Sarah was beginning to understand. How she could have been so dense, she had no idea. Agnes was afraid of her husband, and probably for good reason, if the bruise had come from his hand, as Sarah strongly suspected. Well, she certainly didn’t want to be the cause of another beating.
“I understand,” she said. “Thank you for the information. I’m glad to see the baby is doing so well.”
Agnes’s eyes begged her to be gone, so she turned to go, but just as she reached the door, Agnes called, “Do they know…? Do they know who the killer is yet?” She could hardly get the words out.
Sarah was only too happy to be able to ease her mind, if only a little bit. “We have a good idea. I think it won’t be long until he’s arrested.”
She’d expected Agnes to be relieved. Instead, she looked alarmed, almost frightened. “You know who it is?”
“Yes, or at least we’re fairly sure it’s a man named Will. Gerda and the other girls all met a man named Will just before they died.”
“Will?” She repeated the name carefully. “You are sure?”
“As sure as we can be without catching him in the act,” Sarah said, exaggerating slightly.
Agnes closed her eyes for a moment, as if offering a silent prayer. Perhaps she was giving thanks that Gerda’s killer would soon be caught. “Thank you,” she said when she opened her eyes again.
Sarah marveled at Agnes’s gratitude, but she also remembered that Lars would be home soon and wouldn’t be happy to find her there. “Send for me if you need me,” she said, and left. Moving more quickly than she ordinarily would have, she felt a strong sense of relief when she reached the street without encountering Lars Otto.
Good thing for him, too. She wasn’t certain she could have been civil to him just then. She could be wrong, of course, but if he was responsible for the bruise she’d seen on Agnes, he was despicable. And now she also remembered how Agnes had clutched at her side the last time Sarah was here. Could that have been another injury inflicted by her husband? She’d seen too many abused wives to be shocked, but she would never be complacent about that kind of violence. She always had an urge to go after men like that with a bullwhip, although she was well aware of the irony of her desire to punish violence with violence. Not that she would ever have the opportunity to punish anyone, but she could enjoy her fantasies all the same.
In the meantime, she had a grim job to do.
SARAH EASILY FOUND the address that Agnes had given her, but Hetty wasn’t at home. The woman who answered the door, whom Sarah guessed was Hetty’s mother, looked Sarah up and down suspiciously before giving her that information.
“I’m Sarah Brandt,” she said, as if that would impress the woman somehow. “I just heard about Hetty’s friend being killed, and I wanted to express my condolences. Do you know where-?”
“She’ll be with Bertha. The two of them was carrying on so loud, I made them leave. Don’t know where they went.”
“Could they have gone to Bertha’s?”
The woman shrugged a shoulder, indicating she had no idea and cared less. Sarah was able to convince her to give her the address, however. A few minutes later she was walking down Avenue A and found Hetty and Bertha sitting on the front stoop of one of the tenement buildings. They were no longer “carrying on,” but they were slumped against each other, their young faces ravaged by tears. They were the very picture of despair.
“Hello,” she greeted them gently.
Bertha looked up and her red-rimmed eyes widened in surprise. “It’s Mrs. Brandt,” she said, poking Hetty in the ribs.
The other girl looked up without much interest, then slowly her expression hardened into anger. “You did this to her. You killed Lisle!”
“What?” Sarah asked in surprise.
“You made her lead that policeman to George, and now he’s done for her just like he did for Gerda!”
“George didn’t do this,” Sarah told them. “Mr. Malloy questioned him first thing. He was with a group of his friends all night. He’s not the killer.”
Hetty snorted derisively. “So you say. How do we know his friends ain’t in on it, too! Maybe there’s a bunch of them that goes around killing girls!”
“If there was, we’d have found them out by now. They’d be bragging and fighting among themselves. It’s impossible to keep a secret like that when more than one person knows it.”
Hetty didn’t want to be wrong. She wanted this to be Sarah’s fault so she could put the blame somewhere. She couldn’t think of a valid argument, so she simply glared at Sarah.
“Could I buy you girls something to drink?” Sarah suggested. “You look like you could use something.”
“You just want to ask us more questions,” Hetty said bitterly.
“I want to find out who killed your friends,” Sarah agreed. “Maybe you know something that will help.”
Bertha was crying again. “I want to find out who it is,” she told Hetty, scrubbing at her cheeks with her sleeve. “I’m going to help her.” She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet.
“I don’t know nothing, and neither do you!” Hetty insisted, her chin jutting rebelliously even though her lower lip quivered suspiciously.
“Then you won’t be able to help. But my offer is still good. There’s a beer garden just around the comer, isn’t there?”
Grudgingly, Hetty rose from the stoop and followed as Sarah and Bertha started down the street. In a few minutes the girls each had a stein of beer-which Sarah felt they needed for medicinal purposes-and Sarah had a lemonade.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Sarah was loath to intrude upon their grief, but finally she said, “Can you tell me what happened last night?”
“Nothing happened,” Hetty said, her anger still fierce.
“She means nothing bad,” Bertha explained. “We went to Harmony Hall, just like we usually do. There was a dance, but we none of us met anybody we liked, so we left together. We walked home, and Lisle went off by herself, just like she always does, when we got to her street. That’s the last we know.”
“Then she wasn’t with any particular fellow? Nobody she would have willingly gone with?”
“We ain’t done that since Gerda died,” Hetty informed her haughtily. “We ain’t stupid!”
“Then someone must have followed her or seen her alone and accosted her.”
“She would’ve screamed,” Bertha insisted. “There’s lots of people out on the streets and sleeping on the roofs and porches. Somebody would’ve heard if she screamed.”
“Maybe she couldn’t scream,” Sarah suggested, thinking out loud. “Maybe he grabbed her too quickly.”
“Or maybe it was somebody she knew,” Hetty said with surprising insight. “Maybe she wasn’t even afraid at first.”
Sarah hadn’t thought of that. “Somebody she wasn’t afraid of, so she went with him willingly.”
“Maybe,” Hetty said. not quite convinced. The idea didn’t appeal to Sarah, either. Since the girls didn’t know who the killer was, how could any man have been considered safe?
Sarah tried a different tack. “Did either of you ever hear Lisle speak of a man named Will?”
The girls exchanged a glance. “Was he the one who…?” Bertha began.
Hetty nodded. “Lisle met him a while back. In the spring, I think. He took her to Coney Island and bought her a pair of ear bobs. He seemed like the perfect beau, and then…”
“He hit her,” Bertha said baldly.
“What do you mean?”
“They was…” Bertha caught herself, glancing at Hetty, whose frown held a warning.
“I know you don’t want to speak badly of your friend, but we can’t let that stand in the way of finding out who killed her,” Sarah reminded them.
“Lisle didn’t never want anybody to know, especially you,” Bertha told her.
Sarah was touched. Lisle had wanted her good opinion. “I thought Lisle was a fine, brave girl,” she said, her voice unsteady as she tried to hold back her tears. “Nothing you tell me now will change my mind. And no one else will ever know.”