Tell Me, Pretty Maiden (4 page)

“Missed me,” I shouted, but I could hear him gaining on me. The hills and trees were ahead. We could turn this into a game of hide-and-seek. The snow was deeper here again, however, and I clambered and slithered up the nearest slope. Daniel still hadn’t caught up with me. I started to run down the other side, then almost stumbled over something beside the tree. It was white and I didn’t realize what it was until almost too late. I grabbed onto a bare tree branch and pulled up, recoiling in horror. It was a woman’s body.

FIVE

She was young and beautiful, with a delicate little elfin face surrounded by rich chestnut hair, and she was clad only in a flimsy white dress and white stockings with dainty little black evening shoes. Her porcelain flesh was as white as the snow and she looked like a large white china doll lying there.

“I’ve got you now. You’re at my mercy,” Daniel shouted as he came blundering over the rise. Then he saw my face. “What is it?”

Silently I pointed to the ground at my feet.

“God Almighty,” Daniel exclaimed, although he was usually most careful about swearing in my presence. “Don’t touch her and stand back. I want to get a good look at the scene of the crime. There will be footprints.”

“Scene of the crime?” I asked nervously.

“Young ladies don’t usually wander out into the snow with no warm outer garments and certainly not in those shoes. She was probably killed and brought here.”

He came forward cautiously and examined the ground around the dead girl.

“Strange,” he muttered. “I see no prints but those the girl herself made. How can that be?”

He squatted beside the girl, lifted her wrist, then dropped it again as if it burned him. “I felt a pulse. She’s still alive. Quickly, help me off with my jacket. We must warm her up.”

“My cape is warmer,” I said, untying the neck before he could object. I helped Daniel raise the girl from the snow and we wrapped the fur-lined cape around her.

“We must get help fast,” Daniel said. “And a warm drink. You stay with her. Here, put my jacket around you. I’ll go and alert the constable at the gate. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

He ran off while I knelt in the snow, cradling the unconscious girl in my arms. Her flesh felt so cold to my touch that it was hard to believe she could be still alive. But as I looked down at her face I saw her eyes flutter open and look around in wonder. They were an incredible blue and her wide-eyed stare only added to her doll-like quality.

“Don’t worry. You’re safe now,” I said in a soothing voice. “Help is on the way. You’re going to be all right.”

The eyes fluttered shut again and I held her to me like a large child. I looked around me at the desolate winter landscape. It was hard to believe that I was in the middle of a city and that just over that hill there were crowds of people. Daniel was as good as his word. Just as I was beginning to feel the cold badly without the benefit of my cape, he came back, wading through the deep snow with a cup of cocoa in one hand, and the constable from the park gate, red-faced and panting, following at his heels.

“Well, I never did,” the constable exclaimed.

“She hasn’t regained consciousness, then.” Daniel dropped to his knees beside us.

“She opened her eyes for a moment,” I said.

“Wake up, my dear,” Daniel said gently. “We’ve got a nice hot drink for you. Try and take a sip.”

He put the cup to her mouth. She recoiled in fear as the warm liquid touched her, but then ran her tongue experimentally around her lips. Daniel tried again and this time she managed a sip or two. After a few minutes of patient ministration, he was able to get the whole cup down her. Her eyes opened again and she stared at us in complete bewilderment.

“We should get you home,” Daniel said. “Where do you live, miss?”

She continued to stare without responding.

“You’re in Central Park. Do you know how you got here?”

No reaction.

“You’re safe with us,” Daniel said gently. “We are police officers. We’re going to take good care of you. Now, what is your name?”

She looked up at me with the same bewildered look on her face.

“Tell us your name and address and we can take you home,” I said, smiling at her.

No response.

“Maybe she has some identification on her,” the constable suggested.

“I think that’s unlikely,” I said. “She’s wearing the flimsiest of gowns and no kind of overcoat.”

“No pocketbook?”

I shook my head. “No pocketbook.”

“Maybe that’s it then,” Constable Jones said. “Maybe she was out for a morning walk and she was robbed in a desolate part of the park and the thief stole her outer garments and pocketbook.”

“It’s possible,” Daniel said. “Were you attacked? Let me see if you were hit on the head.”

He went to touch her hair but she recoiled in alarm again.

“Let me,” I said. “She’ll feel more comfortable with a woman.” I smiled at her. “I just want to see if you got a nasty bump on the head. I won’t hurt you.”

