Murder in Chelsea Page 2

  “I don’t have any money to give her.”

  “Your parents do, and she probably knows that.”

  “I told you, Mrs. Keller didn’t tell her anything about me.”

  “Maybe she found out about you some other way. It’s not a secret that you took Catherine from the Mission. Any of the girls who live there could have told her. She might’ve talked to any of them before she came to see Mrs. Keller.”

  Sarah hadn’t thought of that. Maeve was probably right about her being too trusting. She just hoped Anne Murphy didn’t eat her for breakfast.

  * * *

  ANNE MURPHY’S ROOMING HOUSE WAS LIKE HUNDREDS of others in the city, a large old house the owners could no longer maintain, so they rented rooms. The Chelsea neighborhood varied between tenements and rooming houses where immigrants and their offspring found cheap lodging near their jobs on the waterfront. On this Sunday afternoon, the neighborhood seemed to doze in the wintry sunshine.

  The slatternly woman who answered their knock looked the two women up and down with silent approval. “We’re full, but if you’re looking for a room, I might have an opening soon.”

  “We’re looking for Miss Anne Murphy,” Sarah said.

  The woman’s eyes widened. “Now what would you be wanting with her?”

  “Is that your business?” Maeve asked, already breaking her promise to keep quiet.

  Sarah shot her a warning look, then smiled at the affronted landlady. “Please excuse my sister. We were in the neighborhood and thought we would stop by to say hello to Miss Murphy. Is she in?”

  “I ain’t sure.” She glared at Maeve.

  “Maybe we could come in and wait while you check,” Sarah said with her best finishing school charm.

  The landlady reluctantly admitted them, offering them the meager comforts of the sparsely furnished parlor while she went in search of her boarder.

  “Maeve . . .”

  “You don’t need to remind me,” she whispered. “And by the way, nobody will believe I’m your sister.”

  She was probably right about that. With her red hair, Maeve could never pass for anything but Irish, while Sarah’s honey gold hair and practiced bearing marked her as one of the upper classes, no matter how unfashionable her clothing might be.

  Sarah swallowed her reply as Anne Murphy stepped into the room. A woman of middle age with a trim figure and a handsome face, she clutched her hands in front of her. She glanced over her shoulder, then back at them. “Who are you?”

  “Mrs. Keller sent us,” Sarah said, not ready to reveal her name just yet.

  Miss Murphy stiffened. “I see.” She glanced over her shoulder again. “Let’s go up to my room so we won’t be . . . overheard.”

  Sarah turned to Maeve for guidance, and the girl shrugged and nodded. They followed Miss Murphy up the stairs and down the hall, close enough for Sarah to notice the worn heels on her once stylish shoes. Her clean shirtwaist showed wear, and she wore her auburn hair in a simple bun. Whatever work she’d found during the past year had not been lucrative.

  Like the parlor, her room was sparsely furnished, with an iron bedstead, a dresser, a washstand, and two straight-backed chairs.

  “Sit down,” Miss Murphy said, indicating the chairs. She closed the door behind them after checking the hallway one last time. Then she perched on the edge of the bed. “The landlady is nosy. I didn’t think you’d want her listening in. Now, who are you?”

  “You don’t need to know my name just yet.” This had been Maeve’s suggestion, and Sarah thought it a good one. If Miss Murphy didn’t know who she was, she couldn’t find her later. “Mrs. Keller told me you’re the one who left Catherine at the Mission.”

  “Her mother told me to take her someplace where she’d be safe.”

  Sarah almost winced. She’d come to think of herself as Catherine’s mother. “How could you know she’d be safe there?”

  “It’s a place where they take care of girls, isn’t it? And I couldn’t keep her with me, could I? They’d’ve found us for sure.”

  “Who is this ‘they’ you’re so frightened of?”

  She pressed her lips together, and for a moment Sarah thought she wouldn’t answer. “I don’t know.”

  “You expect us to believe that?” Maeve asked.

  Sarah shot her another look, but she didn’t see it. She was too busy trying to stare down Miss Murphy, who proved to be no match for her.

