Tell Me Pretty Maiden
Page 4
“But is the truth out, that’s the question? There has been no trial as yet. That rat Quigley has yet to confess.”
“It will all come right, I’m sure,” I said, and gave him an encouraging smile.
East Drive had been cleared of snow, which now lay piled in great mounds that urchins were sliding down on sheets of cardboard, giving out hollers of delight. Better-dressed children passed us, dragging proper sleds or carrying ice skates, and accompanied by nannies.
At that moment there came a delightful tinkle of bells and a horse-drawn sleigh passed along East Drive, its occupants looking as if they had stepped straight from a Currier and Ives Christmas scene with their fur-trimmed bonnets and muffs. They were laughing merrily as if they hadn’t a care in the world. I found myself thinking of Arabella Norton. Daniel might have been riding in such a sleigh had he not broken his engagement to her.
“So did you see anything of Arabella when you were home?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“I was not about to make my presence known or to go out into society given my current circumstances,” Daniel said dryly, “even if I had wanted to do so—which I didn’t.”
He started to walk faster, almost dragging me along beside him.
“Whoa, hold your horses,” I said, tugging at his arm. “I can’t stride out like a man, you know, much as I would like to.”
He looked down at me and smiled. “Forgive me,” he said. “As you know, I have much on my mind. Let us go and see the skaters and forget all our cares. If you’d like to, we could try it ourselves.”
“In which case I rather fear I should be sitting on my backside on the ice more than anything,” I said, “since I’ve never been on skates before.”
“You’d have my arm firmly around you,” Daniel said, “and I have skated on the pond behind our house since childhood.”
“We’ll see when we get there,” I said. “At this moment I’m just enjoying being in the snow. It hardly ever snows in my part of Ireland, and if it does it’s only a light dusting that soon melts in the rain that follows it. My, how it dazzles. Come on, let’s walk where nobody has trodden before.”
I started to run across what had been a meadow and was now an expanse of pristine whiteness. The snow crunched deliciously under my feet and I looked back at the trail my footprints had left.
“If I were a criminal, you’d have no trouble following me, would you?” I called out. “Come on, Daniel. What are you waiting for?”
“Molly, a little decorum, please, and besides, you don’t know how deep the snow might be.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “It doesn’t come over the tops of my boots. Don’t be such a ninny. See?”
I took two more steps and suddenly found myself sinking into snow up to my knees. I hadn’t realized until this moment how very cold the snow could be. It almost took my breath away.
“Daniel, help me out,” I gasped. I glared at him as he started laughing.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he chuckled.
Feeling foolish and angry, I bent down, scooped up a snowball, and threw it at him. It hit him square in the chest.
“Good shot, Molly,” I yelled with delight.
For a second he looked startled, then he brushed himself off. “Right,” he called. “You asked for it!” and he bent to make his own snowball.
I struggled free of the snow and started to run. A snowball hit me in the back. I paused, scooped, and threw back one of my own, then picked up my skirts, raising them to a level that bordered on impropriety and ran on again, squealing in delight like a ten-year-old. At the edge of a meadow the ground rose in a series of tree-covered hillocks. I headed in that direction as another snowball whizzed past me.
“Missed me,” I shouted, but I could hear him gaining on me. The hills and trees were ahead. We could turn this into a game of hide-and-seek. The snow was deeper here again, however, and I clambered and slithered up the nearest slope. Daniel still hadn’t caught up with me. I started to run down the other side, then almost stumbled over something beside the tree. It was white and I didn’t realize what it was until almost too late. I grabbed onto a bare tree branch and pulled up, recoiling in horror. It was a woman’s body.
FIVE
She was young and beautiful, with a delicate little elfin face surrounded by rich chestnut hair, and she was clad only in a flimsy white dress and white stockings with dainty little black evening shoes. Her porcelain flesh was as white as the snow and she looked like a large white china doll lying there.
“I’ve got you now. You’re at my mercy,” Daniel shouted as he came blundering over the rise. Then he saw my face. “What is it?”
Silently I pointed to the ground at my feet.
“God Almighty,” Daniel exclaimed, although he was usually most careful about swearing in my presence. “Don’t touch her and stand back. I want to get a good look at the scene of the crime. There will be footprints.”
“Scene of the crime?” I asked nervously.
“Young ladies don’t usually wander out into the snow with no warm outer garments and certainly not in those shoes. She was probably killed and brought here.”
He came forward cautiously and examined the ground around the dead girl.
“Strange,” he muttered. “I see no prints but those the girl herself made. How can that be?”
He squatted beside the girl, lifted her wrist, then dropped it again as if it burned him. “I felt a pulse. She’s still alive. Quickly, help me off with my jacket. We must warm her up.”
“My cape is warmer,” I said, untying the neck before he could object. I helped Daniel raise the girl from the snow and we wrapped the fur-lined cape around her.
“We must get help fast,” Daniel said. “And a warm drink. You stay with her. Here, put my jacket around you. I’ll go and alert the constable at the gate. I’ll be as fast as I can.”
