Time of Fog and Fire: A Molly Murphy Mystery (Molly Murphy Mysteries) (3 page)

So I was relieved to get a postcard from Daniel a few days later with a picture of the White House in Washington. On the back he had written,
All going well here. Sending a kiss to my wife and son.

He was in Washington, only a few miles away. And if he had time to buy and write a postcard then he couldn’t be in any imminent danger, I told myself. Maybe he was telling the truth when he said he was handling a simple case of fraud. I resolved to enjoy my time while he was away. Sid and Gus were true to their word. They took me to an exhibition at the Tenth Street Studio—a huge warehouse-like place where poor local artists could rent a studio to work for a very small rent. The rent, unfortunately, did not include heating. The exhibition was under the central dome and even though the setting was quite grand, it still felt chilly and inhospitable. I was glad that I had my fur muff with me and even more glad when I was offered a glass of mulled wine, cradling my hands around it and feeling the warmth flowing back into my fingers.

Also I have to confess that I was not impressed with the latest trends in art. I had found the paintings of the Impressionist school to be beautiful and serene. These post-Impressionists, Cubists, Fauvists, or whatever they liked to call themselves, were not producing pictures I should care to hang on my walls—all distorted figures, garish colors, and nightmare designs. Still, I suppose they represented the new century we lived in with its mechanical progress, political upheaval, and new scientific ideas. I was naturally polite when Sid and Gus enthused over various canvases and compared them to Gus’s own work (which I found equally unappealing, although of course I had never said so).

I did meet one young man whose work I liked. His name was Feininger and he painted elongated figures in pleasing colors, rather like stained glass windows. I was just chatting with him when Gus came up to me in great excitement and dragged me away.

“You’ll never guess who we’ve just met, Molly. Mr. Samuel Clemens.” When she saw my puzzled face she went on, “You know, Mark Twain himself. He’s taken a house here again and we’re invited to a soiree on Saturday. Do come over and meet him.”

Of course. Mark Twain. I flushed at my own ignorance. I had actually heard him speak once before when he was visiting Greenwich Village so I was not unprepared for the shock of white hair and impressive white mustache. He shook my hand when we were introduced.

“This is what I need around me now,” he said, looking at the audience who had gathered around him. “A bevy of beautiful women. Young and beautiful women. Ever since my dear wife and daughter died the world has seemed extremely bleak and forlorn.” He squeezed my hand. “You’ll come to my little gathering, won’t you, my dear Mrs. Sullivan?”

“Of course. I’ll be glad to,” I said.

“How about that,” I said as we walked back down Fifth Avenue, our arms linked, striding out over the lingering fragments of snow. “Not only does my husband receive a summons from the president, but I am invited to hobnob with Mark Twain. If only Sister Mary Patrick could see me now. Or my mother. They both told me that I’d come to a bad end if I didn’t reform my ways.”

We were still laughing as we turned into Patchin Place. I believe it was the last time I laughed for a long while.

Three

On Saturday night we dressed in our finery to attend Mr. Twain’s gathering. I had been given some rather lovely silk gowns by a generous young society lady after our house had burned down. I had had little occasion to wear them during the normal course of my life, but was pleased to find them in my wardrobe now. I chose the dark blue with a matching lace fichu and affixed a blue flower to my hair. I was feeling quite glamorous when I bade good-bye to Bridie.

“You’ll be all right here alone for a little while, won’t you?” I asked. “I don’t plan to stay out late and I’m only a block away on Fifth Avenue if you really need me.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I am almost twelve years old, you know. And Liam’s already asleep.”

I hugged her. “You’re such a big help to me. I’m so glad you’re here.”

She beamed at me, but then her face became wistful. “I don’t really remember my real mother very much. You’re more like my mother now. I only hope…” She broke off.

“And you’re my big daughter,” I said quickly, knowing that she worried as much about having to go back to live with her father in squalor as she did about finding he had died. “Between myself and Daniel’s mother we’re going to make sure you have every chance in life, and you’ll always have a home.”

She nodded then, her eyes very bright. I have to confess I did have misgivings as I closed the door. I had left her alone with Liam before, but during the daytime and on occasions when Sid and Gus were just across the alleyway. But I told myself not to be silly. I had checked Liam and the house. All was well. I should go out and enjoy myself without worrying.

