Murder on Washington Square (39 page)

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.

 

 

 

S
ARAH 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.”

“That must be Francine. Walcott told the other girls that Francine had found a rich husband and moved to the country,” Sarah remembered. “Were there other girls before her?”

“One that I know of. The lady next door told me her name was Cummings or something.”

“Is she the other body?”

“No, it’s a man. Probably the old man who owned this house. Walcott told people he’d sold out and moved away, but apparently, they’d killed him and put him in the cellar.”

Sarah groaned.

“Does your head hurt?” Harold asked. “He hit you before I could get to him.”

“Let’s hope he knocked some sense into her,” Malloy said without the slightest trace of sympathy.

Harold glared at him, but he didn’t notice. He was heading down the hall.

“Where are you going?” Sarah demanded.

“To see if Walcott has recovered enough from Harold’s strong right arm to answer a few questions.”

“I’m going, too!” Sarah said, jumping to her feet. She was instantly sorry. She hadn’t drunk very much of the tea, thank heaven, but enough to dull her senses. That, combined with the elbow she’d taken to her temple, was enough to make her wish she’d risen more slowly from her chair.

“Suit yourself,” Malloy said, but he didn’t wait for her.

“I’ll help you,” Harold said, taking her arm. “I want to hear what happened, too!”

Walcott was sitting in the parlor, hands tied in front of him and looking foolish wearing the housedress with his masculine haircut. A uniformed policeman stood guard over him. Someone had tied a bandage around his forehead, where Harold had struck him with the stick he’d been using to frighten the dogs away. He looked a little woozy and very angry.

“It’s late,” Malloy was saying, “and I’m tired, so please don’t make me exert myself, Walcott. Just tell me the whole story, and that cut on the head will be the worst thing that happens to you tonight.”

Walcott was trying to look bored, but when he saw Harold and Sarah come into the room, his expression hardened.
“You,”
he said. “This is all your fault!”

At first Sarah thought he was addressing her, but then she realized he was glaring at Harold. “Because he came here to the house?” she guessed.

“Anna was a fool!” Walcott said. “She was never satisfied. I told her over and over again not to be too greedy, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Is that why you killed her, Walcott?” Malloy asked. “Because she was greedy?”

“No,” Walcott said, turning his anger on Malloy. “Because she was stupid.”

“How was she stupid?”

“First she wouldn’t be satisfied with what Giddings could afford to pay her. She made him steal from his company, which drew attention. If they’d pressed charges against him, we would have had the police here in an instant, asking all kinds of questions. And then she picked Nelson Ellsworth. That was the stupidest thing of all.”

“He was a mistake, wasn’t he?” Sarah guessed. “Because he wasn’t married.”

“She was supposed to check!” Walcott shouted. “She just asked some kid on the street who lived in the house. She didn’t bother to find out that the Mrs. Ellsworth who lived there was his
mother
!”

“So that’s why you were so angry with Anna,” she said, earning a black look from Malloy, which she ignored. “Because she’d chosen a man who couldn’t be blackmailed and because she’d drawn attention with Mr. Giddings.”

“She was causing too much trouble, and she wouldn’t stop,” Walcott said coldly. “I had to get rid of her before she ruined us all.”

“Is that why you killed Francine, too?” Sarah asked. “Because she was causing trouble?”

“No, because she got sentimental.” Walcott gave her a condescending glare. “One of her gentlemen friends killed himself, and she started feeling guilty. She even started talking about doing penance for her sins and maybe even going to the police, so I had to silence her.”

“The way you silenced the old man who owned this house?” Malloy said.

“It wasn’t like that,” Walcott said. “The old man wasn’t supposed to die. I’d thought of this foolproof way to make money, and I needed a house. Ellie knew about this old man who had one.”

“Who’s Ellie?” Malloy asked. “Is she buried in the cellar, too?”

Walcott gave him an irritated glance. “Ellie Cunning-ham, and no, she’s not buried in the cellar or anywhere else. I met Ellie when we were in a play together and—”

“You’re an actor?” Sarah cried, earning another black look from Malloy.

“Yes, an excellent actor,” Walcott said smugly. “I fooled
you
, didn’t I? I fooled everyone.”

He was right, of course. “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” she said. “Please continue.”