  “I don’t know for sure. It could’ve been a couple of different people, couldn’t it? All I know is Miss Emma told me to pack up and get away as fast as I could and take Catherine someplace safe and she’d find us.”

  “Miss Emma? Is that Catherine’s mother?” Sarah asked.

  Miss Murphy clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Sarah let it pass. “How would she find you?”

  “She said she’d write to me at . . . at this place we both knew.”

  “And did she?”

  “A few weeks ago, finally. I thought . . . I’d started to think she was dead, didn’t I?”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said it was safe to bring the girl back. I’m to meet her in a few days.”

  “Then you haven’t actually seen her?” Maeve asked. Sarah didn’t give her a look this time.

  “I told you, we’re going to meet soon.”

  “How do you know she was the one who wrote the letter then?” Maeve asked. “Maybe she is dead and whoever killed her wants to get his hands on Catherine now.”

  “I . . . I know her handwriting.”

  Maeve glared at her the way they’d both seen Malloy glare at people he didn’t believe. “Do you?”

  Miss Murphy suddenly squared her shoulders. “No need to be rude now. I don’t have to talk to you at all, do I?”

  “You do if you want to find Catherine,” Maeve said.

  Sarah silenced her with a gesture. This was getting them nowhere. “If Catherine’s mother is alive, of course we want to see them reunited,” Sarah said, even though the words almost stuck in her throat. “But we aren’t going to put the child in danger. Now I want you to tell me everything you know about Catherine’s mother and father and why you think someone is trying to kill this woman, Emma.”

  “And why should I?” Miss Murphy asked.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me or Catherine again.”

  Miss Murphy’s shoulders slumped in silent defeat. “All right, I’ll tell you, but how do I know you aren’t trying to find the child yourself?”

  “Because I’m the one Mrs. Keller told about your visit to her, and I’m the one who has Catherine. Now stop acting like a goose and tell me everything.”

  Miss Murphy glanced at Maeve as if expecting her to weigh in, too, but this time Maeve wisely said nothing. “I don’t know what Mrs. Keller told you . . .”

  “Start at the beginning.”

  She sighed. “Miss Emma and I were friends for a long time. Well, not friends exactly, but I knew her. From the theater.”

  “What theater?”

  “Not just one. I mean she was in the theater. An actress. She sang, too. Real pretty. All the men was wild for her. She got flowers every night from somebody. Then Mr. Smith come along.”

  “Catherine’s father,” Sarah said.

  “That came later, of course. At first, he just sent her flowers. I never thought anything about it, but then he stopped by to see her after the show one night. I didn’t want to let him in, but when she saw how fine he looked in his expensive clothes and how he was older than most of the other men who sent her flowers, she told me it was all right.”

  “Were you an actress, too?” Maeve asked.

  “No, I . . . I worked backstage, helping the girls dress and such.”

  “Go on.”

  “He invited her out to supper that night, and then he started coming for her every night after the show. He gave her things, jewelry and such. She told me his name wasn’t r
eally Smith, that the waiter where he took her to eat called him something else, but she never told what. She knew he was rich, though, rich as a king. The girls in the chorus don’t get paid much, you know, so she liked that he gave her things. She even started thinking maybe he would invest in a show for her or something, so she could be the star. But then she found out she was going to have a baby.”

  “How did Mr. Smith react to that?” Sarah asked.

  “She didn’t want to tell him, but she had to do something about it, and she didn’t have money for anything like that, so she had to. He was happy about the baby, though. He wouldn’t let her get rid of it. Said he’d get her a house and keep her in style. He did, too, and she hired me to look after her and take care of the place. Cute little house, too.”

  “Where was it?” Sarah asked.

  “Way up in Harlem. Miss Emma, she didn’t like being out in the country like that, but I did. So pretty and quiet, and we had flowers. They grew in the yard. Somebody’d planted them before we came, and they’d come up every year. All kinds and colors.”

