The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

“Do you have a pencil and paper?” I asked. The only thing I had in my bag was my calling card and that would never do.

She looked around and shook her head. “Then repeat after me,” I said. “Nine Patchin Place. Can you remember that?”

She repeated it. I nodded. “Good. Keep repeating it to yourself. Any constable in New York will tell you the way. It’s in Greenwich Village and it’s where these women live.”

“Thank you,” she said.

We finished stripping the bed and Blanche led me down the hall to a linen closet for clean sheets. “And there should be a clean uniform in here for you.” It was more like a small room than a closet, with shelves of neatly folded linens on all sides. She looked around the shelves then reached up, hauled down some folded gray-and-blue cloth and handed it to me. It was a gray dress with its grayish-blue overgarment like the one she was wearing made of coarse cloth. It was hard for me to take it, knowing that I wouldn’t be needing it and that some girl would have to launder it again, but I couldn’t find a way to refuse.

As I took it she said, “I think that one will fit. That must have been Katy’s and you’re about the same size.”

“Was Katy one of your friends?” I asked. “Has she had her baby and left?”

Blanche shook her head. “She died.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She fell down the cellar steps and broke her neck.”

“How terrible,” I said. “Poor girl.”

She nodded. “It was an awful shock, especially when I was feeling so low anyway. Katy was a lovely girl. So friendly and nice.”

“What was she doing going down to a cellar?” I asked. “I’ve seen how dark and old some parts of this building are. Why would you ever send a pregnant woman down there?”

“As to that I don’t know what she was doing. Perhaps Sister Angelique had something against her as well. Perhaps she found out that Katy was scared of mice or rats or spiders so she sent her down to clean some part of the cellar where there are bound to be plenty of them. She does things like that.” She shrugged.

“Sister Angelique?” I asked.

“She’s being trained to take Sister Francine’s place. Sister Jerome only likes running things and bossing people around—not the actual day-to-day work. But between ourselves,” and she lowered her voice, leaning close to me, “I don’t think that Sister Angelique is the right person for the job. She volunteered, I understand, but she’s difficult. Moody. Strange. She didn’t take to Katy, although I can’t think why. Katy was a lovely person.”

“You don’t think…” I began hesitantly, “that she maybe took her own life out of despair?”

She looked shocked. “Take her own life? Katy would never do that. She was a cheerful sort of girl, although…” She broke off.

“Although what?”

“She definitely did have something on her mind the day before she died. She was worried about something. I remember now. I asked her what was wrong and she said, ‘It’s nothing. Just something that’s bothering me and I’m not sure what to do about it. She never takes them off, you see.’”

“Who never takes what off?” I asked.

Blanche shrugged. “She wouldn’t say. She just said, ‘Forget about it,’ and walked off. And then we heard that she’d fallen down the steps that evening. But she would never have taken her own life. Never.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I could see she was distressed. “I should never have brought it up. It was simply a sad and terrible accident.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Poor Katy. Such a waste of a life.”

She was about to lead me out of the closet when I moved closer to her and whispered, “Sister Jerome told me about another Irish girl called Maureen. I gather she didn’t like her much.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Blanche’s face. “She didn’t. Maureen stood up to her and she didn’t want to give up her baby, so I heard.”

“And Sister already had a good home for it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“But Maureen didn’t have any option, did she? I mean she couldn’t just go out into the world with no money and a baby to look after?”

“Of course not. That’s what Sister told her, but for some reason she wouldn’t see sense.”

“So what happened to her?” I asked.

“She ran away and nobody found out until she didn’t show up at breakfast.”

“Did you know her?”

She shook her head. “Not really. She’d already had her baby when I arrived and the new mothers stay in the maternity wing with their babies. But a couple of the girls heard her yelling and shouting at someone. She said awful things, I gather—that she’d rather kill her baby than let it go to those people.”

“But she didn’t kill it, did she?” I asked in a horrified whisper.