“You do not know what it was like. You do not know how she fomented me. Showing herself like a harlot, telling me the things she did with other men! She wanted me to lust after her. She was not happy unless every man lusted after her.”
“And so you started hitting her, just the way you hit your wife, but you couldn’t stop yourself, could you?” Sarah said. “You kept hitting her and hitting her until she was dead.”
“She deserved to die!”
“And what about Agnes? Does she deserve to die, too?” Sarah tried, trying to break through his blood lust. “Are you going to kill her next?”
Sarah watched in horror as his expression changed from fury to evil satisfaction. “No,” he said, suddenly very calm. “I am going to kill you next.”
Sarah screamed as loudly as she could as she watched his doubled fist draw back to strike her, and she lashed out herself, aiming a punch at the vulnerable area between his legs.
He howled with pain and released his grip on her hair enough that she was able to scramble to her knees. Still his fingers tangled in her hair too tightly for complete escape, but ignoring the tearing in her scalp, she made a lunge for the poker, now lying in the comer where he had flung it.
This time she caught it with both hands and swung wildly, hoping for any kind of contact that would allow her a precious second to escape. But once again, he caught the other end of the poker, and for what seemed an etemity, they struggled for it, Sarah grasping the pointed end with both hands while he grasped the handle with one and tried to tear out her hair with the other.
Her eyes streaming with tears from the pain, Sarah hung on for dear life, until, from out of nowhere, his boot struck her in the ribs. The pain knocked the breath from her body, and he easily wrested the poker from her now nerveless hands.
The expression on his face was chilling, eyes gleaming with pleasure, teeth bared in a feral grin. Holding her fast by the hair of her head, he raised the poker over his head while she struggled helplessly, fighting for the breath for one last scream. In the second before the poker came slamming down into her head, her last thought was that at least Malloy would know who’d killed her, and she threw up her hands in a futile effort to ward off the blow.
The sound was like nothing she could have imagined, a dull thud and oddly far away. She waited for the searing pain and instead felt nothing at all. Then something very large and very heavy came toppling over on top of her.
“Mrs. Brandt, Mrs. Brandt, are you all right?”
Sarah needed a second to realize that the large, heavy weight lying on top of her was Lars Otto’s now unconscious body, and the voice she was hearing was ... no, it couldn’t be!
“Mrs. Brandt, did he hurt you? Can you help me get him off of you? He’s awfully heavy!”
“Mrs. Elsworth?” Sarah said, still not quite certain she wasn’t mistaken.
Suddenly her strength returned, and she was able to push herself free of Otto’s weight. His hand was still tangled in her hair, but Mrs. Elsworth’s nimble fingers quickly freed her, leaving an alarming number of broken strands still locked in his motionless fist.
Only when she was free could Sarah finally see that Lars Otto did, indeed, lie unconscious on her kitchen floor.
“How on earth... ?” she started to ask, and then she saw that Mrs. Elsworth still clutched her cast-iron skillet in her other hand. “Did you hit him with
that?”
“He was going to hit you with the poker!” Mrs. Elsworth replied defensively. “What else could I do?”
Sarah looked at the back of Otto’s head. His skull didn’t seem to be misshapen, so perhaps he was only unconscious and not even very seriously injured. Gingerly, as if touching a live snake, she placed her fingertips on the inside of his wrist and found a pulse.
“We’d better get him tied up before he wakes up,” Sarah said. “He won’t be in a very good mood when he does, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, my,” Mrs. Elsworth said. “Perhaps I should hit him again.”
Sarah felt an hysterical urge to laugh. “I’d much rather let the police take care of him. I’m sure they’ll be more thorough. Now, let me see, I think I have some clothes rope around here somewhere.”
MOTHER, REALLY. I think you should go home. All this excitement can’t be good for you,” Nelson Elsworth said for what Sarah guessed was the tenth time in as many minutes.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Elsworth said to her son, also for the tenth time. “I’ve never felt better in my life. Besides, I have to tell Detective Sergeant Malloy what happened, don’t I?”
“He can come to our house to speak with you,” Nelson insisted. Nelson Elsworth was a tall, slender man approaching forty who wore wire-rimmed glasses and was trying to disguise the way his hair was thinning on top by growing the hair on the sides longer and combing it over the bald spot. He’d arrived home from his job at the bank a short while ago to find his neighbors gathered in the street in front of Sarah’s house and his mother inside enjoying the attentions of a red-faced police officer who didn’t quite know what to make of the entire situation.
