The Family Way

by Rhys Bowen

  Two

  I stood staring down at the picture of Maureen. It had obviously been cut from a family group and showed her stiff, uneasy, and unsmiling; her hands folded in an unnatural position. Her hair was light, but it wasn’t possible to tell the true color. I slipped the picture back into the envelope then reread the letter. By the time I had finished reading, my head had started buzzing with ideas. The missing girl had done something she was ashamed of and didn’t want them to know. She’d run off with an unsuitable man, or she’d been sacked from her situation in Mrs. Mainwaring’s household and didn’t want to write until she had found herself a new post. If I could locate this Mrs. Mainwaring, no doubt this matter could be solved quickly. It shouldn’t be too hard—Mrs. Mainwaring must be a lady of some substance if she ran a household big enough to employ more than one parlormaid. And I knew people who moved in those circles. The first person to try should be my old friend Miss Van Woekem—she knew the Four Hundred personally. Or maybe some of my friend Emily’s Vassar pals, or of course Gus came from a most distinguished Boston family who would have connections in New York. It wasn’t definite that the lady lived in New York, but given that the girl landed here and found a situation immediately, one could surmise …

  A horse and cart lumbered past, the poor horse with his head straining forward and breathing heavily as he attempted to drag a dray piled high with barrels. The clop of hooves and the rumble and rattle of the cart so close to me broke my train of thought and made me step back hastily from the curb. Then I realized that it was no use surmising. I would not be taking on this case. I had given up my detective business and promised Daniel that I would never again involve myself in stupidly dangerous situations. As hard as this was for me, I could see his point of view: I had narrowly escaped death on several occasions. I’d even suffered a miscarriage once that I had never found the courage to tell him about. He had been unjustly jailed at the time and in no position to marry me. As these thoughts passed through my mind I admitted that I had experienced some very dark hours. I had taken stupid risks. I was lucky to be alive and to be married to the man I loved with a bright future ahead of me.

  I’d take the letter home, show it to Daniel, and ask if he knew of any reputable private detectives who might want to take on the job. I stopped at my favorite greengrocer on the corner of Ninth Street and bought a pound of peaches and some salad for Daniel’s supper, since it would be too hot to think of cooking much. I looked longingly at those peaches in my basket, tempted to eat one on the spot, but reminded myself that the respectable wife of a well-known police captain does not behave like a street urchin. Instead I joined the throng attempting to stay in the shade under the elevated railway tracks, and was trying to avoid being bumped and jostled when I heard my name being called.

  I stepped out into the sunlight, looked up, and saw a delicate vision in pale lilac waving at me. She seemed almost unreal, so out of place among the drab colors of the sturdy housewives and laborers that I had to look twice before I recognized her. It was Sarah Lindley, fellow suffragist friend of Sid and Gus. In spite of the fact that she came from an upper-class and wealthy family she was not only passionately involved in the suffrage movement but had been volunteering at a settlement house in the slums of the Lower East Side. She looked both ways and dodged between a hansom cab and a big black carriage to come to me.

  “Molly, how lovely to see you,” she said, giving me a delicate kiss on the cheek. “And how well you look. Positively blooming. How many months to go now?”

  “Two and a half,” I said, “and it can’t go by quickly enough for me. I find this heat unbearable.”

  “I know. Isn’t it just awful.” She brushed an imaginary strand of stray hair back under her lilac straw hat.

  “Surely you could escape from it,” I said. “Don’t your folks have a country estate? Or weren’t you supposed to be making a European grand tour?”

  “Already accomplished, my dear,” Sarah said, linking her arm through mine as we started to walk together. “We went in May. France, Italy, Germany, you name it, we were there. Every art gallery and palace in creation. All very lovely, but not a single prince or count asked for my hand so mama came home most disappointed.”

  I glanced at her and we exchanged a grin. “I don’t imagine you’re in any hurry to marry after what you went through last year, are you?” I asked. Her last fiancé had turned out to be what we would have called a rotter who came to a bad end.

