“And did you find the culprit?”
“What do you think? It wasn’t late. There were plenty of people still around on Greenwich Avenue, along with all the students in Washington Square. The fellow would only have had to have hightailed it from a completely deserted Patchin Place and then he’d have blended in with the crowd.” He sighed. “No. Nobody saw anything. We’ve nothing to go on. But we did find a paving stone that had been thrown through our front parlor window, thus confirming my suspicions. Someone broke the glass then hurled some kind of primitive bomb inside.”
“And Aggie?” I asked. “Did they find her body?”
“Yes. Badly charred, I’m afraid. Do you know of any next of kin who should be notified?”
“Next of kin? They turned her out when they knew she was pregnant, Daniel. They told her never to come back, that she was no longer their daughter.”
“All the same, officially…” he began.
I shook my head. “I know the family had a small farm somewhere in the Hudson Valley. More than that I can’t tell you.” Then I cleared my throat, hardly daring to ask the next question that was going through my mind. “And our house? Is it completely destroyed? Everything gone?”
He nodded. “Pretty much. It’s still smoldering in there so I didn’t get a chance to look too closely, but I’d be surprised if there was anything—” He’d started the sentence sounding so matter-of-fact but then his voice cracked and I realized how deeply he too felt about what had happened to us.
“What will we do?” I asked, the bleak despair coming to the surface. “Where will we go?”
“We’ll be all right.” Daniel stroked back my singed hair from my cheek. “I promise we’ll be all right. The commissioner has said that there would be money coming and the department would take care of us. Whether that means they’ll rebuild our house for us, or just give us enough to get by for the present, I can’t say. I didn’t like to press too much. But for now my main concern is to make sure that you are safe. I want you out of the city, far away from here.” He paused, then frowned. “You can go up to my mother to start with. I don’t want to put her in danger in the long run but…”
“Daniel,” I interrupted. “She’s gone, remember. On her trip out West.”
“She’s already left?”
I nodded. “Her letter said, ‘By the time you read this I shall be gone.” She said she didn’t tell us before because she was sure you’d try to dissuade her and she was determined to take her chance to have one big adventure in her life.”
“She can’t have got too far. We’ll locate her and bring her back.”
“No, Daniel. Let’s not spoil her one big adventure.”
Daniel gave a testy sigh. “No matter. You can go to the house. Martha will take care of you.”
“No, that won’t work either. Martha has closed up the house and gone to her ailing mother. There’s nobody there.”
“Then you can stay in the house alone, surely. The hired man will have a key…”
“I suppose so,” I said, thinking of being in that remote house alone with Liam, wondering and worrying about Daniel every moment. “But you won’t be with me, will you? I’ll be all alone.”
“You’ll be safe enough there, at least for the present. The hired man lives on the property, doesn’t he? He’ll keep an eye on you.”
“That’s not the point,” I retorted. “I want to be with you, Daniel. I’ll worry myself sick about you if we’re apart.”
“I have to stay on the job. I can’t leave right now, you must see that. I’m sure Sergeant O’Halloran will let me stay at his place. But if you really will be too worried up in Westchester all alone, I’ll find somewhere for you to go for the time being—somewhere far enough away where those bully boys of the Italian gang can’t track us down immediately.”
I put my hand over his. “Then I’ll stay at Sergeant O’Halloran’s with you. I don’t want to leave you, Daniel, especially not at a time like this.”
He took my face in his hands. “Don’t you understand? I want you well away from the city, just in case these people try again. I can’t take the risk that something will happen to you. I’d much rather track down my mother and ask her to come home, but you may be right. It is remote and I’m not even sure that Westchester is sufficiently removed…” he broke off, frowning. Then he said, “Of course. Why didn’t we think of it before?”
“Think of what?” I asked.
He wagged a finger at me in an animated fashion. “Your friends in Paris. They’ve invited you enough times. You can go to them.”
“To Paris, Daniel? Don’t be absurd. I only mentioned it to you as a joke.”
“But it’s perfect, don’t you see. You’ll be safely out of harm’s way.”
“But the fare to Paris…”