Murder on Washington Square

by Victoria Thompson

  Many of the people in the hospital knew Sarah and remembered her husband, Tom, so it took her a while to make her way to the ward where Prescott lay. Fortunately, her status also gave her the ability to inquire about his condition and receive an honest answer.

  The news wasn’t very good. The knife had missed his heart but had damaged his lung. He’d lost a lot of blood and was very weak. If he got a bad infection, he probably wouldn’t make it, and he could hardly avoid getting an infection with a wound like that. And of course, pneumonia was always a possibility, too. On the other hand, he was young and healthy, which meant he stood a small chance.

  Sarah found him sleeping, and when she touched his forehead, she detected a slight fever.

  “Could I have some water?” he asked hoarsely, without opening his eyes.

  Sarah got him a glass of water and held it to his lips while he drank. Then he fell back on the pillow, exhausted. But he did open his eyes to thank her, and his puzzled frown told her he couldn’t quite remember who she was. “You’re not a nurse,” he said.

  She didn’t like how weak his voice was. “No, I’m Sarah Brandt. I live next door to Nelson Ellsworth.”

  A healthy reporter would have a dozen questions to ask her—who’d told her he was here, why had she come, what did she want?—but he could only manage a weak, “Why?”

  “Mr. Malloy asked me to check on you. I also happen to be a nurse. He wants to make sure you’re getting good care,” she explained, picking up his wrist and checking his pulse. It seemed very fast. “Are you having a lot of pain?”

  His young face twisted. “They gave me morphine, but . . .”

  “Do you mind if I check your bandage?”

  She didn’t wait for a reply. With skilled hands, she adjusted the blanket and raised his nightshirt while still preserving his modesty. The bandage was clean and dry except for a small, fresh bloodstain. Every instinct demanded that she offer to take him home where he wouldn’t be exposed to the contagion of the other patients and where she could give him constant care. She didn’t, though, because she knew the trip across town would be too much for him in his weakened condition.

  “Can you take a deep breath?” she asked, and he merely gazed at her incredulously. “I’ll make sure the nurses take special care of you,” she told him, “but you must do everything they tell you, even if it hurts. Otherwise, you’ll die.”

  What little color he had left leached away at that. “I don’t want to die.”

  “That’s good,” Sarah said briskly. “Then be as determined to live as you were to get the story on Nelson Ellsworth. Do you have any family in the city? Someone who can visit you and bring you food?”

  “They feed me here,” he said, confused.

  “You’ll need better food than you can get here, and someone to watch over you all the time. You should have beef broth to build your blood. Is there someone who would bring it for you?”

  “I have an aunt in Brooklyn,” he said doubtfully.

  Brooklyn had once been practically another country, accessible only by water, but now that they’d opened that amazing bridge, people traveled from there to the city and back every day. “If you give me her address, I’ll send her a message and tell her what you’ll need.”

  Sarah didn’t stop to wonder why she was being so considerate of a man who had tried to ruin Nelson Ellsworth’s life. From his point of view, of course, he’d done Nelson a good turn by vilifying Anna Blake. And he was just doing his job, after all. Never mind that doing his job meant making other people’s lives miserable. None of that really mattered, however, because Malloy had asked her to help him. If Malloy thought he was worth saving, she had no reason to question his judgment. The only thing she questioned was his sudden concern for a man whose profession he despised, but he’d tell her why the next time she saw him. She’d see to that.

  Overriding Prescott’s feeble protests, Sarah gave him a cool sponge bath in an effort to help his body fight the fever that was building. Then she discussed his care with the nurses on the ward. They were overworked as it was and had no time to give special care to any of their patients, but Sarah extracted promises to keep a close watch on him and to let her know if he got worse.

  Only when she’d done all she could for the moment did she suddenly realize that Malloy’s concern for the boy might not be so generous after all. “Mr. Malloy said that your stabbing might have something to do with Anna Blake’s death,” she tried.