  “Exactly,” she said. “And I want to be like you. I want to marry for love. Mama is all for a good match, but I don’t see why one should be unhappy for one’s whole life just to have a title or a castle or something.”

  “So what are you doing in this part of the city?” I asked.

  “Coming to pay a call on your dear neighbors,” she said. “I haven’t seen them since I came back from Europe and I’m dying to regale them with all my stories. I know they’ll love to hear about the fat German count who trapped me in the hotel elevator in Berlin and tried to kiss me.”

  “How disgusting. What did you do? Scream for help?”

  “Absolutely not, my sweet. I stuck the tip of my parasol into his foot. With considerable force. You should have heard him howl and hop around.”

  I laughed. “Sid and Gus would be proud,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’ve come on a wasted journey. They are not home. They went to stay with Gus’s cousin in Newport.”

  “Oh, the dreaded Roman mansion.” She laughed. “I wonder what made Gus endure that again? I thought she couldn’t stand that particular cousin.”

  “I gather they were prepared to suffer the cousin for the sake of sea air,” I said. “It really is devilishly hot in the city. As I said I’m surprised you haven’t escaped.”

  “Devotion to duty,” Sarah said. “One of our volunteers at the settlement house is getting married so I promised to take over her shifts.”

  “You’re still working at the settlement house?”

  “I am. It’s hard work, but it brings me great satisfaction to be able to make a difference in the lives of those people. We’ve expanded our educational programs and we’re teaching so many poor mothers about hygiene and good nutrition. That’s become my little pet project, actually. I love going out into the tenements and helping people. You’d be amazed how many mothers haven’t the slightest idea about how to look after their babies—they let the little dears crawl around on absolutely filthy floors and put anything they find in their mouths and they even give them rags soaked in gin to keep them quiet.”

  “You’re doing a wonderful job,” I said.

  She wrinkled her little button of a nose. “Mama doesn’t see it that way. I have to endure a constant barrage of comments about my chances of marriage slipping away and the bloom fading on the rose and the horrors of impending spinsterhood. But frankly, Molly, I’d be quite happy not marrying and doing this kind of work all my life. What’s so wrong with it?”

  “It isn’t what your mother had planned for you, that’s what,” I said. “Every mother wants her daughter happily married and lots of grandchildren. You should see how excited Daniel’s mother is about the arrival of the baby.”

  “And your mother? I presume she’s still at home in Ireland?”

  I shook my head. “My mother died when I was fourteen. My father’s dead too. I have a brother who was part of the Republican Brotherhood, hiding out somewhere in France, and a younger brother still in Ireland but that’s all. No real family anymore.”

  She touched my arm. “Poor Molly. How sad for you.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “I’ve got Daniel, and Sid and Gus have become like family to me. I’m so sorry they’re not at home. I don’t know when they plan to return. Would you care to come to my place for a cup of tea or a lemonade since you’re in the neighborhood?”

  “How kind of you. I’d love to.”

  We turned, arm in arm, from Sixth to Greenwich Avenue and from there into Patchin Place, teetering on the co
bbles in our dainty shoes. The house was now uncomfortably hot so I led Sarah though to our tiny square of back garden, where I had set a wrought iron table and two chairs in the shade of a lilac tree, then brought out a jug of lemonade and a plate of biscuits I had made a few days previously. Sarah clapped her hands and laughed in delight.

  “Molly, you have become so domesticated. Look at you, lady of the house and soon-to-be mother. Did you ever imagine when we met last year that your life could change so dramatically?”

  “It certainly is changed,” I agreed as I poured the lemonade.

  “How relieved you must be that you are no longer in danger and working in such uncomfortable circumstances,” she said.

  I hesitated. “Sometimes I feel that way, but I’m used to hard work, and I’m afraid I enjoyed the excitement of my job too. I find my present condition rather boring. I wasn’t raised to leisure like you so I’ve no idea how to fill idle hours.”

