From what I recall and I once did a lot of research on Sickles the handkerchief waving incident occurred only onceon the day of Keys murder  In fact Sickles saw Key waving the handkerchief and ran out and shot him  The murder itself is better described in the Wikipedia entry for Teresa Bagioli Sickles  The blatantly public aspect of the affair was that Key and Teresa were frequently seen alone together in society by mutual friends  But this was with Sickles knowledge  Sickles was neglectful of his wife and grateful that Barton Key took an interest in her although Key had told Sickles that he thought of Teresa as a daughter  During their affair Barton Key and Teresa met for sex in a house on th Street  Apparently all the neighbors were aware that two society people a man and a women arrived separately and used the house for their romantic meetings  In this respect it was blatantly publicto the neighbors of the house in that poor mostly black neighborhood