  Sarah remembered Maeve and Catherine cutting the last of the summer flowers in her yard last fall. Catherine had suddenly started screaming about some bad people taking the pretty lady away. She’d thought then that it must be a memory of her previous life. Could the flowers have triggered the memory of the garden in Harlem? And what had frightened her so badly? “Then what happened?”

  “Catherine came, and Mr. Smith, he doted on her. He would’ve been happy to keep things just like they was, with us living in that little house and him coming to see us a day or two a week.”

  “But I’ll bet Miss Emma got bored, didn’t she?” Maeve said.

  “How’d you know that?” Miss Murphy asked.

  Maeve shrugged.

  “She would have gotten very bored after all those years,” Sarah said. “How many was it? We aren’t quite sure how old Catherine is.”

  “She’d be almost five now, I guess. She was born in July, on the fifth. I remember because we could see fireworks out the window while Miss Emma was in labor.”

  “So Emma was stuck out there in Harlem for over four years, first waiting for Catherine to be born and then watching her grow up,” Sarah said.

  “Oh, it wasn’t that long because she went back to the theater.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “Mr. Smith, he knew people and got her some jobs. She told him she wasn’t going to sit around a parlor mending socks for the rest of her life, and he didn’t want her to take Catherine and disappear, so he let her go back to acting. Well, singing it was, mostly. She never was real good at acting, but she could hold her own in the chorus.”

  “Did she make the trip into the city every day?” Maeve asked.

  “Heavens, no. Even on the train, it’s too far. She’d get a room and live there during the run of the show, and when it closed, she’d come back home until the next one.”

  “And you stayed with Catherine?”

  “Yes, it was just her and me most of the time. We got along fine, we did. She was a sweet little mite.”

  “So she’ll remember you,” Sarah said.

  Miss Murphy frowned. “I expect she will, but you know how it is with wee ones. They forget you if you stay away too long. Sometimes, Catherine cried when her mother came home because she didn’t know who she was.”

  Sarah exchanged a glance with Maeve. Was Miss Murphy trying to explain in advance why Catherine wouldn’t recognize her? How easy it would be to send Miss Murphy packing if Catherine didn’t know her. “Your life sounds idyllic. What happened to change it?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I know when Mr. Smith came one day, he and Emma had a terrible row. I took Catherine out for a walk, so I don’t know what it was about, but after that, things was never the same between them.”

  “How soon was it after this before she told you to take Catherine away?”

  “Just a few days, but not before some other people came to the house.”

  Sarah leaned forward. “Who?”

  “Mr. Smith’s son was one of them. I knew he was because when I opened the door, he looks me up and down and says, ‘So this is Father’s little whore. Kind of long in the tooth, aren’t you?’ I almost slammed the door in his face, but Miss Emma come running and told me to leave her alone with him.”

  “Do you know what they talked about?”

  “I know Miss Emma didn’t think much of him. He tried to scare her, I think, but she wasn’t worried, at least not at first. Mr. Smith was that mad when he found out, and I’ll tell you, I never expected the young man would ever come back, but he did, and the next time he really scared Miss Emma.”

  “What did he do?” Sarah asked.

  “He brought another man with him, a friend of his, I guess. I never did get the straight of it, but the two of them come barging in, wanting to see Miss Emma, and when they found her, they laid hands on her. Didn’t hurt her really, but the son, he grabbed her and shook her like she was a doll.”

  Gooseflesh rose on Sarah’s arms. “Where did this happen?”

  “At the house I told you about—”

  “No, I mean where in the house?”

  “Well, it wasn’t in the house at all. It was in the garden. Miss Emma was cutting flowers, and—”

  “And Catherine was watching her,” Sarah finished.

  Miss Murphy gaped at her. “How did you know?”

  She knew because watching Maeve cut flowers had reminded Catherine of that day and frightened her so badly she’d started screaming a year later. “Then what happened?”

  “The son threatened her. She wouldn’t tell me what all he said, but I heard enough to know he wasn’t teasing. Seems like Mr. Smith had put Catherine in his will or something, and the son didn’t like that one bit. He wanted everything for himself.”

