Victoria Thompson - Murder on St. Mark’s place

“But we still don’t know for certain that Dirk is the one who killed them,” Sarah reminded him almost desperately, “even if he really is the man they all knew as Will.”

“I believe I’ve mentioned that before,” Malloy reminded her, although she could see it gave him no pleasure to be right. He wanted Dirk to be the killer, and not just because he wanted the killer caught. He wanted Dirk especially to be the guilty one, because he didn’t like him. “We need some proof.”

Sarah remembered what she’d learned yesterday. “I met with Bertha and Hetty yesterday. They said Lisle knew a man named Will, but she’d stopped seeing him because he hit her.”

“When was this?”

“It must have been earlier this summer, just after Coney Island opened on Memorial Day,” she guessed, glancing at the photograph she still held. “They said she let him… let him have his way. Then he got angry and called her a whore, and he hit her. She fought back, though. Apparently, she’s stronger than she appears. Was stronger,” she corrected herself, her voice catching. “Somehow she managed to get away.”

“Did Gerda know about this?”

“That’s the strange part. They said she did, which should have made her wary of him, but they also said she was the kind of girl who’d think something like that would never happen to her. She may not have told the others the name of her new benefactor because she didn’t want a lecture from Lisle.”

Malloy considered this for a moment. “It fits what we know about the killer. Maybe he gets mad at women who give in to him because he thinks they’re immoral or something and deserve to die. But why would he have gone after Lisle again? He must’ve known she’d be wary of him.”

“Oh, dear heaven!” Sarah exclaimed, covering her mouth as if she could stop the words that may have led to Lisle’s death.

“What is it?” he demanded, his voice too loud for a church.

“I… I led him to her!”

“What do you mean?”

“I… He was asking me about the crimes. I thought he was just interested!” she cried in her own defense.

Malloy nodded. “Go on. What did you tell him?”

“He asked me… No, he told me! He was the one who came up with the theory that Gerda hadn’t told anyone her new beau’s name because she wanted to keep the others from knowing who he was. He suggested they might want to steal him or maybe that Gerda had already stolen him from one of the others. He knew that’s what had happened!”

“Maybe,” Malloy reminded her. “What else?”

“He asked me… He wanted to know which of Gerda’s friends was most likely to have had a beau that Gerda would want to steal. I told him Lisle. Oh. Malloy, I led him right to her!” she wailed.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Malloy said with a kindness that surprised her. He was trying to assuage her guilt, but it wasn’t working.

“Yes, we do! I killed her, Malloy, just as surely as if I beat her myself!” The tears were welling in her eyes, hot as lava, burning and stinging and begging to be shed.

“Don’t be a fool! He would’ve figured it out himself eventually. Or else he would’ve just killed every girl who might’ve led us to him. You probably saved some lives by giving him Lisle’s name.”

She couldn’t bear his vindication, and she certainly didn’t deserve it. She’d caused Lisle’s death, and she would carry the knowledge to her grave. The only hope she had for retaining her sanity was to put a noose around the killer’s neck.

“What can we do now?” she asked. “Will you take him in and question him?”

“Not likely, a man in his position,” Malloy said. “If I did and couldn’t prove he was the killer, he’d have my job. More important, he’d be free to keep on killing, because he’d know the other detectives wouldn’t dare detain him again either, for fear of what he’d do to them.”

“Then we need some proof,” Sarah said, her mind racing as she considered and rejected one idea after another. “Maybe some of the other friends of the dead girls would recognize him.”

“And what if they did? We already know he knew the victims. Unless one of the friends saw him committing a murder, which we know they didn’t, then he’d still go free.”

Sarah felt the old frustrations welling up, the helpless, powerless feeling she’d had when her husband Tom was killed and no one could find his murderer. Behind that came the wave of guilt and shame for her part in all this. “Then I’ll get him to confess,” she said.

Malloy reared back at that. “And exactly how will you do that?” he asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out. I was thinking maybe I’d take him back to Coney Island. He’s never killed anyone out there, so I should be safe.”

“Are you crazy?” Plainly, he believed she was. She’d never heard that tone in his voice before. It sounded almost like panic.

“I assure you, I’m perfectly sane. You’ve already said the usual methods won’t work with Dirk. He’s too rich and powerful for you to take him into the Mulberry Street cellar and beat him into confessing. He isn’t likely to come to you voluntarily to clear his conscience, either. That leaves us no other choice but to trick him.”

“Mrs. Brandt, you’re not a detective,” he reminded her with more than a hint of condescension. “You couldn’t trick a man like that.”

She gave him a disdainful glance. “Women of my social class are trained to trick men like Dirk Schyler from the time we can talk, Mr. Malloy. All I need is some time to decide the best method to use.”

He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “And exactly how will you do that?”

He still didn’t believe her capable of such a deception. He obviously knew far too little about upper-class society.

“First of all, I have to figure out why he’s doing these terrible things.” She waited a moment while the ideas formed in her mind. “Unfortunately, it’s not all that difficult to imagine. Dirk has been a slave to social conventions all his life. That sort of constraint can drive people to do strange things. It drove me to become a midwife,” she confessed with a shrug. “I think it’s probably the reason he chose to spend his time with shop girls. With them he didn’t have to worry about all the rules that he’d been taught to obey, and he certainly didn’t have to observe any sexual restraint,” she went on, thinking aloud.

“Why not just go to a prostitute then, if that’s all he’s interested in?”

Sarah considered. “Possibly he has some compunction about using the services of prostitutes. Perhaps he doesn’t like the lack of romance he encountered with them. But the shop girls were different. They actually liked him, or at least pretended to, and they willingly granted their favors in exchange for trinkets instead of money. This would remove some of the taint. That was what he wanted, but when he got what he wanted, for some reason he couldn’t accept it. Perhaps he felt he had to punish these girls for not adhering to the stringent rules of morality he’d been taught. He might even believe they deserved to die. If I could get him to admit that…”

“And what if you can’t? What if he decides you know too much and kills you, too?” He was furious or outraged or perhaps simply exasperated. She was too distracted to figure it out, and besides, it didn’t matter.

“He won’t kill me, Malloy, because you’ll be following us, ready to arrest him the instant he admits what he’s done.”

THIS WAS CRAZY. The whole idea was crazy. Sarah Brandt was crazy for thinking of it, and Frank was crazy for agreeing.