In the end I gave up and went back to the ferry dock, realizing that I should have questioned the touts and shown them the photos. They were a striking couple. Someone might well have remembered them. I came back to find a three-ring circus in full swing—a boat was just unloading, children were screaming, touts were shouting and trying to herd hapless immigrants in the direction of their establishment, small boys were trying to earn some coppers by carrying baggage which the frightened owners were not going to release, and among the crowd I spotted enough criminal element to make the immigrants’ fears justified. Pickpockets were doing a lively trade in the crush and some more brazen crooks were simply snatching bundles and boxes and dodging off with them into back alleyways. What a welcome to the land of the free! And where were New York’s finest when you needed them? I’d have to tell Daniel—forget that right now, Molly Murphy, I told myself. I wouldn’t be telling him anything again.
I was cursing myself for coming all this way for nothing when I saw something that made me grin from ear to ear. At the far side of the crowd a tall lugubrious fellow was walking up and down with a sandwich board with the words, MA KELLY’S BOARDINGHOUSE. JUST LIKE HOME. CHEAP AND CHEERFUL. The address was on Division Street, a mere half block from where I had stopped my search.
Of course they would have gone there if they’d seen the sign. How could Michael Kelly have resisted going to someone who might even have been a distant relative? I hurried to the Third Avenue El and rode it up to Canal Street where it was a mere hop, skip, and jump to 59 Division Street. A dreary tenement like all the rest—five stories of dingy brown brick. I knocked on the front door and it was opened by an enormous woman wearing a dirty white apron over a faded black dress. “Yes?” she asked, folding her arms across the monstrous shelf of bosom.
“I’m looking for my cousin and her new husband who recently arrived from Ireland. I’m wondering if they might have stayed here, seeing that their name is also Kelly.” I gave her a hopeful smile. “Michael and his wife Katherine—a young couple, just married, they are.”
I had hoped that her granite face might have softened when she heard the Irish accent, but she continued to glare at me. “Don’t mention them to me, the no-good pair,” she said.
“Then they were here?”
“They were here all right. Treated them like me own son and daughter, didn’t I? Him with his blarney about us being related.” She hoisted up the bosoms and sniffed. “No more related to him than the man in the moon.”
“So they’re not here any longer?” I asked cautiously.
“Upped and left without a by your leave or a thank you, didn’t they?” she demanded. “Waited until I was doing me shopping then simply upped and left. When I came back there was no sign of them, and they left owing a week’s rent too.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Going on for a month, I’d say. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
“I’m sorry they treated you so badly,” I said. “It’s Katherine who’s my cousin, not this Michael Kelly. I understand from the folks at home in Ireland that he’s a bit of a rogue.”
“A bad lot if you ask me.” She bent toward me. “I think your cousin married beneath her. Always behaved like a real lady, that one, and talked all highfalutin too—although she could be a proper little madam if she’d a mind to. Had the nerve to criticize my housekeeping, she did. She told me her dogs at home wouldn’t want to eat off my floor. Can you imagine? The nerve of it.”
I swallowed back the smile. From what I could see of the grimy lace curtains and pockmarked linoleum, Katherine was quite right. I nodded with sympathy. “She was brought up rather spoiled,” I said. “But she’s a sweet nature and I’d like to help her if I can. You’ve no idea where they went, have you?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t as if they said more than two words to me. Kept themselves to themselves, they did.”
“Were they around the house much when they lived here? Did they find jobs?”
“She did. She was out all day and every day, but that great lummox of a husband of hers, he lazed around doing nothing half the day. He didn’t perk up until the saloons opened and then he was out half the night.”
“So he could have been working a night shift then?”
She leaned closer to me again. “You don’t come home from the night shift on unsteady legs, smelling of beer.”
“Do you happen to know where Katherine was working?” I asked. “ “Maybe I could trace her through her job.”
Ma Kelly sniffed again. “Like I told you, we hardly exchanged more than two words. Kept herself to herself, that one, but with her fine airs and graces you’d have thought that she’d have had no trouble landing herself a refined job.”
I tried to think of more questions to ask, but couldn’t. “I’m sorry to have troubled you then, Mrs. Kelly. If any post arrives for them from home, maybe you could have it forwarded to my address. It’s Ten Patchin Place, in Greenwich Village. Molly Murphy’s the name.”
“I can do that,” she said. “I hope you find your cousin. Like I said, she was no trouble at all. He was a typical Kelly. Just like my late husband—couldn’t trust him farther than you could throw him. Went and inconvenienced everybody by dying when all he had was the influenza.” She sniffed again.
“If you do hear anything about Michael and Katherine, please let me know then,” I said. “I’ll be offering a small reward for information.”
“I’ve just given you information,” she said, a gleam coming into her eyes.
“So you have.” I reached into my purse. “Here’s fifty cents for your trouble. If the information leads to finding them, it will be more, of course.”
“I’ll keep me eyes and ears open for you, my dear,” she said, smiling at me most benignly now.