Victoria Thompson - Murder on Washington Square

“He what?”

“He said…” Catherine took a deep breath. “He’d kill her if she didn’t.”

SARAH GAPED AT HER. THIS WAS EVEN MORE INFORMATION than she’d wanted to get. “Are you sure that’s what he said?” she asked, still not wanting the Giddings boy to be guilty of the crime.

“Yeah, because Anna started laughing, and he said something like she’d better believe him or she’d be sorry.”

Sarah hadn’t been trained as a detective, but that sounded like pretty good evidence to her. “And then he left?”

“Yeah, Mr. Walcott told him to leave, and he did.”

“Did you say Mr. Walcott? I thought he wasn’t home that night.”

Catherine looked confused and then frightened again. “Did I say that? No, I meant to say Mrs. You’re right, he wasn’t home that night. Mrs. Walcott asked him to leave.”

“And what time was this when he left?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine complained. “Early in the evening, I guess. Right after supper.”

“And you went to bed immediately?”

“No, I told you, it was still early.”

“So Anna didn’t leave the house right after that?”

“No, we played checkers for a while, the two of us.”

Sarah managed to conceal her surprise. This wasn’t what Mrs. Walcott had said. “Did she seem upset by the argument she’d had with the boy?”

“Not a bit. Nothing much upset her, even though…”

“Even though what?” Sarah prodded.

“Well, Mrs. Walcott… She was mad about the boy coming to the house. She didn’t like disturbances. Yelling and carrying on, she says that’s low class.”

“Did she say anything to Anna about it?”

“Not that I heard. She isn’t one to air dirty linen, you know? That’s how she always says it. No use airing our dirty linen in public. She’d wait ’til I was gone to say something, if she did.”

“And you think she did that night?”

Catherine shrugged. “Like I said, I was asleep. I didn’t hear anything.” She wouldn’t meet Sarah’s eye.

Sarah was starting to get a little impatient with Catherine, but she tried not to let it show. “Did Anna get a message that evening?”

“Not that I know of.”

Sarah was confused now. “So Anna was still here when you went to bed?”

“That’s right. Anna never would go to bed until real late. Then she’d sleep late in the morning, just like when we worked in the theater. I told her it’s hard on the complexion to stay up half the night, but she wouldn’t listen. Anna wouldn’t listen to nobody.”

“Was Anna in the habit of going out alone at night?”

Catherine looked at her like she was crazy. “Only whores go out on the street at night. Anna didn’t want to be taken for no whore.”

“Then why did she go out that particular night?”

“I don’t know, I tell you! I wish I did. Then people would stop bothering me. All I can tell you is that she did, and she got herself killed.”

“And what’s going to happen to you now?” Sarah asked.

Fear flickered in Catherine’s eyes again. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you going to keep entertaining your gentlemen friends the way Anna did?”

“That ain’t none of your business,” she said. At last she jumped up from her seat on the sofa. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now you’d better leave here before Mrs. Walcott gets back.”

“Why? Don’t you think she’d like to see me?”

“She don’t like talking about Anna, especially since that reporter came here snooping around the other day.”

Sarah felt a warning prickle on the back of her neck. “Was it Mr. Prescott? From the World ?”

“I didn’t hear his name.”

“A tall fellow? Young? All arms and legs?”

“I guess,” she said with a shrug. “He was asking about Anna being in the theater and all. Mrs. Walcott sent him packing, and she told me and Mary not to let any more reporters in. There’ve been a lot of them come by, wanting to know all about Anna, but we never tell them nothing.”

“If a lot of reporters have been here, why did that particular one annoy Mrs. Walcott?”

“This one barged right in past poor Mary, without so much as a by-your-leave. Mrs. Walcott threatened to call the police on him,” Catherine said. “In fact, now that I think on it, I shouldn’t be talking to you at all. How do I know you’re not working for some newspaper? This could be a trick.”

“I assure you, I don’t work for a newspaper. I’m a midwife. That’s why Nelson Ellsworth brought me to meet Anna Blake in the first place,” Sarah reminded her.

Catherine waved this away. “I don’t know about any of that. All I know is, you better go now.”

Sarah rose to her feet, but she wasn’t quite finished. “Do you remember what Anna was wearing that night?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d like to find out how she was dressed when she went out the night she died. That could tell me who she was going to meet.”

“How could what she was wearing tell you anything?” Catherine asked.

“If she was dressed carefully, she was probably going to meet a lover,” Sarah said. “If she dressed hastily, she might have been in a hurry. Can you remember?”

“I only know what she was wearing last time I saw her.”

“Could you tell from looking at the clothes in her room what she wore to go out that night?”

Catherine cast one anxious glance at the door again. Could she actually be frightened at the prospect of having Mrs. Walcott catch her talking to Sarah? What kind of a relationship did she have with the landlady? Before she could pursue that thought, Catherine said, “I can look at her things. They’re all there in her room. Mrs. Walcott won’t let anybody touch them. It’s not like Anna’s going to need them or anything, is it?” she grumbled, opening the parlor doors and leading Sarah up the stairs.

Sarah followed her into Anna’s room. The shades had been drawn, and everything was just as she’d seen it last. The place was starting to have that closed-up, dusty smell to it.

“I could wear her things,” Catherine was saying. “We were the same size. I don’t know why she won’t let me have them.”

“Maybe she will when this is all settled,” Sarah suggested.

Catherine took a quick inventory. “That’s funny.”

“What?”

“Looks like she didn’t change her clothes before she went out. She was wearing her house dress that night. After the boy left, she changed into it. She didn’t like to sit around in her good clothes if nobody was coming to call. Clothes cost the earth, you know.”

Sarah knew it well. “What color was it?”

“Brown,” she said, confirming what Mrs. Walcott had said, although the landlady hadn’t mentioned what kind of a dress it had been. Women usually had a dress, usually one past its prime, they kept for doing housework and such. Although Anna wouldn’t have done much work, she would have had a shabby dress she wore to be comfortable.

“So she was wearing a house dress. What coat would she have been wearing?”

Catherine looked at everything again. “She only had this cape, and it’s still here. Her winter coat is in the trunk. It hasn’t been cold enough to get it out. Or at least it wasn’t before she died. It’s a nice coat, too. Hardly worn at all,” she added enviously.

“Did she have a shawl or something?”

Catherine looked at each garment again. “The one she wore around the house. She had it on that night when we was playing checkers. Mrs. Walcott wouldn’t light a fire. She said it wasn’t cold enough yet, but Anna was always cold.”