A few minutes later Sarah was outside Faircloths when the girls came out at the end of their shift. She tried to imagine Gerda working in this place, sitting over a sewing machine for long hours, making men’s shirts, then coming out at the end of the day, tired but rejuvenated at the prospect of going dancing that evening and meeting a young man who might marry her and change her life.
Of course, changing her life might not necessarily have been a change for the better. She would most likely have traded her good times for life in a tenement apartment with too many children and too little money. Unfortunately, Gerda’s only alternatives would have been prostitution and an early death or spinsterhood, living on the charity and goodwill of relatives. When Sarah thought of Lars Otto’s potential for showing goodwill, she knew why women chose spinsterhood only when they had no other choice.
At first Sarah was afraid she might miss Gerda’s friends in the crowd of girls pouring out of the building, but then she saw Bertha’s outrageous hat with the red bird on top, and she called out to attract her attention. Bertha was surprised, and as Sarah had expected, she directed the attention of the other two girls, who were with her, to Sarah. They made their way over to where she stood beside the building.
“Mrs. Brandt, what’re you doing here?” Lisle asked “Did you find out something?”
“Did you find the killer?” Bertha asked, saying what Lisle wouldn’t.
“Not yet, which is why I need your help. Is there someplace we can go to talk? I’ll treat you to supper,” she added when the girls looked doubtful.
She knew that the girls frequently skipped lunch to have money for their frolics, and they eagerly accepted the invitation. They found a German beer garden nearby, where they feasted on bratwurst and sauerkraut and chunks of freshly baked bread.
“What do you want from us?” Lisle asked when they were settled at their table, heaping plates in front of them.
“I need to know the names of all the men that Gerda had been seeing right before she died,” Sarah explained. “My friend Detective Malloy is going to question the friends of all the other murdered girls, too. We’re going to try to narrow down the list of suspects to men that all the girls knew. Try to think of men who paid Gerda particular attention those last days.”
The girls thought and argued. “He did so dance with her!” “No, he didn’t!” It was a frustrating process, and Sarah was afraid it might be equally fruitless since evenings at the dance halls seemed to run together in their minds.
Still, she jotted down every name the girls mentioned in relation to Gerda, no matter how casual the contact. Sarah thought perhaps the killer wouldn’t want to have been seen with the victim very much before the crime. Perhaps he’d kept their contact mostly private. The thought was discouraging. That would mean he was clever enough to hide his identity from everyone.
“And there was George, don’t forget,” Bertha reminded them. “He bought her that fancy hat.”
Hetty nodded grimly. “George liked her a lot. He got mad one night when she danced with somebody else.”
“What night was that?” Sarah asked, her interest quickened. “Was it near the time she died? Was it before or after he gave her the hat?”
“After, I think,” Bertha said, glancing at Lisle, who was frowning. Plainly, she didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken.
Sarah waited for her verdict. “Yes, it was after,” Lisle reluctantly recalled. “She was wearing the hat that night, I think. That’s what started the fuss. George thought she should only dance with him, but she was tired of him.”
“That’s right,” Hetty remembered. “She’d found somebody she liked better. He had more money to spend, too. He’d treated her to dinner at a real nice place, she said.”
The other girls nodded.
“And George was jealous,” Sarah guessed.
“I guess you could call it that,” Bertha allowed as the girls exchanged a look.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not like George was in love with her or anything,” Lisle explained. She sounded almost as if she were defending him. “He just… he wanted to…”
“She’d let him do it,” Hetty said baldly when Lisle couldn’t find the proper words. “He wanted to do it some more, but Gerda was finished with him once she got the hat.”
“Was Gerda fickle?” Sarah asked.
The girls gave her a blank stare, not understanding.
“Did she often change her mind about which man she liked best?” Sarah tried.
“She never liked any of them,” Bertha said. “Not really.”
Lisle nodded her agreement. “She never cared for anybody much. She just went with anyone who could show her some fun.”
“She liked a man who’d treat her,” Hetty added. “The more he’d spend on her, the better she liked him.”
“And she’d found someone more generous than George, so naturally, he was angry,” Sarah said. “Do you know George’s last name or where he lives?”
“He wouldn’t kill anyone,” Lisle said too quickly, and Sarah remembered that Lisle had also taken a gift from him. That meant she’d had a relationship with him, too. Did Lisle have tender feelings for him? If so, she’d better tread softly.
“I didn’t say I thought he was the killer,” Sarah said. “But maybe he would remember who the other man was or know his name. We need to question everyone who might know anything at all. It’s the only way we’ll find Gerda’s killer before he kills someone else.”
This sobered them instantly. After a moment Lisle said, “I never heard George’s last name.”
“I think he said Smith, but that’s probably a lie,” Hetty said. “Sometimes they don’t tell you their real names.”
Sarah could believe that. She wrote “George Smith” with a question mark. “What else do you know about him?”
“He sells ladies notions to the stores in town. Siegel-Cooper, Ehrichs, Simpson-Crawford, Adams & Co., and O’Neils,” Hetty said, naming all the big department stores on Sixth Avenue. “At least he claimed he did,” she added.
“He had nice things in his sample case, that’s certain,” Lisle said. Sarah thought she sounded wistful.
“Have you seen him lately?” Sarah asked.
The girls tried to remember. “I don’t think so,” Bertha finally decided. The others agreed.
“He ain’t been around since Gerda…” Lisle didn’t have to finish the thought.
“Please let me know if you see him in any of the dance halls, won’t you?” Sarah asked. “And it wouldn’t hurt to ask around and find out if anyone knows more about him.”
They looked grim now. Plainly, they didn’t relish the role of detective the way Sarah did.
“Do you know any of the other girls who were killed?” she asked. “Well enough to know who their male companions might have been?”
They considered.
“I used to see Luisa at the dances sometimes,” Hetty allowed.
The others weren’t sure. Obviously, they weren’t too interested in which other females attended the dances.
“Do you know any of their families?” Sarah asked. “Maybe you could introduce me.”
“Why would you want to meet them?” Lisle asked.
“To find out what men they knew in common.”
The girls looked at her pityingly. “Their families ain’t likely to know such a thing,” Lisle said. “You’d best ask their friends. Like us, that’s who’d know.”
They were right, of course.
“Do you know any of their friends, then?” she asked with a smile.
Two MORE DAYS passed before Malloy came in response to the note she’d sent him. She was sitting in her backyard, savoring the cooler evening breeze and feeling awful because she’d lost a baby that afternoon. The cord had been wrapped around his throat, and he’d suffocated before ever seeing the world. Sarah knew there was nothing she could have done, no way she could have known or prevented it from happening, but she still hated failure. The mother had been inconsolable. She’d lost another one before this, too, a baby born before its time and too small to live. She had placed all her hopes on this one since she’d managed to carry it to term. The babe had been perfectly formed, too. All his fingers and toes and a face like an angel. But dead. Sarah had tried every trick she knew to revive him, but to no avail.