end when I met her.”

“She was very lucky to find someone like you, Nelson,” Sarah Brandt said sweetly. “Someone who was willing to help her without expecting anything in return.”

Even in the dim light of the gas jets, Frank could see that Ellsworth’s face had gone scarlet, because they all knew he’d eventually gotten something in return, expected or not. “I didn’t force her,” he said. “You must believe that!”

“Of course we believe that,” she assured him. “Did Anna have any other friends in the city? Perhaps she’d met someone when she came here.”

“I… I got the impression she was quite alone,” Ellsworth said. “Besides, she might have been killed…” He had to stop and fight back a rush of emotion. “By a stranger,” he finished. “At that time of night, in a public square…”

“But why would she have been out so late, alone?” she asked, still sweet and gentle. Frank was beginning to admire her technique. “Can you think of any reason?”

“No, I can’t,” Ellsworth wailed. “I’ve asked myself the same thing a hundred times. She would’ve known it wasn’t safe. At that time of night, the Square is filled with all sorts of dangerous people.”

“But if she was from a small town, maybe she didn’t know that,” she offered. “Is it possible she just decided to go for a walk? Could she have been that naive?”

Ellsworth’s shoulders sagged with despair, and he covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know.”

But all this conjecture had given Frank an idea. “Do you think she would have gone out to meet you?”

Ellsworth looked up. “But I never would’ve asked her to meet me someplace after dark!” he objected.

“She might not have known that, though. Suppose someone sent her a message and said it was from you. Would she have gone out to meet you?”

“I don’t know. She might have,” he conceded.

Frank checked the serving bowl and kept the last scoop of potatoes from going to waste.

“Do you think someone lured her out that night to kill her?” Mrs. Brandt asked him while he was refilling his plate.

Frank shrugged one shoulder. “It’s possible. I’m just trying to figure out how it might’ve happened. We know she was out there and someone killed her. If it wasn’t Nelson here-”

“And it wasn’t!” Ellsworth cried.

“Then it had to be someone else. Was it a stranger? If so, why was she there in the first place, where she was easy prey? Prostitutes work in the Square after dark. Why would she risk being mistaken for one by some drunken customer?”

“Which means she must have had a good reason for being there,” Mrs. Brandt guessed. She was getting much too good at this sort of thing. “And that could only mean she was expecting to meet someone. Someone important to her.” She turned to Ellsworth. “If you were her only friend in the city, she must have thought she was meeting you.”

“But why wouldn’t he have just come to the house, the way he always did?” Frank asked. “Or at least wait until morning to meet her? Why would he ask her to do something dangerous?”

“Please, I can’t…” Ellsworth begged, dropping his head into his hands again. “I can’t think anymore. Isn’t it dark enough for me to go home yet?”

Frank sighed. He wouldn’t mind being rid of Ellsworth. He wouldn’t get any more from him tonight. “I’ll check to see if the reporters are still there.”

A quick trip to the front room told him that only two of the more persistent reporters remained, and they were standing across the street under the gaslight which had recently been lit, not paying much attention to the house.

“I think you could make it now if you’re quiet,” he told Ellsworth when he got back to the kitchen.

“Malloy will go with you,” Mrs. Brandt said, without bothering to consult him. He shot her an irritated look, but she didn’t pay any attention. “Try to get a good night’s sleep.”

“And don’t try to go to work in the morning,” Frank warned him.

“But Mr. Dennis will be expecting me!” Ellsworth protested. “If I don’t go, I could lose my job.”

“If the bank fills up with reporters who write stories that say a killer works there, you’ll definitely lose your job,” Frank pointed out.

“It’s just for a few days, until we find the real killer,” Mrs. Brandt added reassuringly. “I’m sure Mr. Dennis will understand when he hears what happened.”

Frank wanted to challenge her on the “we,” but he refrained. He preferred getting Ellsworth home as quickly as possible. Arguing with Sarah Brandt could wait a few more minutes.

Ellsworth looked like he might pass out, but Frank got him to his feet and helped him out the back door. Mrs. Brandt’s garden was pitch dark. Even though the street out front was lighted, not a beam of it could penetrate the row of houses in between. The two men made their way carefully down her walk and opened the back gate. Frank winced when it squeaked, but he waited a moment, and when the noise didn’t seem to have aroused any alarm, he led Ellsworth into the alley and around to his own yard.

Frank knocked lightly on the back door, and in a moment, the curtain in the window beside it moved and a shadowed face peered out. A second later, they heard a cry of recognition, and the back door flew open.

