by Rhys Bowen
“You say in your statement to my officer that you didn’t know Mr. O’Malley, that you had never met him, even though you both came from the same small town of Plumbridge. Is that correct?”
“I have no idea where Mr. O’Malley came from. I had never met him before.”
He looked up and there was a glint in his eyes. I noticed his eyes for the first time. He was what we call Black Irish—supposedly descended from those Spanish sailors who were able to swim ashore from the wreck of the Armada in Queen Elizabeth’s time. He had unruly black curls that he had attempted, unsuccessfully, to slick down with a center part, a roguish cleft in his chin, and eyes that were an alarming blue. A very attractive man. I stared for a second before I remembered where I was, who I was supposed to be, and what was happening to me. Then I looked down at my hands again.
“Mrs. O’Connor,” the policeman went on, “it has been reported to me by several of your fellow passengers on the Majestic that you were seen striking Mr. O’Malley. Do you make a practice of going around striking men you don’t know?”
“He made an indecent proposal to me,” I muttered, still looking down at my hands. “He was trying to take advantage of a woman traveling without her husband.”
“Was he now?”
I glanced up. For a fraction of a second I had seen what seemed to be amusement flash across his face. “So you hit him. Do you normally react so violently, Mrs. O’Connor?”
“I slapped his face,” I said. “A woman is allowed to defend her honor when she has no man to protect her, isn’t she?” I only realized as I was saying it that I seemed to be making a practice of defending my honor with violence recently. The two cases would tie together very nicely in police eyes.
I looked down again.
“And did Mr. O’Malley take the hint?” Captain Sullivan continued. “Did he bother you again?”
“No, sir. He took the hint.”
“So you never had contact with him again?”
“No.”
There was a long pause. I just kept staring at my hands. A clock ticked loudly on the wall above us. I could hear the lapping of waves outside the window.
“Now here’s another interesting thing, Mrs. O’Connor,” Sullivan continued. “Your name came up in another context.”
I tried to keep breathing evenly so that he wouldn’t notice my rising panic.
“You were seen leaving your dormitory in the middle of the night. You were also seen, by two separate witnesses, running away from the men’s dormitory, looking scared.”
I looked up now, staring at him defiantly. “Did the two witnesses happen to mention that I had a child in my arms?” I demanded. “The little one had been sleepwalking. I caught her just before she went into the men’s dormitory. Do you think I’d have brought her along for company if I’d gone in there to kill a man?”
Again the flash of interest before the frown returned.
“And I understand that the poor man had his throat cut from ear to ear,” I went on. “I don’t know where I’d be finding such a knife. I’ve witnessed the cutting of a pig’s throat before now. There’s a lot of blood. I don’t think I’d have managed it without getting blood on my dress. So take a good look at me. I haven’t had access to any change of clothing. Do you see any blood?”
I stood up and turned around. He was watching me with that same half-concealed amusement. “Sit down, Mrs. O’Connor,” he said. “Nobody is suggesting that you killed Mr. O’Malley. For one thing I don’t think you’d have had the strength. He was a big man. Whoever did it was taking an enormous risk. The first cut had to sever the windpipe so that he couldn’t cry out. That would take a very sharp knife and a lot of muscle power—as well as experience in killing.”
“And you’ve not found anyone with blood on his clothing yet?” I asked. “That would seem the most obvious thing to look for. None of us can get downstairs to our baggage.”
“Are you telling me how to do my job, Mrs. O’Connor?” He asked it without malice, and smiled. He had rather a wicked smile.
“Sorry, sir. I just want to get out of this place and see my husband again.”
“Oh yes, of course you do.” Did his face fall? “But we have to get to the bottom of this while we have the opportunity. It’s not often we detectives have the chance to tie up a case so easily—the suspects all in one place with no way to leave. And such a daring, outrageous crime. Somebody must have seen something. It’s just a question of waiting until somebody talks.” He leaned back in his chair and examined me carefully. “I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that there’s more you could tell us. You’re holding back on something, Mrs. O’Connor. Wouldn’t you like to get this murder solved so you could leave the island and go home?”
“Of course I would, but there’s nothing I can tell you. I didn’t know O’Malley. And you yourself said I wouldn’t possess the strength to kill him.”
“But you could have been an accomplice. You could have brought your child along as an excuse and kept watch outside the men’s dormitory while your accomplice was committing the crime inside.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “And anyway, the guard was there. He can tell you. He came out of the men’s dormitory and yelled at us. That’s when I ran away.”
“The guard?” He sat up straight again making his chair clatter upright. “You’re saying you saw a guard in the men’s dormitory? In the middle of the night?”
I nodded. “I grabbed Bridie just as she was about to walk into the room. He appeared and yelled at us. From the way he was yelling, he obviously thought I was coming to visit one of the men. And he stood there watching until I picked up the child and ran away.”
“This guard—you’d recognize him again?”
“I think so. He was a big man, a lot of whiskers, a paunch, and a big voice.”
He stood. “Harris!” A young policeman poked his head around the door. “Have all the guards assembled and tell me when you’re ready.”
