Through the Window: A Molly Murphy Story (Molly Murphy Mysteries)

by Bowen, Rhys

  “I’ll get my shawl,” I said.

  “I’m most grateful,” he replied. “I am beside myself with worry, or I would not have troubled you.”

  I went over to Mrs. Sullivan, who was now pretending to rearrange flowers on the adjoining table.

  “Mr. Emory has asked me to accompany him, Mother Sullivan,” I said. “If Daniel returns home, please ask him to join me right away.”

  “If you are sure you’re strong enough?” She asked, her eyes holding mine. “And make sure you keep your shawl wrapped well around you. The night air is already cold for this time of year and you haven’t been out in quite a while.”

  “You have been ill, Mrs. Sulivan?” Mr. Emory asked.

  “I gave birth to a child, but am quite recovered, thank you,” I replied, glancing at my mother-in-law, who said nothing.

  “A blessed event. How fortunate you are. My wife and I have not been similarly blessed.”

  I took down my shawl from its peg in the hallway and threw it around my shoulders. “There’s still time, Mr. Emory,” I said. “Do not give up hope.”

  “No,” he said in a voice clipped with emotion. “One should not give up hope.”

  ***

  There was indeed an icy wind that sent leaves swirling as I followed Mr. Emory down Patchin Place. His house felt cold and empty after the warmth of my own. It was almost like a house that has been abandoned by its owners, or never fully lived-in.

  “She left you no note?” I asked and my voice echoed up the stairwell, bouncing back from the white plastered walls. “Don’t you think she would have done that if she’d run away?”

  “She left nothing,” he said. “No clue as to where she had gone.”

  “But she left food for you in the larder,” I said. “I saw the butcher make a delivery yesterday.”

  “The butcher? A delivery?” He sounded surprised. “We have nothing delivered. My wife is an able-bodied young woman. Exercise and fresh air are good for her. There is no need for extravagances.”

  I frowned, thinking, trying to remember. I had seen the butcher boy’s bicycle on our street early yesterday and I was fairly certain the delivery had been to the Emory’s.

  He walked ahead of me into the kitchen. “I can check the meat safe,” he said, going through to the scullery, “but I think you’ll find you are mistaken. Ah yes, you see. The remains of Sunday’s roast. That’s all.”

  “Then I was wrong,” I said. “I can’t see our own side of the street clearly from my window.”

  He nodded curtly as if accepting my apology. “If you’d be good enough to follow me upstairs.” He went up at a great pace. I came more slowly, my legs weak from lack of exercise. In fact I felt a little dizzy by the time I reached the top.

  “In here, if you please,” he called. He took a match and lit the gas bracket on the wall. It hissed into life, illuminating the room with soft yellow light as I entered. It was a front bedroom that, in contrast to the austere feel of the rest of the house, was in a certain amount of disarray. A lady’s dress and stockings lay over the back of a chair. A hairbrush on the seat of the vanity stool beside a hat. I felt horribly uncomfortable—an intruder in this intimate setting.

  “Surely you can tell better than I if any of your wife’s clothes are missing?” I said.

  He shook his head. “What she wore was of no interest to me, Mrs. Sullivan. I tried to break her from her frivolous past but she refused to dress as befits a married woman of dignity.”

  There was a heavy dark wood wardrobe against one wall. Its door hung half-open. I opened it fully and looked inside. A couple of hangers had no garments on them. I couldn’t see the pretty blue dress that she had worn when we first met.

  “Do you remember if your wife was wearing her blue gown yesterday?” I asked. “It had little flowers embroidered around the neckline.”

  He frowned. “I don’t think so. In fact I instructed her to wear something suitable to visit our pastor. Not one of those New Orleans fripperies, I told her. Not that she had many suitable clothes. She had never bothered to make up the material I bought her. I don’t even know where it is. She never thanked me for it.”

