Victoria Thompson - Murder on Washington Square

“Then how does he explain it?” Sarah asked.

“He doesn’t. In fact, he doesn’t believe they found it at all.”

The hour was late by the time Sarah finally arrived at Bellevue. She found Mrs. Ellsworth dozing in her chair, her chin resting on her bony chest, her breath coming in unladylike snores. Webster Prescott was sleeping, too. He seemed to have recovered a bit from his earlier ordeal, and the nurse confirmed he’d been resting comfortably for several hours. Even his fever was a little lower.

Mrs. Ellsworth awoke with a start and a snort when Sarah touched her shoulder. “What…? Oh, Mrs. Brandt,” she said in relief. Then she instinctively looked at Prescott. “How is he?”

“He seems to be doing fairly well.”

“Oh, heavens, don’t say that! It’s bad luck to say a sick person is doing well!” she informed Sarah, aghast at her ignorance.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, however insincerely. “I mean to say he’s not doing as poorly as he was.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the old woman replied with some relief.

Sarah bit back a smile. “You’ve done a good job guarding him, but it’s time for you to go home to your own bed now.”

“Nonsense! Someone must stay with him all the time. What if that woman comes back to kill him again?”

“Then I’ll be here,” Sarah told her.

“But you shouldn’t waste your time here . You have things you could be doing, while I don’t have anything to look forward to except more waiting.”

“Yes, you do,” Sarah assured her. “I need for you to go home and tell Mr. Malloy where I am when he comes looking for me tomorrow. I have some important things to tell him, especially about the woman who tried to kill Mr. Prescott, and I need to see him as soon as possible.”

“Then I should stay here while you go find Mr. Malloy,” she argued.

“I’ve spent a good part of the afternoon trying to do just that without success. I left a message for him at Police Headquarters, so I think the best plan is for me to stay in one place and let him find me. But he’ll go to my house, and he won’t know where else to look unless you tell him.”

She started sputtering additional objections, but Sarah cut her off.

“You’re going home, and I’m staying here, and I won’t hear any more on the subject. Now, I’ve got a carriage waiting for you downstairs, and you’re keeping the poor driver from his bed.”

“A carriage?” she echoed suspiciously.

“It’s my parents’. They sent me home in it, so I thought I should make good use of it. Now don’t make that poor man wait any longer. There’s food, too, for your and Nelson’s supper, courtesy of my mother’s cook. Enjoy it.”

Mrs. Ellsworth offered a few more feeble arguments, but finally she surrendered. She really was starting to feel the strain of the day. Before she left, however, she pressed a rabbit’s foot into Sarah’s hand.

“It can’t hurt,” she said when Sarah looked skeptical.

“How many of these do you have?” Sarah asked, remembering she’d given one to Malloy as well.

“As many as I need,” she replied.

When she was gone, Sarah made herself as comfortable as possible and settled in for a long night.

Frank wondered how Sarah Brandt could give him a headache when he wasn’t even with her. He’d been feeling pretty good this morning, having arrested Anna Blake’s confessed killer the night before. Although he’d had no reason to be concerned about her comfort, he’d managed to get Mrs. Giddings locked up in The Tombs instead of at Police Headquarters. The Tombs were grim, but they were still far more tolerable than the cellar at Mulberry Street.

Getting Gilbert Giddings released from jail had been the work of a few moments, and he hadn’t even had to deal with the man himself. Let his son tell him the awful news about what his wife had done. He never wanted to see that sorry drunk again. Frank’s sense of accomplishment had dimmed somewhat when he’d gotten Mrs. Brandt’s message, though. He was used to being teased about her, or as used to it as he was ever going to get, but that didn’t mean he was used to having her involved in his cases. He’d never get accustomed to that, especially when being involved meant confronting would-be killers in the act, as he’d learned from Mrs. Ellsworth when he’d gone looking for Sarah Brandt at her home.

“I’m sure Mrs. Brandt is perfectly fine,” Mrs. Ellsworth said from where she was sitting beside him on the El as they sped uptown toward Bellevue. “We scared that woman off. She won’t be back.”

Frank gritted his teeth. “If it was a woman,” he said. “You said yourself you didn’t see her face.”

“Well, whoever it was who tried to poison poor Mr. Prescott, they won’t be back,” Mrs. Ellsworth insisted.

Frank only hoped she was right. The thought of Sarah Brandt facing down a killer in the middle of the night on a deserted hospital ward was unsettling, to say the least. It unsettled Frank so much he wanted to strangle somebody. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said, not for the first time. “I told you I’d get somebody to stand guard over Prescott. His newspaper will probably hire a guard when they find out what happened. It would make for a good story.”

“A guard can prevent the killer from striking again, but he won’t be able to give Mr. Prescott the special care he needs,” she pointed out. “Besides, I’m tired of being locked in my house day and night.”

When Frank had gone to Sarah Brandt’s house this morning-and he’d gone the instant he’d gotten her message-the last thing he’d expected was to find Mrs. Ellsworth watching for him.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Mrs. Ellsworth was always watching for something to happen on her street. If she’d been unable to do anything about what had been happening lately, that only made her more anxious to get active again. Frank would’ve had to tie her hand and foot to keep her from accompanying him to the hospital to find Mrs. Brandt. When she told him about the attempt on Prescott’s life, he hadn’t wanted to waste time trying to deter her, either.

“If it’s any comfort to you, I arrested Anna Blake’s killer last night,” he told her.

Her eyes widened, almost erasing the wrinkles around them. “Oh, Mr. Malloy! That’s wonderful! Who was it?”

“The wife of another man Anna Blake was blackmailing. This man was ruined. He stole from his employer to pay her. When he got caught, he impoverished himself to pay back what he’d stolen. His wife was very angry, so she took it out on the person she held responsible for her troubles.”

“That poor woman! The wife, I mean. Anna Blake asked for her trouble, but this poor woman didn’t. I guess I can’t blame her for wanting vengeance. I probably would’ve felt the same, in her place.”

“You women,” Malloy snorted. “You’re so cold-blooded.”

“I didn’t say killing Miss Blake was right,” she defended herself. “I just said I could understand why she wanted that woman dead. If my Nelson had been ruined, I might have considered the same thing.”

Frank didn’t point out that Nelson was as good as ruined unless they could find out who had really stolen money from his bank. Even if they could, it was possible the sensational stories about him that had appeared in the various newspapers would have destroyed his reputation and he would be unable to make a respectable living again. In Frank’s experience, innocent people often had to suffer for others’ crimes. Nelson Ellsworth would probably be one of them, and there might be nothing Frank could do to save him. He wasn’t going to be the one to explain all this to the man’s mother, however. His job was hard enough as it was.