I tried to feel her scalp but she was starting like a nervous colt. “She may have a bit of a bump just over her right temple,” I said, “but I don’t see any blood. Besides, we saw her footprints, and no others. If someone had hit her over the head to knock her out, would she have got up and started walking again? And look at those impossible little shoes. She’d never have intentionally gone for a walk in those.”

“But she did walk this far under her own steam and then she must have collapsed with cold.” Daniel was still frowning.

“No other footprints, you say?” The constable stared at the snowy ground, which clearly displayed the dainty trail coming from the northeast. “And no sign of foul play, as far as we can tell? Her dress was not disturbed or in disarray?”

From the way a glance passed between him and Daniel, I could tell what he was hinting at.

Daniel coughed discreetly. “If she walked here alone, we can hardly find out any more until she’s been examined by a doctor, or can tell us herself.”

“Her dress was in no kind of disarray when I found her,” I said. “She was lying as if asleep,”

“Whatever happened we must get her into a warm environment as soon as possible,” Daniel said. “In the absence of a name and address we’d better take her to the closest hospital.”

“That would be the German hospital, Lenox Hill, on East Seventy-seventh,” the constable suggested.

“Not far at all, then,” Daniel said. “If we could carry her to the nearest park gate, we could hail a cab. That would be quicker than summoning an ambulance. Do you think we could manage it?”

“No trouble at all,” the constable said. “I’ll wager she weighs no more than a feather. Look at her, she’s all skin and bones. She doesn’t look as if she’s had a decent meal in months.”

He was right in a way. There was no spare flesh on her. I could easily span the tiny wrist I was holding between my thumb and first finger, and yet she didn’t look gaunt or starving, and from what I could see, her dress and shoes were of good quality.

“Are you sure you can’t tell us your name?” I asked her again. “It would be so much nicer to go home than to be taken to a hospital, wouldn’t it?”

The girl only stared at me with large, hopeless eyes.

“Maybe she doesn’t understand us,” Daniel said. “Maybe she is a new immigrant who speaks a different language.”

I tried my schoolgirl French on her and Daniel tried some German, but we got no response. As Daniel and the constable lifted her gently between them, she attempted no kind of struggle, but lay passively, her head lolling like a rag doll’s. We soon found a path cutting across from the East Drive and were walking on a swept surface again. The wet snow had soddened my skirts and stockings by now and my teeth were starting to chatter even though I had Daniel’s jacket around my shoulders.

We soon emerged onto Fifth Avenue and Daniel hailed a cab that whisked us a few short blocks to Seventy-seventh. As Daniel carried the girl through the austere entrance of the hospital, and then down that echoing white-tiled hallway, she showed alarm and attempted to struggle, but she was so weak that he held her easily imprisoned in his arms. Soon she was lying in a hospital bed, wrapped in warm blankets and being attended to by nurses. I retrieved my borrowed cloak just as an imposing, bearded doctor arrived on the scene and we repeated our story for him.

“Out in the snow, dressed like this?” he demanded. “Such folly.” He had a strong German accent.

“We were thinking that maybe she wasn’t out in the park willingly. That maybe she had escaped from an abductor or assailant,” Daniel said.

“
Ach so
. I will take a look at her. Move away, please.” A screen was placed around her bed while the doctor examined her. He came out almost immediately, wiping his forehead.

“She is clearly severely traumatized,” he said. “She won’t let me touch her.”

“Then it’s possible she was assaulted in the park?”

“From what I could see, I’d say the answer is no,” the doctor replied. “Her undergarments are tied with an old-fashioned draw-string and don’t appear to have been touched in any way. I should have thought that any potential attacker would have snapped the string in his lust, or at very least not bothered to tie it up again.”

“And as to other kinds of assault?” Daniel asked. “She didn’t appear to have been struck on the head and knocked unconscious, did she?”

“Again, not from what I could see. She became so alarmed every time I moved near her that I thought it best to let her recover before we examine her further. So you have no idea who she might be?”

“She wouldn’t answer any questions or communicate with us in any way,” I said. “Captain Sullivan thought she might not understand English.”

“Captain Sullivan? You’re in the military,
mein Herr
?”

“New York police,” Daniel replied curtly.

“
Das ist gut.
Then we don’t have to file a police report.”

