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

Since I hadn’t been privy to that conversation I couldn’t supply her with details. “Just that they were afraid to go with him. That should be enough to warn you, shouldn’t it?”


Instead of agreeing with me, she shook her head, still smiling. “This is of no importance for Lanie’s future, Miss Murphy. After they are married there will be no more evenings at the theater. No more chorus girls. The boy will learn to settle down and be a good husband and doting father. We shall make sure of that. I was more concerned about his financial status.”

“His financial affairs seem above reproach,” I said. “He is thought of highly among his colleagues and at his bank, one gathers.”

“Then that is all that matters. Young men are expected to sow their wild oats, Miss Murphy. You’re no more than a slip of a girl yourself. You have probably led a sheltered life and never encountered such things, but young men with a good income make a practice of wining and dining chorus girls. They may get drunk and act foolishly from time to time. But it all stops when they marry.”

“But are you not concerned that he may treat your daughter roughly? He may make strange demands of her?”

“My daughter is used to getting her own way, Miss Murphy,” she said firmly. “I don’t think she’ll have any problem keeping Leon Roth in order, and if she does, then Mr. Mendelbaum will soon straighten him out. Everyone listens to Mr. Mendelbaum, if they know what’s good for them.”

She stood up again. “I’m so glad you came and I thank you for the information. I owe you a fee, don’t I? Let me find my checkbook.”

She went to a lady’s writing desk, beautifully carved in mahogany, and opened the roll top. Then she scrawled something on a check and handed it to me. “I think we agreed on one hundred, didn’t we?”

“I hardly like to take it if I did you no service,” I said.

“Take it. Of course you should take it. You put in the time and effort, didn’t you? You supplied us with the facts. Now it is up to us to decide whether we should act on those facts. And knowing my daughter and how headstrong she is, I’d say there is little likelihood that she will let Leon Roth out of her clutches again. And I suspect they will be blissfully happy.”

She waved the check back and forth to let the ink dry and then put it firmly into my hands.

I left the house with a bad taste in my mouth. Should I have been more forceful in my condemnation of Leon Roth? Was Lanie Mendelbaum destined for a hard time ahead? Then I told myself that it was none of my business. I had been hired for a job. I had done the job. What they did with the information I supplied was their business. As my friends had told me, I got too emotionally involved with my cases. I should learn to keep all emotion out of my work.





THIRTY-THREE

After I left the Mendelbaums’, I paid a satisfying visit to my bank, then I checked a nearby clock and decided I might just have time to find Ryan at home before I had to report to the theater. I went all the way back to Washington Square and to the Hotel Lafayette, only to find that Ryan wasn’t there. This was turning into a most vexing day. I was just leaving the hotel again when who should be coming along the sidewalk but Dr. Birnbaum, who also resided at the Lafayette.

“Ah, Miss Murphy,” he said, raising his hat to me and clicking his heels at the same time, which was no mean feat. “I have just been to call on you. I was most anxious to hear how things went this morning.”

“Our girl has been taken away by her relatives,” I said.

“Well, that is good news, isn’t it? So all was well? They recognized her immediately?”

“They did.”

“And it was too much to expect that she recognized them?”

“She certainly didn’t seem to. If anything she looked worried when they spoke to her.”

He nodded. “Only natural. Her brain was trying to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle back together. Something inside her was saying that she should know these people, but she probably associates them with home and knows that they are in the wrong place. She didn’t even react to their speaking Hungarian to her?”

“She didn’t answer them, or even look as if she understood.”

“It will take time. We just have to be patient. At least with loving care she may make dramatic improvements. You told them that I would like to continue treating the patient?”

“I did, but they insisted that they would rather have their own doctor. They seemed suspicious of alienists.”

“Only too frequent a reaction, I fear. But you took their address, did you?”

“I did. And I remember it. It is twenty-nine Brook Street, Brooklyn.”

“Excellent.” He produced a little notebook, took a pencil from the side of it, and jotted down the address. “I think I will call on them anyway and again offer my services. I can say modestly that I have a better chance of restoring her to health than any other doctor in New York, except for Meyer, maybe.”