Victoria Thompson - Murder on Washington Square

“I guess I knew that,” she said. “I just didn’t want to believe it. Please forgive me for putting you in an awkward position.”

“Nonsense,” he said, brushing away her apology. “I’ll give the matter some thought and see what I can do. I can’t make any promises, mind you, but-”

“Oh, Father, I’m not asking for any promises. But I don’t even know anything about embezzlement. If I did, perhaps I could… I don’t know, do something ,” she said in exasperation.

“I’m glad to say I know very little about it myself, but I can at least obtain that information with relative ease. I’ll take lunch at my club today. Someone there will be only too happy to enlighten me on the subject, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, Father. I’d be so grateful.”

He peered at her over his coffee cup. “No reason to be grateful, my dear. Now go upstairs and see your mother. I’ll send you word when I’ve learned something useful.”

Frank wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the information Nelson Ellsworth had given him about the missing money. But first he had to clear the man of murder, or stolen money would be the least of his problems.

Frank had gotten out of the cab, leaving Nelson to make his way home alone, and headed for Police Headquarters on Mulberry Street. He wanted to find Harold Giddings, but he knew he’d have to wait until the end of the work-day. His mother would never tell him where he was working today, even if she knew, which was unlikely. In the meantime, he might as well do the job he was being paid to do.

A black Maria was pulling up at the door of Police Headquarters when Frank arrived at Mulberry Street. The closed carriage held the last of the drunks that had been collected off the city streets from the night before. The boys from the press shacks across the street leaned out their windows to see if they recognized any of the faces as someone who might make a good story. Frank pulled his hat lower in an attempt to escape notice as he made his way quickly inside, just in case someone recognized him as being a good source for a story about Anna Blake’s murder.

The desk sergeant looked up when he entered, nodding his greeting with a bored expression. Frank wished him good morning.

“About time you showed up, Malloy,” the sergeant said. “Some drunk’s been asking for you all night.”

“A drunk? What’s his name?”

“How should I know? Just some drunk. Said you’d vouch for him and we should let him go.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t,” Frank said with a grin.

“Hell, I figured we should send him to the Tombs for life just for knowing you,” the sergeant said, grinning back.

Frank was going to head upstairs to the detectives’ office, but then he remembered one drunk in particular who might have had him uppermost in his mind this week. He wasn’t sure why Gilbert Giddings would think he could trade on his acquaintance with Frank for a favor, but if he was the drunk downstairs, it wouldn’t hurt to find out. He might be grateful enough to tell him where his son could be found, if he even knew. Or he might have remembered something new about Anna Blake. “Is this fellow still downstairs?”

“Locked up tight,” the sergeant said, turning his attention to the parade of drunks and derelicts being herded in the front door.

Frank made his way down to the cellar of the large, square building, two floors below the street, where the dark, stinking cells held those unfortunate enough to have come to the attention of the police. Strong men had been known to break down and confess to the most heinous crimes to avoid being locked in these cells-or to escape from them to the relative pleasantness of the dismal City Jail.

A quick inquiry of the jailer on duty led him to a cell filled with slowly sobering inmates where he did, indeed, find Gilbert Giddings sleeping off his night’s revelries.

“You know him?” the officer asked.

Frank nodded. “Has he ever been here before?”

“Him?” the jailer scoffed. “He’s here once a week or more. When he runs out of money, he starts bothering other patrons at whatever bar he’s at. They get annoyed, and the next thing you know, the paddy wagon takes them all away.”

A new thought occurred to Frank. “Was he here last Tuesday night?”

“I could check.”

“Thanks. Meanwhile, open the door. I want to have a word with the gentleman.”

The jailer unlocked the cell and went off to check on Giddings’s records. Frank stepped into the cell, which was crammed with men curled and huddled in varying degrees of misery on nearly every square foot. Snores alternated with snivels and groans, and the smell of unwashed bodies and vomit rose up like a miasma. Frank stepped over a mass of rags that served as clothing for the man beneath it, and kicked Gilbert Giddings sharply on the hip.

He awoke with a start and looked around in alarm. His red-rimmed eyes quickly found Frank, looming over him, but he needed another moment to recognize him. “Mr. Malloy,” he said, his voice hoarse from sleep and excess. He tried to scramble to his feet, but quickly gave up the effort as his head protested painfully. Holding it in both hands, he looked up at Frank again.

“Can you get me out of here? I can’t… this is so humiliating. A man in my position…”

“You don’t have a position, remember?” Frank reminded him. “You gave it up for Anna Blake.”

To Frank’s disgust, the bloodshot eyes filled with tears. “I loved her, Malloy. I would’ve done anything for her.”

“Even leave your wife and son?”

Giddings winced at that. “I wanted to, but she wouldn’t let me,” he confessed. “She was too honorable.”

Frank didn’t bother to argue the point. Let Giddings believe what he wanted. “I guess your family was grateful for her sacrifice,” he said instead.

“They… they didn’t understand. I can’t blame them, I suppose. They lost so much.”

“You son seems more angry than your wife,” Frank observed. “He doesn’t think much of your Miss Blake.”

“He’s young,” Giddings excused him. “He doesn’t know much about life.”

“He knows about his life, and his mother’s. He knows how you and Anna Blake ruined both of them. He must hate her.”

“He doesn’t even know her.”

Frank wondered if Giddings really didn’t know. “Yes, he does. He met her at least once.”

Giddings stared blearily at Frank, not certain he’d understood correctly. “Harold couldn’t have met her.”

“But he did. Went to her house on the night she died. What do you suppose he wanted?” Frank asked.

One of the drunks nearby started coughing. The sound was raw and painful to hear, and Frank couldn’t help wondering what disease he might be carrying.

Giddings was looking at the coughing drunk with distaste, probably unaware that he himself looked no better than the filthy, unshaven wretch. At last the coughing stopped, and Giddings looked up at Frank again. “Harold didn’t know her,” he insisted.

“Then why did he kill her?”

This time Giddings reacted in a normal way. His eyes grew large, first with surprise, then with fury. He even made a valiant effort to rise, ready to confront Frank, but Frank hooked his foot behind Giddings’s heel and sent him sprawling back to the floor again.

Gasping with pain from his aching head and his bruised ego, Giddings glared at Frank. “Harold couldn’t kill anyone. He’s just a boy.”

“You better take a good look at him next time you’re home,” Frank advised. “He’s not a boy anymore. He’s taken your place as the man of the family.”

Giddings winced at the accusation, but he didn’t back down. “He didn’t kill Anna!” he insisted.