“No, that’s been taken care of,” Daniel said. “So we can leave her in your care for the time being, can we?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll give you my card.” Daniel fished in his pocket. “And we’ll come to visit her tomorrow.”

“Hopefully by the next time you come she’ll have fully recovered and we’ll have contacted her family.” The doctor gave a jovial smile.

I
glanced back at her bed as we left. The screens had been wheeled away and she was lying there not moving, eyes closed, looking as if she was carved from white marble.

SIX

“I’m not sure that I’m in the mood for ice-skating after that escapade,” Daniel said as we stepped into brilliant winter sunshine. “How about you?”

“I’m feeling thoroughly wet and sodden,” I said, “in need of a change of clothes and some hot tea.”

“I’ll call us a cab and take you home.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” I retorted. “All this extravagance with cabs.”

“Then I’ll let you pay for it,” Daniel teased, “since you made a fortune over in Ireland and are currently working on another lucrative case.”

“It wasn’t exactly a fortune,” I said, “and in my business I need to put money by for the dry times when no client shows up at my door. Besides, I was brought up to be frugal. I’ve a good pair of legs and they can take us to the nearest El station.”

“I’ll agree with that,” Daniel said, eyeing me appraisingly. “You’ve certainly got a good pair of legs.”

“Captain Sullivan!” I exclaimed in mock horror.

“Well, you showed them to half the world as you danced across that snowy meadow,” Daniel said, smiling.

We walked in silence for a while. “You’re very subdued,” Daniel said. “Still thinking about that girl?”

“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I said. “Poor thing. What an awful ordeal. She could so easily have died if I hadn’t run away from you and looked for somewhere to hide.”

He nodded. “A rum business, wasn’t it? I’ll be most interested to hear an explanation of what really happened.”

“It seemed to me that the girl had had a bad fright of some kind,” I said. “The way she flinched away when anyone tried to touch her. And yet there appeared nothing wrong with her except for extreme cold.”

“I wonder if she isn’t perhaps a mental patient, wandered away from her caretakers,” Daniel said. “She could be delusional.”

I thought of those blank blue eyes. “You may be right. If she is a mental patient, her family will have reported her missing by now.”

By the time the El reached Eighth Street, my petticoats and stockings had dried and I found myself regretting that I had not tried the ice-skating.

“Maybe we could go skating tomorrow,” I said. “Knowing Sid and Gus they will undoubtedly have proper skating outfits. I have already agreed to have lunch with them and with their friend Nelly Bly.”

“Nelly Bly?” Daniel exclaimed. “The newspaper reporter? She is an acquaintance of your friends?”

“Sid and Gus know everybody worth knowing in the city,” I said with a smile. “And she seems such an interesting woman.”

“A dashed plucky one, from what one reads,” Daniel aside. “She has put herself in harm’s way on numerous occasions, including traveling around the world in seventy-eight days. I’d dearly like to meet her.”

“Then I’ll ask Sid and Gus if you may be included,” I said. “We can visit the hospital in the morning, lunch with Nelly Bly, and then have time to fit in an afternoon of skating before I have to shadow Mr. Roth to his evening pursuits.”

“Couldn’t you take an evening off and let us extend our skating into dinner somewhere?” Daniel asked.

“And what if that’s the one night that he goes on the town, or meets with undesirable people?” I said. “I have been hired to do a job, Daniel. I don’t recall you taking evenings off when you were on a case.”

“That’s true enough. But in my case, I was on the trail of criminals and it was important that they were caught.”

“Oh, I see,” I said haughtily. “You still think that my occupation is not serious, is that it? I’ve been in dangerous situations myself, you know.”

“Which is why I would be heartily glad if you forsook it for a safer profession,” Daniel said. “But I admire your loyalty to your clients and your determination to see the job through. I’ll be content to wait for a dinner engagement until the assignment is over. When will that be?”

“I’m planning to observe Mr. Roth for at least two weeks,” I said. “If I have no hint of any deviant behavior in that time, I shall report to my clients that their daughter may safely marry him.”

“So any young man only needs to behave himself for two weeks to make an ideal husband?” Daniel asked.

“I didn’t say that. But two weeks should be enough to form an impression of him, and two weeks is about the amount of time the client is paying for.”

Daniel laughed.

“I’m starving,” I said. “It’s past lunchtime and we haven’t had a bite to eat.”

