Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #5)

Somehow I made it home. I let myself into my house and crawled up to bed. I felt terrible—not just because of the effect of the gin, but because I had lost a woman I had come to admire enormously. More than that—my one ally had been taken from me. How could I possibly go on with this investigation alone? Then all at once I sat up in bed. It wasn’t my case, was it? Nothing we had discovered pointed to any connection between the East Side Ripper and Daniel’s imprisonment. He admitted he had just been assigned to take over with little to go on. And now with John Partridge’s link to the racing syndicate, I even had a motive for him to have plotted Daniel’s arrest. So it didn’t matter if I was off the Ripper investigation. I felt relief but also annoyance. I didn’t like to leave things half-finished. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it anymore. Quigley and McIver were hardly likely to share their findings with me.

About an hour after I’d gone to bed I woke from a half doze to a bad attack of cramps. I lay, hugging my knees to me as my insides were wracked with pain. At first I wondered if it was something I had eaten until I remembered the gin. Mrs. Butler had made me drink it for this very purpose. Mother’s Ruin, she had called it and given me a significant wink. I got up and paced around, hugging my arms to my stomach. Did this mean I was going to lose the baby, after all? I knew now with complete certainty that I didn’t want that to happen.

Please no, I prayed silently.

I went downstairs and made myself a cup of tea, then sat at the kitchen table, sipping the hot liquid and hoping for the cramps to subside. After a while they did seem to lessen in strength. I crawled back to bed and lay curled up in a ball. Eventually I must have drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke bright sun was streaming in through my bedroom window. Birds were chirping. I sat up and realized I had survived the night. The cramps had gone. My baby was still there. I felt like a new person. I had literally been given a new lease on life. I jumped up and almost ran down the stairs. I snatched a quick breakfast before making my way to Saint Vincent’s Hospital.

The sister at the reception desk was not the same one I had met before. She looked at me with horror.

“Visiting hours are posted on the wall over there,” she said. “We certainly don’t allow strangers tramping all over the hospital at seven in the morning.”

“But this is important. A lady was brought in here last night by ambulance. Mrs. Goodwin.”

“Ah yes, a terrible accident.”

“It was no accident, she was run down,” I said. “She’s a police matron, and she was on an important case.”

“And what is your interest in this?” she asked starchily. “Are you some kind of reporter?”

“I’m—” I was about to say I was on the case with her, then I changed my mind. “I’m her sister,” I said. “I got word that she had been struck by a runaway horse, but they couldn’t tell me any more.”

She looked at me with those piercing nun’s eyes that have made any number of young children blurt out sins. “Her sister, are you? I understand that she survived the night but remains unconscious.”

“Is there any chance I could see her? It might bring her back to consciousness to hear my voice.”

As I said this I was stricken with conscience. We had never discussed Mrs. Goodwin’s family situation. It was very possible that she had children who should be at her bedside, not a woman she hardly knew. Their voices might bring her back to the world of the living. Mine certainly wouldn’t.

It was of no matter. The sister shook her head. “She’s allowed no visitors until further notice. Doctor’s orders. Absolute peace and quiet, that’s what he said. I told the same to the policemen who came last night.”

“If I come back at visiting time, I’ll be allowed to see her then?” I asked.

“If she is allowed visitors and has regained consciousness.”

She made a motion to go back to her paperwork. I still hovered, reluctant to take no for an answer. She was still alive, that was good news. “And which ward is she in?”

Those eyes were fixed on me again in an innocent stare, but she understood all right. She was thinking that I’d find my way there the moment her back was turned, which had obviously been my intention. “She’s under observation at the moment. I can’t say which ward she’ll be transferred to if and when she awakes.”

I stood looking down the long, white-tiled hallway. Nuns floated up and down it in pairs, gliding almost like ghosts. There were too many of them for me to slip past unnoticed. I’ll have to find myself a nun’s outfit, I thought, as I admitted defeat. I remembered Paddy Riley’s complete wardrobe of disguises. I needed to start my own.

Back home I experimented with bedsheets and my one good tablecloth, but I couldn’t come up with anything that looked like a believable Sister of Charity. If only they wore simple veils, like the nuns at Saint Finbar’s at home, I might have gotten away with it. Now all I could do was wait.

The midday post brought a letter from J. Atkinson, attorney at law. He assured me that Daniel’s case was progressing nicely. However, if I had come up with new information that might be pertinent to the case, would I please drop him a note to share it with him. He didn’t think an interview with Daniel himself could be arranged at this time without jeopardizing his own position and responsibility.