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

He went up the stairs. I heard him greet Mrs. Tucker and then say something to the girl that I didn’t understand. After a few minutes he came downstairs again. “I tried addressing her in Hungarian,” he said. “I know a few phrases. But it seemed to make her more distressed, so I stopped.”


I closed the door behind him, still wondering. If the sound of Hungarian being spoken made her more distressed, how could I be doing the right thing in handing her over to this young man? A suspicion came into my head. What if she had arrived, an innocent virgin from Hungary, pledged to a man she hardly knew, and what if he had tried to have his way with her as soon as he got her home? Might she not have fled into the snow, hoping to find a friend? I was going to give Mr. Laslo Baka a good grilling before he took Annie away.

I dressed with care and then took the El to Grand Central, giving myself plenty of time to reach the meeting place first. I stationed myself under the clock, as instructed, and waited. It was smoky and noisy in there with the sound of puffing locomotives competing with the shouts of porters and the hubbub of the crowd. I waited. The clock struck eleven. Nobody came. An absurd hope rose inside me that he had changed his mind and I wouldn’t have to give up Annie to him. Of course, like many of my notions, it bordered on the ridiculous. I had neither the time nor the means to care for her in the long run, but I realized I’d harbored this stupid secret fantasy that one day she’d open her eyes and say, “I am restored to my former self, thanks to you, Molly Murphy.”

I hadn’t taken into account that her former self might have been deranged.

As the big hand on the clock jumped on to ten after eleven and I had decided to leave, I saw two men hurrying toward me. One was tall, lanky, and dark-haired, with a sad face and drooping mustache, and the other short, stocky, clean-shaven, and distinguished-looking, with an impressive head of iron-gray hair worn beneath a dark homburg. They both wore dark overcoats of what seemed to be good quality, and the older one carried an ebony cane with a silver tip.

“Miss Murphy?” It was the older one who spoke. He held out his hand. “May I present my nephew Laslo Baka. Unfortunately, he speaks only little English. He came from Hungary two years ago.”

He nudged the younger one, who held out his hand. “Happy to meet you, Mees Murphy,” he said.

“And I you,” I replied.

“We are so grateful you rescue our beautiful girl for us,” the older one went on. “We think she is lost forever.”

“We don’t yet know that it is your girl,” I said.

“Of course. But we are hopeful. You find this girl lost the day after she should have arrived from Germany on the ship.”

“How was it that you failed to meet her at the ship?” I asked.

The old man muttered something to the younger one, who muttered a reply.

“He say he was a little late. They were digging up the streets around the docks. The cab take longer than it should. He gets out and starts to run. It is farther than he thinks and when he gets there—the gangways are already down and people are going ashore. My nephew asks for her. He goes on board and asks for her. They think she already went ashore.”

The young man muttered something else, waving his arms as he spoke. “He is frantic. He is desperate. He search the whole of New York for her.”

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“What I think,” the old man said grandly, “is that sometimes no good rats wait for these ships. They pounce on girls alone. They lure them away and want to force them into prostitution.” He looked at me with a penetrating gaze. “What was the girl wearing when you found her?”

“She was dressed as if for a party or the theater. A white silk evening dress. Little evening slippers.”

“No coat? No shawl?”

“No. Nothing.”

“You see, I am right! These rats, they dress her, tell her is for party, and then she find what is for. She escape. She run.”

It did seem possible.

“So now we take cab. We go to her, si?”

“Do you have a photograph of the girl you are looking for?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, no. This girl is from primitive village, far from city. No photographer. But I bring you letters.” He opened his overcoat and produced some papers from an inside pocket. He bowed as he handed them to me. “One from her father. One from priest to say on which ship she comes.”

I stared at the letters. They looked as if birds had been hopping over the paper, creating a series of wild scratches that hardly resembled words. Finally, I did manage to pick out the word Budapest and then Bremen on one of them. The older man looked over my shoulder and jabbed at the letter with his forefinger. “This say Anya is so happy that she will meet Laslo again. She looks forward to her new life in America.”

“We don’t yet know that it is the same girl,” I said.

“We will know her when we see her. We go?”

He took my arm and firmly escorted me from the station and out to the hansom cabs.

“It’s quite a way to my house,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want to take the El?”