  “In his will?”

  “Yes. I didn’t know what that meant, but Miss Emma said it meant when Mr. Smith died, Catherine would get some of his money. I thought that was a nice thing for him to do for the child, but it just scared Miss Emma. That’s when she told me to take Catherine someplace safe. She didn’t want to know where we went so they couldn’t make her say.”

  “And what happened to Emma?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure.”

  “But you have an idea,” Maeve said.

  Miss Murphy frowned at her, but she said, “I do at that.”

  “Are you going to tell us what it is?” Maeve asked.

  “Maeve,” Sarah tried, but Maeve ignored her.

  “Are you?”

  “I think she went on tour.”

  “On tour?” Sarah frowned, thinking of the European tours people like her parents took. “She went on a holiday?”

  “Not a holiday. She went on tour with a show. They’re always putting together touring companies of shows that start out here, and they travel all over, doing the show in different places. They don’t get the first-class actors to go because nobody wants to be away from the city that long. People forget you, you know. And it’s a hard life, traveling all day and doing a show in some dirty little theater and then moving on to the next place in the morning. She never would’ve done it otherwise, but if she was desperate enough, it was a way to go someplace Mr. Smith’s son couldn’t find her.”

  “Wouldn’t Mr. Smith have protected her?” Maeve asked.

  “I don’t know why she didn’t try that. Maybe she did. Maybe he wouldn’t believe no evil of his son. Some men are like that. And I don’t know for sure that’s what happened, you see. It’s just what I hope happened. What I pray happened, because if it didn’t . . .” Her voice broke and she dropped her eyes.

  “Because if it didn’t . . .”

  “Well, maybe Mr. Smith’s son found her and killed her like she was afraid he would.”

  2

  “SHE’S PROBABLY RIGHT, YOU KNOW,” DETECTIVE SERGEANT Frank Malloy said, glaring at Sarah across her kitchen table. “This Emma woman is
probably dead, and you’re lucky you and Maeve didn’t join her. What were you thinking?”

  A telegram sent to Malloy’s flat had probably terrified his mother—telegrams never bring good news—but it had brought him to her doorstep that evening without alerting anyone at Police Headquarters that she was looking for him. Malloy took enough teasing about her as it was.

  “I was thinking I wanted to hear her story before I decided what to do next.”

  She hadn’t often seen him quite this furious. “I thought Mrs. Keller already told you somebody wanted to kill Catherine. How much more of the story did you need to hear before you thought about calling in the police?”

  “If they wanted Catherine, they aren’t likely to harm me until they find her, now are they?” Sarah was getting a little angry herself.

  “You couldn’t be sure of that.”

  “Will you stop being unreasonable and help me figure out what to do next?”

  “I’m not being unreasonable!”

  “You most certainly are!”

  “Stop it, the both of you!” Maeve said, stomping into the kitchen in her wrapper. Her auburn hair hung over her shoulder in a braid.

  “I told you to go to bed,” Malloy said.

  “How can I sleep with the two of you shouting like that? You’re lucky Catherine didn’t wake up.”

  That silenced both of them. Malloy contented himself with a murderous glare, which Sarah ignored. “Maeve and I didn’t get ourselves murdered, and I’m asking for your help now, Malloy. Will you give it?”

  “Of course I’ll give it. And I won’t let this Anne Murphy off as easy as you did either.”

  “What will you do to her?” Maeve asked with way too much interest.

  “Never you mind, but she’ll tell me this Mr. Smith’s real name and who this Emma woman is and where she’s been hiding all this time.” He turned back to Sarah. “Are you sure nobody followed you when you left her place?”

  “I wouldn’t have even thought to check, but Maeve did, and she was sure.”

  Malloy glanced at Maeve, who flipped her copper-colored braid over her shoulder and grinned. “I made her get on the El and ride around for a while. First south for a bit. Then off and a few blocks of wandering. Then back north. If anybody followed us, we lost them.”