Maybe Riley had all this information down in his little black book. My next task should be to go to the library, or even to New York University, and find someone who could interpret the unknown language. That would have to wait until next week, however. I didn't think there were classes on Saturdays. So there probably wasn't too much more I could do until Monday—except to follow Paddy's route home.
Delmonico's is located on the corner of Twenty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue. It was unlikely that Paddy would have spent money on a cab—I hadn't seen any evidence of his wasting money on anything—and it was too far to walk comfortably, which meant he had probably taken the Sixth Avenue elevated railway. I consulted my notes. His home address was a boardinghouse on Barrow Street, a disreputable neighborhood down by the docks, according to his own description. I knew it was on the far west of the area they call Greenwich Village. I tried to picture the area in my mind. If he had taken die Sixth Avenue El, where would he have alighted? This would be crucial. Somewhere on that route home he had stopped off for a drink and overheard something so shattering that it may have brought about his death.
As I walked down Twenty-sixth Street toward the El station, I heard a clock on a nearby tower chiming eleven. This made me pause and think. I was already halfway to the high society areas of Upper Manhattan. My frugal upbringing reminded me that I should save the expense of an extra train ride whenever possible, even though I apparently had an endless supply of money to play with. Eleven o'clock might be just the sort of time when a man-about-town might be bestirring himself. If I were sensible, I'd go first to the Waldorf Astoria and interview the wayward English lord.
Thus I turned back and set off up Fifth Avenue. I knew where the Waldorf Astoria was. Daniel had pointed it out to me on one of our Sunday walks. “That's where the real nobs stay,” he had told me. “It costs more to stay a week there than you could earn in a whole year.”
I should never have thought of Sunday walks with Daniel. I reminded myself that M. Murphy, junior partner and businesswoman, had better use her brain to come up with a plan of campaign for meeting Lord Edgemont.
I must tread carefully. I could be blundering into a murderer's den, although I didn't think so. I tried to analyze whether Lord Edgemont would make a likely killer. Not personally, of course. The young man who had punched me and leaped from the window in no way resembled the English aristocracy, as I had witnessed them in my childhood. But then men of Lord Edgemont's standing could afford to hire a killer to do their dirty work—if he needed to hire a killer, that was. I had been told he was in financial difficulties, which Miss Van Woekem hinted would bring the relationship with Kitty Le Grange to an end anyway. If his money ran out in New York, he'd have to go home to his wife and estate in England, so she'd get him back—if that was what she wanted.
So no real motive for murder there, even if she planned to drain his coffers to the last penny with alimony demands. Since working with Paddy I had come to learn that marriages among the rich were more like business deals and that some women became considerably richer by divorcing several husbands. What a strange world. When I married, it would only be for love.
I reached the imposing facade of the big hotel and stood on the sidewalk staring up at the high colonnade, collecting my thoughts before I tackled the doorman at the front door. Then I decided that nothing ventured was nothing gained. I was perfectly safe in a hotel, surely, when a cry could bring any number of servants running to my aid.
So I held my head erect and nodded to the doorman as I swept past him.
“I am afraid that Lord Edgemont does not reside here,” I was told when I presented myself at the reception desk.
I felt this was a poor attempt to brush me aside and I wasn't about to be brushed. I tried my hand at an English accent, as I had heard it spoken by my aristocratic playmates. “Oh, but I have it on the best of authority that his lordship resides here at the moment. Is this establishment no longer to his liking?”
If a man could bristle, this one did. “This is the Waldorf madam. I believe you want the Astoria, next door.”
“It's not the same hotel?”
“Oh no, madam. Two quite separate hotels, each owned by a member of the Astor family.”
“You're telling me that two members of the same family run two different hotels in this building?”
He nodded. “Two separate hotels. The Astor cousins were not on speaking terms when the two hotels were built.”
Well, if that didn't take the cake. I wondered if Daniel knew that interesting fact. Next time I saw him I'd have to—I murmured my thanks to the man at the desk and went next door, where a matching glass door was opened by a matching grand doorman.
“Lord Edgemont?” the young man at the reception desk asked suspiciously. “May one inquire what this concerns?”
“Some business that the senior partner in my establishment was conducting with him. I wish merely to appraise him of the current status of the situation.” Truly my way with words was improving by the minute. I was amazed at myself.