  When he struggled to reply, she had a pang of guilt over bothering him again, but then she remembered the Ellsworths and how their lives had been practically destroyed by all of this.

  “A woman . . .” he said very faintly, “Said she knew something . . . she stabbed me. I think . . .”

  Sarah gaped at him, trying to make sense of it. “A woman who claimed to know something about Anna’s death stabbed you?”

  He nodded.

  This didn’t make any sense. Why would someone want to stab a newspaper reporter? She’d been very angry with a lot of them the past few days, but to actually lure one to his death and shove a knife into his side was something else entirely. And a woman, too. How very unusual. This person had wanted Webster Prescott in particular to die. But why? And why him of all the reporters working on the case?

  “Did you get some new information recently? Something that hasn’t been in the newspaper yet?” she asked.

  “Anna’s friend . . . at the theater . . .”

  “What theater?”

  “Tivoli,” he said.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Irene.”

  “What did she tell you?” Sarah asked, leaning over, willing him to answer her. But he was slipping away. The latest dose of morphine was finally doing its job.

  “Actress,” he muttered before the drug overcame him.

  Sarah sighed in frustration. At least she knew he’d been talking to an actress named Irene at the Tivoli Theater. Did Malloy know? Had he gotten all the information from Prescott, and was he even now questioning this Irene? She’d have to track down Malloy immediately and find out. Or else find Irene herself, just in case he wasn’t.

  Finding Malloy was never easy, and going to Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street in search of him was far from pleasant. On the other hand, she could be fairly certain that an actress would be at the theater where she worked this evening. The hospital would probably let her use a telephone to call Headquarters and leave a message for Malloy. He wouldn’t appreciate all the teasing he’d get over it, but that couldn’t be helped. He’d also get teased if she went down there in person. She might yet hear from Malloy this afternoon. If not, and if no one decided to deliver today, she could go find this Irene tonight.

  First, however, she’d have to get home and post a letter to Prescott’s aunt. She’d receive it tomorrow, and if she was any kind of a female, she’d be across the bridge with a basketful of nutritious food for Prescott the same day. Sarah would check on him first thing in the morning, too, and do whatever she could to make him more comfortable.

  Meanwhile, she’d wait to hear from Malloy and go visit Irene at the Tivoli Theater.

  The theater hadn’t opened yet when Sarah arrived that evening, and the front doors were locked. The signs outside urged people to come and see the current product and featured a drawing of a scantily clad female fleeing from an evil-looking man with a handlebar mustache and wearing a black top hat. The names of the actors listed on the sign did not include anyone named Irene.

  Sarah knew little about the theater, but she assumed the actors would enter through a rear door, since they had to be at the theater earlier than the patrons in order to prepare for the performance. She had also, in her years of attending the theater, never seen an actor entering or leaving, which meant they came and went at different times and through different doors than the audience. In fact, now that she thought about it, she’d heard about the men who waited outside the theater after a performance to meet the actresses. W
eren’t they called Stage Door Billys? No, Jimmies or Johnnies or something like that. She couldn’t remember exactly. Which meant there must be a stage door that the actors used someplace off the main street, a place where would-be Lotharios could wait.

  Pleased at her deduction, Sarah walked to the side of the building until she found the alley that ran beside the theater. Just as she’d suspected, she located an unmarked and inconspicuous door on the side of the building, near the rear. It, too, was locked, but when she knocked, an elderly gentleman opened it and peered out at her suspiciously.

  “Yeah?” he asked gruffly.

  She tried a friendly smile. “I’m looking for Irene. Is she here yet?”

  The smile didn’t seem to affect him at all. In fact, he didn’t bat an eye. “Who’re you?”

