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

“No children?” I asked.

“No children,” he said sadly. “I was married once, but she couldn’t take my sort of life. You’re either married to a woman or to the theater. You can’t have both. I chose the theater, and she found someone who could devote the time and attention to her that she deserved. I decided not to make the same mistake twice.” He gave me a brief, wicked glance and patted my hand, “Oh, don’t get me wrong. There have been women since, but nobody I cared about enough to make it permanent. And now it's only me. My sister and brother are both gone. My parents too. I’ve one nephew and I’ve done enough for him already—put him through Harvard, paid off his debts, not to mention paying off the young woman he got into trouble. No, I’m averse to leaving my fortune to him, Miss Murphy. This is where you come in.”

Now, for one wild moment I wondered if he was hinting that he’d like to adopt me and make me his heir. I always did have wild, improbable fantasies, as my mother would tell you. I looked up at him. “I want you to try and find my sister,” he said.

“Your sister? But I thought you said she was already dead?”

He nodded. “That was my older sister, Bridget, I was talking about. My nephew Harvey's mother.”

“You had more than one sister, then?”

“That's the strange thing, Miss Murphy.” He stared out into the darkness. Someone on stage was crying. I couldn’t tell if it was part of the play or if they were genuinely upset. It sounded real enough. “My ma died a few months ago,” he said. “God, I worshipped that woman. What a tower of strength she was. I was with her a lot during her final weeks. She wasted away to a skeleton, you know. Like a stick figure, she was. Pitiful to see. And in the last weeks, when they started giving her morphine for the pain, she started rambling. One day she said she hoped God would forgive her for what she had done, leaving her baby behind in Ireland. I was shocked, I can tell you, but I didn’t know if it was fantasy or reality. They say morphine gives you dreams and delusions. So I prodded her about it. She wasn’t quite lucid anymore,- but from what I could gather, I had a baby sister called Mary Ann. When we were about to sail for America she fell sick with a bad fever and was not expected to live. My parents didn’t want to give up the chance for the rest of us to sail to a new life. Who knows if they’d have secured passage on another ship? And God knows enough babies die in Ireland all the time. So they left her behind.”

“Holy Mother of God. Abandoned her, you mean?” I asked, horrified. “Just left her to die?”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I gather they left her with a local parish priest, who promised to find someone to take care of her. But apparently it had been preying on my mother's mind all these years, although she never said a word about it to me.”

“And you think your sister might be still alive?” I asked. “Do you have any reason to believe this?”

“None at all. It's just that I won’t rest until I know, one way or the other. I’m a busy man, Miss Murphy. As you can see, I’ve a new play opening at the Casino here in two months. I’m also planning a grand production of Babes in Toyland for the new year—lots of good songs and a cast of thousands. It's going to make me a fortune. So I’m tied to New York myself. That's why I’m hiring you. I want you to go over to Ireland and see if you can trace my little sister.”

“To Ireland?” I can’t tell you what mixed emotions coursed through me at that word. The chance to go home again! There had been times during this tumultuous summer when I had been consumed with homesickness. But no sooner had I thought of going home, than I remembered the reason I had fled in the first place. The man I thought I had killed was still alive, it was true, but he was vindictive and would delight in finding me delivered to his doorstep, like a lamb to the slaughter.

“That's right,” Tommy Burke said. “To Ireland.”

“Wouldn’t it be simpler just to place an advertisement in the Irish Times and see what comes of it?”

“What, and have every confidence trickster in Ireland coming out of the woodwork for a handout? I’m known on both sides of the Atlantic to be a rich man, Miss Murphy. That's why I’m hiring you. An Irishwoman like yourself can be discreet. Portray yourself as a cousin, coming home from America and wanting to look up family members, if you like. You don’t even need to say you were sent from me.”

“You’d pay my expenses?” I asked, weakening.

“All your expenses and a hundred-dollar retainer—and a healthy bonus if you actually find her alive. What do you say, Miss Murphy? Will you take the case?”

I had no other assignments on the books. Funds were dwindling fast, and New York was not the happiest of places for me at the moment. I nodded and held out my hand. “Very well, Mr. Burke. I’ll take the case.”





Four