“My dear girl, I told you, I have a nice set of fingerprints on that statue. If Monty’s match—well then. There we are. The courts have never yet allowed us to admit fingerprints as evidence, but they’ll have to soon. And at very least you’ve stopped your friend Sarah from marrying him.”
“Poor Sarah,” I said. “She might really love him. I know how I’d feel it you turned out to be a drug fiend or a murderer.”
Daniel actually laughed. “That’s one thing you can say for me. I’m a straightforward kind of guy. What you see is what you get.”
I looked at him with love in my eyes. “That’s just fine with me,” I said.
*
I arrived back at Sid and Gus’s to find a beaming Bo Kei with Frederick beside her. He had been released that afternoon and they were already planning what they should do next.
“I will be forever in gratitude, Missie Molly,” Bo Kei said. “You have given me my life and my happiness.”
Well, at least I’d done something right. They were going to go back to Canada where they felt that Chinese people had a better chance of leading normal lives. This made me think of Monty crossing the border. Had the police been too late to catch him? Would the Canadian authorities return him?
We didn’t learn the truth until a few days later. Monty had been apprehended trying to sail out of Montreal on a ship bound for England. He had died of a drug overdose that night, whether intentionally or accidentally we’d never know. Given his position in society, it would have been unlikely that he would have had to face a harsh punishment for the crime of killing Chinese. He might even have walked away a free man. Sarah was with us when Daniel came to tell us the news.
“I’m glad he’s not going to prison,” Sarah said. She sat staring down at her hands, her face betraying no emotion. “I know that addiction causes people to do all kinds of wicked, reckless things. Poor Monty, I believe he tried to tell me about it once, in a subtle way. He said that he’d fallen from his polo pony in India and broken his ribs. The pain had been so great that they’d fed him a constant supply of morphine. I suppose the addiction started then.”
“I think you’re being too kind,” Sid said. “You’re well rid of him, Sarah. Now that you’re no longer engaged we can tell you that we thought him a selfish, arrogant brute who would have made your life miserable.”
“Why didn’t you say this to me before?”
“Because we know that people fall in love with the most unsuitable types,” Gus added. “And if you really were in love with him, it was not up to us to stop you.”
Sarah gave a sad sort of smile. “I don’t think I ever was truly in love with him. I can’t have been because I felt such a sense of relief when I heard he had fled to Canada. And I’m not heartbroken that he died. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m sure he didn’t love me either. He was only marrying me for my money.”
“That’s the same with Molly and me.” Daniel patted my hand. “I’m only marrying her for her money.”
“So you’re off back to Westchester tomorrow for the final wedding preparations, are you?” Sarah asked.
I nodded. “Final fittings on my dress, that kind of thing. If you think you could bear it, I’d like you to come to the wedding too.”
“I’d like to, if only to see Sid and Gus dressed as bridesmaids.” Sarah managed a smile.
“I’ll have you know that Gus and I will be the most demure and correct bridesmaids in the history of weddings,” Sid said. “You wait until you see us in lavender.”
“I must be going.” Daniel got to his feet. “I only came to tell you the news and I have paperwork to finish tonight if I want to be free to come with you tomorrow to my mother’s. Ladies, I bid you farewell.” And he bowed correctly.
I walked with him to the door. “How is it that you have time to come with me? I thought you were working on a big case you couldn’t tell me about.”
“I was.” He paused. “It is concluded, satisfactorily as far as the commissioner is concerned, in spite of you, Miss Murphy.”
“What did I do?”
“I was ordered by the commissioner to look into corruption in the New York City police—a task I found most repugnant, as you can imagine. Spying on my fellow officers and turning them in. I can tell you, that goes against the grain; but I had no choice in the matter. I obey orders. As you can imagine, a good deal of my attention was focused on the issue of accepting bribes. I was spying on Kear and Bobby Lee when you barged in on me. They were about to conclude a lucrative deal. Luckily I was able to nail him anyway—something I don’t regret too much, as I couldn’t stand the man. The commissioner hopes that a couple of examples like this will put the fear of God into the rest of the force. We shall see. On a policeman’s pay it’s all too easy to accept bribes and sometimes it’s expedient to work on both sides of the law.”
“But you’ll never do that,” I said.
“If I did, you’d never hear about it.” He laughed. Then he took me into his arms and kissed me.