Murder on Washington Square

by Victoria Thompson

  “You’re an actor?” Sarah cried, earning another black look from Malloy.

  “Yes, an excellent actor,” Walcott said smugly. “I fooled you, didn’t I? I fooled everyone.”

  He was right, of course. “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” she said. “Please continue.”

  “Ellie and I started this thing together. She charmed the old man into renting us a room. Told him I was her husband. We gave him a little opium to keep him happy so he wouldn’t notice the gentlemen callers Ellie had. We might’ve given him too much, or maybe his time was just up, but one day he just died. We decided no one would miss him, and why should we leave and let the house go to some stranger? So we buried him in the cellar and told people we’d bought the house from him and he’d moved away.”

  “What did you do with this Ellie?” Malloy asked.

  “Nothing. She got bored and wanted to go back on the stage. She went on tour, and I never saw her again. By then I had Francine, though, so we didn’t miss her.”

  “And after Francine ended up in the cellar, you got Catherine and Anna,” Malloy guessed. “What I want to know is why Anna didn’t end up in the cellar like the others.”

  Walcott gave him an impatient look. “She was supposed to, but . . . I gave Francine opium and she died real quick, like the old man,” he said, apparently forgetting his fiction that the old man’s death had been an accident. “But with Anna . . . she was the one who got the knife. She was going to stab me, so I was just defending myself. I was going to put her in the cellar with the others, except she wasn’t dead. She was just pretending. While I was outside, opening the door to put her body in before Catherine saw it, she got away. I tried to follow her, but I lost her in the dark.”

  Sarah looked at Malloy, and she knew they were thinking the same thing. Now it all made sense! The reason Anna had left the house so late at night, alone, was that she was running for her life. They’d assumed she’d been trying to get home after being stabbed, but she’d really been trying to get away. She’d managed to reach the Square before collapsing. No one there would have helped her or even taken particular notice. They would just have assumed she was drunk and let her lie there and die.

  “Why did you try to kill Webster Prescott?” Malloy asked.

  Walcott managed a sneer. “Who says I did?”

  Before anyone could blink, Malloy gave him a back-handed slap, surprising a gasp from Sarah and a cry of outrage from Harold.

  Malloy turned to them in disgust. “If you don’t have the stomach for this, you better leave now.”

  Harold looked pale, and Sarah felt very light-headed again. She’d known Malloy’s tactics could be rough, but seeing them was much worse than simply knowing about them. Still, he was dealing with a man who had killed four people. She took a deep breath and said, “You can go if you want to,” to the boy.

  Harold shook his head determinedly.

  Sarah looked up at Malloy. “We’ll stay.”

  He narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t challenge her decision. “Don’t make me ask you again, Walcott,” he said.

  “Prescott was too smart,” Walcott said quickly, obviously anxious to avoid another blow. “He’d found out about Anna, that she was an actress, and then he came here, asking more questions. He frightened Catherine, and I was afraid she might say something to him if he got her alone. I had to take care of him.”

  “You must be losing your touch,” Malloy said. “First Anna gets away, then Prescott. You botched it twice with the reporter.”

  Walcott gave Sarah a black look. “You turn up like a bad penny.”

  “Don’t expect me to apologize,” she said.

  “Why did you have to kill Catherine Porter?” Malloy asked.

  Walcott sighed. “I’ll always regret that. I was very fond of Catherine, but she’d figured out what happened to Anna. I had to get away before you figured it out, too, and I couldn’t leave her behind to tell what she knew.”

  “So you decided to pretend that you’d run away with Catherine and left your poor innocent wife behind,” Sarah guessed.

  Walcott just gave her a derisive stare.

  “Are we going to find your wife buried in the cellar, too?” Malloy asked him.

  Walcott gave him a pitying look. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? There is no Mrs. Walcott. I’m the entire Walcott family.” He smiled at his own joke.

  “I found the wigs and the fake beard in your bedroom,” Malloy said. “What gave you the idea to dress up like a woman in the first place?”

