In Like Flynn (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #4)

I sat down to write an invitation to the Misses Goldfarb and Walcott, requesting the honor of their company at ten Patchin Place for dinner at eight, and delivered it in person to their frontdoor. When they accepted I headed for a kosher butcher’s shop on the Bowery where I knew their chickens would be freshly killed and not have been hanging about for days with flies on them. I'd also stop off at the post office on Broadway to see if any mail had come addressed to Paddy Riley, former owner of P. Rileyand Associates, from whom I had inherited the detective agency. The occasional commission still came in and frankly at this moment I needed the work. It had been an expensive business maintaining a house and feeding two hungry youngsters.

On the corner opposite the tall, strangely Eastern-looking, tower of the Jefferson Market building sent a shaft of black shadow across the early morning sunlight. Even at this hour the sidewalks were beginning to heat up. Smells of rotting vegetables and fruit wafted across to me, as barrows piled with fresher fare crushed them under iron wheels. A couple of policemen came out of the police station that was housed within the same building. I turned and hurried away, toward Washington Square. Daniel had been known to emerge from that same police station, and I had unpleasant memories of spending a night in the jail there, having been mistaken for a lady of the night.

On the corner the newsboys were hawking today’s newspapers. “Read all about it. The Eastside Ripper Strikes Again.”

I had been so intent on reading the advertisements in The Times that I had missed the sensational headline. But it screamed outfrom all the billboards around Fifth Avenue: Another prostitute found murdered. Ripper at work again.

“They ask for it, don't they?” I heard one woman say to another as they picked up a copy of The Herald. “If you go into that line of work, you know what to expect.”

“Shouldn't be allowed in a respectable city,” her companion agreed. “Good riddance I say. I hope he gets the lot of 'em.”

I shuddered as I hurried past. So yet another prostitute had been murdered. Four of them this summer, enough that the press now spoke of an Eastside Ripper, following in the footsteps of London’s notorious mass murderer. Because the victims were prostitutes there had been little public interest until the most recent murders. Many people agreed with those women I had overheard—immoral behavior like that was just asking for retribution.

It was so easy to dismiss crimes like this as happening in another world. Nothing to do with me, thank God. That was the general attitude. And yet I had spent a night in a jail cell with some of those women. They had been kind to me and all I felt for them was pity. Those sad young girls with innocent faces hidden under rouge and lipstick could have been me when I first arrived, penniless, in New York.

I had just reached Broadway and joined the throng of pedestrians that seemed to populate that street at all hours when I had a sudden feeling that I was being followed. I glanced around but saw nobody I recognized. I quickened my pace but the feeling didn't go away I suppose you could say I was bom with the Irish sixth sense. Well, it had stood me in good stead before and I wasn't about to ignore it now. Those headlines about the Eastside Ripper flashed through my mind. Ridiculous, I told myself. Those murders were all done at night, the bodies all dumped on one of the streets known for their houses of ill repute. I was clearly not that kind of woman. It was broad daylight and I was on Broadway.I was quite safe.

Even so, when I saw a chance to dodge between two streetcars and a dray carrying beer barrels, I took it and continued on the other side of the street. The feeling was stronger than ever. I stepped under the awning of a greengrocer’s shop and stood surveying the crowd. Nobody I recognized. Nobody who looked like an Eastside Ripper either. Just ordinary housewives about their morning shopping before the day’s heat became too intense, businessmen on their way to appointments, children on their way to play. I noticed a young police constable, his familiar helmet bobbing above the crowd and felt reassured. I could always appeal for help if I really needed to. So I set off again. When I came to Wannamaker’s Dry Goods I paused, pretending to examine the hats in the window while in reality surveying the crowd that passed behind me.

At that moment a hand grabbed my shoulder. I looked around frantically for the policeman, then found that I was staring up into his face and it was his hand that held me.

“Holy Mother of God,” I exclaimed. “You scared the daylights out of me, officer. What do you think you are doing? Do I look like a pickpocket to you?”

His angular boyish face flushed with embarrassment. “I'm sorry, ma'am. I believe I know who you are. Miss Murphy, is it not? I was sent to find you by Captain Sullivan.”

“By Captain Sullivan?” I blurted out as the crowd parted around us. “Of all the nerve. He daren't face me himself so he sends one of his underlings to do it now, does he?”

“I'm sorry, Miss,” he repeated again. “But it’s important. Captain Sullivan really needs to speak to you and you haven't answered his letters.”

“Of course I haven't answered his letters and I don't intend to speak to him either. That should be quite obvious by now. He and I have nothing more to say to each other.”

“So you won't come with me to speak to him?”