I felt a sudden chill of apprehension. “So what did you do, Mrs. Clegg?”
“He did it, not me.” Her voice rose alarmingly. “I didn't want him to, but he wouldn't listen. He cut the boy’s hair and dressed him in our boy’s cast-off clothes so he wouldn't be recognized. Then he set off with the child and returned without it. I said, Did you leave the child where he'd be safely found and taken home?' And he said he wasn'triskingthat, wasn'triskingthe child being traced back to us, so he took him into Albany. He said he was planning just to dump him on a city street, but one of those orphan trains was in the station and when no one was looking, he put Brendan with all the other orphan boys.”
I heard Daniel gasp. My heart was beating so loudly I expected the others to hear it.
“What is an orphan train?” I tried to make my voice obey me.
Daniel was frowning. They gather up orphans from the cities in the East and take them tofamiliesout West. It gives them a new chance at life, so they say.”
“So Brendan could be anywhere in the country?” I stammered.
Johanna Clegg nodded. “I've prayed for forgiveness every day, but that won't bring him back, will it? Those poor people. That poor couple, not knowing their son is alive.”
“It’s too lateforhis mother,” I said. “She died this week.”
Johanna gave a great choking sob. “Oh, Lord have mercy. What did we do? I didn't want him to—I begged him, but you don't know Amos—”
Without warning the front door was thrust open and a hulk of a manfilledthe doorway. “I thought I told you no strangers on the property,” he bellowed. “Who are they? Getridof them.”
“I'm a New York City policeman,” Daniel said, “and we're here about the Flynn baby.”
They know,” Johanna Clegg whimpered to her husband.
They wouldn't have found out if you hadn't opened your big mouth, you stupid cow!” Amos Clegg raised his arm as if to strike her. Daniel stepped between them.
“That wouldn't be wise,” he said, “not unless you want to spend the night in jail.”
“You can't stop a man from hitting his own wife,” Amos Clegg said with a sneer. “It’s the law.”
“Go ahead and try if you want,” Daniel said. They faced each other—two big strapping men, eye to eye.
Amos Clegg lowered his arm, still glaring at Daniel.
“Get out of my house,” he said. “Go on. Out with you. My wife is soft in die head. She rambles. There’s no way you can ever prove that we had anything to do with the Flynn baby.”
“I think there is,” I said. I had been watching young Billy Clegg sitting in a comer, eyeing us shyly while he pretended to play with some toy soldiers. Among the soldiers was a red wooden elephant.
Thirty-four
Ineed to take this, if you don't mind,” I said to the child as I bent to pick up the wooden elephant. “It came from Brendan Flynn’s Noah’s ark and I know one little girl who will be very happy to see it.”
“Out! Now! Before I get my shotgun!” Amos Clegg roared. He opened the front door wide. The rain had now started in earnest, great fat drops thudding down onto the dirt.
“You can't send them out in this, Amos,” Johanna begged. “There’s going to be a storm any minute.”
“It was their choice, coming here,” Amos said. “This ain't the Bible. I don't have to offer shelter. You folks had better make a run for it before the creek rises.”
I wondered if Daniel was going to attempt to arrest them and was glad when he turned and said, “We'll be back, Mr. Clegg, with a warrant for your arrest.”
“You can't prove anything. I ain't done nothing wrong,” Amos blustered, waving his fist dangerously.
“Threatening a police officer will do to start with,” Daniel said. He led me outside and assisted me aboard the buggy and cracked the whip. As we started off, we could hear Amos Clegg yelling at his wife. Probably hitting her, too. My mood matched the foul weather. I felt plunged into gloom. I should have been jubilant that Brendan was still alive, but the odds of finding him were slim. And I couldn't stop thinking about the cowering Johanna, who had chosen marriage to that brute rather than bear a child in shame. Maybe she had had no choice. It was an unfair world where women were punished and men went their merry way.
It was the last of a gloomy twilight and thunder now rumbled over the mountains across the river.I draped the rug over us, but it soon became sodden and we huddled together miserably. Heavy splatters of rain soon turned into a solid, drenching sheet. We couldn't see more than a few yards ahead of us. Then the horse stopped so abruptly that I was almost thrown over backward.
“Oh no,” Daniel groaned.
What had once been a gentle ford was now a raging torrent, wide and fierce.
“We can'triskcrossing that,” I said.
“Even if I could persuade the horse to try, which I don't think I can,” Daniel agreed.
“So what do we do now?”
In Like Flynn (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #4)
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