In Dublin's Fair City (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #6)

“My luggage is still on board the ship,” I reminded him, “and my umbrella with it.”


He did, however, produce an old blanket which I suspect had been used on the horse. I attempted to shield myself from the worst of the rain with it and eventually made him pull up at an inn so I could take shelter until the storm had passed. The gray drizzle persisted, and I arrived in Cork at last, feeling chilled and miserable.

“And where will you be staying?” he asked.

Having been dubbed “my lady,” my vanity took over and I didn’t want to diminish myself in his eyes by suggesting some clean and simple establishment. Besides, my expenses were being covered, weren’t they?

“I’ve never been in Cork before,” I said, “but I’m sure there are some fine hotels here.”

“I wouldn’t know one from the other myself,” he muttered, “not having stayed at a hotel in my entire life, but I’ll take you to St. Patrick's Street. The Victoria Hotel is about the best Cork has to offer, so I hear. It's the sort of place where the gentry hobnob.”

As we approached St. Patrick's Street, a wide and elegant boulevard with gracious stone buildings on either side, we were treated to another dose of cloudburst, so that I went up the steps of the Victoria Hotel looking less like “your ladyship” than I had hoped.

“Who would have thought the weather would have turned on us so quickly?” was the closest the clerk at the reception desk came to acknowledging that I looked like a drowned rat. I showed him my letters of credit and was taken to a spacious room. I’d have been overwhelmed at the opulence of it had I not spent the last week in a first-class cabin and thus become used to such finery. All the same, it was very nice, and I admired the molded ceiling, the velvet drapes, and the regency-striped wallpaper while I waited for the enormous bathtub to fill with hot water in the white-tiled bathroom. If only I could invite my family to visit me here, I found myself thinking—showing, of course, what a shallow person I really was. Then I reminded myself that I could not contact my family. Nobody in county Mayo must know I was here or the warrant for my arrest might resurface. So far I had been lucky, and I had pushed my luck too many times recently. I was here to perform a simple task. I was going to do it and then go back to America and get on with my life.

Which made my thoughts turn to Daniel. He hadn’t entered my head for a day or so. Was that a bad sign? Surely young lovers pined for each other constantly, thought of nothing else, and sighed with deep longing for the moment when they could rush into each other's arms again. I suppose it was because my courtship with Daniel had taken so many strange turns that I had learned to shut him from my mind and not dare hope for a future together. I was still finding it hard to picture that future.

I sat at the writing desk and wrote him a quick note, informing him that I had landed safely and would be based here for the next few days.I didn’t mention Rose's murder or the strange circumstances on the ship. No need to inflict any more worries on him at this moment when he was clearly still in the deepest fear for his own future. I hesitated at signing it “love, Molly” and signed it just with my name instead. Then I repeated the same sentiments in a letter to Sid and Gus and finally a note to Inspector Harris, care of the Cork Police Station, letting him know where he could find me.

The rain had now stopped, so I ventured out to find the police station for myself. Cork was an elegant city with lots of fine buildings, but after New York it felt like a sleepy backwater. Not an automobile to be seen on those broad streets, no electric tram cars, just the occasional horse-drawn cart or carriage. The sidewalks were not crowded with New York's teeming crush of humanity, and it was so quiet that the seagull's cries and clip-clop of horse's hooves were the only sounds over the sigh of the ever-present wind. It was like being in a city that time had forgotten.

At the end of the street I came to a wide river, and I stood on a bridge savoring the feel of the fresh Irish air in my face. And a surge of excitement swept through me—I was back in my homeland, I had money in my pocket, and a straightforward task to fulfil. Free and independent—what more could I wish for?