  Sarah surprised herself with her cleverness. “I’m Irene’s cousin, Sarah. I live in Brooklyn, and she told me if I came to see her, she’d show me the stage and everything and let me watch her get ready for the play and—”

  The old man interrupted her with a grunt and pulled the door open wide enough for her to enter. “I expect you wanna be an actress, too,” he grumbled. “Well, don’t get your hopes up, girlie. You’re a little long in the tooth to be starting out. Unless you’ve got nice ankles. They might give you a try if you’ve got nice ankles. I could check and give you my opinion,” he offered, glancing down hopefully.

  Sarah glared at him, but he didn’t notice because he was looking at the floor, waiting for her to lift her skirt. “I don’t want to be an actress,” she said. “I just want to see Irene.”

  He grunted again, this time in disappointment. “She’s down there,” he said, pointing vaguely toward a hallway and turning away. He’d lost interest since she wasn’t going to show him her ankles.

  Not wishing to press her luck by asking for more explicit instructions, Sarah set off, figuring if she couldn’t find Irene, she’d most certainly find someone who could.

  As it turned out, she needed no further assistance. The dingy corridor she entered led past several doors, but only one was ajar. Through it, Sarah could hear the sound of women’s voices. Deciding this was very promising, she called into the opened doorway, “Irene?”

  The voices ceased, and a long moment of suspicious silence followed.

  “Irene, are you there?” Sarah called again, feigning confidence. If Irene wasn’t there, she’d have to bluff her way past others the way she’d bluffed past the doorman.

  But a voice said, “Who is it?” and Sarah knew she need look no further. She pushed the door open all the way and stepped in to find a narrow room lined on both sides with crudely built shelves that apparently served as dressing tables with mirrors above them. The shelves were littered with the same kinds of grease paints Sarah had found in Anna Blake’s room, along with wigs and brushes, combs and hand mirrors, and scraps of ribbon and hairpins and feathers and all sorts of grooming items. At the far end of the room stood racks of what appeared to be costumes, judging by their garish colors and fabrics.

  Three young women in various stages of undress stood in the center of the room. The one who wore a wrapper carelessly draped over her underclothes was staring at her most intently, while the other two seemed merely curious. “Hello, Irene,” Sarah said to the one who was staring. “I’m Sarah Brandt.”

  “Do I know you?” she asked warily. She wasn’t old, not in years. Her body still retained its youthful curves and her face showed no signs of dissipation. Her eyes, however, revealed a wealth of experience, and they’d taken Sarah’s measure in one glance. She didn’t seem impressed by what she’d seen.

  “I’m a friend of Anna Blake’s,” Sarah tried.

  Instantly, the two curious women moved away and busied themselves with the costumes at the far end of the room. Irene looked even warier now, as if she might bolt. Murder had a way of making people cautious, Sarah had learned.

  “A newspaper reporter, Webster Prescott, said you knew Anna,” Sarah tried quickly, in an attempt to break through Irene’s understandable reluctance to speak of Anna Blake to a stranger. “I’m trying to find out who killed her, and if you could—”

  “You?” she scoffed. “How could you find a killer? And why would somebody like you care who killed Anna anyway?”

  Sarah doubted Irene would understand her concern for Nelson Ellsworth even if she’d felt like explaining it, which she didn’t, so she said, “I want to see justice done. The police . . .” Sarah made a helpless motion with her hand. “I don’t think they care very much about finding the killer.”

  “I thought that fellow did it, the one in the newspaper who was her lover,” Irene said. “That’s what the reporter said, anyway.”

  Sarah only needed a second to come up with a new lie. “That’s what the police are trying to make everyone believe so they don’t have to exert themselves to find the real killer. But he didn’t do it, and Mr. Prescott is helping me find out who did.”

  Irene didn’t care about any of this. “I gotta get ready for the performance,” she said impatiently.

  “I don’t want to bother you,” Sarah said. “But I only have a few questions, and I’d be willing to pay you for your time. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  The two women who had been so interested in the costumes suddenly turned their attention back to Sarah. “I knew Anna,” one of them offered.

  “You did not,” Irene snapped. “Shut your lying mouth.” Then to Sarah, “Come out here where we can talk.”

