“You
are
very pleasant company, Sarah,” he insisted. “I consider myself extremely fortunate to have met such a charming lady as yourself, and — ”
“Stop that nonsense,” she snapped. “I know exactly what I am, and charming isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe myself. Something else drew you to me, and if you don’t tell me what it is, I shall never speak to you again.”
“How heartless you are, Mrs. Brandt,” he tried in a feeble attempt at levity.
“I have many other undesirable qualities, too, and if you wish to see them, then by all means continue lying to me.”
“I’ve never lied to you,” he protested.
“There are lies of omission,” she reminded him sternly.
“You are a hard woman,” he said. “I wonder if even a policeman could tame you.”
“Richard,”
she warned.
“All right.” He lifted his white-gloved hand in mock surrender. “I was hoping that ... that you could help me understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Hazel. My wife. She ... Oh, God.” His voice broke, and Sarah was instantly contrite.
“I’m sorry, Richard! I can be so stupid sometimes. I warned you that I have bad qualities. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to — ”
“No, stop,” he said, clearing the emotion out of his voice. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. Just like it’s my fault that Hazel is dead.”
Sarah wasn’t sure she’d understood him. “Do you feel responsible for your wife’s death?”
“Of course I do.”
Now Sarah understood. “We always feel responsible when a loved one dies,” she assured him. “We blame ourselves for not loving them enough when they were with us, and we feel guilty for being the one still alive and — ”
“But do you feel
responsible
for your husband’s death, Sarah?” he challenged.
“I’ve wished a thousand times I’d stopped him from going out that night,” she admitted.
“But are you
responsible
for his death?” he insisted desperately. “Do you blame yourself for
killing
him?”
Sarah felt herself grow cold beneath the many layers of her fancy dress clothing. “Did you ... Did you cause your wife’s death, Richard?”
“As surely as if I’d plunged a knife into her heart!”
Sarah gasped, instinctively recoiling from him. Over the past few months, she’d heard several confessions of murder, but she’d never expected to hear one riding in a luxurious carriage while returning from the opera.
He muttered something that might have been a curse and slapped his thigh in anger, making her jump. “That’s not how I meant to tell you,” he said. “Why does nothing ever go the way I plan?”
Now Sarah was sliding her gloved hand over the side wall of the carriage, trying to find the door handle. Even if she found it, would she be able to get the door open and escape, hampered as she was by her borrowed finery? Once on the street, where could she go? Would the carriage driver help her or be loyal to his master? And where were they? She might actually be in more danger outside the carriage than inside with a confessed killer, depending on the neighborhood.
“Sarah?”
She started, instantly alert and ready to scream bloody murder, if necessary. She waited, holding her breath beneath her tightly laced corset.
“Oh, God, I’ve frightened you,” he said in despair. “I didn’t mean ... Please forgive me. I just ... Sometimes I get so angry when I remember ...”
He lifted a hand to his forehead, and his whole body seemed to sag in the shadowed darkness of the carriage.
Sarah forced herself to take a fortifying breath. “How did you kill her, Richard?” she asked softly, wary of angering him again.
“What?”
“If it was an accident, no one will blame — ”
He groaned, causing her to recoil again, but this time she had no farther to go because the carriage wall was against her back.
“How did I manage to make such a hash of this?” he asked of no one in particular. “Maybe I should let you think I killed her and turn myself in to your policeman. I’ve often thought I should be punished for what I did to her. Would your Mr. Malloy punish me, Sarah?”
“Richard, I don’t think — ”
“Enough of this,” he said, interrupting her. “I can’t allow you to be frightened anymore. I’m not a killer, Sarah. Not the way you think. But even still, I’m responsible for Hazel’s death.”
Sarah felt the knot in her stomach loosen just enough that she could breathe without conscious thought. “What do you mean?” she asked, glad that her voice sounded perfectly reasonable.
