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.”
“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.”