Time of Fog and Fire: A Molly Murphy Mystery (Molly Murphy Mysteries) (2 page)

“You’re turning into quite a student,” I said. “Your mother would be so proud of you.”

“And my father?” She looked up at me wistfully. “He was never much for books and reading. I think he must be dead too, don’t you?”

Bridie’s father and brother had taken a boat to Panama to work on the new canal and we’d not heard any news from them for a year or more. Having heard rumors of the horrendous conditions down in that hellhole, I thought it was quite possible that Seamus was dead, but I put an arm around Bridie’s shoulder. “Not at all. I think he might be in a place far from any communication. There aren’t any roads or post offices, you know. And as you say, he was never one for writing much. Perhaps it never crosses his mind that you’re worried about him. Men are different that way. They don’t think that we women worry.”

She managed a brave smile then. “He won’t know me when he comes back,” she said. “I hope I can still stay with you or with Captain Sullivan’s mother out in the country.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it…” I said, and broke off as I heard a door opening and voices.

“You’ll think about it then?” John Wilkie’s voice. “What will I tell President Roosevelt?”

“I’ll give you my answer by the end of the week,” Daniel said. “It’s a big step. I can’t decide lightly.”

“I’m sure I can smooth it over with the commissioner, especially if the request comes straight from the president,” Mr. Wilkie said. He stood in the hall as Daniel helped him into his overcoat and then handed him his scarf, hat, and gloves.

“So good to see you again, Mrs. Sullivan.” Mr. Wilkie turned to me. “Many thanks for the cheese straws. They were delicious.”

I nodded politely as Daniel ushered him out the front door. The second the door was closed I demanded, “What was all that about? Mr. Wilkie wants you to work for him?”

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about it,” Daniel said. “But yes, that’s the gist of it.”

“You’d leave the police force?”

“If Wilkie can work it out properly, I’d be seconded to him, on assignment.”

“And the request would come direct from President Roosevelt?”

“It would.”

“So you’d be working for the president himself?”

“Indirectly.”

“You are infuriating, Daniel Sullivan,” I said in exasperation. “How can you not tell your wife what you’ll be doing? Surely any decision in your life concerns me.”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “I need to weigh the pros and cons. This assignment is not exactly straightforward. It involves an element of subterfuge.”

“And danger?”

“Possibly that too. But I live with danger every day in my current job, as you know only too well. I’ve already taken one bullet recently.”

I put a hand on his arm. “Then do what your mother wants. Go into politics.”

He laughed then. “Can you actually see me in Albany as a congressman? Or worse still, in Washington? If I’ve fallen foul of the police commissioner because I won’t take bribes and turn a blind eye to corruption, how much worse do you think it would be in politics? I’d be beholden to those who elected me. I’d have to toe the party line and go against my conscience.”

“Is this assignment from John Wilkie in New York?” I asked. “Can you tell me that much?”

“No, I don’t think it would be in New York.”

“We’d have to move?”

“No. It would only involve a brief trip away from home, I hope. A month or so at the most.”

“And I would stay here?”

“You’d stay here,” he said. “Much better all around. Bridie has her school. You have your friends to keep an eye on you. And I’d be free to do—what I have to.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I don’t want you to do anything dangerous, Daniel.”

“Don’t be silly.” He kissed me on the forehead. “I know how to take care of myself. I won’t take any stupid risks. It will be fine.”

“You sound as if you’ve already made up your mind.”

“I think I have,” he said. “I’d rather be out and doing something than hanging on here, watching my colleagues get handed the juicy investigations, waiting for my enemies to find the next nail to hammer into my coffin.”

“Don’t speak of coffins, please.” I looked up into his face.

Two

Two days later Daniel told me that he had decided to accept Mr. Wilkie’s assignment. It would be a good challenge for him, he said. And a chance to sound out other opportunities. If he got on well with the president, if the president came to value him, who knew where that might lead.

I looked up from the potatoes I was peeling at that moment. “I’d love the folks in my village in Ireland to see me now,” I said. “Molly Murphy, from the tumbledown cottage with the drunken father, now married to a man who has been personally summoned by the president of the United States for a special assignment.”