“Officer O’Brien,” Nelson said to the policeman, “Can’t you tell my mother it’s all right if she goes to her own home? We only live next door.”
O’Brien shrugged. “I’d stay around if I was her. Malloy can be awful testy if he’s irritated, and it irritates him to have to go chasing down witnesses.” He’d used a call box to notify police headquarters of the incident, and they were trying to track down Frank Malloy to handle the investigation.
“I’m not a
witness,
young man!” Mrs. Elsworth reminded him indignantly. “I am the one who subdued this miscreant!”
“Yes, ma‘am,” O’Brien said, coughing to hide a chuckle.
Sarah was coughing, too. She knew she must be in shock. Why else would she be fighting the urge to laugh when a semiconscious killer was lying trussed like a Christmas turkey in her kitchen?
“You know,” Mrs. Elsworth was saying, “it’s the oddest thing. I didn’t see a single omen today, either. You’d think that with something this important, I would’ve seen
something,
wouldn’t you? But not a hint! However was I supposed to be prepared?”
Sarah could think of no reasonable answer to that. Luckily, Malloy chose that moment to arrive, so she didn’t have to. He, too, was red-faced, probably from rushing in this heat. Sarah and Mrs. Elsworth were sitting in chairs in Sarah’s front office, while O’Brien, the beat cop, and Nelson Elsworth stood around helplessly.
Frank took in the scene with one swift glance. His main concern was making sure that Sarah Brandt was all right, and she appeared to be, although her hair was loose and tangled, something he’d never expected to see. He found the sight more than a little disturbing.
Before he could ask her what had happened, she said, “Lars Otto killed Gerda. He’d gone out looking for her that night, and he saw her go into an alley with a man. That made him furious, so he apparently accosted her afterward and started beating her. He may not have intended to kill her, but he did. His wife saw that his hands were all bruised when he came home that night, but he told her some men had tried to rob him, and he’d fought with them. She wanted to believe him, so she did. Oh!” she added as a new and apparently very disturbing thought occurred to her. “He also beat his wife. We should send someone to make sure she and the children are all right. I went to see Agnes Otto this afternoon, and she told me what happened. He may have beaten her again, too!”
Malloy glanced at O‘Brien, who nodded his understanding. “What’s the address, ma’am?” he asked Sarah.
Sarah gave it to him, and he went out to use the call box again.
Frank walked over to the kitchen doorway and looked down at where Lars Otto lay, moaning softly. Blood was oozing from the back of his scalp, and he was tied hand and foot with what appeared to be about a mile of clothes rope. “Somebody want to tell me what happened here tonight?”
“I heard Mrs. Brandt screaming,” Mrs. Elsworth said rather proudly. Plainly, she couldn’t wait to tell him her story. “So I ran over to see what was the matter. Luckily,” she added with a twinkle, “I thought to take my cast-iron skillet with me, just in case.”
Frank glanced at where the skillet now sat on the kitchen table. “You hit him with
that?”
he asked incredulously.
“My mother isn’t a very strong woman,” Nelson Elsworth said, rushing to his mother’s defense. “I’m sure no permanent damage has been done to this gentleman.”
“I can’t say I’d mind if there was, if what Mrs. Brandt here says about him is true,” Frank allowed. “I’m just amazed that he held still for you to do it, Mrs. Elsworth.”
“Oh, he was rather busy trying to kill Mrs. Brandt with that poker at the time,” Mrs. Elsworth informed him cheerfully. “I don’t think he even knew I was there.”
Frank felt the impact of her words like a blow to his gut. He struggled to get his breath, but before he could, Sarah jumped in with her version.
“He broke in,” she told him somewhat defensively, pointing toward the smashed door lock. “He was quite angry that I’d tried to convince his wife to leave him for her own safety. I think he also must have realized that she’d told me enough to make me realize he’d killed Gerda. He must have thought if he killed me, no one would ever find out what he’d done.”
Somehow Frank managed to find enough breath to speak in a fairly normal voice. “He told you he killed the Reinhard girl?”
She nodded.
