Free Murder on St. Mark's Place by Victoria Thompson

photograph. Sarah opened the cardboard frame, expecting to see a picture of the dead girl. Instead she found what appeared to be a picture of people in a boat, and they all appeared to be screaming.
    Puzzled, she looked up at Agnes for an explanation.
    “It is Gerda. There in the front row,” she said, pointing.
    Sarah looked again and recognized Gerda Reinhard. She was sitting with a young man in a bowler hat. He had his arm around her, and they were obviously only pretending to be frightened. “Where was it taken?”
    “At that place, what do they call it? It is on an island ...”
    “Coney Island?” Sarah asked, looking at the photograph again.
    “Ja, Gerda said they have this boat ride. The boat goes down a... a hill and makes a big splash.”
    “And they take a photograph of it?” Sarah knew that couldn’t be true. Photography required that the subjects sit very still. Taking a picture of an amusement-park ride would be impossible.
    “Yes,” Agnes said, “but not when it is going.” She searched for the proper words to explain. “They have a special boat. That one,” she added, pointing to the picture. “You sit in it, and they make a photograph. The people in the boat are just pretending to be riding down the hill.”
    “Oh, I see, so they have a souvenir of their adventure,” Sarah said, looking more closely at the picture. “Do you know the man sitting with Gerda?”
    “No, we do not, and that made Lars very angry. He say Gerda should not be making photographs with men he does not know.”
    Sarah only wished Gerda had only been posing for photographs with such men. That was the least of her transgressions.
    “At least you have her picture,” Sarah pointed out. “To remember her by.”
    “But such a picture,” Agnes lamented, closing her eyes again.
    Sarah discreetly finished examining the contents of the box, carefully replaced the lid, and set it back where she had found it. Maybe she could ask Lisle and the other girls if they knew the man in the photograph, although the chance that he was Gerda’s killer was probably remote.
    “That was the day when she got the red shoes,” Agnes murmured, her eyes still closed so that Sarah wasn’t sure if she’d been addressing her or not.
    “Gerda got the red shoes when she went to Coney Island ?” Sarah asked.
    Agnes nodded, her face a mask of pain. “Just before she...”
    “Agnes, would you mind if I borrowed this photograph for a few days? I’d like to see if I can find out who this man with Gerda is.”
    Agnes’s eyes flew open, and her pain instantly turned to horror. “Do you think he is the one?”
    “That’s something we can let the police find out,” she demurred.
    Malloy would be proud of her restraint. She’d have to make sure he heard about it very soon.

4
    M ALLOY CALLED ON HER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE afternoon. He figured this would be the best time. She wouldn’t try to feed him, so he wouldn’t have to stay very long. He just needed to repay the debt he owed by telling her what he knew about the German girl’s death, and then he’d be free of her for good.
    It was a good plan. Why did he have such a sickening feeling it wouldn’t be quite that simple?
    The moment she opened the door to him, he knew he should have let her know he was coming. Because of the heat, she was wearing hardly any clothes at all. Well, she did have a dress on, but her arms were bare, and the dress was so light, it left little of her figure to the imagination. He wondered she considered it decent. He certainly didn’t.
    “Malloy,” she said, the way she always did, and smiled. The way a cat smiles when it’s been in the cream. “Come in. I was visiting with my neighbor, Mrs. Elsworth, but I’m sure she’ll excuse us. Like your mother, she thinks there’s something more between us than a mutual interest in a murder case, and she’ll be only too happy to leave us alone.”
    Plainly, she found this amusing. Malloy did not.
    She left him no