However, I have to confess that I was relieved when I tapped on Sid and Gus’s front door only to learn that Gus had a headache and did not feel like going to a noisy party.

“Then we don’t have to go,” I said immediately.

“That’s what I told her,” Sid said. “But she insists that you and I go and enjoy ourselves.”

“Then I’ll just pop back and tell Bridie that Miss Walcott is home, should she need her,” I said. I did so then Sid and I set off. The parlor at Mr. Twain’s house on Fifth Avenue was already full of noisy company by the time we arrived. More women than men, I noticed, and most of them stylishly dressed.

“How good of you to come.” Mr. Twain took my hands in his. “Another radiant beauty to light up my small and dreary life.”

“As if anything about your life could ever be small, Mr. Twain,” the man beside him said. “You’ve been a giant in American society since you were a boy.”

“I hope you’re not going to write such exaggerated twaddle now that I’ve given you permission to write my biography, Albert,” he said. He turned to us. “This is Mr. Albert Paine, who has been pestering me about writing my autobiography. Or failing that, to let him be my biographer. Clearly he thinks I don’t have much time left on this earth, but I’ve always sworn that I plan to go out with Halley’s Comet so I’ve a few more years yet. I came in with it and I’ll go out with it.”

“It would be a grand notion if we could all arrange the day of our deaths in advance,” Mr. Paine said. “So much tidier.”

More newcomers arrived and Sid and I were swept into the crowd. Sid seemed to know some of them. I felt rather shy as I found myself chatting with writers, artists, and members of the Four Hundred. I was glad I had been to Paris the year before as the conversation seemed to revert back to that city and to London.

“I wouldn’t dream of having my clothes made anywhere else these days, would you?” a woman was saying. She was dressed in the height of fashion in a mauve dress with the new bolero waist and generous lace trim all over, a jaunty mauve turban on her head, plus a little too-obvious coloring on her lips and cheeks.

I caught the eye of an older woman standing behind her, soberly dressed, and we exchanged a grin. At least there are others here who think like me, I decided and was glad when she came across to speak to me.

“I’m feeling a little like a fish out of water here, I have to confess,” she said to me. “I don’t know why I came but my dear friend Irma Reimer told me it was time I came back into society more and dragged me from the house. Do you know Irma Reimer? She is very thick with the Vanderbilts and the Astors.”

“I’m afraid not,” I said. “I don’t move much in society these days. I’ve a young baby.”

“How fortunate you are,” she said. “Mr. Endicott and I were not blessed with children. It has been a thorn in the side for both of us.” She extended her hand. “I’m Rose Endicott.”

“Molly Sullivan.” We shook hands. “Are you a widow now?” I asked, noting her dark gray dress and that her friend had told her it was high time she came back into society.

“Oh, no,” she replied. “But my husband is away so much. He is in the import and export business. His company has an office in London and one in Havana. He is sometimes gone for months at a time.”

“Oh, that must be hard for you,” I said. “Can he not take you with him when he travels?”

She looked away from me then. “I’m afraid I have a delicate constitution. I do not travel well. I get seasick and Wilbur gets impatient with me. So it is easier this way, although I find the loneliness hard to bear.”

“My husband is also away at the moment,” I said. “I hate to be parted from him, so I understand your feelings.”

She took my hand. “Do you? I’m so glad I met you this evening. May I be so bold as to invite you to visit me while your husband is away? I don’t live too far from here. Just on Eighth Avenue.”

“I live close by too,” I said. “On Patchin Place, just off Greenwich Avenue. And I’d be delighted to come and visit.”

“You’ll bring your child?”

“I’m afraid he’s eighteen months old and into everything at the moment,” I said.

“Oh, but it always cheers me to have a lively youngster about the place. Do say you’ll bring him—for tea, maybe?”

“Very well,” I said.