He ran off while I knelt in the snow, cradling the unconscious girl in my arms. Her flesh felt so cold to my touch that it was hard to believe she could be still alive. But as I looked down at her face I saw her eyes flutter open and look around in wonder. They were an incredible blue and her wide-eyed stare only added to her doll-like quality.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe now,” I said in a soothing voice. “Help is on the way. You’re going to be all right.”
The eyes fluttered shut again and I held her to me like a large child. I looked around me at the desolate winter landscape. It was hard to believe that I was in the middle of a city and that just over that hill there were crowds of people. Daniel was as good as his word. Just as I was beginning to feel the cold badly without the benefit of my cape, he came back, wading through the deep snow with a cup of cocoa in one hand, and the constable from the park gate, red-faced and panting, following at his heels.
“Well, I never did,” the constable exclaimed.
“She hasn’t regained consciousness, then.” Daniel dropped to his knees beside us.
“She opened her eyes for a moment,” I said.
“Wake up, my dear,” Daniel said gently. “We’ve got a nice hot drink for you. Try and take a sip.”
He put the cup to her mouth. She recoiled in fear as the warm liquid touched her, but then ran her tongue experimentally around her lips. Daniel tried again and this time she managed a sip or two. After a few minutes of patient ministration, he was able to get the whole cup down her. Her eyes opened again and she stared at us in complete bewilderment.
“We should get you home,” Daniel said. “Where do you live, miss?”
She continued to stare without responding.
“You’re in Central Park. Do you know how you got here?”
No reaction.
“You’re safe with us,” Daniel said gently. “We are police officers. We’re going to take good care of you. Now, what is your name?”
She looked up at me with the same bewildered look on her face.
“Tell us your name and address and we can take you home,”
I said, smiling at her.
No response.
“Maybe she has some identification on her,” the constable suggested.
“I think that’s unlikely,” I said. “She’s wearing the flimsiest of gowns and no kind of overcoat.”
“No pocketbook?”
I shook my head. “No pocketbook.”
“Maybe that’s it then,” Constable Jones said. “Maybe she was out for a morning walk and she was robbed in a desolate part of the park and the thief stole her outer garments and pocketbook.”
“It’s possible,” Daniel said. “Were you attacked? Let me see if you were hit on the head.”
He went to touch her hair but she recoiled in alarm again.
“Let me,” I said. “She’ll feel more comfortable with a woman.” I smiled at her. “I just want to see if you got a nasty bump on the head. I won’t hurt you.”
I tried to feel her scalp but she was starting like a nervous colt. “She may have a bit of a bump just over her right temple,” I said, “but I don’t see any blood. Besides, we saw her footprints, and no others. If someone had hit her over the head to knock her out, would she have got up and started walking again? And look at those impossible little shoes. She’d never have intentionally gone for a walk in those.”
“But she did walk this far under her own steam and then she must have collapsed with cold.” Daniel was still frowning.
“No other footprints, you say?” The constable stared at the snowy ground, which clearly displayed the dainty trail coming from the northeast. “And no sign of foul play, as far as we can tell? Her dress was not disturbed or in disarray?”
From the way a glance passed between him and Daniel, I could tell what he was hinting at.
Daniel coughed discreetly. “If she walked here alone, we can hardly find out any more until she’s been examined by a doctor, or can tell us herself.”
“Her dress was in no kind of disarray when I found her,” I said. “She was lying as if asleep,”
“Whatever happened we must get her into a warm environment as soon as possible,” Daniel said. “In the absence of a name and address we’d better take her to the closest hospital.”
“That would be the German hospital, Lenox Hill, on East Seventy-seventh,” the constable suggested.
“Not far at all, then,” Daniel said. “If we could carry her to the nearest park gate, we could hail a cab. That would be quicker than summoning an ambulance. Do you think we could manage it?”
“No trouble at all,” the constable said. “I’ll wager she weighs no more than a feather. Look at her, she’s all skin and bones. She doesn’t look as if she’s had a decent meal in months.”
He was right in a way. There was no spare flesh on her. I could easily span the tiny wrist I was holding between my thumb and first finger, and yet she didn’t look gaunt or starving, and from what I could see, her dress and shoes were of good quality.
“Are you sure you can’t tell us your name?” I asked her again. “It would be so much nicer to go home than to be taken to a hospital, wouldn’t it?”
The girl only stared at me with large, hopeless eyes.
“Maybe she doesn’t understand us,” Daniel said. “Maybe she is a new immigrant who speaks a different language.”
I tried my schoolgirl French on her and Daniel tried some German, but we got no response. As Daniel and the constable lifted her gently between them, she attempted no kind of struggle, but lay passively, her head lolling like a rag doll’s. We soon found a path cutting across from the East Drive and were walking on a swept surface again. The wet snow had soddened my skirts and stockings by now and my teeth were starting to chatter even though I had Daniel’s jacket around my shoulders.