Daniel grinned. “You make it sound more important than it really is,” he said.

“You could at least give me a hint about what you’ll be doing.” I glared at him. “Will you be chasing criminals, catching spies? I don’t exactly know what the Secret Service does.”

“Neither do I,” Daniel replied. “Neither do they, I think.” He laughed. “The service was started to prevent the counterfeiting of money and to protect the president. But John Wilkie is an ambitious man and I’m sure he seeks to expand its role.”

“So you’ll be protecting the president?” I asked innocently.

“No. My task is humbler than that, I can assure you.”

“Is it espionage then?” I asked. “Anarchists?”

“No anarchists, I promise you.” He smiled. “And you’re making much more of this than it really is, Molly. I don’t think it will amount to much more than a simple case of fraud.”

I felt a small spark of relief that at least he wouldn’t be battling dangerous foreigners. “So why is Mr. Wilkie coming to you? Doesn’t he have agents of his own to do his dirty work?”

“Of course. But I rather think he wants me because I’m not one of them. I’m an outsider. Unknown.”

I stood there, a half-peeled potato in my hand, staring at him, willing him to speak. “Daniel, won’t you at least tell me where you’re going?”

“As to that I can’t tell you because I don’t rightly know. I’ll be meeting with the president in Washington, D.C. After that…”

“After that? I’m your wife. Don’t I have a right to know where you’ll be? What if Liam was taken deadly sick, God forbid? Or your mother?”

“John Wilkie will know where I am. In case of dire emergency, you can contact him.”

“So what sort of clothes should I be packing for you?” I asked. “Will it be your winter long johns or your summer blazer?”

He laughed then and slipped his arms around my waist. “I’m not going to fall for your subtle attempts to get a confession out of me, Molly Sullivan. I’ll pack my own bag when I’m ready to leave.”

I sighed and went back to my potatoes.

The next few days passed too quickly. Daniel received telegrams and presumably sent replies. I made sure all his clothing was clean. He packed what seemed to be a ridiculously small bag. At least this cheered me up a little. He could not be expecting a long absence if he was taking so little clothing. When I’d gone to Paris I’d taken a trunk. So maybe I was worrying too much over nothing. It might be no more than a brief consultation with the president and then he’d be home.

Daniel himself seemed in the best of humor when he said good-bye to us on a brisk March morning. Wind whipped at his scarf as he paused halfway down Patchin Place and turned back to wave and blow Liam a kiss. Then he was gone. I blinked back stupid tears. I was being unnecessarily emotional. He wasn’t being sent abroad to be a spy. He was doing a simple job for the president. No more dangerous than his normal work in New York.

The door across Patchin Place opened and my neighbor Gus Walcott came out.

“He’s off then?” she said as Daniel’s back disappeared around the corner onto busy Greenwich Avenue.

I nodded.

“Cheer up. He’ll be back before you know it.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “And they do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’m going to the French bakery to pick up croissants. Come over in half an hour and have coffee with us. We’ll plan some exciting things to do while Daniel is away.”

I tried to seem more cheerful when I was ushered into their warm kitchen later that morning. The good smells of brewing coffee and warm breads filled the air. Gus’s companion, Sid Goldfarb, was standing at the stove, stirring a bubbling pot, looking like a rather glamorous witch in her emerald green velvet jacket and black silk trousers. I suppose I should explain that Sid and Gus were nicknames for two women officially called Augusta and Elena. They had enough private money to live a Bohemian lifestyle, completely ignoring the rules of polite society. They were always trying new things, painting, writing, traveling, and enjoying themselves. They were also passionate suffragists. While I supported their cause I had to tread carefully as Daniel did not approve of women making spectacles of themselves (nor of women getting the vote, I suspect). And since he was well respected in New York society, I couldn’t do anything that might jeopardize his position. However it occurred to me as I put Liam down to toddle around that I’d have more freedom to be involved while he was gone.

Sid and Gus must have been thinking along the same lines because Sid looked up from the pot she was stirring. “So the cat’s away and the mice are going to have tremendous fun playing, eh, Molly?” she said with a mischievous smile. “We were just talking about you last night and how it’s up to us to keep you entertained. We have art galleries you have to visit and we’ll invite all our disreputable artist friends your husband so disapproves of. Also we’re planning a spring suffragist campaign and we’d love you to be part of it. We’re even talking of marching in the Easter Parade again with our banners.”

