Tell Me Pretty Maiden

by Rhys Bowen

  I nodded. “It hasn’t been easy and today has been a strange, strange day.” Then I told him about the Hungarians and about Annie going with them.

  “But that’s good news, surely,” Daniel said. “I’m relieved to hear that you no longer have to take responsibility for her. She’s gone where her own people can take care of her.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I kept asking myself whether I was doing the right thing in letting her go.”

  “Why? Was there something wrong with these men?”

  “I don’t know. They seemed respectable enough. They seemed very concerned about her.”

  “Well, there you are then. The girl should never have been your responsibility. Let her go and stop worrying. So the only case we still have on the books is Miss Van Woekem’s nephew, and I doubt that we’ll ever get to the bottom of that one.”

  “Did you have a chance to visit the steamship companies?”

  “I did,” he said. “None of the shipping lines remembers selling a ticket to someone who resembled John Jacob Halsted.”

  “And trains?”

  “I showed his picture around at the train station that was closest to the wrecked car. Nobody remembered seeing him there, either. Nor at any of the businesses along the little main street there. The man has completely vanished, Molly. I think we have to assume that he is lying dead somewhere in a snowdrift. I don’t know how we’ll tell the old woman. It will break her heart.”

  “What else could we possibly do?”

  “I have no idea. But right now what we are going to do is enjoy this meal before it gets cold.” He attacked his steak with relish. I followed suit.

  “I’d better take you home,” Daniel said as we came out into the chilly night air. “That wine was certainly heady.”

  “I’m just fine,” I said, although I could feel the effects of the wine all through my body.

  Daniel looked at me and smiled. “I don’t want you falling over on the ice.” He hailed a cab and helped me inside. In the dark confined space I was very conscious of his closeness and it seemed very natural for his arm to come around me and for my head to rest on his shoulder. “Now this is more like it,” he said. “It seems we’ve been at odds recently. I’ve had the feeling that you’ve been keeping me at arm’s length.”

  “With good reason,” I said. “I know what happens if I let you get any closer than that.”

  He laughed and squeezed me tighter.

  We proceeded slowly down lower Fifth Avenue to the Washington Square arch and then stopped at the entrance to Patchin Place. Daniel jumped down to help me out. His hand was warm and firm in mine. “Here, take my arm,” he said. “It’s still icy in the alleyway.”

  We reached my front door without incident. Conflicting thoughts were racing inside my head. He was going to ask to come inside. I knew that I should turn him away but I didn’t want to. I also knew what was likely to happen if I let him in. I fumbled for my key, conscious of how close he was standing beside me.

  Suddenly the door opposite was thrown open and Sid and Gus came rushing out.

  “Molly, it is you!” Sid shouted. “Gus said she was sure she spotted you coming down the alley. I’m so glad we’ve caught you.” She noticed Daniel at this juncture. “Oh, and good evening to you, too, Captain Sullivan.”

  Daniel nodded politely.

  “Molly, please tell us that you don’t have to be at that horrible theater tomorrow night, because we have something wonderful planned.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “My assignment at the theater is over.”

  “Hooray for that,” Gus said. “We were quite out of sorts because we hadn’t seen you for absolutely ages, weren’t we, Sid?”

  “She was,” Sid said. “Positively pining. Wouldn’t eat her food. I’ve had to tempt her with foie gras and truffles.”

  “You two!” I laughed.

  “Can you come in for a while?” Sid asked. “We have to tell you our plans for our wonderful costume party tomorrow night. We’re all going to come as our favorite literary character and we’re going to cook meals that feature in several well-known novels. There will be prizes and Ryan is bringing some of his theater friends—” Again, she glanced at Daniel, who was scowling now. “You are invited, too, of course, Captain Sullivan.”

  “Not exactly my cup of tea, thank you,” Daniel said. He tapped my arm. “I think I had better be making my way home, Molly. It’s getting late.”

