The maid nodded reluctantly, then slipped away down the hall. Catherine Porter led Sarah into the parlor and closed the doors behind them. When she turned, Sarah instantly saw the change in her. The last time they had met, Catherine had been worried, but now she looked almost frightened. Her face was pale and lines of strain had formed around her mouth. Her youth and health had been her most appealing features, but those seemed to have faded, leaving her worn and lifeless.

“I don’t know anything about Anna’s death,” she said before Sarah could even think of which question she wanted to ask first.

“You said you were asleep when Anna left the house that night. What time do you usually retire?”

“I don’t know. Nine o’clock. Or ten, maybe. I don’t pay attention. I go to bed when I’m tired.” She walked over to the sofa and sank down wearily.

“You go to bed after dark, though,” Sarah guessed, taking a seat opposite her.

“Sure. I’m not a farmer,” she said derisively. She was lying, then, about having been asleep when Anna left the house, which meant she’d also been lying about not knowing why Anna had left.

“I guess you got in the habit of staying up late when you worked in the theater,” Sarah tried.

“You have to,” she said. “The plays are at night, and by the time you get changed and out of the… Wait, how did you know I worked in the theater?” Her eyes widened, and she looked wary.

“You told me,” Sarah reminded her, smiling with what she hoped was reassurance. “Your friend Irene said you and Anna and Francine were all actresses.”

“Irene,” Catherine scoffed. “She’s no friend of mine.”

“Was Francine a friend of yours?”

“I knew her, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did you live here when she did?”

“She left before I came.”

“Where did she go?” Sarah asked, wondering if this Francine might be able to tell her anything.

“I don’t know. Some place in the country. She got a rich man to take care of her, so she left.”

Sarah could just imagine. Most likely, the “rich” man was no longer rich, nor was he spending time with Francine anymore. “Is that what you were planning to do? Find some rich man to take care of you?”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Catherine pointed out. “Lots of women do it!”

Lots of women in every class did it, Sarah would have to admit. Becoming a rich man’s mistress, or his wife, was one of the few opportunities women had of escaping poverty. Sarah didn’t feel like discussing this with Catherine, however. “Did Mr. Walcott court you the way he courted Anna?” she asked to change the subject.

“I don’t know what you mean.” This time the fear in her eyes was too real to mistake. “Mr. Walcott is… he’s a married man.”

“Married or not, he used to hang around the theater, waiting for Anna and bringing her flowers. Did he do that for you, too?”

Catherine glanced at the parlor doors. Was she worried that someone might be eavesdropping? Or was she worried about something else? “He just… he offered me a place to live. That’s all. He said he ran a respectable boarding house and I’d like it here.”

“Because you could entertain your gentleman callers upstairs with his approval?” Sarah asked mildly.

Catherine didn’t like these questions. “I told you, this is a respectable house.”

“Not according to the men who used to call on Anna Blake,” Sarah said. “They were both permitted above stairs with the full knowledge of the landlords. I can’t say for certain what went on in Anna’s room, but I do know that both gentlemen in question believed they had gotten Anna with child. This would indicate to me they were intimate with her.”

“That was Anna, not me,” she insisted.

Sarah decided not to press the issue. “Did you see the young man who visited Anna the night she died?”

“Yeah, but I never saw him before. He wasn’t a regular…” She caught herself and quickly added, “I mean, he’d never been here that I ever saw.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Young, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Looked like a common laborer, if you ask me. Mary didn’t want to let him in, but he pushed his way past her and started shouting for Anna.”

“Didn’t you ask her who he was?”

Catherine glared at Sarah. At any moment she might realize she didn’t really have to sit here and answer these questions. Sarah had no authority at all, but she didn’t betray any hint of that. She glared right back at Catherine determinedly. Finally, she said, “Anna said he was Mr. Giddings’s son.”

“Who was Mr. Giddings?” Sarah asked, managing to conceal her feeling of triumph and hoping Catherine wouldn’t remember that Sarah had been here the morning Giddings had come looking for Anna.

“One of her… a friend of hers. He helped her with some… some business matters.”

“I see,” Sarah said, seeing more than that. “And what did the boy want with her?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t my business.”

“Did he go upstairs with her?” Sarah asked, remembering that the coroner had said she’d been with a man shortly before her death.

“Not likely! Not the way they was fighting!”

“They were arguing? What about?”

“I wasn’t listening on purpose,” she said, defensive again, “but he was shouting. It was hard not to hear what he was saying.”

“And what was he saying?”

“He wanted her to leave his father alone. He said there was no more money. I think… he said something about her giving the money back, I think. And he…”

“He what?”

“He said…” Catherine took a deep breath. “He’d kill her if she didn’t.”

13

SARAH GAPED AT HER. THIS WAS EVEN MORE INFORMATION than she’d wanted to get. “Are you sure that’s what he said?” she asked, still not wanting the Giddings boy to be guilty of the crime.

“Yeah, because Anna started laughing, and he said something like she’d better believe him or she’d be sorry.”

Sarah hadn’t been trained as a detective, but that sounded like pretty good evidence to her. “And then he left?”

“Yeah, Mr. Walcott told him to leave, and he did.”

“Did you say Mr. Walcott? I thought he wasn’t home that night.”

Catherine looked confused and then frightened again. “Did I say that? No, I meant to say Mrs. You’re right, he wasn’t home that night. Mrs. Walcott asked him to leave.”

“And what time was this when he left?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine complained. “Early in the evening, I guess. Right after supper.”

“And you went to bed immediately?”

“No, I told you, it was still early.”

“So Anna didn’t leave the house right after that?”

“No, we played checkers for a while, the two of us.”

Sarah managed to conceal her surprise. This wasn’t what Mrs. Walcott had said. “Did she seem upset by the argument she’d had with the boy?”

“Not a bit. Nothing much upset her, even though…”

“Even though what?” Sarah prodded.

“Well, Mrs. Walcott… She was mad about the boy coming to the house. She didn’t like disturbances. Yelling and carrying on, she says that’s low class.”

“Did she say anything to Anna about it?”

“Not that I heard. She isn’t one to air dirty linen, you know? That’s how she always says it. No use airing our dirty linen in public. She’d wait ’til I was gone to say something, if she did.”

“And you think she did that night?”

Catherine shrugged. “Like I said, I was asleep. I didn’t hear anything.” She wouldn’t meet Sarah’s eye.

Sarah was starting to get a little impatient with Catherine, but she tried not to let it show. “Did Anna get a message that evening?”

“Not that I know of.”

Sarah was confused now. “So Anna was still here when you went to bed?”

“That’s right. Anna never would go to bed until real late. Then she’d sleep late in the morning, just like when we worked in the theater. I told her it’s hard on the complexion to stay up half the night, but she wouldn’t listen. Anna wouldn’t listen to nobody.”