  She took a sip of lemonade. “I was raised to leisure, as you say, but I have always rebelled against it. Croquet matches and coffee mornings seem such a waste of time to me. And all those discussions about new hats and dressmakers. I never could abide them. That’s why I went to work at the settlement house and found like-minded people.” She looked up suddenly from her glass. “You could always come and help me if you’re bored,” she said. “I’m sure you’d be splendid at educating families in the tenements on hygiene and I’d certainly relish a companion with me.”

  “I would jump at a chance like that, but I’m afraid Daniel wouldn’t agree. He’s treating me as if I’m a dainty little flower at the moment and he’s terrified I’ll catch some awful disease if I venture into the slums.”

  Her face grew somber. “Well, he does have a point there. Remember that terrifying typhoid outbreak a couple of years ago? They are saying there is already typhoid in Brooklyn this summer and it can easily spread across the river. And there is always cholera in the hot weather. So maybe joining me wouldn’t be such a good idea, Molly.”

  “Don’t you fear for your own health?”

  She laughed. “Me? I may look dainty, but I’m as strong as an ox. My brothers all came down with all the childhood diseases when we were young, but not I.”

  “I was that way too when I was growing up, but I confess that I was horribly sick in the early months of my condition and for the first time in my life I did feel like a delicate china doll who needed looking after. Thankfully that has passed and I’m raring to go again. Daniel chided me earlier today because he found me standing on a chair, taking down the net curtains to launder them.”

  “I think I might have chided you too,” she said.

  “I need to keep busy, Sarah.”

  She looked thoughtful. “If you have time on your hands—you could always help our suffrage cause. I know you are a fellow supporter.”

  “I am, most definitely, but I don’t think I’m up to marching and carrying banners at the moment.”

  “Of course not. But we always need help with flyers and brochures to be handed out. You could assist with things like that, couldn’t you?”

  “I could,” I said.

  “We’re having a meeting next week to plan strategy. Do you think you can join us?”

  I started to say that I’d have to confer with Daniel first, but then the old Molly resurfaced. “Yes, I’d like to,” I said. “As long as it’s not at a time when I should be cooking Daniel’s dinner.” I saw her face and added swiftly, “He works such long hours that I like to make sure he has a proper meal when he gets home.”

  She nodded, accepting this, then put down her glass. “I should be making my way to the settlement house,” she said. “We have a couple of new volunteers and I’m afraid they both fit the expression, ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ They love the idea of serving the poor, but they don’t actually want to scrub floors and make beds.”

  We both laughed as she got to her feet.

  “I expect it’s hard for people in your station to find themselves in such different circumstances for the first time,” I said. “I don’t suppose they’ve ever scrubbed a floor before.”

  She nodded agreement. “It is a shock when you first start and when you find your first bedsheet with fleas and lice all over it. But you soon get used to it. And it’s so worth it when you see the change in the young women who come to us.”

  “Where do they go when they leave you?” I asked.

  “We try to find domestic situations for those who are suitable. Not all of them are, of course. Those who were ladies of the night or drug fiends don’t take kindly to our ministrations on the whole.”

  “And what happens to them?”

  “I’m afraid they go back onto the streets, and probably will wind up floating in the East River someday.”

  I stared at her, wondering how such a delicate creature could discuss such matters calmly. Most young women of her class would swoon at the words, “drug fiends.” But as I watched her open the back door and step into the house an idea was forming in my mind. “So some of these girls go into domestic service,” I said, following her down the narrow hallway. “Do you place them yourselves?”

  “We usually send them to an agency,” she said. “We simply don’t have the time to handle such matters.”

  My eyes lit up. “Then we may be able to help each other. Daniel has been adamant that we hire a servant—more for his status than for me, I suspect.” I smiled. “He has just written to his mother to ask her for recommendations, but I’d rather choose my own girl if she’s going to live in my house and work for me. Do you have anyone who might fit the bill at the moment?”

