Victoria Thompson - Murder on Washington Square

“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.”