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

“Not my idea. The room was booked for me.”


“I see.” He touched his hat again. “Your ‘employer’ again?” He put a satirical emphasis on the word. Then he touched his hat. “Well, I must be toddling along. Keep in touch, won’t you. Anything that you feel might be useful in our investigation. You can always leave a message for me at the police station.” And on he went, leaving me feeling quite shaken. Was it only by accident that we had bumped into one another, or was I being followed? The thought of those trunks, sitting right now in my room, made me go hot and cold all over. They had to go, and right away. I didn’t care how, I didn’t care where, just out of my room. I wanted nothing more to do with Oona Sheehan and her little schemes.

I crossed the street to the general post office and composed a telegraph to send to Miss Sheehan in New York.

YOUR TRUNKS STILL UNCOLLECTED. PLEASE ARRANGE PICKUP SOONEST. M. MURPHY.


I was horrified at the enormous fee they wanted to send these few words. It was pointed out to me that the words had to be sent through a cable all the way under the Atlantic Ocean. Put that way, I had to agree that the fee was not excessive, so I paid up and the cable was sent. I came out with a stamped receipt. At least this showed that the trunks weren’t mine, and that I was trying to contact their true owner. And hopefully they would be whisked away from my room in the near future. It couldn’t be soon enough for me.





Nineteen


As I walked back to the Shelbourne, down Grafton Street, I passed a bookshop. Amid the notices pasted in its window was one that caught my attention:

P OETRY READING , S ATURDAY E VENING . Mr. Desmond O’Connor reads from his Aran Island cycle and recounts his journeys in the Far West .


The address was Davy Byrne's on Duke Street, and the sponsoring society was the Gaelic League. If I learned nothing of Terrence Moynihan at the play tomorrow night, then the Gaelic League might turn up trumps.

I dined at the hotel and went to bed amid my mountains of luggage, but I didn’t find it easy to sleep knowing what those trunks contained. Conflicting emotions raged through my head—anger at Oona Sheehan for using me so shamelessly to do her dirty work and anger at myself for being duped and flattered so easily. I could just see her smirking as she told me how closely I resembled her and how I fell for it. Lying there with the noises of a strange city outside my window, I suddenly felt very alone and far from home. The trouble was that I didn’t know where I belonged any more. It wasn’t my home in county Mayo I was missing, to be sure. My memories of that were of drudgery and boredom and dreaming of something better. But I missed my friends in New York,and I had to admit that I missed Daniel. He was probably missing me equally at this moment, living in limbo as he was and not knowing what his future might hold. In my current position of uncertainty, I understood his moods more charitably and chided myself for not being more loving and sympathetic to him. My desire to be an independent woman and to punish him for what he had put me through had made me act coolly to him when he most needed me. I got up and wrote him an encouraging note. I even signed it “Your Molly” this time.

That done, I fell asleep and only woke when the sun streamed in through my windows. I spent the day pleasantly enough, exploring the city. Each time I returned to my room, the trunks sat there untouched. I wondered how long it would take Oona Sheehan to act on my telegraph, and it occurred to me that maybe the person designated to retrieve her trunks might have been caught and was in jail. I had no idea what I’d do with them if they were still in my room when the time came for me to leave Ireland. Contact Inspector Harris, who seemed a reasonable sort of man, and tell him the truth, probably.