“Did your husband admit to killing Anna?” Sarah asked, hating to cause the woman more pain, but knowing it was necessary. “Did he tell you how it happened?”
“Is your tea too hot?” she asked suddenly, her tone oddly insistent. “Or did I make it too sweet?”
Too sweet. A memory stirred, the faintest of warnings. Sarah looked down at the cup, trying to remember, but a sudden disturbance distracted her. Someone was yelling outside, and several dogs began barking furiously. “What on earth?” she asked, quickly setting her cup and saucer down. She almost missed the table, and the cup teetered dangerously before Mrs. Walcott caught it.
“It’s nothing to be alarmed about, just those stray dogs,” Mrs. Walcott said reassuringly. “We can’t seem to get rid of them.”
But someone was calling Sarah’s name, the person who was shouting over the barking dogs. She was sure of it. She stood up, but she must have risen too quickly, because she felt dizzy. Something is wrong with the tea! her mind cried, but she couldn’t seem to focus on what it might be.
“Mrs. Brandt! Get out of there! Come quick!” the voice was calling, and Sarah responded instinctively, moving toward the door.
Mrs. Walcott grabbed her arm to stop her, but she shook her off. “Someone needs help,” she said, her words sounding oddly slow to her own ears.
“Mrs. Brandt! Get out of there!” the voice was screaming, desperate now. It was vaguely familiar, the panic unmistakable.
Mrs. Walcott grabbed her again, her hands amazingly strong, like a man’s. Sarah shoved her away, panic making her stronger, too. The woman hit a table, lost her balance, and fell, but Sarah couldn’t stop to help her. She had to get to the voice.
She was running now, through the house, toward the kitchen, even though her feet felt as if they weren’t even touching the ground. The dogs, she knew, were in the backyard. They wanted to get in the cellar. Wasn’t that what had happened in her dream? She was so confused. She only knew she had to get to the backyard.
The gaslights were on in the kitchen. She saw the back door and made for it. Mrs. Walcott was behind her, shoes scuffling on the bare floor as she ran to catch up. Sarah threw open the door and launched herself out onto the porch. She caught one of the posts to keep from falling headlong down the steps.
Vaguely aware that Mrs. Walcott had followed her onto the porch, Sarah concentrated on trying to make sense of what she saw in the backyard. Harold Giddings was waving a stick, trying to chase away a pack of stray dogs who were, in turn, trying to get past him into the open cellar doors. He was alternately screaming at the dogs and screaming for Sarah.
An elderly woman, in her nightclothes and carrying a lamp, stood peering at the curious scene from the next porch. Other lights were coming on, and people were starting to shout complaints about the disturbance.
“Harold!” Sarah shouted over the din, and the boy looked up.
“Mrs. Brandt! There’s somebody dead down there!” he cried, pointing toward the open cellar doors.
She leaned forward so she could see into the opening. Someone had lit a lamp in the cellar, and there she saw a large brown dog, the one she herself had tried to shoo away the other day. He was digging furiously, and down in the hole he had dug was what appeared to be a mass of red hair.
Red hair. Irish girl. Francine. Moved to the country.
Sarah wanted to scream, but the sound lodged somewhere in her chest. Behind her, someone gasped, and she turned to see Mrs. Walcott. Except her cap had come off in the struggle, and now Sarah could see what it was about her hair she’d been trying to hide. It was cut like a man’s. Now she was Mr. Walcott without the beard!
And whoever she was, she was running away. No, Mr. Walcott was running away, and he was the killer!
Something in Sarah seemed to explode, flooding her with fury. Somehow she forced her sluggish body to move, and then she was running down the hallway after Walcott. “Help me, Harold!” she screamed, praying he heard her. Remembering the hands that had tried to hold her from answering Harold’s call, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to restrain Walcott by herself, but she’d do it as long as she could.
The woman’s skirts impeded Walcott’s progress enough that Sarah caught him as he was opening the front door. Not knowing what else to do, she threw both arms around his waist and fell to her knees. She wasn’t sure if she’d intended to do that or if her knees had simply given out, but her dead weight had stopped him, so she hung on for dear life, still screaming for Harold to help her.
Walcott struggled fiercely, and something struck her in the temple, sending stars streaking across her vision, but she didn’t let go. She wouldn’t let go, not until someone came to help. She wasn’t going to let Walcott get away with murder. Then Walcott was falling, and someone else was there. Arms and legs, thrashing around, and a stick rising and crashing down. Then everything was still.
17
SARAH PRETENDED SHE DIDN’T HEAR MALLOY SWEARING when he was out in the backyard, looking in the cellar. She held the cool cloth to her bruised forehead and closed her eyes, wondering if the dizziness was from the blow she had taken or from the opium in the tea.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Brandt?” Harold Giddings asked solicitously.
“Yes, thanks to you,” Sarah said, opening her eyes to smile up at him. She was sitting at the table in the Walcotts’ kitchen. “Have I told you how glad I am you followed me here?”
“At least three times,” Harold said, taking a seat opposite her. He rubbed his eyes as if trying to erase a vision. “I don’t guess I’ll ever get that picture out of my mind. The dog digging down in the cellar and all that hair. That poor woman didn’t hardly have any skin left on her face.”
“The memory will fade in time,” Sarah said, recalling some of the terrible things she’d managed to push to the back of her memory. “Why did you go in the backyard anyway?”
“After I followed you here, I thought somebody might see me if I was on the street, so I went around back. The cellar doors were open and there was a bunch of dogs in there, digging at something. I could smell something dead, so I figured it was an animal. I scared most of them off, but that one wouldn’t pay me any mind at all. I couldn’t see much, but then the kitchen lights came on. Then I could make out a lantern sitting on the cellar steps. I had to wait until the person left the kitchen. Then I lit the lamp and saw what they’d been digging up… Well, that’s when I started yelling for you to get out of there.”
“Thank heaven you did. She was trying to poison me. I guess I would’ve ended up down in the cellar, too.” Sarah shuddered at the horrible thought. Another terrible thing she would have to make herself forget.
“That’s exactly where you would’ve ended up,” Malloy said, coming in from outside. He was angry, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d almost gotten herself killed. “It would’ve been crowded though. Walcott’s already got two people down there, and we found Catherine Porter’s body in her bedroom. She was wrapped up, ready to go down as soon as it got dark. Walcott already had the hole dug.”
Sarah felt the gorge rising in her throat, but she swallowed it down, determined not to be sick in front of Malloy. She was already humiliated enough. “Poor Catherine.”
Malloy made a rude noise. “Poor Catherine? She was probably blackmailing some unfortunate man just like Anna Blake was.”
He was right, of course, but she certainly hadn’t deserved to die for it. And nobody deserved to be buried in a cellar. “Wait, did you say two bodies were already buried in the cellar?” she asked.
“Yeah. The one Harold found was the red-haired girl who used to live here.”