“I could check.”
“Thanks. Meanwhile, open the door. I want to have a word with the gentleman.”
The jailer unlocked the cell and went off to check on Giddings’s records. Frank stepped into the cell, which was crammed with men curled and huddled in varying degrees of misery on nearly every square foot. Snores alternated with snivels and groans, and the smell of unwashed bodies and vomit rose up like a miasma. Frank stepped over a mass of rags that served as clothing for the man beneath it, and kicked Gilbert Giddings sharply on the hip.
He awoke with a start and looked around in alarm. His red-rimmed eyes quickly found Frank, looming over him, but he needed another moment to recognize him. “Mr. Malloy,” he said, his voice hoarse from sleep and excess. He tried to scramble to his feet, but quickly gave up the effort as his head protested painfully. Holding it in both hands, he looked up at Frank again.
“Can you get me out of here? I can’t… this is so humiliating. A man in my position…”
“You don’t have a position, remember?” Frank reminded him. “You gave it up for Anna Blake.”
To Frank’s disgust, the bloodshot eyes filled with tears. “I loved her, Malloy. I would’ve done anything for her.”
“Even leave your wife and son?”
Giddings winced at that. “I wanted to, but she wouldn’t let me,” he confessed. “She was too honorable.”
Frank didn’t bother to argue the point. Let Giddings believe what he wanted. “I guess your family was grateful for her sacrifice,” he said instead.
“They… they didn’t understand. I can’t blame them, I suppose. They lost so much.”
“You son seems more angry than your wife,” Frank observed. “He doesn’t think much of your Miss Blake.”
“He’s young,” Giddings excused him. “He doesn’t know much about life.”
“He knows about his life, and his mother’s. He knows how you and Anna Blake ruined both of them. He must hate her.”
“He doesn’t even know her.”
Frank wondered if Giddings really didn’t know. “Yes, he does. He met her at least once.”
Giddings stared blearily at Frank, not certain he’d understood correctly. “Harold couldn’t have met her.”
“But he did. Went to her house on the night she died. What do you suppose he wanted?” Frank asked.
One of the drunks nearby started coughing. The sound was raw and painful to hear, and Frank couldn’t help wondering what disease he might be carrying.
Giddings was looking at the coughing drunk with distaste, probably unaware that he himself looked no better than the filthy, unshaven wretch. At last the coughing stopped, and Giddings looked up at Frank again. “Harold didn’t know her,” he insisted.
“Then why did he kill her?”
This time Giddings reacted in a normal way. His eyes grew large, first with surprise, then with fury. He even made a valiant effort to rise, ready to confront Frank, but Frank hooked his foot behind Giddings’s heel and sent him sprawling back to the floor again.
Gasping with pain from his aching head and his bruised ego, Giddings glared at Frank. “Harold couldn’t kill anyone. He’s just a boy.”
“You better take a good look at him next time you’re home,” Frank advised. “He’s not a boy anymore. He’s taken your place as the man of the family.”
Giddings winced at the accusation, but he didn’t back down. “He didn’t kill Anna!” he insisted.
“How do you know? Is it because you killed her yourself?”
Giddings’s jaw dropped, but before he could speak, the jailer called to Frank.
“He was here Tuesday night. Came in around nine o’clock.”
“That’s pretty early,” Frank said, a little disappointed. Of course, that still would have given him time to kill Anna, since the landlady had said she’d left the house before dark.
“He got into a bar fight. He’d been hanging around all evening, cadging drinks, but he didn’t have any money of his own, so the crowd got tired of him. Threw him out into the street, but he kept coming back in. The beat cop took him in.”
Frank looked down at Giddings. “That was the night Anna died. You told me you couldn’t remember what happened that night. What were you doing in the bar?”
He looked up, his eyes resentful. “I didn’t remember everything. I went to visit Anna that day, but she wouldn’t see me. They wouldn’t even let me in. That woman, Mrs. Walcott, told me not to come back again, that Anna was going away.”
“So you went to the bar?”
“I couldn’t go home. My wife… she doesn’t understand. So I went out.”
“How did you get into a fight?”
“I told you, I don’t remember anything after I left her house until I woke up here the next morning.”
“Did you try to see Anna that day?”
“I wanted to, but I was too sick. I had to wait until the next morning.”
“That’s when we met,” Frank guessed, remembering how frantic Giddings had been to find her.
Giddings nodded and rubbed his head again, unable to meet Frank’s penetrating gaze.
“So that means even if you could remember, you wouldn’t know if your son went out to see Anna Blake that night or not,” Frank said.
This brought Giddings’s head up, his eyes wild with fury. “My son didn’t even know where she lived! If you try to blame him for this, just because you can’t find her real killer, I’ll have your job!”
Frank didn’t bother to point out that he was no longer in a position to be any danger to Frank’s job. He had more important things to think about. Frank had been hoping that Giddings would turn out to be the one who’d killed Anna. It was still possible, since Giddings claimed not to remember what he’d done that evening. He’d had time to find her and kill her before going to the bar. And if he couldn’t remember killing Anna, he could have been truly surprised to learn later that she was dead. That would explain why he’d acted like an innocent man the morning Frank had first seen him. But the boy was still a good suspect, too, and Frank knew for certain he’d seen Anna that night. “Your wife said you were home with her and your son the night Anna died, Giddings,” Frank said. “Now why would she say that?”
Giddings rubbed his temples. “She’s a good woman. She doesn’t deserve this.”
Frank gave him another light kick to get his attention. “Where is your son working today?”
Giddings started up stupidly. “How should I know?”
That’s what he’d expected, but he still didn’t like it. He stepped back over the ragged bundle of a man sleeping between him and the door. The fellow hadn’t stirred during the entire conversation, which meant he was either dead drunk or just dead. Frank walked out of the cell, and the jailer closed the door behind him.
“Keep that one until I tell you to let him go,” Frank said, indicating Giddings.
Giddings blinked, still rubbing his head. “I thought you were going to let me go,” he said.
“Didn’t anybody ever warn you that liquor makes you stupid?” Frank asked, then turned away. He needed some fresh air.
From her parents’ house on Fifty-Seventh Street, Sarah took the Sixth Avenue Elevated Train down to Twenty-Sixth Street and walked over to Bellevue Hospital to visit Webster Prescott. As she’d feared, he was in a fever and didn’t seem to know who she was. She forced some soup down his throat and bathed him with cool water. Then she put some hot compresses on his wound, to draw out the inflammation that was poisoning him. When she left, he seemed to be sleeping more comfortably. She told the nurses she’d be back to check on him later, hoping that would motivate them to give him better than average care in the meantime.
She’d posted the letter to Prescott’s aunt that morning. With any luck, the woman would receive it in the afternoon mail and be over to visit him tomorrow. Until then, Sarah would keep a close watch on him. Breathing a silent prayer for his recovery, she left the hospital and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk when she realized she had no idea what to do next.