In Like Flynn (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #4)

“If you really don't mind—” She gave me a sweet smile. “It’s such a glorious day for riding, isn't it?”


The bloomers were found and I put them on, delighting in the lightness and freedom when I walked in them. I resolved to have a pair made when I returned to Greenwich Village and also, maybe, to buy myself a bicycle to carry me around the city. Both of these grand schemes would be dependent on my making some money, but I had been bom an optimist. I collected the letter I intended to post to Daniel. It would be wiser if nobody in the house knew I was in contact with anyone in New York, I decided. Then I strode out onto the grounds, taking wonderful man-sized steps. As luck would have it, I ran into Adam, wheeling a barrowful of dead wood up the driveway.

“Just the person I was looking for,” I said. “I was wondering, Adam, if you'd have a few minutes to spare to help me leam to ride a bicycle. I understand they are kept in the carriage house.”

“Yes, miss, that’s right,” he said. “I'll be with yourightafter I've taken this load to the woodpile.”

The big doors of the carriage house were open, revealing an automobile on one side and a grand-looking enclosed carriage on the other. Behind it were the mews and I heard the clip-clop of horse’s hooves as Belinda rode out on afinebay hunter. I looked around for the chauffeur but he was nowhere in sight. Stairs went up the outside of the wall to a door above which must be the chauffeur’s residence. Formerly Bertie Morell’s residence. I was sure the police would have searched it thoroughly. I wondered if the child had ever been held there.

“Here I am then, miss.” Adam’s cheerful voice cut short further musings. He wheeled a sturdy-looking bicycle out of the depths of the carriage house for me and dusted off the saddle. “Ever ridden one of these contraptions before?”

“Never. Is it hard?”

“Not once you get going. You just need to pick up speed and then you go straight enough. I'll hold it while you climb on.”

I eased myself into the saddle and put my foot on the pedals.

“Now, I'm going to give you a push to start and then I'll keep hold of the back of your saddle for a while until you get going,” he said. “Off we go then.”

Suddenly I was moving forward. I turned the pedals and felt myself pick up speed. “Keep it straight, miss. Look straight ahead and keep peddling. That’s it. You're doingfine.”And I was moving on my own. Tentatively I turned the handlebars and rode in a circle. Then I slowed, wobbled and put my foot down just as Adam leaped to catch me.

“You did splendidly,” he said. I noticed he was standing a little too close to me, one hand on the handlebars, the other on the back of the seat. “I've a feeling you're not quite as grand as the rest of these folks, or as least as grand as they'd like to be.”

“You shouldn't talk that way about my cousin,” I said, but I was smiling at him.

“Your cousin would still be living in a wooden house like the one my mother lives in, if he hadn't made a fortune in the ice trade.”

“I heard about that,” I said. “He bought a barge, sailed it up to Maine and came down with it full of ice, is that right?”

“That’s how it got started,” he said. “Then he set about getting a monopoly on the icehouses of New York City. Then, not content with that, he set about buying up all the ice along the river.”

“How can you buy ice from a river? Nobody owns river water, do they?”

“There are ice-cutting leases up and down thisriverin winter-time,” he said. “My father used to have one.”

“Really? How interesting. He doesn't have it any more?”

“Flynn squeezed him out of it.”

“Oh,” I said, digesting this. “Then why do you work for him?”

“He pays good wages and it’s convenient. My pa’s dead now. My mother lives across the riverand she’s in poor health. So I'm able to help her out and see her real regular, which is good.”

“And you were away visiting her the day the child was kidnapped?”

“That’sright.”But he averted his eyes.

“You say you and Bertie were good pals,” I went on. “Did you ever think he'd pull off a thing like that?”

“Never in a million years,” he said. “Oh, I'm not saying that Bertie was straight as a die. He'd cheat at cards, make himself ten bucks on a horse, that kind of thing. But nothing like that.”

“So he never talked to you about his plans?”

He shook his head.

“He never talked big at all?”

“The only thing he ever talked about was going out West. Maybe to Alaska. ‘There are plenty of suckers out there, Adam,’ he'd say to me. ‘I reckon I could make myself a mint in Alaska.’”

I took a deep breath before I asked the next question. “He never suggested that you go in with him then?”

“Me? Hey, I was on the other side of the riverthat day. If he planned something as evil as kidnapping that poor baby, he never told me about it.”