Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #7)

“We have informed the police about her. We can’t do any more,” he said. “Physically she’ll be strong enough to leave us any day.”


“And if they don’t manage to locate her family?”

“If her mental condition doesn’t improve, then she’ll have to be placed in an institution. We need our beds here for the sick.”

“You’re sure this isn’t just a language problem?”

“My dear young lady, we have tried,” he said. “If you don’t understand a language, there is always some way of communicating, isn’t there? Gestures and smiles and words that languages have in common, like mama, papa.”

“Yes, I suppose you are right,” I agreed. “Oh dear. I had hoped for better news today. I’ll come back tomorrow and bring her some good broth—something nourishing. Maybe you’ll have better news by then.”

“Let us hope so,” he said. “Goodbye, Fraulein.” He nodded gravely and moved on.

I was in deep gloom as I walked down the long tiled hallway. Nurses drifted past in crisply starched pairs. Loud moans came from a ward on my right. I hate hospitals, I decided. Maybe it was that smell of disinfectant that doesn’t really mask the sweeter odors of sickness and death. Then I noticed a figure I thought I recognized coming toward me. The meticulous outfit, the neat blond beard, the homburg, the silver-tipped cane—I couldn’t be mistaken. It was the young German alienist I had encountered on several occasions previously.

“Dr. Birnbaum,” I called and waved, making the nurses turn toward me and frown.

His face lit up as he saw me and he clicked his heels smartly. “Miss Murphy. What an unexpected pleasure. What brings you here?”

“Visiting a patient,” I said. “And you?”

“I’m here to consult with an old friend from my student days in Vienna,” he said.

“Of course, how silly of me. This is called the German hospital, isn’t it? You’d feel right at home here.”

“Although I am Austrian, not German. There is a difference, you know.” He smiled. “And I treat the mind and here they only treat the body.”

A magnificent idea was forming in my head. “You’re an absolute godsend, do you know that?”

“Am I? In what way?”

“There is a patient here, a young girl, who doesn’t seem to be able to speak or understand anyone. I found her yesterday unconscious in a snowdrift in Central Park. We brought her here and she has recovered, but still won’t speak.”

“Has it occurred to anyone that she might be deaf?” he asked.

I felt really stupid. “What an obvious thing to have overlooked,” I said. “But would you take a look at her yourself? I’d feel much happier if I knew that everything was being done to communicate with her. And if she really were suffering from a disease of the mind, then you’d be the very person, wouldn’t you?”

“I can’t examine a patient here uninvited,” he said, “but I can ask my friend to make an introduction to her attending physician.”

He always was one for correctness, I remembered.

“Thank you, Dr. Birnbaum. That’s a load off my mind. And if you could possibly let me know what you find, I’d be most grateful.”

I thought he might say that divulging such information would also be unethical, but he nodded and said, “I’ll pop a note through your front door when I return home this evening. It’s good of you to take such an interest in a stranger.”

“Oh, you know me.” I laughed. “I never could keep my nose out of other people’s business.”

I came out of the hospital and stood breathing deeply, filling my lungs with the cold, smoky, familiar New York air to rid my nostrils of the cloying hospital smell. Then I walked back along Central Park, making my way to the Fifty-eighth Street El station. As I walked I found that my brain was buzzing. Daniel and I should have taken more trouble to examine the site where we had found the girl yesterday. We should have retraced her footsteps and seen if we could have located her coat, or the place where she was attacked. We might have seen the footprints of her attacker. We may even have been able to see where she entered the park and where she encountered him, or them.