We soon emerged onto Fifth Avenue and Daniel hailed a cab that whisked us a few short blocks to Seventy-seventh. As Daniel carried the girl through the austere entrance of the hospital, and then down that echoing white-tiled hallway, she showed alarm and attempted to struggle, but she was so weak that he held her easily imprisoned in his arms. Soon she was lying in a hospital bed, wrapped in warm blankets and being attended to by nurses. I retrieved my borrowed cloak just as an imposing, bearded doctor arrived on the scene and we repeated our story for him.
“Out in the snow, dressed like this?” he demanded. “Such folly.” He had a strong German accent.
“We were thinking that maybe she wasn’t out in the park willingly. That maybe she had escaped from an abductor or assailant,” Daniel said.
“Ach so. I will take a look at her. Move away, please.” A screen was placed around her bed while the doctor examined her. He came out almost immediately, wiping his forehead.
“She is clearly severely traumatized,” he said. “She won’t let me touch her.”
“Then it’s possible she was assaulted in the park?”
“From what I could see, I’d say the answer is no,” the doctor replied. “Her undergarments are tied with an old-fashioned draw-string and don’t appear to have been touched in any way. I should have thought that any potential attacker would have snapped the string in his lust, or at very least not bothered to tie it up again.”
“And as to other kinds of assault?” Daniel asked. “She didn’t appear to have been struck on the head and knocked unconscious, did she?”
“Again, not from what I could see. She became so alarmed every time I moved near her that I thought it best to let her recover before we examine her further. So you have no idea who she might be?”
“She wouldn’t answer any questions or communicate with us in any way,” I said. “Captain Sullivan thought she might not understand English.”
“Captain Sullivan? You’re in the military, mein Herr?”
“New York police,” Daniel replied curtly.
“Das ist gut. Then we don’t have to file a police report.”
“No, that’s been taken care of,” Daniel said. “So we can leave her in your care for the time being, can we?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll give you my card.” Daniel fished in his pocket. “And we’ll come to visit her tomorrow.”
“Hopefully by the next time you come she’ll have fully recovered and we’ll have contacted her family.” The doctor gave a jovial smile.
I glanced back at her bed as we left. The screens had been wheeled away and she was lying there not moving, eyes closed, looking as if she was carved from white marble.
SIX
“I’m not sure that I’m in the mood for ice-skating after that escapade,” Daniel said as we stepped into brilliant winter sunshine. “How about you?”
“I’m feeling thoroughly wet and sodden,” I said, “in need of a change of clothes and some hot tea.”
“I’ll call us a cab and take you home.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” I retorted. “All this extravagance with cabs.”
“Then I’ll let you pay for it,” Daniel teased, “since you made a fortune over in Ireland and are currently working on another lucrative case.”
“It wasn’t exactly a fortune,” I said, “and in my business I need to put money by for the dry times when no client shows up at my door. Besides, I was brought up to be frugal. I’ve a good pair of legs and they can take us to the nearest El station.”
“I’ll agree with that,” Daniel said, eyeing me appraisingly. “You’ve certainly got a good pair of legs.”
“Captain Sullivan!” I exclaimed in mock horror.
“Well, you showed them to half the world as you danced across that snowy meadow,” Daniel said, smiling.
We walked in silence for a while. “You’re very subdued,” Daniel said. “Still thinking about that girl?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I said. “Poor thing. What an awful ordeal. She could so easily have died if I hadn’t run away from you and looked for somewhere to hide.”
He nodded. “A rum business, wasn’t it? I’ll be most interested to hear an explanation of what really happened.”
“I wonder if she isn’t perhaps a mental patient, wandered away from her caretakers,” Daniel said. “She could be delusional.”
I thought of those blank blue eyes. “You may be right. If she is a mental patient, her family will have reported her missing by now.”
By the time the El reached Eighth Street, my petticoats and stockings had dried and I found myself regretting that I had not tried the ice-skating.
“Maybe we could go skating tomorrow,” I said. “Knowing Sid and Gus they will undoubtedly have proper skating outfits. I have already agreed to have lunch with them and with their friend Nelly Bly.”
“Nelly Bly?” Daniel exclaimed. “The newspaper reporter? She is an acquaintance of your friends?”
“Sid and Gus know everybody worth knowing in the city,” I said with a smile. “And she seems such an interesting woman.”
“A dashed plucky one, from what one reads,” Daniel aside. “She has put herself in harm’s way on numerous occasions, including traveling around the world in seventy-eight days. I’d dearly like to meet her.”
“Then I’ll ask Sid and Gus if you may be included,” I said. “We can visit the hospital in the morning, lunch with Nelly Bly, and then have time to fit in an afternoon of skating before I have to shadow Mr. Roth to his evening pursuits.”
“Couldn’t you take an evening off and let us extend our skating into dinner somewhere?” Daniel asked.
“And what if that’s the one night that he goes on the town, or meets with undesirable people?” I said. “I have been hired to do a job, Daniel. I don’t recall you taking evenings off when you were on a case.”
“That’s true enough. But in my case, I was on the trail of criminals and it was important that they were caught.”
“Oh, I see,” I said haughtily. “You still think that my occupation is not serious, is that it? I’ve been in dangerous situations myself, you know.”