  “After the old man died, I needed a wife,” Walcott said, obviously proud of his ingenuity. “Ellie couldn’t be living with a single man. That wouldn’t be respectable. So we invented Mrs. Walcott.”

  “What do you mean, invented her?”

  “I created the character,” Walcott bragged. “I became Mrs. Walcott whenever we felt that we needed her.”

  “You’ve needed her a lot lately,” Sarah observed.

  Walcott didn’t seem the least bit chagrined. “I found I enjoyed being Mrs. Walcott. And the gentlemen callers were much more comfortable dealing with a female landlady. It was my greatest role, and I believe I handled it admirably. I fooled all of you,” he reminded them again.

  Plainly, Malloy found the whole idea distasteful. “Didn’t Anna and Catherine and the others think it was strange having you dressed up like a woman all the time?”

  “They didn’t seem to. Actually, I think it excited them. The very afternoon Anna died, she came to me and—”

  “That’s enough,” Malloy said, glancing meaningfully at Sarah and Harold.

  They stared back blankly, shocked into silence by the strangeness of the tale.

  Someone started knocking on the front door, and one of the policemen opened it. Sarah looked out into the foyer to see an elderly woman come in with a covered plate in her hands. “I’m Miss Stone from next door,” she was explaining to the policeman. “I brought some food, in case anyone is hungry.”

  Sarah’s stomach growled. She was on her feet in an instant. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Stone,” she said, grateful for a chance to escape this bizarre conversation, and hurried out to accept her gracious gift.

  “You did that on purpose,” Sarah said.

  She and Malloy were finally alone, riding uptown from The Tombs in a Hansom cab. Oliver/Olivia Walcott was locked up at Police Headquarters, and Harold Giddings had gone to be with his mother at the city jail. He’d vowed to stay there until morning, when she would be officially released. Malloy had managed to find a cab. He even knew the driver, which meant they would probably make it safely home.

  “What did I do on purpose?” Malloy asked. It was very dark in the cab, and she couldn’t see his expression.

  “Hit Walcott,” she said. The opium was wearing off, or at least she thought it was. She just felt very relaxed, but that could be simple fatigue. She didn’t even want to know how late it was. Or rather how early. “You hit him on purpose so I would see you do it.”

  “How much opium did you swallow?” he asked.

  “Not very much. I’m right, aren’t I? You wanted me to despise you.”

  “Mrs. Brandt,” he began in that reasonable tone she hated.

  “Don’t waste your breath, Malloy,” she chided. “I know I’m right. What I don’t know is why. Why don’t you want me to like you, Malloy?”

  “I thought opium made people sleepy,” he said. “Why don’t you fall asleep? I’ll wake you up when we get to your house.”

  “I don’t want to go to sleep. I want to know why you don’t like me, Malloy. I like you, even if you do hit people.”

  He sighed. “I never said I didn’t like you, Mrs. Brandt.”

  Reasonable again. She wanted to smack him. “And why don’t you ever call me Sarah? You think I’m beautiful, but you never call me Sarah.”

  He muttered something she didn’t understand.

  “You do think I’m beautiful,” she insisted. “You said so!�
�

  “Yes, I do,” he said grudgingly. “And I do like you, Sarah. Now let’s talk about something else, because you’re going to be very embarrassed if you remember any of this conversation tomorrow.”

  “No, I won’t,” she informed him. She didn’t feel the least bit embarrassed! “And I still want to know why you hit that man in front of me. You wanted me to see it, didn’t you?”

  “Why would I want you to see it?”

  Sarah was getting very annoyed with him. He usually wasn’t this dense. “Because you wanted me to think badly of you, and I demand to know why!”

  “You do, do you?” he said in a very odd tone.

  “Yes, I do, and I’m not getting out of this cab until you tell me!”

  “I don’t want to tell you.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  She knew he was looking at her, although she doubted he could see very much in the darkness. “I want to show you,” he said.