“Is that a good idea?” I asked as Gus put a cup of coffee in front of me. “It wasn’t too successful last time, was it? And Daniel was furious that he had to rescue me from a jail cell.”

“That was several years ago now,” Gus said. “I think more women are coming around to our way of thinking. And we can’t give up because of a few petty setbacks.” She took a croissant from the basket on the table and handed it to Liam, who promptly sat down on the rug and began to suck on one corner.

“At least you’ll come to our meetings, won’t you?” Sid asked. She put down the spoon and came to sit beside me at the table.

“Of course I will.”

“We have to keep you occupied so that you won’t pine,” she said. “It’s worked for us. You see how busy we’ve kept ourselves since the children went to live with their grandfather.”

“You still miss them?” I said. Sid and Gus had taken in two street orphans who had now been happily reunited with their family. (Thanks to a spot of my detective work, I should add.)

“Of course we do. But we are to see them soon. Their grandfather wrote to us last week. It seems their family owns a cabin in the Adirondacks and we are to take the children up to the snow as the old man is not up to that kind of travel yet.”

“Oh, that should be marvelous fun,” I said. “I’m glad for you.”

“I’ve been meaning to improve my skiing technique for ages,” Sid said. “I tried it once in college but never quite got the hang of it. My German instructor kept telling me to ‘bend zee knees.’ I bent them but I still couldn’t control where those darned skis were taking me.”

Gus exchanged a glance with me. “I think I’m going to prefer the hot cocoa by a roaring fire with mountain views through a window,” she said. “I may even take my paints and capture the scenery.”

“You’ll want to play in the snow with the children, I know you will,” Sid said. “Think what fun we’ll have sledding and making snowmen. And even…” She leaped up again as the pot on the stove began to bubble furiously.

“What are you cooking? It smells interesting,” I said.

“It’s a mulligatawny soup from that Indian cookbook you gave us. We’re getting quite proficient at Indian cookery, aren’t we, Gus? We’re planning an Indian banquet soon. We’ll dress up in saris and put dots on our foreheads and invite someone to play the sitar.”

“Sid was talking about seeing if we could borrow an elephant from the Bronx Zoo to transport our guests along Patchin Place,” Gus said.

“I don’t see what’s so odd about that,” Sid retorted as Gus and I started to laugh.

“And how would you bring the elephant from the zoo? Certainly not aboard the tram or the subway.”

“Details. Mere details.” Sid waved a dismissive hand. “We are determined that our next big adventure will be to go to India, Molly. You know how much we’ve been longing to. But of course we won’t go anywhere until Daniel is safely back and you can do without us.”

“You lead such exciting lives,” I said. “Mine seems so humdrum compared to yours.”

“It wasn’t humdrum when you ran that detective agency, was it?”

“No. It certainly wasn’t.”

“A little too exciting at times, I’d say,” Gus added as she scooped Liam up from the floor before he disappeared into the pantry. “We feared for your safety, Molly. We’re glad you’ve given up such adventures.”

“I suppose so.”

Sid looked up from her coffee. “Do you still miss it? The excitement? The satisfaction of solving a case?”

“As if she’s really given it up,” Gus said. “Who used her detective skills to find out the truth about the children last Christmas? Or solved the mystery of that poor girl’s dreams?”

“I suppose I have had to put my skills to the test occasionally,” I admitted. “And I confess that I’m rather annoyed that Daniel will tell me nothing of this latest assignment. I don’t know where he’s going or what he will be doing.”

“It must be something rather hush-hush,” Sid said. “I bet he’s going to be a spy. How exciting for him. I’d love to be a spy, wouldn’t you, Gus?”

“He’s not going to be a spy,” I said rapidly. “He promised me he wasn’t going abroad.”

“Perhaps he can’t tell you,” Sid said, giving Gus a knowing look.

I wished she hadn’t said that. Now I’d have more to worry about—Daniel secretly in Russia or Japan or Germany.… I couldn’t bear to think about it.