“We could go to the restaurant at the Hotel Lafayette,” Daniel said. “They do a good lunch plate.”

“We’re supposed to be economizing,” I said. “I’ll make you lunch at home. I’ve a good soup and some cheese.”

“Very well, I accept,” Daniel said.

Finally, we reached Patchin Place.

When I unlocked my front door, I found a letter lying on the mat. It was in a woman’s flowery hand, one that looked strangely familiar. I picked it up.

“Now who would have written to me?” I said out loud.

“Maybe it’s another assignment?”

“No. Letters to the agency are held at the post office,” I said. “I don’t want my clients knowing my home address.”

Never having been known for my patience, I ripped the envelope open. The stationery smelled of perfume. I glanced at the letter.

My Dear Miss Murphy:

I can only hope you are safely returned to New York by now. I have just received a long letter from Grania Hyde-Borne in Dublin, apprising me of the amazing events that took place. My dear Molly, I had no idea that I would involve you in such danger. I never intended to place you in harm’s way and I beg your forgiveness.

Please come to visit me at your earliest convenience. I would dearly love to apologize to you in person, and also to hear the truth about my poor Rose and about Cullen. And there is the little matter of extra money that I owe you, although now I fear I can never pay you enough for what you went through.

Oona Sheehan

I stood there with the letter in my hand.

“Who is it from?” Daniel asked.

“It’s from Oona Sheehan,” I said angrily.

“The actress?”

“The very same. The one who put my life in jeopardy on the trip to Ireland with her dirty schemes.”

“So what does she want now?”

“She’s writing to apologize in person, so she says. But I think the truth is that she wants to hear about what happened to Cullen Quinlan. She was in love with him, you know.” I didn’t add that I had fallen in love with him just a little myself.

“Cullen Quinlan?”

I felt myself turning red. “The leader of the republican brotherhood. A very great man.”

“Ah,” he said. “So are you going to go and pay her a call?”

“I don’t see why I should. It will only open up old wounds, talking about it again.”

Daniel peered over my shoulder. “She says she wants to pay you the money she owes you,” he said. “At least you should collect that. You earned it.”

“I definitely did that,” I retorted bitterly. “Very well, I shall pay her that visit, if only to let her know how thoughtless and cruel her actions were.”

“I don’t envy Miss Sheehan,” Daniel commented with a dry laugh. “Why did you not go to collect your fee as soon as you got home?”

“I just wanted to forget the whole business,” I said. “Too many painful memories.” But even as I was speaking I was toying with Daniel’s words. He had said “home.” I could never go back to Ireland and it gave me a thrill of delight to realize that New York really was my home now.

“I’ll go to her rooms right away, and get it over with,” I said.

“Not right away, I hope. Were we not going to eat first?”

“Trust a man to think of his stomach in times of stress,” I said. “Very well, let me put the soup pot on the stove and you shall have your meal.”

A
fter the meal had been cleared away, I changed into my business costume and attempted to put up my hair into a neat bun. As I was doing this I remembered that I still had the striped black-and-white two-piece that Miss Sheehan had lent me to wear. I found it in my closet, looking in definite need of cleaning and pressing. For a second I wondered if she’d be angry at the state I was returning it in. Then I reminded myself that she owed me far more than she could ever repay.

I shoved the garment into a carpet bag, said farewell to Daniel, and off I went.

Miss Sheehan’s address was Hoffman House on West Twenty-fifth Street. I was expecting some kind of apartment building and was surprised to find instead that not only was it on Madison Square, but that it was an elegant hotel. Madison Square is a leafy oasis in the summer, but the sky had clouded over and trees stretched gaunt black branches over gray and dirty snow, making the scene feel quite forbidding. The wind had whipped up again, too, and I was glad to step into the warmth of the hotel foyer. As the doorman closed the gilt-and-glass door behind me, I stood with my feet sinking into thick carpeting while I stared up in half admiration, half fascination at the large oil painting that dominated the back wall. It depicted nymphs and satyrs, all reveal-ingly nude and lusty-looking. One might expect such things in a museum of art, but in a hotel it was shocking, even for one like myself who has sampled the bohemian life.

Obviously it possessed fascination for other New York visitors, too, as an elderly couple poked their heads in through the front door behind me.

“See, Mary, what did I tell you?” the man said.

“Terrible. Wicked and terrible. Don’t you dare look, Joseph.”