“Ellie and I started this thing together. She charmed the old man into renting us a room. Told him I was her husband. We gave him a little opium to keep him happy so he wouldn’t notice the gentlemen callers Ellie had. We might’ve given him too much, or maybe his time was just up, but one day he just died. We decided no one would miss him, and why should we leave and let the house go to some stranger? So we buried him in the cellar and told people we’d bought the house from him and he’d moved away.”

“What did you do with this Ellie?” Malloy asked.

“Nothing. She got bored and wanted to go back on the stage. She went on tour, and I never saw her again. By then I had Francine, though, so we didn’t miss her.”

“And after Francine ended up in the cellar, you got Catherine and Anna,” Malloy guessed. “What I want to know is why Anna didn’t end up in the cellar like the others.”

Walcott gave him an impatient look. “She was supposed to, but . . . I gave Francine opium and she died real quick, like the old man,” he said, apparently forgetting his fiction that the old man’s death had been an accident. “But with Anna . . . she was the one who got the knife. She was going to stab
me
, so I was just defending myself. I was going to put her in the cellar with the others, except she wasn’t dead. She was just pretending. While I was outside, opening the door to put her body in before Catherine saw it, she got away. I tried to follow her, but I lost her in the dark.”

Sarah looked at Malloy, and she knew they were thinking the same thing. Now it all made sense! The reason Anna had left the house so late at night, alone, was that she was running for her life. They’d assumed she’d been trying to get home after being stabbed, but she’d really been trying to get away. She’d managed to reach the Square before collapsing. No one there would have helped her or even taken particular notice. They would just have assumed she was drunk and let her lie there and die.

“Why did you try to kill Webster Prescott?” Malloy asked.

Walcott managed a sneer. “Who says I did?”

Before anyone could blink, Malloy gave him a back-handed slap, surprising a gasp from Sarah and a cry of outrage from Harold.

Malloy turned to them in disgust. “If you don’t have the stomach for this, you better leave now.”

Harold looked pale, and Sarah felt very light-headed again. She’d known Malloy’s tactics could be rough, but seeing them was much worse than simply knowing about them. Still, he was dealing with a man who had killed four people. She took a deep breath and said, “You can go if you want to,” to the boy.

Harold shook his head determinedly.

Sarah looked up at Malloy. “We’ll stay.”

He narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t challenge her decision. “Don’t make me ask you again, Walcott,” he said.

“Prescott was too smart,” Walcott said quickly, obviously anxious to avoid another blow. “He’d found out about Anna, that she was an actress, and then he came here, asking more questions. He frightened Catherine, and I was afraid she might say something to him if he got her alone. I had to take care of him.”

“You must be losing your touch,” Malloy said. “First Anna gets away, then Prescott. You botched it
twice
with the reporter.”

Walcott gave Sarah a black look. “You turn up like a bad penny.”

“Don’t expect me to apologize,” she said.

“Why did you have to kill Catherine Porter?” Malloy asked.

Walcott sighed. “I’ll always regret that. I was very fond of Catherine, but she’d figured out what happened to Anna. I had to get away before you figured it out, too, and I couldn’t leave her behind to tell what she knew.”

“So you decided to pretend that you’d run away with Catherine and left your poor innocent wife behind,” Sarah guessed.

Walcott just gave her a derisive stare.

“Are we going to find your wife buried in the cellar, too?” Malloy asked him.

Walcott gave him a pitying look. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? There is no Mrs. Walcott. I’m the entire Walcott family.” He smiled at his own joke.

“I found the wigs and the fake beard in your bedroom,” Malloy said. “What gave you the idea to dress up like a woman in the first place?”

“After the old man died, I needed a wife,” Walcott said, obviously proud of his ingenuity. “Ellie couldn’t be living with a single man. That wouldn’t be respectable. So we invented Mrs. Walcott.”

“What do you mean, invented her?”

“I created the character,” Walcott bragged. “I became Mrs. Walcott whenever we felt that we needed her.”

“You’ve needed her a lot lately,” Sarah observed.

Walcott didn’t seem the least bit chagrined. “I found I enjoyed being Mrs. Walcott. And the gentlemen callers were much more comfortable dealing with a female landlady. It was my greatest role, and I believe I handled it admirably. I fooled all of you,” he reminded them again.