  She led Sarah back into the corridor. Some more women had arrived and were making their way toward the dressing room. Irene took Sarah’s arm and drew her down to the far end of the corridor, into the shadows where the gaslights on the walls didn’t quite reach.

  “I can’t talk long,” she warned. “What do you wanna know?”

  “How long did you know Anna?”

  “A couple years. Ever since I joined the troupe.”

  “She was here when you came?”

  “That’s right. Been with them a long time, she said.”

  “Why did she stop acting?”

  Irene smiled strangely. “You mean why did she stop working here?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was getting old, you know? Too old for any of the good parts. She could still sing, but they put her in the back row. She didn’t like it, but there wasn’t nothing she could do about it. Then she met this fellow.”

  “What fellow?”

  “I don’t know his name. He’d wait at the stage door for her. Hadn’t nobody waited for her for a long time. We was all pretty surprised.”

  “What did he look like?”

  She shrugged. “Skinny. Short beard. Nice clothes. Good manners. A real dandy. He owned the house where she went to live.”

  “Mr. Walcott?” Sarah asked in surprise.

  “That’s him,” Irene said. “You know him?”

  “Yes. Are you saying he was a Stage Door Jimmy?”

  Irene smiled condescendingly. “That’s Stage Door Johnny, and yeah, he was one. He’d wait out there after the show and give her flowers or something. Some of the swells, they give you jewelry or really nice things. Flowers ain’t good for nothing, but they’re nice. And Anna, she liked the attention, ’cause she hadn’t had any in a while, her being so old.”

  “How old was she?” Sarah asked in amazement.

  “Twenty-five, I think. At least, that’s what she’d admit to.”

  Sarah didn’t think that was very old, but since the doorman had deemed her too “long in the tooth” to begin an acting career, she had to assume different standards prevailed in the theater. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. Go on. Mr. Walcott was giving her presents.”

  Irene shrugged again. “Then next thing you know, she says she’s going to live with this Walcott. Says he’s got a rooming house where she can live for free, and she won’t have to work no more.”

  That sounded suspicious. The Walcotts definitely gave the impression the girls
were paying customers. Unless Anna was a special case. “How would she support herself if she didn’t work? Even with a free room?” Sarah asked.

  Irene made a face. “We had our ideas. Only one kind of place gives you a free room, but we figured she’d be too old to attract much in that trade either. She said it wasn’t that kind of a house, though. Just laughed when I warned her to be careful.”

  “Why were you worried about her?”

  Irene gave her a pitying look. “A girl has to be careful. Nobody takes care of you for nothing. I figured this fellow wanted something from her, even if I couldn’t figure out what it was. But she wasn’t worried. She told me she was just gonna do what Francine did and end up rich and living in the country.”

  “Who’s Francine?”

  “She worked here, too. She found a rich fellow to take care of her, or that’s what she said when she left here. Anna said Mr. Walcott introduced Francine to her gentleman friend and he was gonna do the same for her.”

  “What does Francine look like?” Sarah asked, thinking of Catherine Porter.

  “Short with red hair. Lots of freckles.”

  Not the same person. “Do you know a Catherine Porter?” she asked.

  Irene shook her head. “Never heard of her . . . Oh, wait, could that be Katie Porter?”

  “I’m sure it could. She’s an actress, too. She has dark hair, very Irish looking.”

  “That’s probably her. I haven’t seen her for a while. I thought she’d gone on tour or something. She hasn’t been around.”

  “She lives at Mr. Walcott’s house, too,” Sarah offered.

  Irene registered surprise. “Does she now? Ain’t that interesting? I guess it really is a brothel, then. Wasn’t Anna surprised?”

  “What makes you think it was a brothel?”

  “Because of Katie. She never liked being poor. If she couldn’t get work on the stage, she’d find some on her back, if you know what I mean. She never would admit to being a whore, because she only did it now and then, but if you say she was working in that house . . .” She shrugged again, her meaning clear.