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

Daniel just shook his head.

“Anyway, it doesn’t add up if he met the girl. On the other hand, if he was hoping to meet a girl and she jilted him or never turned up, he might have decided to drive out to visit a pal, just so that he didn’t have to go home early and lose face with his friends.”

“Possible.” Daniel nodded. “Either way the next step is to get ourselves out to the Silverton place and find out what really happened that night. I’d also like to hear the New Haven police’s side of the story, but I don’t know if I should speak to them, given my current circumstances.”

“I can speak to them,” I said.

Daniel snorted. “I hardly think they will divulge the key elements of their investigation to a private investigator.”

“Did you never think that I might wheedle it out of them with my feminine charms?”

“I think that highly unlikely. We’re trained to resist feminine charms.”

“You fell for mine,” I said with a satisfied little smile. “At the very moment when you were supposed to be prosecuting me.”

“Be that as it may, I think it may be better if I have a quiet word with one of my fellow officers in New York. He’ll be able to find out all the details of the case for me.”

“So how are we going to get out to the Silverton place?” I asked. “I understood it was on the road between New Haven and Bridgeport.”

“Go back to the station and see if there is a cab willing to take us that far.”

“I’m starving,” I said. “Don’t police officers ever eat?”

“Not when we’re on a case,” Daniel said. “But in deference to the weaker sex . . .”

“Fine. If you can hold out, so can I. I don’t see anywhere open in any case.”

“Maybe the Silvertons will invite us to tea,” Daniel said. “And it may not be such a grand idea to go out there today. I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

While we had been inside the dormitory building a great bank of clouds had been building to the east. They looked as if they were heavy with the promise of more snow. I was tempted to agree that we should head back to New York, but a small voice inside my head whispered that I’d have no time to come up here again and I didn’t want to leave my investigation in Daniel’s hands. “Oh, I think we’ll be fine,” I said. “As long as we find ourselves a covered cab. I remember getting drenched by a downpour in Ireland. I don’t wish to repeat that.”

There were several cabs lined up outside the station, the horses with their faces stuck in a nosebag and the cabbies sitting under a shelter out of the cold wind. One of them rose to his feet reluctantly as he saw us.

“You need a cab, sir?”

“We need to go out to the Silverton Mansion,” Daniel said. “It’s out toward Bridgeport, I gather. Do you know of it?”

“I know more or less where it is, yes,” the man said. He was thin and pinched and his cheeks were bright red with the cold. “Quite a ways out. I don’t know if I want to put my horse through that, in this cold wind.”

“Fine. If your horse isn’t up to it,” I said, “maybe you can direct us to a livery stable where we can rent a buggy of our own.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t up to it,” the cabby said hastily. “He’s a good enough horse, but it’s a long ride. Won’t be cheap.”

“It doesn’t look as if you have much demand for your services apart from us,” I said. “Name your price and we’ll decide if it’s fair.”

The old man glanced shiftily from me to Daniel. “I’ll do it for two dollars, sir,” he said.

“Two dollars—,” I began but Daniel put a hand on my arm. “Fine. We accept. Now let’s get going before that snow starts to come down.”

The cabby helped me up and draped a rug over my knees. Daniel climbed in beside me. “You drive a hard bargain,” he said.

“I’m glad you’re finally realizing that I’m no blushing violet,” I said. “I’m a businesswoman, on my own in a big city. I’ve had to learn to survive.”

The horse set off at a good pace, the sound of the hoofbeats echoing through empty streets. The squares at the center of town gave way to narrow streets of row houses, poor working-class neighborhoods where stiff laundry hung out on washing lines and hardy children played in the dirty remains of snow. Then gradually the town came to an end. We crossed a frozen river by a bridge. Some boys had made a slide on the ice and were taking turns at it. There was now snow on the road and the paved surface had given way to rutted track so that we bumped along, the icy puddles crunching under our wheels. If the road to New York is like this all the way, I thought, what on earth had made John Jacob Halsted drive his precious motor car as far as the Bronx? And he certainly wouldn’t have done so with a girl in the seat beside him. She’d have been shaken up like a sack of potatoes.