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

“We are an old and proud New York family, Miss Murphy. One of the four hundred, here since the time this city was called New Amsterdam. I believe in the end his family background and his upbringing would not allow him to let us down in this way.”


She was looking at me with imploring eyes. “Will you not help me? I have come to admire your resourcefulness and your pluck. If anyone can come to the truth, it is you, my dear.”

“You flatter me,” I said. “Most of the cases I’ve solved have been more through luck than skill.”

“Then it is that luck that I need,” she said. “The luck of the Irish—that’s what they say, don’t they?”

I chose my words carefully. “Miss Van Woekem, I would love to help you, but a case that would take me out of the city and as far as New Haven? That would involve time that I just don’t have. I’m committed to being at the theater every evening for the foreseeable future, and I have other commitments as well.”

“Captain Sullivan then? Can you not persuade him to work for me? I am not a poor woman, Miss Murphy. I will make it worth your while. Find my nephew, clear his name, and you can set yourselves up in style when you marry.” She leaned forward again. “You do still want to marry the captain, don’t you?”

“I’m not completely sure yet whether I want to marry at all,” I said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like the thought of being under the thumb of some man for the rest of my life. It seems to me that women are expected to surrender all freedom and individuality when they become wives.”

“Well said, Miss Murphy.” She clapped her hands and actually looked pleased. “I knew you were a woman after my own heart. I had offers of my own, you know. I was no beauty but not plain, either, and I came with a good-sized fortune. But all of those suitors wanted to place me in a gilded cage. They wanted to protect me and advise me as if they were to be my father and not my husband. I never found a man who would take me on as his equal so I never married.”

“Sometimes I yearn for security,” I confessed. “I have no money of my own and it’s not easy living from hand to mouth most of the time. And I suppose I do love Daniel, but he has distinctly old-fashioned ideas about marriage. He’d never let me have a career if I married him and I’m not at all sure I want to stay at home and die of boredom.”

“Then it’s fortunate you don’t have to rush into it,” she said, eyeing me so intensely that I wondered if she had any inkling of what I had gone through a few months earlier. “Maybe if you and the good captain work together on proving my nephew’s innocence, he’ll see what a waste it would be to lock you in your little gilded cage.” She reached out and grabbed my hand with her long bony fingers. “You will approach him for me, won’t you? You’ll bring him to see me? You won’t desert me in my hour of need?”

It was like being held in the bony grasp of a skeleton.





SEVENTEEN

I stood in Gramercy Park with John Jacob Halsted’s photograph in my hands, along with fifty dollars that Miss Van Woekem had pressed upon me to cover my expenses, taking deep breaths and trying to calm my racing thoughts. Why had I promised her that we would help her when I already had too much on my plate? I couldn’t possibly jaunt up to Connecticut and back and neither could Daniel if he was supposed to be shadowing Mr. Roth. I supposed I could conclude my investigation of the latter and report to the Mendelbaums that their future son-in-law was all that he claimed to be. But what if I had overlooked or failed to uncover some flaw? I didn’t like to do shoddy work and I certainly didn’t want to saddle the Mendelbaums’ daughter with a less than perfect husband.

Maybe Daniel would have looked into his business and financial dealings today and I could report on those with confidence, I decided. Maybe he would even be home by now and I could brief him on Miss Van Woekem’s problem. Since I was already in the area and Daniel’s apartment was only just across town on Twenty-third, I caught the cross-town stage in his direction. It was still horse-drawn and painfully slow, but at least it saved my feet, on which I’d be standing later for much of a dress rehearsal.

To my annoyance Daniel wasn’t home. I left him a long note, detailing everything Miss Van Woekem had told me and suggesting that he call on her in the morning to offer his services. So now it looked as if I’d just have time to squeeze in a visit to my silent girl in the hospital before I reported for duty at the theater.

My feet were beginning to drag as I walked along the side of Central Park to the hospital. The snow in this area had not been completely cleared away and it was hard going slithering over the icy surface. My feet dragged even more as I made my way up the steps to the hospital ward where she lay. I was hoping against hope for some kind of improvement, and also hoping to find Dr. Birnbaum with her. I came into the ward and found a young fresh-faced nurse in the process of stripping the girl’s bed.