Free Murder in Chelsea by Victoria Thompson Page A

Wilbanks. Remember Anne Murphy told you that when Emma went back into the theater, she would stay in the city during the week? I asked Mrs. Dugan if she stayed at her boardinghouse. She told me that Wilbanks paid her to keep a room for her, but she never actually answered my question about her living there.”
    “But if she had a room there . . .” her father said.
    “That’s what I thought, too, but now I remember another woman who lives there said she hardly knew Emma. If Emma had lived there for several years, even if she didn’t stay there all the time, the other people in the house would have known her well.”
    “Maybe this woman didn’t move in until after Emma ran away from Wilbanks,” Sarah said.
    “Or maybe this Emma was staying someplace else entirely when she came to the city,” her mother said, earning a surprised look from her husband and an admiring one from Malloy.
    “That’s what I was thinking, too, Mrs. Decker,” Malloy said. “Maybe she just wanted Wilbanks to think she stayed there.”
    “But where else would she have stayed?” her father asked.
    “Oh, Felix, use your imagination. She had a lover! She probably told Wilbanks she wanted to go back to acting so she’d have an excuse to come to the city to see him. She could have stayed with
him
when she was here.”
    “Because no respectable boardinghouse would allow her to entertain a man there,” Sarah said.
    Her mother nodded. “And she didn’t want to marry Wilbanks because then she would be living with him all the time and would no longer have had the freedom to see her lover. She wanted Wilbanks to support her, but she couldn’t marry him without giving up the man she really loved.”
    Her father was looking at her mother as if he had never seen her before, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy grinning at Malloy, who was grinning right back.
    “And that man might not have wanted Emma to be reunited with her child because that could have gotten her back with Wilbanks, too. Thank you, Mrs. Decker. I’m going back to see Mrs. Dugan right now.”
    This time her father said, “Wait!” when Malloy would have taken his leave. “We need to meet this evening to share information.”
    “Come to my house,” Sarah said.
    “Why not here?” her mother asked. “Won’t you be coming here with Maeve and Catherine?”
    “No, I think I should stay at my house in case someone needs to find me. I also don’t want to take a chance of Catherine finding out what’s going on. She’s already noticed that I’m not myself, and I don’t want her to be frightened.”
    “All right. We’ll meet at your house at eight o’clock,” her father said and rang for the maid to show Malloy out and order the carriage.
    For the first time in days, Sarah felt the tiniest bit hopeful.
    * * *
    O N HIS WAY BACK TO M RS. D UGAN’S BOARDINGHOUSE, Frank reviewed his earlier conversation with her. She had been very careful to mislead him without lying, he realized, but why? Not to protect Emma Hardy, of that he was certain. She despised Emma. In fact, Anne Murphy was the only person in the whole bunch who seemed to have cared for her at all. In Frank’s experience, the only person most people really wanted to protect was themselves. When he asked himself why Mrs. Dugan would need to protect herself, the answer was easy: She’d taken money from Wilbanks for years for rent on a room Emma Hardy had never—or rarely—used. She wouldn’t want him to find that out.
    Could it be that simple?
    Mrs. Dugan frowned when she opened the door to him. “I didn’t expect to see you back again.”
    “I just need to ask you a few more questions.”
    With obvious reluctance, she let him in and led him to the deserted parlor. “The girls are all still asleep, so try to keep your voice down.” She was doing her best to seem at ease, but her hands betrayed her, clutching each other in a white-knuckled bunch.
    “How long has Ingrid Cordova lived