Sid came over to join us then. “This is my dear friend Molly Sullivan I was telling you about,” she said and I noticed she had a young man beside her. He was less fashionably dressed than most of the company and looked rather skinny and undernourished. More like the students who frequented Washington Square near my home, in fact. “Molly, this is Richard Graves, who edits a magazine I sometimes write articles for. His magazine is a great champion of the suffrage movement. He is doing a piece on women in a man’s world and I told him that you had run a successful detective agency.”

“I don’t know about successful,” I said. “I managed to solve cases without getting myself killed.”

We laughed.

“I’d be most interested in interviewing you, Mrs. Sullivan,” Mr. Graves said. “I am anxious to show the world that real women are not little wallflowers and violets who must be cosseted, but can handle almost any job as well as a man.”

“Not quite as well always,” I said. “You try chasing a suspect in tight skirts and pointed little shoes. We are severely hampered both in prejudice and clothing.”

“Absolutely right!” Sid interjected. “But clothing is designed by men, is it not, to keep up the illusion that women are delicate flowers, and thus to keep them in their place.”

“Although some like yourself refuse to accept such conditions and conventions,” Mr. Graves said, smiling at Sid, who was wearing a man’s smoking jacket and trousers this evening.

“Of course. I have never been one to be bound by the rules,” Sid said. “All the more reason I admire someone like Molly, who is the devoted wife and mother and still manages such impressive feats.”

“Oh really, Sid.” I blushed with embarrassment. “I worked because I had to keep my head above water. Had I been blessed with money I doubt that I should have chosen a career as a detective.”

Sid smiled. “I can’t picture you ever being content to sit at home and hold tea parties.”

“Maybe not.”

Mr. Graves touched my arm lightly. “So may I count on you, Mrs. Sullivan? You could come to my office or I could come to your residence. Whichever is more convenient for you.”

I was tempted. I suppose I was flattered. But a small warning voice was going off in my head. If Daniel’s bosses were looking for excuses to get rid of him might they not jump on an article like this in which Daniel’s wife his portrayed as a great detective? At the very least he’d take a ribbing that I had been solving his cases for him, and at worst his superiors could claim that he had been improperly involving me in police work.

“This might not be a good idea,” I said. “You see my husband is a police officer. If there was any suggestion that I had helped him with his cases you can see what embarrassment I could cause him.”

“I understand,” he said. “You don’t still run this detective agency, do you?”

“No, I gave it up when I married.”

“As do all women, I regret to say,” Sid interrupted. “What husband can tolerate a wife who has a successful career?”

“Other than Nellie Bly,” Mr. Graves said. “I gather her marriage is a happy one and look what exploits she gets up to.”

“We both know Miss Bly, don’t we, Molly?” Sid said.

“Isn’t she wonderful? And yet most women see her as a freak rather than a shining example of what a female can accomplish,” Mr. Graves said earnestly. “We need to educate women and make them realize that all things are possible for them. And you can help. If you grant me the interview, Mrs. Sullivan, I promise you may vet my copy and we’ll make sure it is clear that your adventures were in the past.”

I was still torn, conscious of the crowd around me and people eyeing me with curiosity. I suppose a lady detective is a rarity, even in the company of the likes of Mark Twain. “I’ll think about it and make my decision when I know how long my husband will be away,” I said.

“Your husband is away?” Mr. Graves gave me an almost impudent grin. “Then what could be better? He will not be able to object. The interview will be over and complete by the time he returns.”

Sid touched my arm. “Say yes, Molly. Think of all the good you can do for our poor housebound and dominated sisters.”

“I’d still like to have time to think it over,” I said. “I do have Daniel’s career to consider and I can’t afford to put a foot wrong when there are those at the police department who would love to see his downfall.” I turned to Mr. Graves. “If you will give me your card, I promise I will contact you in a few days with my answer.”

He fished in a pocket. “Very well,” he said. “Here you are. I look forward to hearing from you. You are the neighbor of Miss Goldfarb, are you not? I trust she will work her persuasive magic and make you see what an asset you are to the women’s rights movement.”

He forced his way back through the crowd. Sid gave me an encouraging smile before she followed him, leaving me alone with Mrs. Endicott.

“I’d no idea I was chatting with a celebrity,” she said. “Now I am all the more excited to entertain you at my house. Can we say next Tuesday? How about luncheon instead of tea? My cook is really quite good.”