  “Oh, all right, Daniel.” I held his sleeve. “Look, won’t you reconsider and come to the costume party with me tomorrow? We’ve had so little fun recently. We didn’t even manage to go skating in Central Park.”

  “I—I’m afraid I have to go home this weekend, Molly,” he said. “My father’s health is not improving and I can tell that my mother is worried about him.”

  “You’re just saying that because you don’t want to come to a party with my friends, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m concerned about my father, Molly. I have to go home.”

  “Very well. Then you’d better go home, hadn’t you?” I said coldly. “Give my regards to your parents. Or haven’t you told them about me yet?”

  “I’ve hinted,” he said, glancing across at Sid and Gus still standing there at their front door. “But now is not exactly the time to spring something on them.”

  “Of course not. Well, in that case, thank you for bringing me home, Captain Sullivan.”

  He looked at me, went to say something else, then his gaze turned to Sid and Gus. “I bid you goodnight, ladies. Goodnight, Molly,” he said and walked away without any kind of farewell kiss.

  “I fear your brave captain doesn’t enjoy our company the way you do,” Gus said.

  “Too bad for him,” I replied. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The party on Saturday night was noisy, crazy, and a lot of fun. Ryan came as the Scarlet Pimpernel and Elizabeth, aka Nelly Bly, appeared as Huck Finn. She commented that she might as well use her hard-won expertise in passing as a small, ragged boy. I was Jane Eyre, not because she was my favorite literary character—although I did like the way she threw a book at her cousin—but because I owned the plain sort of clothes a governess would wear.

  “What a pity Captain Sullivan isn’t here,” Gus said. “He’d have made a lovely Mr. Rochester.”

  “What a pity indeed,” I thought, still annoyed that Daniel ran a mile from having anything to do with my friends. He had probably had no intention of going home this weekend until he wanted an excuse to get out of the party. Did he really believe that our future together would only include friends of his choosing? I pushed the uneasy thoughts aside and enjoyed myself thoroughly. It had been a long time since I had enjoyed an evening so much.

  It was strange to have a whole Sunday to myself. It was even stranger to wake up on Monday morning with nothing really to do. Even the house was in good order, thanks to Mrs. Tucker, who had done more than her share of dusting and polishing while she had been with me. I had been complaining about having too much work to do, but now I drifted around the house, bored and annoyed. I thought of paying a visit to Daniel to see how his father was faring, but then decided against it.

  Then it came to me that I should let Mrs. Goodwin know the outcome of the story with the mute girl, after she had taken such an interest and worked on my behalf. I didn’t expect to find her at home on a working day, but I wrote her a note and asked her to stop by at her earliest convenience so that I could tell her the latest in this saga. I had scarcely made it back home myself when she showed up on my doorstep.

  “I was thinking of you today, as it happened,” she said as I invited her inside and seated her in my best armchair. “I’ve just come from the morgue, where I was taking a look at a young woman called Annie.”

  My heart leaped alarmingly. “Annie? It wasn’t my girl, was it? You remember how she looked—elfin face, lots of chestnut hair?”

  Mrs
. Goodwin looked surprised. “She is no longer with you then?”

  “No, some Hungarian men came for her.” I related the entire story.

  “And you were not happy to let her go?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “At least, I suppose I am happy for her that she’s among her own people. It’s just that I expected her wits would have returned and she would have recognized them when they spoke to her. But she didn’t.”

  “It doesn’t always work that quickly in such cases,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “If the brain has suffered considerable trauma it needs time to heal.”

  “And now you’ve got me worried that she might have met a bad end.”

  Mrs. Goodwin smiled. “You can rest easy. This girl was quite different. Pretty, pale, blonde little thing from what we can tell—she had been in the river for a while.”

  “The river?”

  “East River. She was pulled out close to Ward’s Island. Who knows where she went in. She could have floated with the current from farther north.”

  “I see,” I said. “How did you know her name was Annie? Did a family member come forward to identify her?”

