“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?”
“A hundred reasons! He’s a newspaper reporter!” Malloy was shouting now.
“Keep your voice down,” she cautioned. “You don’t want Mrs. Ellsworth to hear you. She’d be over here in a second to find out what’s wrong.”
He looked like he might explode, but he drew a deep breath, let it out on a long sigh, and forced himself to sit down at the kitchen table.
Sarah started making coffee while Malloy got his temper under control.
As she set the pot on the warming stove, he said, “Just because the person-and I’m glad you’re willing to admit it might not have been a female-who stabbed Prescott lured him with a promise of information about Anna Blake, that doesn’t mean he-or she-had any or even knew anything about the murder at all. It just means that person knew this was a sure way to get Prescott to a private meeting.”
Sarah didn’t like this. He was starting to make sense. “Maybe you’re right, but maybe I’m right, too. What if the person who killed Anna was afraid Prescott was getting too close to the truth?”
“How would he-or she-know that?”
“Because of Prescott’s stories in the paper,” she reminded him impatiently. “He was the one who discovered that Anna was an actress and-”
“You were the one who discovered that. Prescott just happened to be the only reporter we told.”
“Fair enough, but still, he was the first one to write about it. If someone was afraid of what he was finding out, they could have decided the safest thing to do was kill him.”
“Wait a minute,” Malloy said, holding up his hand. “How would they know it was Prescott writing the stories?”
Sarah had been rummaging around in her cupboard, looking for something to eat, but this brought her head up sharply. She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came for a moment while she thought this through. “You’re right!” she said finally. “We knew Prescott was writing the stories, but no one else would.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Malloy said. “It’s not like they put the reporter’s name on his stories or anything. So it had to be someone who knew Prescott was the one writing them, or who at least had heard of him.”
“The Walcotts knew Prescott,” she remembered. “He’d been to the house that day we told him Anna was an actress. Then he went back later, right before he was attacked, after he’d talked to her friends at the theater. He was asking a lot of questions, and Mrs. Walcott got very upset.”
“Did Prescott tell you this?”
“No, Catherine Porter did.”
He frowned, surprised and not happy about it. “When did you talk to Catherine Porter?”
“Yesterday. She told me a lot of things, and that’s why I was looking for you. I thought you needed to know them, too.”
“You went to the boarding house?”
“Yes. I just couldn’t make sense of what had happened that night, and I thought Catherine might be able to answer a few of my questions.”
Malloy rubbed a hand over his face wearily, although what he had to be weary about, she had no idea. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me everything Catherine Porter told you?” he suggested tightly.
“I want to get something to eat first,” she said. “You promised Mrs. Ellsworth you’d take care of me, but I can see you have no intention of it.” Turning her full attention to the cupboard for a few seconds, she finally found a tin of peaches and started prying it open with the can opener.
Malloy sighed again, this time in martyrdom, and rose to his feet. “Sit down,” he commanded her.
“But-”
“Sit down! Or I’ll get Mrs. Ellsworth over here to make you.”
That was an effective threat. Sarah sat, mystified as to what might happen next. To her surprise, Malloy finished opening the can of peaches, poured them out into a bowl, and set it in front of her.
Sarah looked up at him, still not quite certain what to make of this. “I’ll need something… a fork,” she ventured.
To her amazement, he located one without fumbling and put it on the table beside her. “Eat,” was all he said.
So she did. And while she did, he found some eggs in her icebox, which was still fairly cool even though she hadn’t replenished the ice in several days. Then he located a piece of cheese that was too hard to eat and a dried-up onion. In a few minutes, he’d chopped the onion and put it in a pan to sizzle in some bacon grease he’d spooned from the container by the stove. Then he broke up the cheese and threw it into the pan with the eggs, and before Sarah could quite comprehend what was happening, Malloy set the finished concoction down in front of her.
While he was pouring them each a cup of coffee, she looked up at him in awe and asked, “When did you learn to cook?”
“This isn’t cooking,” he said. “This is basic survival. How do you think men keep from starving when they don’t have a woman to do for them? Now eat.”
Sarah had forgotten to finish eating the peaches while she’d watched him, and the aroma of the frying onions had set her mouth to watering. She tucked into the omelet with shameless enthusiasm, not pausing until every bite of it was gone.