Murder on Washington Square by Victoria Thompson Page A

her when she came into the bank . . .”
     
    Sarah’s plan to get into the Ellsworth house was perfect, she realized, unless Webster Prescott was one of the reporters. He’d know she wasn’t just an innocent neighbor coming over to borrow a cup of sugar. Fortunately, he wasn’t among the men who surrounded her the instant she started next door.
    “Hey, miss—”
    “Who are you?”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Do you know Nelson Ellsworth?”
    The questions came simultaneously, so Sarah didn’t have to feign confusion. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” she demanded with an outrage that wasn’t the least feigned.
    A chorus of voices answered her, naming the Sun , the Commercial Advertiser , the Evening Post , the Mail and Express , the Daily Graphic , the Herald , the Examiner , and even the Times , virtually all of the newspapers being published in the city. If one of them was, like Webster Prescott, from the World , she didn’t hear.
    “I only read the News ,” she said haughtily, naming the penny scandal sheet that circulated mainly in the tenements, and tried to force her way past them.
    She got a few steps farther when someone called, “Nelson Ellsworth killed a woman last night. What do you have to say about that?”
    Sarah gave him her most withering glare. “I say that’s preposterous! Now get out of my way before I start screaming. I assure you there are many people on this street who will immediately come to my rescue.”
    She didn’t know if it was her tone or her threat that moved them, but they let her pass, although they kept close, hovering at the foot of the porch steps. Sarah pounded on the front door and called, “Mrs. Ellsworth, it’s Sarah! Let me in!”
    The door opened almost instantly, telling Sarah that her neighbor had witnessed her approach. By the time she had slipped inside and Mrs. Ellsworth had slammed the door shut, the reporters were on the porch, screaming their questions. The old woman drove home the bolt an instant before they started pounding on the door.
    Mrs. Ellsworth looked as if she were ready to collapse, and Sarah took her arm and led her through the house to the kitchen in the rear, as far from the front door as they could get. The pounding lasted only another minute or two before the reporters gave up and went back to their vigil. They probably thought they’d lie in wait for Sarah to come out again. She’d worry about that later.
    “Nelson?” Mrs. Ellsworth asked weakly when Sarah had seated her at her kitchen table.
    “He’s sitting at my kitchen table at this very moment. Malloy is with him.”
    She covered her face with both hands. “Thank God! I’ve been so frightened. I should have known Mr. Malloy would help us, though. He’ll straighten everything out.” Then she dropped her hands and turned her moist gaze to Sarah. “Why didn’t you bring him here, though?”
    “Because of the reporters,” Sarah said. “We came in the back door so they wouldn’t see us. We’ll bring him over when it gets dark,” she added rashly. She’d have to get Malloy to agree to that first, but what other choice did he have? The two men could hardly stay at her house all night. Of course, Malloy might also decide to lock Nelson up again.
    “How could this have happened?” Mrs. Ellsworth was saying. “Nelson doesn’t even know this woman—what was her name?”
    “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?”