  After the wardrobe, I opened drawers, one by one. Some items did appear to be missing, but I found myself feeling increasingly uneasy. There was no rhyme or reason to what had been taken. If the blue dress was gone, then why not the matching underslip with the same embroidered flowers? It was chilly outside so why not her good winter coat and stout shoes? And underwear—wouldn’t she have needed all her underwear and nightclothes? Yet those two drawers were almost undisturbed.

  I prowled around the room, stopped short, went to say something and then held my tongue. Did he think I wouldn’t notice? Because something was not right. I began to think that Mrs. Emory had not run away after all.

  Three

  I tried to betray no emotion as I bade Mr. Emory good-bye and promised to send over my husband as soon as he returned. He thanked me profusely for my effort and my concern.

  “So it appears she did take some of her things,” he said as he accompanied me to the front door. “More than she would have needed for one night.”

  “It does appear that way,” I said guardedly.

  My heart was beating rather fast as I left. I answered my mother-in-law’s questions in an offhand fashion, but my brain tried to process what I had just seen while I ate the stew she put in front of me for my dinner. “You might as well have your meal down here, since you’re determined to wait up for Daniel,” she had said, giving me a critical frown.

  I tried to remember exactly what I had seen on the street the day before. The butcher boy making a delivery. And another delivery later…the laundry cart. Again that could have been to the Emory’s. The rest of the traffic had been the usual daily run—old Mrs. Konigsberg walking her dachshund at precisely eleven o’clock as always. The wives doing their morning marketing. And then Mrs. Konigsberg going out again, just as twilight was falling—without her dog. That was not part of her normal routine, but not in any way suspicious. The one person I hadn’t seen at all was Mrs. Emory, and I certainly hadn’t seen her leaving with a valise.

  Of course I hadn’t been looking out of the window all day. I got up to attend to Liam. I attended to my own toilette. But I saw most things that happened on Patchin Place. Perhaps Sid and Gus had observed Mrs. Emory leaving, but I suspected they hadn’t.

  It was fortunate that this was one of the evenings when Daniel wasn’t working until all hours, because the suspense was killing me. I’ve never been known for waiting patiently. My own mother was always scolding me for it, and I guess I hadn’t improved that much over the years. Daniel turned up about eight o’clock and a big smile crossed his face when he saw me up and dressed.

  “Well, here’s a sight for sore eyes,” he said, coming over to me with his arms outstretched. “My wife up and dressed and looking positively blooming. Motherhood agrees with you, my dear. How is my precious son?”

  “Fed and sleeping again,” I said. “Growing chubbier by the minute.”

  “I told Molly she should be back in her bed,” Daniel’s mother said, coming out of the kitchen as Daniel took me in his arms. “Too much excitement will curdle her milk.”

  “Excitement” Daniel released me. “What excitement is this?”

  “You had a visitor,” Mother Sullivan said before I could answer. “A man from down the street. He was in a great state. Thinks his wife has run off and left him.”

  “What’s this?” Daniel turned to me.

  “Mr. Emory,” I said. “You know, the couple who moved in this summer.”

  “The wife you tried to befriend and the husband who keeps a tight rein on her?”

  “That’s right. She has been missing since yesterday,” I said.

  “He’s worried that she’s come to a bad end,” Mother Sullivan said. “Supposed to pay a call to folks on Long Island but never got there. Molly thinks she might have run away.”

  D
aniel looked at me long and hard. “He came wanting to talk to you,” I said. “Something’s clearly not right there, Daniel. I think you should go over to see him right away.”

  “Not until he’s got some food in his stomach,” Mother Sullivan took his arm and attempted to lead him over to the table. “Have a heart, child. The man’s been working all day. Let him eat first. I’ve made your favorite Irish stew, Daniel.”

  Daniel glanced at my face again then he said, “No, thank you, mother. I think I’d better go to see Mr. Emory before anything else. The stew will keep. I won’t be long.”

  “And I’m coming with you,” I said.

  “Are you sure you should be running around in the night air?” Mother Sullivan demanded. “You’ll catch pneumonia if you’re not careful in your weakened state.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I took down the shawl again. “It’s only three doors down the street.”

