“Anna Blake,” Sarah supplied, “and I’m afraid he did know her, very well, in fact.”
“That’s impossible! He never said a thing to me!” she insisted. “I know all of Nelson’s friends.”
“I don’t know why he didn’t introduce her to you,” Sarah said, although she had a very good idea. “But I met her.”
“You? Why?” Mrs. Ellsworth was obviously overwhelmed by all of this and now she was also offended by what Sarah was telling her.
“You’ll have to discuss that with Nelson. He asked for my… discretion.”
“He didn’t want me to know about her?” The old woman was incredulous. “What kind of a woman was she?”
“The kind who gets murdered in Washington Square in the middle of the night,” Sarah said baldly.
“Oh, my poor Nelson!” she wailed. “What has he done?”
Sarah wished she could answer “nothing,” but instead she took the old woman in her arms and offered what comfort she could.
“So when Anna told me about… about the child… I… I…”
Frank signed impatiently. Nelson was making the whole sordid story even worse with his delicacy. He wasn’t sure why Nelson should care about protecting Anna Blake’s good name now that she was dead, but he supposed that’s what a gentleman might do.
“What did you do?” he prompted with more patience than he felt.
“I… You aren’t going to like this part,” he warned nervously.
Frank hadn’t liked any of it so far. Ellsworth had pretty much given him more than enough reason to suspect him of murdering Anna Blake. Broughan would’ve had him locked in a cell down at The Tombs by now. “Tell me anyway,” he said, not bothering to sound patient.
“I… Well, naturally, when Anna told me there might be a child, I… I went to Mrs. Brandt.”
“You what?” Frank nearly shouted.
Ellsworth flinched. “She’s a midwife,” he reminded Frank unnecessarily. “I thought… Well, Anna was an innocent girl. How could she be sure? I don’t know much about these things, but I do know… I mean, I’ve heard my friends talk. The ones who are married. Sometimes a woman thinks… but then she finds out she’s wrong. I would’ve married her either way, of course,” he added hastily, “but she was so frightened. And she had this idea that she wasn’t good enough for me, or at least that’s what she said. I know, it doesn’t make any sense,” he said to Frank’s skepticism, “but I thought maybe she just couldn’t stand the thought of being married to a man like me. I’m not very exciting or romantic. Not at all the sort of man a young woman would be interested in.”
Frank was hardly listening to his protests because something suddenly didn’t make any sense at all. “She didn’t want to marry you? Even after you’d seduced her?”
A pained expression twisted his face. “I can’t blame her, of course, and as much as I would have gladly taken her as my wife, I didn’t want to force her. If she married me and then found out there wasn’t a… a necessity for it, well, she’d hate me, don’t you think? How could I live with myself?”
“So you told Mrs. Brandt your problem. What did she do?” Frank prodded, hoping that if he heard more, the story would start to make sense again.
“She accompanied me to Anna’s rooming house. I thought perhaps she could… well, make sure of Anna’s condition.”
Ellsworth was right. Frank really didn’t like this part. “And did she?”
“She didn’t have a chance. Anna was terribly upset when I introduced her. She thought…”
“She thought what?” Frank was very much afraid he was going to have to get rough with Ellsworth after all, just to hurry things along.
“I know this will sound ridiculous to you, but Anna thought that Mrs. Brandt and I were… romantically involved.”
Frank did think it sounded ridiculous. “Why would she think that?”
“I told you, she’s very innocent,” Nelson said, unconsciously using the present tense. “She couldn’t imagine any other reason why another woman would have accompanied me there. And nothing I said would reassure her, so Mrs. Brandt didn’t get to speak with her at all.”
“If this woman didn’t marry you, what was she going to do?” Frank asked, wondering if Sarah Brandt had been as suspicious of this story as Frank was becoming.
“She… well, you understand her parents were dead. Her mother had just passed away, of course, and she had no one to turn to.”
Which was a very good reason to marry someone like Nelson, who had a steady job and a comfortable income. And an even better reason to trick him into marriage with an imaginary pregnancy, if necessary. “She had you to turn to,” Frank reminded him.
“She was an honorable woman, Mr. Malloy,” Nelson said defensively. “She felt unworthy, after what had happened between us. She was even too embarrassed to meet my mother. She just wanted to go away where no one knew her.”
“So she and the baby could starve to death?” Frank suggested curiously.
A scarlet flush flooded Nelson’s face. “I would have helped her financially, of course. In fact, that’s all she wanted of me. I told you she was honorable.”
Or crazy, Frank thought. Why take money to raise an illegitimate child alone when you could be married? What was wrong with the woman? Could she possibly have been so stupid? He’d have to find out more about this Anna Blake. Maybe when he had, he’d be able to make sense of this. Meanwhile, he’d break one of his cardinal rules and have a taste of Sarah Brandt’s whiskey. After this, he’d earned it.
He and Nelson sat in silence for what seemed a long time until they heard a commotion at the front door.
“Stay here,” Frank warned. “We don’t want anyone to see you.”
He got to the front room just as Sarah Brandt slammed the door behind her. The shadows of the clamoring reporters danced on the other side of the frosted glass window, and their voices were muffled shouts. “They found out who I am,” she said accusingly.
“That was pretty easy to do, considering they know you live next door,” Frank replied.
“No,” she said in disgust, “I don’t mean they found out I’m Nelson’s neighbor. They found out I’m your ‘lady friend.’ ”
“My what?” he asked with a frown, but she was already stomping past him on her way back to the kitchen, leaving him no choice but to follow.
“How are you doing?” she asked Ellsworth in a gentle tone she had never used with Frank.
“I’m fine,” he said, although he was obviously far from fine. “How is my mother taking all of this? She isn’t strong, you know. The shock must have been awful.”
“Now that she knows you aren’t locked in jail, she’s doing much better. I promised her you’d come home after it gets dark and no one can see you.” She looked up at Frank, daring him to contradict her.
“I don’t see any reason why he can’t go home tonight,” he said mildly, “so long as he gives me his word he won’t try to run away.”
“Run away?” Ellsworth echoed indignantly. “I don’t have anything to run away from!”
Frank could have given him a long list of things he should run away from, but he said, “Are you hungry, Ellsworth? Because I sure am.”
Mrs. Brandt gave him an impatient look, but she turned away and began rummaging around for something edible.
“I don’t think I could eat anything,” Ellsworth said, “but a cup of tea would be very nice.”
“You should try to eat,” Frank said, not entirely unselfishly. If Ellsworth didn’t want anything, she might not fix anything. “You’ll need your strength.”
“Malloy is right,” she said, surprising Frank. He thought this might be the first time she’d admitted he’d been right about anything. “And I think we could all use some tea.”
Soon the kitchen was uncomfortably warm, in spite of the evening chill that had settled over the city. Frank stayed there, though. He was enjoying the comfortable domesticity of the scene. For once he needed no excuse to watch Sarah Brandt to his heart’s content.