  The next thing she knew, his hand was on the back of her head and his mouth was on hers. She felt a thousand sensations at once, the scratch of his beard, the taste of his lips, the scent of him engulfing her. The night exploded into shooting stars, and Sarah wanted to catch each one and hold them to her heart.

  But before she could even react, he was pulling away and reaching up to bang on the roof of the cab.

  “Pull over here, Henry!” he called out to the driver.

  “What are you doing?” Sarah asked in confusion. Her world was still swirling, but the cab lurched to a stop.

  Malloy said, “That can be part of your opium dream, Sarah,” and jumped out. “Take the lady home and make sure she gets inside safe and sound, Henry,” he called up to the driver.

  “Malloy!” she called, but he was already disappearing into the darkness. She thought about going after him but couldn’t think of a good reason to. Because she wanted him to kiss her again? Of course she did, but a lady didn’t chase a man down for that! Besides, she mused with a smile as the cab rattled into motion again, she didn’t have to. He would be back. She was perfectly sure of that.

  Malloy didn’t like a case with loose ends, and this one seemed to have a hundred of them. He’d spent the morning getting Mrs. Giddings released from jail and dealing with her and her son’s gratitude. Having escaped that, he had to go uptown to the bank where Nelson Ellsworth had worked to convince Mr. Richard Dennis to hire him back or risk having Frank raise a scandal about the supposed missing funds in his bank.

  Frank had a hunch that Dennis had reasons of his own why he didn’t want anyone to know about the missing money that had nothing at all to do with avoiding a scandal. His first theory was that Dennis himself had taken the money, maybe even after he found out about Nelson being blackmailed, figuring he could accuse Nelson of it and escape detection. His other theory was, in some ways, even worse. That version had Dennis making up the story about the missing money so he could dismiss Nelson and still keep Mrs. Brandt’s good opinion.

  Either way, Frank had him. And since Frank enjoyed having wealthy men bend to his will, he was glad to see how quickly the guard at the bank ushered him back to the vice president, who ushered him to Mr. Dennis’s office. He was instructed to wait outside the closed door, however, because Mr. Dennis was already meeting with someone. The vice president assured him that Mr. Dennis would be more than happy to assist him the moment he was free.

  Frank settled in to wait, but after only a few minutes, the door to Dennis’s office opened. Frank started to rise from his chair, but he stopped when he saw who came out with Dennis.

  “I know you won’t regret this, Richard,” Sarah Brandt said. She was looking back at the man over her shoulder as he escorted her out, but Frank didn’t have to see her face to know she was smiling.

  “How could I ever regret doing you a favor, Sarah?” Dennis said in an unctuous tone that set Frank’s teeth on edge. How dare he talk to her in that tone of voice? How dare he call her Sarah?

  “I’ll see you tomorrow evening then,” she said, giving him her hand.

  He took it in both of his, and Frank found himself on his feet. Only in the nick of time did he stop himself from striding over there and ripping them apart.

  “I’ll call for you at eight,” Dennis said.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” she said, sounding like she really meant it, and then she turned and saw him standing there. “Malloy,” she said in surprise. “What brings you here? I hope the bank hasn’t been robbed.”

  She smiled at her own joke, giving Frank a moment to recover. He’d imagined how she would react the next time they met. He’d been hoping she wouldn’t remember that he’d taken advantage of her, or at least most of him had been hoping that. The other part had hoped she would and that she’d . . . Well, he hadn’t gotten past that in his imagining, because he wasn’t sure how she should feel about it if she did remember. It seemed, however, that she didn’t remember a thing, if he could judge by her expression.

  “I came to see Mr. Dennis,” he said, glancing past her.

  Dennis was frowning. He didn’t remember who Frank was, the bastard.

  “I’ve already told him that you caught the killer,” she said, saving Dennis from having to admit his memory lapse. And saving Frank from the humiliation of having to reintroduce himself. “He also agrees that since Mr. Ellsworth was innocent, he should have his old job back as if nothing had happened.”

  “What about the missing money?” Frank asked, addressing the question to Dennis, who didn’t like it one bit.