He sat down again and smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. O’Connor. That is most helpful. If you can identify him, at least we’ll be further along.” He paused, tapping his pencil on the table. He was a very energetic man, never still, I noticed. “I’m wondering why he didn’t volunteer the information himself that he saw you hanging around the men’s dormitory. Surely that counts as suspicious behavior.”
“Unless he had something to hide himself,” I suggested.
He stared at me.
“He could have committed the crime,” I went on.
“And why would an island watchman want to kill an immigrant?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Robbery? He had a fine gold watch, money in his pocket?”
“You’re traveling steerage, Mrs. O’Connor,” Captain Sullivan said. “If any of you had anything worth stealing, you’d have paid for a cabin.”
This, of course, was true. I got up. “So you’ll not be needing me anymore until I have to identify the guard for you?”
Again he looked at me long and hard as if there were questions he was considering. “Well, I think you can wait outside for now. I’ll know where to find you if I have more questions,” he said. “You can’t swim away.” And he smiled that cheeky smile again. In any other circumstances I’d have enjoyed flirting with a man like him. But I was a married woman, looking forward to joining her long lost husband. I was also, it seemed, under suspicion.
Just as I was leaving the room, a young uniformed policeman came in. “Sorry to interrupt, sir,” he said. He had a definite Irish brogue. Was the whole of New York from Ireland?
“Yes, what is it, Lynch?”
“About his boots, sir. O’Malley’s boots.” Sullivan looked up with interest. “Well, sir, we took them off, and they’re very good quality, sir. They’ve the name of a bootmaker in London inside them and they’re very well made—lined with kid and all.”
“Are they, now?” Sullivan glanced at me. I had been the one who had just suggested that O’Malley might h
ave had something worth stealing.
“So I thought, sir,” Lynch went on excitedly, “that either this man O’Malley isn’t what he seemed, or he stole the boots. In which case maybe Scotland Yard has a file on him.”
“I’ve already telegraphed Scotland Yard with a description of the man,” Sullivan said. “And I’m waiting to hear back from Dublin, too, with anything they can give us on his background. Have you located any luggage he might have stored down in the baggage room?”
“Two of the lads are down there right now, sir. We’ll bring it up to you when we find it.”
“Thanks, Lynch. Good work,” Sullivan said.
“I was thinking, sir, about the boots,” Lynch went on hesitantly. “If he was wearing fine boots like that, then maybe the motive was robbery.”
Sullivan noticed me standing in the door. “You can go now, Mrs. O’Connor,” he said, curtly. I tried not to smile.
More sitting and waiting in the big, drafty room. Then a line of uniformed guards filed in, looking surly and escorted by a couple of policemen. Daniel Sullivan beckoned me. “Take a good look and tell us which man you saw,” he said. “Don’t be nervous.”
I walked down the line of navy blue uniforms. Then I shook my head. “I don’t see him here,” I whispered to the captain.
“Is this all the guards?” Sullivan asked. “Everyone who was on duty last night?”
“Some of the night shift would have gone home on the first boat this morning,” one of the guards answered.
“I thought nobody left the island!” Daniel Sullivan’s face flushed red with anger.
“No immigrants.” The administrator stepped out of the shadows. “But some of the night shift boys went home on the boat that brought the day shift, as usual. They’d gone before we realized . . . We only discovered the crime when the shifts were changing.”
“So you’re saying that any number of people could have sneaked away from the island?”
McSweeney laughed uncomfortably. “Oh no, that’s not possible. Only men working on the night shift. It’s a government launch. They wouldn’t let anybody who wasn’t an employee aboard.”
“Damn,” Sullivan muttered, then glanced up at me apologetically. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“I’ve heard worse,” I said.
He took a deep breath. “Okay. I want all the off-duty guards brought here as soon as possible. Everybody on the roster. I want them back here this afternoon. Got it?”
“They won’t take kindly to being woken in the middle of . . . ,” McSweeney began.
“I don’t care a d—, a fig about their feelings. A man has been murdered. One of them might well have vital information. Get the list to my men and we’ll bring them in right away.”
“You’ve no authority to do this!” McSweeney called after him. “This is federal property. We’ve called in the U.S. Marshals and they’re on their way.”
“This island falls within the boundaries of New York City, Mr. McSweeney,” Daniel Sullivan said. “And any crime committed in New York City is handled by the NYPD. Besides, we’re not dealing with cattle rustling here. This is murder, McSweeney. I doubt your federal marshals have handled a murder inquiry in their lives.”
He strode away from the line of guards with me following him. Then seemed to remember me and turned back. “Sorry to detain you even longer, Mrs. O’Connor. Are your children all right? Go and get them something to eat. Say that Captain Sullivan says you should be fed.”
We went through to the dining room. Other detainees were sitting around with cups of coffee. Still no sign of Michael Larkin. I asked several people. Some thought he had been released and gone. Nobody had seen him recently. Only I knew that he wouldn’t have gotten past the authorities without that five pounds.
The day seemed to go on forever. It was dark and gloomy, with fog swirling past the windows and mournful tooting from ships going up the river. The two children were unusually quiet and good.
“Will they keep us in prison here forever?” Seamus whispered to me.