Frank looked down at Otto again and noticed something he’d missed the first time. He bent and retrieved a hank of long, golden hair that clung to the man’s trousers. It had been pulled out by the roots. Impotent rage twisted in his stomach at the thought of how Sarah’s hair had come to be clinging to Otto’s trousers.
“Mrs. Brandt put, up quite a struggle,” Mrs. Elsworth informed him. “He was dragging her around by her hair and trying to hit her with the poker when I came in.”
Sarah reached up and rubbed the back of her head. Frank swallowed hard on the gorge that rose in his throat. At the thought of Otto putting his hands on Sarah, he wanted to do murder himself, and it took every ounce of willpower he possessed not to kick the life out of the man lying bound on the floor. At least he would have the satisfaction of watching him pay the ultimate price for his crimes in New York’s new electric chair.
“Did he ...” Frank had to clear his throat and start again. “Did he hurt you in any other way?”
She rubbed her side. “He kicked me, but I don’t think it’s more than a bad bruise.”
Frank was going to take great pleasure in seeing Otto fry. “We’ll get a doctor here to look you over.”
“Nelson,” Mrs. Elsworth said. “go fetch Dr. Pomeroy, will you? We want to make sure Mrs. Brandt is all right.”
“I can’t leave you alone with that killer!” Nelson protested.
But just then they heard the clatter of wagon wheels, and a Black Maria, one of the police wagons, pulled up outside. A moment later, two uniformed officers came in, and Frank directed them to collect Lars Otto and carry him off to the Tombs.
As he stood on the sidewalk, watching the wagon pull away, Frank suddenly realized he still held the lock of Sarah’s hair. He could have dropped it, but he stuffed it discreetly into his pocket before going back inside to send Nelson Elsworth after that damned doctor.
Epilogue
FRANK DIDN’T BOTHER MAKING EXCUSES TO HIMSELF for going to see Sarah Brandt. He owed her a visit, if for no other reason than to tell her the news about Lars Otto. The city streets were shimmering with heat, and Frank stopped on her doorstep to mop his brow before knocking on her door. He noted with approval the new lock and the repairs to the door in the moment before it opened.
“Malloy,” she said the way she always did. She looked pleased to see him, and not at all surprised. He always forgot how her smile seemed to glow.
“Thought I’d come by and see how you were,” he said.
“I’m glad you did,” she said. “It saved me from having to send you a message or brave your mother’s wrath by going to your place. Come in.”
As usual, they sat out in the shade of the back porch. The heat seemed almost bearable here amid the fragrant blossoms. She served him lemonade and cookies she said Mrs. Elsworth had baked. “She’s been fussing over me quite a bit since that evening,” she explained with a smile. “I think she just likes talking about it. She was quite the heroine.”
Frank didn’t want to think about what might have happened if Sarah didn’t have such an intrepid old woman living next door. “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to stop saying insulting things about her.”
“And I’ll have to have more patience with her superstitions. She’s been trying to figure out if she saw an omen of what was going to happen and just didn’t interpret it correctly. She likes to think she sees things that are going to happen, you know.”
“She did all right, even without any warning,” Frank allowed.
“She certainly did.”
They fell silent. Frank was dying to know why she’d wanted to contact him, but he wasn’t going to ask. He cleared his throat. “I wanted to tell you that Otto confessed. They only gave him twenty years, though.”
“You thought he’d get a death sentence?” she asked.
Frank didn’t want to say he’d been hoping so, mainly because of the way the bastard had tried to kill Sarah. “They went easy on him because the girl wasn’t very respectable.”
“That’s outrageous!”
He’d expected her to be angry. “I guess we’re lucky they didn’t decide she deserved to be killed and let him off scot-free. How’s his wife doing?”
She frowned and looked away. “She won’t see me. She blames me for Lars going to prison. She still thinks Gerda’s death was an accident and Lars shouldn’t be punished for it.”
“After the way he treated her?” Frank couldn’t believe it.
She shrugged. “I’ve seen it too many times. You’d think that a woman would hate a husband who beats her, but it’s usually just the opposite. Those women tend to be even more loyal than women whose husbands are good to them. They never say an unkind word about them, and they defend them with their dying breath. And of course there’s the problem of her being left with no one to support her with her husband in jail. She blames me for that, too.”