I smiled at their names as well as their reaction, then went over to the reception desk.

“I’m here to see Miss Sheehan,” I said. “My name is Murphy. She is expecting me.”

“Let me see if Miss Sheehan is in residence,” the clerk said and disappeared, leaving me unable to take my eyes off the painting. He soon came back with an almost gracious smile on his face.

“Miss Sheehan will be happy to receive you, Miss Murphy. Please take the elevator to the tenth floor. Room number 1006.”

The elevator operator saluted smartly and whisked me upward. As the door opened on ten a rather striking older woman was standing there. She was swathed in some sort of ginger fur—lynx maybe—and it went well with her wiry mane of hair, giving the impression of a lioness on the prowl. She nodded to me solemnly and said,
“Bonjour,”
in a deep, mannish voice. I was sure I had seen her before somewhere but it was not until the elevator man said, “Going down, Madame Bernhardt,” that I recalled Miss Sheehan telling me that the Divine Sarah also kept a suite of rooms at the Hoffman.

Talk about mingling with the mighty, I thought to myself. If only the folks in Ballykillin could see me now, hobnobbing with the rich and famous. The thought flashed through my mind before I had time to remember that there was nobody in Ballykillin any longer. No family. No friends. All gone. And I was going to have to relive some of my most painful moments for the woman I was about to see. I hesitated in the mirror-lined hallway and almost turned back. But I put on a brave face and rapped smartly on her door.

She was looking as stunning as ever, wearing a silk robe of dark rich green that accented the copper hair. For once this wasn’t piled on her head but spilled over her shoulders. Her face bore no trace of makeup but in truth it needed no help. It was simply the epitome of beauty. One looked at her and gasped. I could well understand why so many young men became besotted with her. I had been resolved to be cold, efficient, and distant with her, but when she stood at the door and opened her arms wide, saying “Molly, my sweet child. Thank you so much for coming,” I found myself accepting her embrace and even murmuring some kind of thanks of my own.

She drew me into a drawing room overlooking the park, elegantly furnished with brocade chairs and sofas. A huge bowl of out-of-season fruit was on a side table, along with the sort of floral tributes that seemed to accompany Miss Sheehan wherever she went.

“Take off your coat, do,” she said, “and do sit down. I’ll have Yvette bring us some tea.” She motioned to a dainty little brocade armchair beside the window. She rang a small silver bell and a slim dark person in a black-and-white uniform appeared, bobbing a curtsey. “You rang, Madame?”

“Yes. Tea for two please, Yvette.”

The maid jerked a halfhearted attempt at a curtsey and went.

Quite a change from Rose, I thought to myself. Her last maid had been a broad country girl from Ireland and she had been brutally murdered.

“Life must go on,” Miss Sheehan said sadly, as if reading my thoughts. “I chose a new maid as different as possible from Rose so that I was not reminded of her. Madame Bernhardt’s own maid suggested her. They come from the same town in France, so one understands.” She paused, looking at me critically. “So how are you, Molly? From what Grania writes you had a most harrowing time.”

“Yes, it wasn’t too pleasant,” I said. “No thanks to you.”

She reached out and touched my hand. “I felt so awful when I realized what I had let you in for.”

“You knew from the very start what you were doing,” I said angrily. “You used me.”

“Yes, but I never thought . . . ,” she said. “Molly, I would never have exposed you to such danger, had I known. I thought it was a simple assignment. Can you ever forgive me?”

She took my hand and smiled her most enchanting dimpled smile. Against my better judgment, I felt myself soften and managed a weak smile of my own.

“And could you possibly bear to tell me all about it? I only have Grania’s account and she has left out a lot of details I would dearly like to know.”

“All right,” I said, and started to recount the events. I tried to be as brief as possible and to stick to the main facts, but it was hard to tell the story without dwelling on my brothers and on Cullen. As she listened she put a lace handkerchief up to her mouth. “Our brave Irish boys,” she muttered. “Such a waste.”

“As you say, such a waste.”

We sat there looking at each other.

“He was a fine man, wasn’t he, Molly?”

“One of the best,” I agreed.

“And did he speak often of me?” she asked.

I didn’t like to say that he had long forgotten her. “All the time,” I lied.

“If only I could have been there,” she said. “But I have a duty to my public. They count on me, Molly. I brighten their little lives.”