I ruffled his hair. “It’s not prison and we’ll be out by the end of the day. Not long now, I promise.”
“You said that when the ship was going up and down, but it was two more days,” he said accusingly.
I smiled. “This time I really promise.”
The afternoon went on. I kept glancing at the clock on the wall. If they didn’t get here soon, I’d be detained for another night. I wondered about Seamus O’Connor. Had he come to the island hoping to meet us yesterday? Was he pacing the shore today, waiting for word that he could come and take us home? And after all that waiting and hoping, to find that his wife hadn’t joined him, after all. It hadn’t really struck me until now that I was the bringer of the very worst news possible. It was possible that Seamus would be so distressed or angry that he’d give me away. When I was a child we used to lay old planks across the fast-flowing brook and dare each other to walk across. We would do it, never knowing when the rotten old wood would give way and tumble us into the icy water and rocks. That was how my life felt at this moment—never knowing at which moment the rickety boards would give way.
Nine
The radiators made the small waiting room uncomfortably warm and stuffy. I was dozing when Bridie climbed onto my lap. “The men have come back for you,” she said. I had been dreaming of home.
It took me a couple of seconds to regain my senses and to see that two policemen were waiting for me.
“Captain Sullivan is ready for you now, Mrs. O’Connor. They’ve brought all the guards in. If you’d come this way.”
“I’ll be back in a minute. Watch your sister,” I said to Seamus as I followed the men from the room.
This time there was a long line of uniformed men. Some of the uniforms had obviously been put on hastily and some of the men clearly hadn’t shaved. They all looked disgruntled at being dragged here during their time off.
“You know what to do, don’t you?” Daniel Sullivan asked me. “Let me know if you recognize the man you saw last night.”
I fell into step beside him and we walked slowly down the line. So many faces, but none of them I recognized until . . . there he was It had been dark last night and he was standing in the shadows, but surely that had to be him. Big, brawny, lots of whiskers . . . I leaned close to Daniel Sullivan. “That’s the one,” I said. That man there with all the whiskers.”
We continued to the end of the line. Daniel went to speak to the administrator. “Boyle!” he called. “Would you step this way please?”
The big man followed him and was escorted by Captain Sullivan into a side room. I found that I was shaking. If that man had been a murderer and I’d just identified him, wasn’t it possible that I was now in danger? What if he escaped or was released and came looking for me? Why had I opened my big mouth again and gotten myself involved when I could so easily have said nothing?
Nobody told me what to do, so I went back to the children in the dining hall. There was coffee and bread available, but I wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t long before Daniel Sullivan himself came looking for me.
“Can I have a word with you, Mrs. O’Connor?” He led me outside of the room into the deserted hallway.
“You’re sure that was the man?”
“Not completely sure. He was in the shadows and the lights were very dim, but he’s the only big one, with a paunch and lots of whiskers. That’s what I saw.”
“Only he wasn’t here last night, Mrs. O’Connor. He was on the day shift yesterday and he left on the six o’clock boat.”
“He can prove that, can he?”
“We’ll check it out, of course, but why would he have any reason to lie?”
“If he had something to hide?”
He glared at me. “You’re back to this something to hide rubbish again. If he wanted to rob immigrants, he could get himself stationed in the baggage room and help himself when no one was looking. He wouldn’t be the first. But you don’t carry a big, sharp knife
around with you unless you’re intending to kill. And why would he pick out one sleeping man over another?”
“He recognized O’Malley as someone he had a feud with long ago?”
“Rather far fetched, wouldn’t you say? Boyle was born in upstate New York and he’s never been out of the country.”
“How do we know O’Malley was never here before?”
A brief frown crossed his face. “We don’t,” he said. “We’ve requested information about his past. Then we’ll know more. But there was a guard on duty last night who covered the men’s dormitories. He’s a thin little Russian immigrant with a black beard. And he said no other guard was assigned to that area.”
“They could be in on it together.”
He stepped forward and grabbed me by the shoulders. “You know what I’m thinking, Mrs. O’Connor. I think you might be spinning me a good yarn to get yourself off the hook.” Suddenly he seemed to realize that he was holding me. Myself, I was all too aware of those big strong hands on my shoulders. We stood there, just for a moment, like that, then he dropped his arms awkwardly and cleared his throat. “Now I have two courses open to me, Mrs. O’Connor. I can’t hold you here any longer—this is federal property, but the idiots here aren’t equipped to handle crimes of this magnitude. So I could take you straight to the city jail and hold you there for questioning. I don’t recommend the city jail. The inmates call the cells there the Tombs—” he waited for the alarm to register on my face—”or I can release you to your husband, for now, on the understanding that you don’t go anywhere and you are available to come to police headquarters whenever you are summoned.”
“But you are going to check out that guard’s alibi, and try to find the knife?” I suggested.
“You seem determined to teach me my job, Mrs. O’Connor. The knife, I’d imagine, is already lying at the bottom of New York Harbor. And it will be easy enough to check out Mr. Boyle’s movements.” He paused. “There is, of course, a third option.”
Dramatic pause. I swear I could hear my heartbeat echoing in that tiled hallway.