  “No, it was easier than that. Her undergarments had her name inked on them. Annie P.”

  I started. “Annie P? That couldn’t be Parker, could it?”

  She nodded. “Possibly, why? Do you know an Annie Parker?”

  “A girl named Annie Parker, who meets your description, went missing from a theater in New Haven, Connecticut, just before I found the girl in the snowdrift,” I said.

  “Is that right?”

  “And she may be connected to a case I’m working on—trying to find a young man called John Jacob Halsted who robbed a mansion just outside New Haven.”

  “Halsted?” she reacted sharply. “Half the police force is looking for him. Why are you involved?”

  “Working on behalf of his family. They want to know the truth about him and where he is.”

  “So do we all,” she said.

  “Well, one thing I’ve found out is that he frequented the theater in New Haven and that he was planning to take a young lady out for a late supper—possibly Annie Parker. We did wonder whether they might have run off together to South America, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She could have been in his motor car with him when it crashed. She could have been dazed and wandered off and fallen into the marshes nearby.”

  “Hardly,” Mrs. Goodwin said shortly. “She had a bullet hole in the middle of her back.”

  “She was shot?”

  “She was shot. So if your Mr. Halsted was with her, I’d say that things now look even worse for him.”

  “Oh dear,” I said. “It all seems so unlikely from everything we’ve heard about him. He certainly liked a good time and he liked spending money, but he had plenty of it and his friends describe him as someone easygoing who didn’t even own a gun. I can’t see a person like that being involved in these horrible crimes they are ascribing to him—robbing banks, shooting people willy-nilly . . .”

  “As to that,” Mrs. Goodwin said, “it would now appear that Mr. Halsted is probably not responsible for at least some of the crimes in that area. I gather they have arrested a man in connection with the pay-wagon robbery in Greenwich.”

  “They have?”

  “Yes, lucky coincidence, actually. The New York police have had their eye on an Italian gang who have been causing us grief. They call themselves the Cosa Nostra and come from Sicily, so I understand. Anyway, we conducted a raid on their houses and one man we rounded up matched the description of the bandit who had robbed the payroll wagon. Now we think that they have found these outlying small towns to be easy pickings without the police supervision of the city.”

  “So John Jacob is no longer wanted for these crimes?”

  “He’s still wanted for the robbery and murder at the Silver-ton mansion,” she said. “The evidence against him there is overwhelming.”

  “Yes, I suppose that is pretty damning,” I said. “I’d certainly like to know if Annie Parker was involved with him and if it is her body that is now lying in the morgue.”

  “I can take you back there to see for yourself,” she said, “although I warn you, she’s not a pretty sight. When a body has been in a river for a few days, the fish have had a good nibble at it.”

  I shuddered. “I think I’ll do without the morgue visit then,” I said. “It certainly sounds very like her. But I’m thinking that perhaps I should go up to New Haven and talk to the other girls in the chorus up there. Annie may have confided her plans for that night to one of them.”

  “Now that you tell me this, I’ve thought of something else that could be done. I’ll see if the bullet was extracted from her, and then maybe we can find out if it matched the bullet that shot the servant at that mansion.”

  “Good idea,” I said, getting quite excited now. “Will you come with me up to New Haven?”

  She shook her head with a smile. “Oh no, my dear. I’ve just had ten hours on the beat. All I’m going to do now is fall asleep. But you go. You can handle it well enough on your own. I’ve great faith in you.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll go then. I believe that most theaters are dark on Monday nights, but I’m sure I’ll be able to locate where the girls are lodging.” I picked up my cape from where I had tossed it across a kitchen chair. “Can I make you something first?” I asked. “A cup of tea? A sandwich?”

  She smiled again. “Oh no, thank you, my dear. You go about your tasks and I’ll be off to bed then. How did my nosy neighbor work out as a nursemaid?”

  “Wonderfully,” I said. “She couldn’t have been better. My girl adored her and had actually come to trust her. I think if we’d had another week or two, we’d have restored her to her old self.”