  Daniel closed the door behind us. “What is it?” he asked. “I could see in your face that there’s more to this than you were saying.”

  “I think there has been foul play, Daniel,” I said. “I couldn’t say it in front of your mother, but something’s definitely not right. Mr. Emory asked me to see if she’d taken any of her clothes with her. Now why would he do that? Couldn’t he look at her wardrobe himself and see that items were missing? It’s my belief he wanted me to think she’d run away.”

  “Why would he do that?” Daniel asked.

  I leaned closer to him. “Because he’d killed her,” I whispered.

  “Killed her?” Daniel reacted sharply. “Molly, that’s a terrible accusation to make. What makes you come to that conclusion? Isn’t perhaps your past experience as a detective letting your imagination run away with you?”

  “Have my detective skills served me well these past few years, Daniel Sullivan?” I demanded. “Haven’t you yourself admitted that I’ve a good eye for detail?”

  “I have, and I have come to value your judgment,” he said. “but I’m concerned that you’ve never liked the man, and you’ve suggested before that he abuses his wife, even though we have no evidence of that.”

  “Then I’ll give you my evidence of this,” I said. “First, the clothes that were supposedly taken made no sense. If you were going to run away, would you take a silk afternoon dress but not the matching under-slip? Would you leave your winter coat when the weather is turning cold? And your stout shoes? And would you not bother with underwear or nightclothes?”

  Daniel shrugged. “She might have bought new clothes to take with her and left her old life behind.”

  “He gives her no clothing allowance, Daniel. He himself said he didn’t know how she found the money to run away. But there’s something more…” Again I leaned closer. “I saw traces of blood on the bedroom washbasin and what looked like spots of blood on the carpet.”

  Now he really was paying attention. “Blood? Are you sure?”

  “The light isn’t the best in that room, but it certainly looked like blood,” I said.

  An icy blast swept down Patchin Place, sending dead leaves swirling again. Daniel frowned. “If he killed her, what do you think he has done with the body?”

  ‘That’s what your men will have to find out,” I said.

  We had reached the Emorys’ front door. “All right.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s go and take a look, shall we?”

  He rapped on the door and Mr. Emory opened it. “Oh, it’s Officer Sullivan. How good of you to come.”

  “It’s Captain Sullivan,” Daniel corrected. “My wife tells me your own wife is missing.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Mr. Emory said, ushering us into his front hallway. “I’ve been beside myself with worry. She was supposed to visit friends on Long Island yesterday, you see. When she didn’t return by nightfall, naturally I assumed they had persuaded her to stay. You’ll remember we did have an unpleasant bout of rain yesterday evening. But when she hadn’t returned and there was no word from her today, I sent our friends a telegram and they replied that she had never arrived at their house.”

  “Worrying indeed,” Daniel said. “Is your wife prone to taking off on a whim?”

  “Absolutely not. She is required to obtain my permission before she leaves the house, and until now, she has given me no cause for alarm.”

  “Does she perhaps have other friends she might have decided to visit instead?” Daniel asked. “Or relatives nearby?”

  “She is not from here,” Mr. Emory replied. “She came from New Orleans and knows nobody in the city apart from members of our church, to whom I introduced her.”

  “Then is it possible she has returned to her former home?”

  “I hardly think so,” Mr. Emory said. “As I explained to your wife, her former home is no more. Her stepmother has remarried, her stepsisters are now also married and living in their own homes. And from what my wife told me, she had no great affection for any of them.”

  “I see.” Daniel sucked through his teeth. “So what exactly would you like me to do, Mr. Emory?”

  “Find my wife and bring her back.” He snapped out the words. Then he paused and a spasm of pain crossed his face. “Or if something untoward has happened to her, I need to know.”

  “Untoward?” Daniel asked.

  “This is a city of crime and danger, Captain Sullivan. It’s just possible that she fell among evildoers on her way to Long Island. She’s an innocent, unworldly little thing, and easily led astray.”

  “We are talking about a journey in broad daylight on public transportation, Mr. Emory,” Daniel said. “A train ride to Long Island?”