He sighed, and she heard the anguish that came straight from his soul. “I didn’t mean to make you think I’d taken her life,” he explained. “She did die of a fever. The doctors came, but they could do nothing for her. It was a fever she’d caught from those people.”
“What people?”
“The people she went to help. At the mission. You know what they’re like. Filthy and diseased, little more than vermin. All she wanted to do was help them, and they took her life instead.”
Sarah didn’t know how to reply. There was some truth to what he said. “How did she get involved with this place — what was it called?” she asked in hopes of finding a way to help him.
“It’s called the Prodigal Son Mission. A friend of hers had been approached for a donation. She and Hazel went down to see what kind of work they were doing. The next thing I know, she’s going down there every week to help.”
“I take it you didn’t approve.”
She expected an explosion of frustrated anger, caused by his guilt at having allowed his wife to do something of which he didn’t approve, but he made no response at all for a long moment.
“It’s worse than that,” he said at last. “I ... I didn’t care.”
Now Sarah was thoroughly confused. “If you didn’t mind that she went, then you can’t blame yourself for what happened.”
He sighed in the darkness. “No, you don’t understand. It’s not that I didn’t mind. I didn’t care. I didn’t care what she did or how she spent her time, just so long as she didn’t bother me.”
Sarah recoiled instinctively, this time out of aversion instead of fear.
“You see,” he accused. “You hate me from just hearing about my behavior. I’m despicable.”
“Oh, no!” she tried. “I don’t hate you.”
“Don’t try to spare my feelings. You can’t hate me more than I hate myself. I was a selfish cad. I didn’t know how fortunate I was to have the love of such a wonderful, selfless woman. I would have bought her anything she wanted, but all she wanted was a family — the one thing my money couldn’t buy. When the children she wanted didn’t come, she tried to find other things to fill her life.”
“That’s only natural,” Sarah assured him. “I know many people think women should be content with managing their households and visiting their friends, but that’s not enough for some of us.”
“It wasn’t enough for Hazel. She was too restless, too...”
“Intelligent?” Sarah supplied when he hesitated.
She could feel his sharp glance. Few men acknowledged that females could be intelligent.
“Yes,” he admitted after a moment. “I think that may have been it. She was bored with the things women usually do. After she ... was gone, I remembered things she’d said. She’d tried to explain it to me, but I was too busy to listen. Too busy to care. And then it was too late.”
“Are you sure it’s too late?” Sarah asked softly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you admitted that you sought me out because you wanted me to help you understand her. That is what you were saying, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” he said wearily. “I had this insane notion that if I could figure out what drew her to that place, I might be able to understand ...”
“Understand why she died?” Sarah guessed.
“I know it sounds foolish.”
“It doesn’t sound foolish at all.” Sarah had experienced the same need after Tom died. If only she’d known what he’d been doing the night he was killed, and who he’d seen, and who had killed him and why ... It was foolish. Knowing all that wouldn’t bring Tom back. It might, however, bring her some measure of peace. “How can I help you?”
“I don’t think you can,” he said sadly. “I’m sorry I burdened you with all of this. Please forget we ever had this conversation, and forgive me if you can.”
“Nonsense. Your wife sounds like someone I would have liked to know, and now I’m curious about this mission myself. They must do wonderful work there, or she never would have continued to support it. Perhaps they need our help. We owe it to her memory to find out.”
“You don’t need to involve yourself in this, Sarah. I’m perfectly capable of making the necessary inquiries myself. It will be my sackcloth and ashes.”
“You forget that I owe you a favor, Richard,” she said, reminding him of what he had done for her neighbor, Nelson Ellsworth. He hadn’t been entirely willing to perform this favor, but he still could have refused outright and ruined an innocent man. Sarah felt he should be encouraged to continue on the proper path. “I will consider it my duty to help you learn everything you can about the Prodigal Son Mission.”
Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy grumbled as he pulled his coat collar up against the early morning chill. Any sane man would be home in bed, enjoying his Sabbath rest. Trouble was, on certain subjects Frank Malloy wasn’t exactly sane. He’d been forced to acknowledge that recently. That was why he’d left his warm blankets and trudged out into the deserted city streets this morning. He knew the early daylight hours of a Sunday were the best time to catch miscreants unawares — not only with their pants down but completely off as they slept away their Saturday night revelries.
He walked down the filthy alley behind a row of tenement buildings. He’d been here twice before and found no one in residence, although the place was clearly occupied on a regular basis. He’d received a tip from a drunken prisoner that he would find the answer to an old mystery here. The drunk had been interested in being released from jail in exchange for this information. Frank had been happy to oblige him, figuring Ol’ Finnegan would get picked up again within the week anyway. The favor he had granted was little enough, even if the information proved worthless. And if it wasn’t worthless ...
Frank stopped and looked around for any signs of life. Even in daylight the alley was dark, shadowed by the five- and six-story buildings looming over it. The sun’s rays would reach it for only a brief period during high noon before moving on to warm other, more deserving parts of the city.
Above him stretched a cat’s cradle of clotheslines, strung between the two buildings that backed to either side of the alley. Most of the laundry had been removed in honor of the Sabbath, but here and there a lonely pair of drawers or a tattered sheet hung limply. The porches that stretched along the backs of each building on every floor were cluttered with bundles of belongings and stray pieces of furniture that wouldn’t fit into the cramped flats or had been removed for the night to make room for sleeping. More clothes hung over a railing here and there, forgotten.
The alley itself was littered with the debris of many people living tightly packed together. Garbage was piled next to a crudely constructed children’s “fort.” A reeking outhouse stood beside wooden washtubs. The cobbled ground was stained with decades of discarded waste, human and otherwise. A mangy dog lay in the shelter of an overturned crate, but Frank’s arrival hadn’t disturbed him. Either he didn’t care or he was dead.
Nestled in the midst of the alley was a compact dwelling of sorts, made of an odd assortment of materials obviously scavenged from many different locations over an extended period of time. Some tin here, some brick there, and many sizes, shapes, and colors of wood everywhere. The window holes were shuttered from within with what appeared to be crudely constructed wooden planks. The door had been scavenged from an old building and seemed as solid as it was scarred. A bent and battered stovepipe extended above the ramshackle roof, but no smoke drifted from it. If anyone was inside at this early hour, he wasn’t stirring yet.
After taking one last look around for lurking danger, Frank strode up to the worn door and pounded on it. “Open up, Danny!” he shouted.
He knew this would draw as many of the neighbors as could raise their aching heads out onto the surrounding balconies to see what was going on. Entertainment was at a premium in this section of town, and free entertainment was always a draw.
Without waiting for a response, he tried the door, putting his shoulder to it when it didn’t open immediately. To his surprise, it wasn’t a lock that prevented the door from opening but a sack of rags lying on the floor in front of it. One good push sent it rolling away, allowing the door to swing wide.
Even though the alley was deeply shadowed, he still needed a moment for his eyes to become accustomed to the darker darkness within. For an instant, he had the impression of having disturbed a rat’s nest. The floor seemed to come alive. Piles of rags — including the one that had blocked the door — and dirty blankets trembled and rose up, becoming children of varying sizes, shapes, and genders. They were groaning and cursing, and a dozen pairs of eyes glared at him murderously in the morning haze.
“Danny’s the one I want,” Frank bellowed, using the voice that turned hardened criminals to jelly.
A girl screamed, drawing Frank’s attention to the far corner. A young fellow, a few years older and much larger than those sleeping on floor, had pushed himself up to a half-sitting position from where he’d lain on a thin, straw mattress. The girl who had screamed was one of two sharing the makeshift bed with him. Neither of the girls wore much in the way of clothes, and Danny didn’t seem to be wearing any at all. From what Frank could see of the girls, which was quite a bit, he knew they couldn’t be more than twelve, if that.