Now Frank knew he should have tied her hand and foot to keep her from coming with him today. “I can’t order them to do it,” he quickly clarified, “but I was going to strongly suggest it.”
“What a good idea,” Mrs. Brandt said, smiling her approval. Frank wished her approval didn’t matter so much to him.
“And if you can’t order them to, I can,” Mrs. Beasley said tartly, sounding very much like Mrs. Ellsworth. “If they don’t, I’ll contact another newspaper and give them the story in exchange for a guard!”
“Aunt Orpah!” Prescott protested feebly, but his aunt paid him no attention.
Fortunately, the editor at the World immediately saw the news story potential in Prescott’s situation. Arrangements were quickly made by telephone to dispatch someone from the newspaper both to protect Prescott and to get the full story.
“You mustn’t allow them to tire Mr. Prescott,” Mrs. Brandt instructed his aunt when the arrangements had been made. “He’s still in danger and needs lots of rest.”
“I can talk,” Prescott protested feebly, but no one seemed interested in hearing him do so.
The three women consulted on what the best course of treatment would be for the reporter. By the time the representatives from The World arrived-three of them and all very excited at the prospect of reporting the second attempt on Prescott’s life-Mrs. Brandt was finally satisfied that she could safely leave Prescott in his aunt’s care.
Frank’s goal was to get Sarah Brandt home as quickly as possible since he was afraid she might keel over from exhaustion at any moment. Taking her on the train seemed the most difficult means of travel, but a Hansom cab could barely hold two passengers, and he had to return Mrs. Ellsworth to her home as well. Besides, the train was faster, even if it meant walking some distance both to and from the stations. They managed to make the trip without any mishaps.
Just in case the reporters were still keeping their vigil on Bank Street, however, Frank led the women down the alley behind their houses. A stray dog was rooting through a pile of garbage, and he looked up and growled as they approached. The animal was mangy and scrawny, and Frank hoped it wasn’t also rabid. He shouted and clapped his hands, advancing threateningly, and to his relief, the dog tucked his tail and ran.
“You’re much better at that than I am,” Mrs. Brandt remarked.
“I’m louder,” he said.
“And bigger,” Mrs. Ellsworth added.
They reached the rear of their houses without further incident. “We’ll wait here until you’re safely inside,” he told the old woman.
Mrs. Ellsworth wasn’t eager to be dismissed, however.
“Mrs. Brandt, you need to get some rest immediately,” she said. “I’ll be happy to come in and fix you something to eat so you don’t have to exert yourself.”
Frank opened his mouth to protest, but Sarah Brandt beat him to it.
“Thank you so much for the offer, but I’m afraid I must consult with Mr. Malloy before I can even think of resting. I have a lot of things to tell him… and to ask him, too,” she added with a meaningful look he didn’t even try to interpret.
“But you must eat,” Mrs. Ellsworth insisted. “You probably haven’t even had any breakfast.”
“I’ll fix her something,” Frank said, earning an amazed look from both women. “And if anyone comes looking for Mrs. Brandt to deliver a baby, tell them she’s already out on a call,” he added to Mrs. Ellsworth.
“Malloy!” Mrs. Brandt protested, but Frank wasn’t going to argue that point.
“Don’t you want to hear all about Mrs. Giddings’s confession?” he asked provocatively, taking her by the elbow and steering her toward her back gate.
“Thank you for your help,” she called over her shoulder to the old woman. “I’ll check on you this afternoon.” Then she said, “Ouch!” because Frank was squeezing her elbow pretty tightly.
But he didn’t let her go until he was sure she was safely in her yard with the gate closed behind them, away from Mrs. Ellsworth.
As soon as they were inside her house and the back door was shut, she said, “You better not have used the third degree on Mrs. Giddings.”
Frank pulled off his bowler hat and hung it on a hook by the back door before trusting himself to respond to that. “I didn’t lay a hand on the woman, or on her son either, for that matter. I figured out from what he told me that he didn’t kill Anna Blake. I wasn’t even going to arrest him, but I guess his mother didn’t know that, which is why she decided to confess.”
She pulled off her gloves and then her hat, jabbing the lethal-looking hat pin back into it with far more force than necessary. “Something’s not right about this, Malloy,” she insisted, making her way into the kitchen without bothering to invite him to follow. He did anyway.
“I don’t know why you can’t just accept that the woman killed Anna Blake,” he tried. “She had every reason to, and she admitted it.”
“How did she even know where Anna lived?”
“She followed her son there that night. The boy had followed his father before, so he knew where the house was. Harold wanted to confront her. He wanted her to give back the money she’d taken from his father.”
She was stuffing kindling into the stove. “I’m sure Anna found that amusing.”
“The boy said she laughed at him, if that’s what you mean. Then he left, but his mother waited for a while, so the boy wouldn’t see her, and when she saw Anna leave the house, she realized this was her chance. She followed her to the park and stabbed her.”
Mrs. Brandt had lit the kindling and looked up while she waited for it to catch. “She stabbed her in broad daylight?” she asked.
“They were standing off by themselves. No one paid them any attention.”
“And Anna just lay there until morning?” She was feeding small sticks into the growing flames. “No one noticed her?”
“She must’ve walked a bit, trying to find some help. But if anyone saw her, they probably just thought she was drunk.”
“Wouldn’t they have seen the blood?”
“The coroner said she covered the wound with her shawl, probably trying to stop the bleeding.”
“And what about the man?”
“What man?”
“The man the coroner said Anna had been with before she died. The sponge, remember?”
He’d been trying not to think about it. “She probably had a liaison with somebody we don’t know anything about,” Frank suggested.
“Malloy, this doesn’t make any sense.”
“Murder doesn’t have to make sense,” he reminded her in exasperation. “In fact, it hardly ever does!”
“I’m not talking about the why. I’m talking about the how. Mrs. Giddings couldn’t have killed Anna Blake.”
“She confessed!” Frank reminded her angrily. “Why would she do that if she didn’t kill her?”
“You said it yourself, she thought you were going to arrest her son. She might have done it to protect him. But whatever her reason, she was lying. Mrs. Giddings did not kill Anna Blake.”
15
SARAH STUCK A LOG INTO THE STOVE AND SLAMMED THE door shut more loudly than necessary. Malloy was glaring at her, but she didn’t care. She was right, and she knew it.
“All right,” he said, pretending to be reasonable, “if Mrs. Giddings didn’t do it, then who did?”
“The same person who tried to kill Mr. Prescott.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yes, I do! The person who stabbed him promised him information about Anna Blake’s killer. And why would anyone else want to kill him?”