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

She nodded. “Possibly, why? Do you know an Annie Parker?”


“A girl named Annie Parker, who meets your description, went missing from a theater in New Haven, Connecticut, just before I found the girl in the snowdrift,” I said.

“Is that right?”

“And she may be connected to a case I’m working on—trying to find a young man called John Jacob Halsted who robbed a mansion just outside New Haven.”

“Halsted?” she reacted sharply. “Half the police force is looking for him. Why are you involved?”

“Working on behalf of his family. They want to know the truth about him and where he is.”

“So do we all,” she said.

“Well, one thing I’ve found out is that he frequented the theater in New Haven and that he was planning to take a young lady out for a late supper—possibly Annie Parker. We did wonder whether they might have run off together to South America, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She could have been in his motor car with him when it crashed. She could have been dazed and wandered off and fallen into the marshes nearby.”

“Hardly,” Mrs. Goodwin said shortly. “She had a bullet hole in the middle of her back.”

“She was shot?”

“She was shot. So if your Mr. Halsted was with her, I’d say that things now look even worse for him.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “It all seems so unlikely from everything we’ve heard about him. He certainly liked a good time and he liked spending money, but he had plenty of it and his friends describe him as someone easygoing who didn’t even own a gun. I can’t see a person like that being involved in these horrible crimes they are ascribing to him—robbing banks, shooting people willy-nilly . . .”

“As to that,” Mrs. Goodwin said, “it would now appear that Mr. Halsted is probably not responsible for at least some of the crimes in that area. I gather they have arrested a man in connection with the pay-wagon robbery in Greenwich.”

“They have?”

“Yes, lucky coincidence, actually. The New York police have had their eye on an Italian gang who have been causing us grief. They call themselves the Cosa Nostra and come from Sicily, so I understand. Anyway, we conducted a raid on their houses and one man we rounded up matched the description of the bandit who had robbed the payroll wagon. Now we think that they have found these outlying small towns to be easy pickings without the police supervision of the city.”

“So John Jacob is no longer wanted for these crimes?”

“He’s still wanted for the robbery and murder at the Silverton mansion,” she said. “The evidence against him there is overwhelming.”

“Yes, I suppose that is pretty damning,” I said. “I’d certainly like to know if Annie Parker was involved with him and if it is her body that is now lying in the morgue.”

“I can take you back there to see for yourself,” she said, “although I warn you, she’s not a pretty sight. When a body has been in a river for a few days, the fish have had a good nibble at it.”

I shuddered. “I think I’ll do without the morgue visit then,” I said. “It certainly sounds very like her. But I’m thinking that perhaps I should go up to New Haven and talk to the other girls in the chorus up there. Annie may have confided her plans for that night to one of them.”

“Now that you tell me this, I’ve thought of something else that could be done. I’ll see if the bullet was extracted from her, and then maybe we can find out if it matched the bullet that shot the servant at that mansion.”

“Good idea,” I said, getting quite excited now. “Will you come with me up to New Haven?”

She shook her head with a smile. “Oh no, my dear. I’ve just had ten hours on the beat. All I’m going to do now is fall asleep. But you go. You can handle it well enough on your own. I’ve great faith in you.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go then. I believe that most theaters are dark on Monday nights, but I’m sure I’ll be able to locate where the girls are lodging.” I picked up my cape from where I had tossed it across a kitchen chair. “Can I make you something first?” I asked. “A cup of tea? A sandwich?”

She smiled again. “Oh no, thank you, my dear. You go about your tasks and I’ll be off to bed then. How did my nosy neighbor work out as a nursemaid?”

“Wonderfully,” I said. “She couldn’t have been better. My girl adored her and had actually come to trust her. I think if we’d had another week or two, we’d have restored her to her old self.”

“Amazing.” Mrs. Goodwin nodded. “It just shows that she’s the type who needs to be kept busy then, doesn’t it? Next time she shows up on my doorstep, I’ll find a task for her to do.”