  “It seems that was just an accounting error,” Dennis said quickly. “As I explained to Sarah . . . Mrs. Brandt, I couldn’t believe such a sum could have gone missing, so I had the auditors check again. I never believed Mr. Ellsworth was responsible, in any case.”

  Frank could have argued with him, but he knew when to be gracious in victory. Nelson had his job back, and no one was going to be prosecuted for embezzlement. Frank would make sure Mrs. Brandt understood exactly what Dennis had tried to do. All was right with the world once again. Or it would be in a second.

  “You’ll let me know if there’s any more trouble here, won’t you?” Frank said. “I’ve taken a personal interest in your establishment now, and I wouldn’t want to see you have more bad luck.”

  He’d hoped Dennis would be smart enough to understand his unspoken message—that if he tried to pin some later crime on Nelson just to get rid of him, Frank would be watching. To his credit, Dennis gave him the phony smile that rich men gave when they knew a less worthy opponent had the advantage over them. “I appreciate your concern, Mr. Malloy, and I’m sure you won’t have to trouble yourself anymore.”

  He didn’t offer to shake hands, so Frank stepped back to make room for Sarah to precede him out.

  “Good day, Richard,” she said, giving him another of her smiles. “Mr. Malloy.” Her smile for him was smaller. And sly. Frank was sure it was sly.

  He was going to follow her when Dennis said, “Let me give you something for your trouble, Malloy.”

  Frank would never forgive him for saying that where she could hear. He gave the man a look that drained the blood from his face. “It wasn’t any trouble,” he replied very distinctly and turned on his heel.

  Mrs. Brandt was waiting for him out on the sidewalk, pretending to be ransacking her purse for something. She looked up and smiled at him the way she usually did when he came out the door. “Good morning, Malloy. Did you get Mrs. Giddings out of jail?”

  “She and Harold should be home by now,” he replied, searching her face for any sign that she remembered what he’d done last night. He saw none. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “You mean after the opium?” she guessed, her eyes glittering knowingly. “Just fine. Except everything that happened last night seems like a dream. A very bad dream. Please tell me I didn’t imagine that Mr. Walcott is safely locked up.”

  “You didn’t, and he’s the talk of the city. They aren’t quite
sure whether to lock him in the men’s or the women’s section of the Tombs. The women at the house might not have thought he was strange for dressing up like a female, but everyone else in the city does.”

  “Not many men could have carried it off,” she said. “I think he was right, it was his greatest role.”

  The morning light had turned her hair the color of gold, and he didn’t remember ever seeing her look so beautiful. The knowledge was like a piece of jagged glass in his chest. “What kind of a deal did you make with Dennis to save Nelson’s job?” he asked, unable to keep the anger from his voice.

  She smiled the way she did when she knew something he didn’t. “I didn’t make a deal. I simply told him that my father couldn’t understand how the auditors had discovered the missing funds so quickly, and we were sure there must be some mistake. A mistake like that could ruin the bank’s reputation, along with his. Then I reminded him of how faithful an employee Nelson had always been, and how tragic it would be if he were to suffer for crimes he hadn’t committed. A female can make her point just as effectively as a man, if she knows how, Malloy. Richard understood exactly what I was saying and the consequences he would face if he insisted on dismissing Nelson.”

  Which would have included never seeing Sarah Brandt again. Frank could understand the man’s decision to do her bidding. “And now you’re going to see Richard tomorrow night.” He sounded childish, even to himself.

  “He invited me to the opera. I haven’t been to the opera in years, so I accepted. Don’t look so disapproving, Malloy. I’ll start to imagine you’re jealous.” She smiled and shook her head in mock disgust. “Now tell me, when does Brian get his cast off?”

  Frank blinked at the sudden change of subject. “Next Wednesday morning.”

  “Could I come?” she asked. “I’d like to be there.”

  She was only being kind, he told himself for the thousandth time and ignored the small spark of happiness she’d caused him. She was asking because she adored his son, and who could blame her? “I know the boy would like it,” was all he trusted himself to say.