  She paused, her hand on my front door knob, thinking. “Not really,” she said. “But the agency that we use might be able to recommend a girl for you. They are most reliable and thorough. I’ll take you and introduce you if you like.”

  “That would be splendid,” I said. “Where is this agency?”

  “It’s on Broome Street, not far from the Bowery. If you’ve nothing to do right now, I could introduce you on my way to work.”

  Loathe as I was to step out into that heat again, I wasn’t going to turn down this chance. “Most kind of you,” I said. “I’ll fetch my hat and gloves.”

  “What do you think?” I asked as we reached the entrance to Patchin Place. “Should we chance the Sixth Avenue El and then walk along Broome or should we go across to Broadway and ride the trolley?”

  “At this time of day they are both likely to be packed,” Sarah said. “Not a good idea in your delicate condition. We’ll take a cab.”

  “A cab? But surely…” I began, but she was already stepping out into traffic, waving imperiously with her little gloved finger.

  “There are some privileges of the rich that I still enjoy,” she said. “And one of those is taking cabs whenever necessary. In fact Papa insists that I take cabs anytime I’m in undesirable parts of the city. He thinks I’m in constant danger of being captured and whisked off to white slavery.” And she gave a gay little laugh as the cab came to a halt beside us. I had to admit I was glad not to have to face a crowded rail car and the odor of sweaty bodies, my nose having become rather sensitive of late.

  The cabby looked surprised when Sarah gave him the address. “Are you sure that’s where you want to go, miss?” he asked.

  “Quite sure, thank you,” Sarah replied crisply.

  We set off at a lively clip. I put my hand into my purse to find my handkerchief and my fingers closed around the letter. I pulled it out. “Tell me,” I said. “You don’t happen to know a Mrs. Mainwaring, do you?”

  “Mainwaring? I don’t think I do. Are they a New York family?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I’ve just received this,” I said and handed her the letter. She read it. “I thought you’d given up detecting work,” she said.

  “I have, but I can’t help being curious. If the Mainwarings had turned out to be a well-known New York family, I could have made
inquiries and maybe been able to give these Irish folk an answer to their concerns.”

  “The fact that I don’t know them doesn’t mean that they are not New Yorkers,” Sarah said. “We are not among the Four Hundred, you know. Daddy started off in trade, which has limited our social rise, much to Mama’s annoyance. And these Mainwarings could be fellow members of the middle class who have now made enough money for a big house and plenty of servants. Besides,” she handed me back the letter, “you don’t know that Mrs. Mainwaring does live in the city, do you? She might live anywhere.”

  “The fact that this Maureen found a situation so quickly after arriving in New York indicated to me that the family must be local. She’d either have seen an advertisement or visited a local agency like the one you are taking me to.”

  Sarah nodded. “Of course people from all over the country advertise in the New York newspapers. she might have seen an offer of employment in Pennsylvania or California for all you know.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t see an Irish girl fresh off the boat being willing to set out for California, not knowing about the people she was going to.”

  “It’s a wild goose chase, Molly.”

  “I know, and one I shouldn’t be undertaking. But I just thought that if it might be easily solved, then I’d solve it and put the poor woman’s mind at rest.”

  “Your husband would not take kindly to your traipsing around New York, I fear.”

  I chuckled. “He certainly wouldn’t. But if this agency finds me a good servant, then I’ll have even more time on my hands, won’t I?”

  She returned my smile. “Molly, you’re incorrigible. No wonder Sid and Gus like you so much.”

  The cab had slowed to a crawl as it entered the Bowery and had to follow a slow-moving procession of horse-drawn vehicles being forced into the curb to get around a stopped electric trolley. Sarah tapped imperiously with her parasol on the roof of our cab. “It’s all right, driver. You can let us disembark here. It’s quicker to walk the rest of the way.”