Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #5)

My friends were right. I was missing the O’Connor children. I had felt myself encumbered by the O’Connors since I arrived in New York, but also responsible for them, since they had essentially saved my life. I had posed as their mother to bring them across from Ireland, when their own mother found that she was dying of consumption and not allowed to travel. Thus I had been able to escape Ireland with the police on my tail. So I could hardly abandon them. And the poor little mites with no mother, too. Seamus and young Shamey had gone to the country to be with Bridie during her recovery, Seamus hoping to find some kind of farmwork to support them.

As I stood lost in thought, there was a plop and the morning post landed on the doormat. I picked up two letters. The first, in Daniel’s black, decisive hand, went straight in the rubbish bin. The second a childish scrawl I didn’t recognize, liberally dotted with ink blots. I opened it and saw it was from the O’Connors.

Dear Molly,

My pa telled me to rite this as he don’t rite so good. (Little Shamey had clearly not benefited overmuch from his recent schooling). We’re doing fine here. Bridie is up and walking agin. Pa and me is camping out in a farmer’s barn and, we’re helping him with the harvest. You shud see me, Molly. I can lift great bales of hay jest like a man. Pa likes it so good out here, he says he don’t want to go back to the city where there is sickness and gangs and all. He’s trying to get a job all year on a farm. I wish you’d come out here and join us, Molly.



Then underneath in an even more illegible scrawl, “It don’t seem the same without you, Molly. I know there’s no question of love between us, but we get along fine, don’t we, and the children already think of you as their mother.”

I put down the paper hurriedly on the kitchen table. If I read this right, I now had three unwanted suitors. I wished I hadn’t left The Times over at Number Nine. Nebraska was sounding better by the minute!





TWO




An hour later I had come to one big decision. I was not going to mope around feeling sorry for myself any longer. Sid was right. All my life I had been a fighter not a coward. I should face Daniel, once and for all. I was going to put last night’s dream down to a sluggish liver and get on with my life. Having made this momentous decision, I decided to celebrate. Gus and Sid had been so good to me and I had imposed upon their generosity, giving little in return. So tonight I would cook them a grand dinner, as a thank-you. It would take my mind off things to keep myself occupied.

I wasn’t going to try and compete with the exotic fare that they ate, but I decided that I couldn’t go wrong with cold chicken and salad for a hot summer night. Chicken was a luxury I could ill afford at the moment, funds not being too plentiful. I hadn’t had an assignment since I returned from the mansion on the Hudson, almost a month ago now. And I was still owed my fee for that assignment. But since Daniel Sullivan was the one who owed it to me, I’d rather starve than ask him for it. I suppose my behavior could be construed as childish, but this time I was resolved to be firm.

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 front door. When they accepted, I headed for a kosher butcher 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. Riley and 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 EAST SIDE 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 out from 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.”