“Quiet!” Frank warned, before the old woman started screaming at the sight of her son. “Get him inside and turn out the lights and don’t either of you go outside until you hear from me. Do you understand?”

“I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Malloy,” Ellsworth stammered.

“Thank me later. Now get inside before someone hears us.” He shoved Ellsworth into the house and pulled the door shut. In another minute he was back at Sarah Brandt’s back door.

He wasn’t surprised to see her waiting there, watching to make sure everything went all right. He’d been planning to bid her good night, but she stepped aside for him to enter, which he was more than happy to do.

“What’s going to happen now?” she asked when he was inside again.

“I guess I’ll have to find out if there was anyone else who might’ve wanted to kill Anna Blake. Otherwise, Nelson is in a lot of trouble.”

“He didn’t do it. You know that, don’t you, Malloy?”

“I don’t think it’s very likely,” he admitted, “but that might not be enough to keep him from frying.”

She winced. “Then we have to find out who really killed her. Are you investigating the case?”

“No, Broughan has it.”

“Oh.” Her expression fell. She knew Broughan. He’d helped Frank out one time on a case she’d been involved with. “He won’t be much help, will he?”

“He won’t be any help. I had to promise I’d get Ellsworth to confess before he’d let me take him home.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Yes, oh dear,” Frank agreed. Then he remembered one more thing he needed to deal with before he left. “Were you just teasing me before or do you really know something about this case that I need to know?”

“Oh, I’d almost forgotten. Sit down, and I’ll tell you about my meeting with Anna Blake.”

Frank pushed the dirty dishes away and sat back down at the table. “I’d been meaning to ask you about that,” he said in a tone that should have warned her he was angry, but she didn’t seem to notice. Or else she didn’t care.

“Nelson sent me a note and asked me to meet him at Washington Square.”

“Wait, stop right there,” Frank said. “He sent you a note? Why didn’t he just come to your front door if he wanted to talk to you?”

“Because his mother would have wanted to know why he was talking to me. You know she doesn’t miss a thing that happens on this street. So I met him at the Square on Monday afternoon.”

“Where in the Square?” Frank asked, thinking this sounded too familiar.

She hesitated. “By the hanging tree,” she finally admitted.

“Right where this Anna died.”

“So it appears.”

“That’s interesting. Go on.”

“We met, and he told me about Anna and how she thought she was expecting a baby. He thought maybe I could help her.”

Frank frowned. “Did he want you to do something to the baby? To get rid of it?”

“Oh, no! I think perhaps he was hoping she wasn’t expecting at all. That would have solved all his problems. But if she was, he wanted me to offer her assistance and reassure her, I think. Maybe even convince her to marry Nelson.”

“Now that’s the part I don’t understand. Why would a woman in her position not want to marry the man who’d ruined her?”

“I didn’t understand that either,” she said, “until I met Anna. You see, she wasn’t at all what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?”

“I thought she’d be young and innocent and frightened out of her wits. Instead, she wasn’t nearly as young as Nelson seemed to think. She tried hard to look young. Her clothes and her hair and her manner were designed to make her appear so, but I could see she was way past the blush of youth. She was a very good actress, but her eyes gave her away. They weren’t innocent at all.”

“But Ellsworth was fooled.”

“Oh, yes, completely. And when Nelson introduced me, she became hysterical. At first she insisted on believing that I was Nelson’s fiancée who had come to denounce her. He finally convinced her I was a midwife, and then she started accusing him of bringing me there to kill her baby! Can you imagine? She wouldn’t listen to anything he said, so finally, I left him there to comfort her and went home.”

“You’d think she’d be happy to find out you weren’t Nelson’s fiancée,” Frank said.

“Yes, you would, but she actually seemed disappointed. It was as if she wanted me to stand in the way of their love.”

“If she didn’t want to marry Nelson, what did she want?”

“She wanted money. A thousand dollars, so she could go away and not bother Nelson again.”

“Where on earth would Nelson get a thousand dollars?” Frank had been saving for years to amass enough money to pay the $14,000 bribe necessary to get promoted to Captain, and he knew how difficult it was to come by an extra $1,000. That was a goodly portion of Nelson’s annual salary, and no one paid him rewards for doing his job well, the way they did Frank.

“I don’t think he could have gotten that much money without a great deal of sacrifice,” she said, “but that doesn’t matter now.”

“Oh, it matters a great deal, Mrs. Brandt,” he contradicted her. “Because if she was blackmailing him and he couldn’t pay, he had a perfect motive for murder.”