  “Amazing.” Mrs. Goodwin nodded. “It just shows that she’s the type who needs to be kept busy then, doesn’t it? Next time she shows up on my doorstep, I’ll find a task for her to do.”

  She got up and adjusted her bonnet. “Good luck in your hunting then, Miss Molly. Let me know what you find.”

  We left the house together, she for her bed and I toward Grand Central Terminus. I stared impatiently out of the window as the train crawled through Manhattan and then crossed the bridge to the Bronx. It was a gray December day with mist hovering over the low-lying ground. I watched keenly as the marshes appeared in the distance to our right. The first of the marshy area must have been a good half-mile from the place where the motor car hit a tree. If Annie had been in the car, how had her body wound up in the marshes? Had the car been ambushed, knowing that it contained the loot from a burglary? In which case, had John Jacob also been shot and his body dumped into the nearest creek?

  I shuddered and pulled my cloak around me, even though it was warm in the compartment. It is always tragic when a young life meets a violent end. John Jacob had seemed a likable young man and Annie Parker was a vibrant beauty. And yet someone had robbed and murdered at the Silverton mansion and all the evidence pointed so firmly to John Jacob Halsted. I just hoped I’d be closer to the truth by the end of this day.

  We passed through Greenwich and then Bridgeport and finally came to New Haven. It was bitterly cold and the sidewalks were icy as I made my way toward the theater. I hoped I might find the manager in his office again, but the building was closed up and there was no sign of life. I walked around the back and discovered an alleyway with what was presumably a stage door. No luck there, either. I was just walking away when I heard a sound above my head. I looked up to see a woman taking in her laundry, farther down the alley. The garments were stiff with frost and crackled as she pulled them from the line. I called out to her and asked if she knew where the chorus girls from the theater lodged.

  “Are you thinking of joining them?” she asked. “It’s an awful hard life, so they say.”

  “It’s my little cousin I’ve come to visit,” I said. I’ve found that the mention of family members always reassures people.


  She nodded and gave me directions with a clothespin still stuck in the side of her mouth. I came out of the alley and turned right at the Bank of Connecticut on the corner. The lodging house was on a dingy side street with scruffy children playing kick the can in spite of the cold. Their breath hung in the air like smoke. They stopped playing to look at me curiously as I went up the steps and knocked on the front door.

  A slovenly middle-aged woman opened the door and stood staring at me with her hands on her hips.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “Is this where the girls from the theater lodge?” she asked.

  “Some of them, yes.”

  “Did Annie Parker stay here?”

  “Her? Don’t talk to me about her. She skipped off owing me a month’s rent, she did. If you’re a relative, I expect to be paid.”

  “I’m not a relative,” I said. “I’m a private detective and we’re investigating Miss Parker’s disappearance.”

  “Go on with you!” She shook her head in half disbelief. “What’s she supposed to have done?”

  “Could I come in?” I said. “It’s freezing out here. I’d like to talk to some of her friends if they’re at home.”

  “Where else would they be on a nasty cold day like this?” she said. “When these girls have a day off, they sleep. Come on then. Wipe your feet.”

  I thought this last command was a little excessive, given the state of the floor, but I followed her into a shabby sitting room. There was the barest hint of a fire burning in the grate and two girls were sitting in armchairs with blankets around their shoulders. They looked up as I came in.

  “This young lady wants to know about Annie,” she said. “She’s a detective.”

  They shot me worried looks. “A detective? So it’s true then. She has done something bad?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “It’s possible. It’s also possible she might be dead, so anything you can tell me about her, and about that last night when she disappeared, would be most helpful. Do you happen to know if she went off to meet a young man that night?”

  “She was a great one for the boys, Annie was,” the younger of the two girls said. She had a fresh-scrubbed face and looked not much older than fourteen. “And they sure liked her. You should see the gifts she got—flowers, candies, even perfume.”