  “Who knows where evil lurks,” Mr. Emory said. “I want your men to find her for me.”

  “That’s quite a tall order, Mr. Emory,” Daniel said. “Anyone who wanted to stay hidden in this city could do so easily, and if she has fled beyond the city…well, America is a big place. But I will try. All I can do is the obvious—post her picture at our police precincts, check the bodies of young women brought to the morgue.”

  Mr. Emory gave a sort of hiccupping cry. “I need to know, Captain Sullivan. However painful the news, I need to know.”

  I touched Daniel’s arm. “Perhaps you should also take a look upstairs in her room and see if you can glean anything from the clothes she took or didn’t take.”

  “Very well.” Daniel’s voice displayed no emotion. “If you permit, Mr. Emory?”

  “By all means. Anything that will help.”

  We trudged back up the stairs. The house felt cold and I shivered. I pictured the lively Mrs. Emory sitting at her vanity, brushing her hair, and her husband coming up behind her with a knife in his hand or a blunt instrument and…. I pushed the thought away. I let Daniel go ahead of me into the room. He moved around, apparently showing only perfunctory interest.

  “A valise, Mr. Emory,” he said, turning back to the man who remained in the doorway. Have you checked whether a valise or traveling bag is missing?”

  “No, I…” the man began, then turned. “Our traveling bags are on top of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom. Let me see…”

  The moment he left, Daniel examined the washbasin, then looked at the floor below it. His eyes met mine and he nodded.

  “No valise appears to have been taken,” Mr. Emory said, returning to us. “I believe she had a hat box and I don’t see that, but….” Again he left the rest of the sentence hanging.

  “We can’t do any more tonight,” Daniel said. “I suggest you come down to police headquarters on Mulberry Street in the morning, on your way to work. Bring a photograph of your wife and give us a full description, plus the addresses of anywhere she might have gone.”

  “I don’t know if I can face going in to work tomorrow,” Mr. Emory said. “How can I possibly concentrate on my tasks, when all the time I am imagining the worst about my wife? But I will come to police headquarters. That’s something positive I can do.”

  Daniel started down the stairs. “By t
he way, Mr. Emory.” He turned back to the man. “I noticed what look like blood spots on your bedroom carpet. Are they recent?”

  “Blood spots?” Mr. Emory paused, halfway down the stairs. “My wife cut herself peeling potatoes the other night. It bled quite badly. She went upstairs to put something on the cut. I suppose blood could have dripped onto the carpet then.”

  “I see,” Daniel said. “And the washbasin in the bedroom. Do you and your wife both use that?” He continued down the stairs.

  “No, as a matter of fact I shave and wash in the bathroom, but Francine prefers to perform her ablutions using the washstand in the bedroom, as our bathroom facilities are outside and therefore rather chilly. Why do you ask?’

  “It’s of no great importance,” Daniel said. “Just trying to get a picture of your wife’s behavior.” He had reached the bottom of the stairs and started for the front door. “Well, I think that’s all I can do tonight. Try not to worry too much, Mr. Emory. These things usually sort themselves out in the end.”

  “I do hope so, Captain Sullivan,” Mr. Emory said.

  Daniel took my arm as we walked back down the street. “You are quite right,” he said. “Definitely traces of blood on the basin and on the floor. That’s why I invited Mr. Emory to come to headquarters in the morning. While he’s away my men can give the place a proper going-over.”

  Four

  Next morning I watched Mr. Emory set off down Patchin Place. Shortly after he had gone, Daniel arrived with two constables and I saw them enter the Emorys’ house. How they got in, I thought it better not to ask. They were there quite a while. My curiosity got the better of me and in spite of my mother-in-law’s warnings about the dire things that could happen to me, I dressed and went out into the street. It was a warm morning, dazzlingly bright and sunny as October can sometimes be. I knew better than to go into the Emorys’ house, but was loitering outside when I was met by Sid and Gus, coming up Patchin Place with laden baskets.