by Rhys Bowen
“So is Mary still here, do you think?”
“We’ve no Mary in the chorus, but there is a Cora who is from Ireland.”
I laughed. “That would be the kind of name she’d choose. She always was fanciful. Is there any way I could see her?”
“Not before a performance, lady,” he said. “You could come round afterwards and see if she wants to speak to you.”
“It’s just that I’m worried, you see,” I said. “I heard that this man who was bothering her had a reputation with the girls. Someone told me that his name might be Mr. Joshua Clements. Does that ring a bell?”
“The stage door Johnnies don’t give out their names,” he said curtly. “Just in case any wives are keeping tabs on them.” And he eyed me squarely as if he thought I might be such a wife.
“You’d know him if you’d seen him,” I said. “A big man. Strong and healthy looking. Florid complexion. Overbearing manner. In his late forties, I’d say.”
“I haven’t seen the gentleman in question in quite a while,” he said. “And I seem to remember it was quite another girl he was sweet on. Not Cora, anyway.”
“What girl was this?” I asked.
“She don’t work here no more. Quit a few months back.” He looked around, then said, “I don’t know what your game really is, but I ain’t saying no more. Go on. Beat it.”
I had no choice but to go around to the front of the theater, where I paid for a ticket and went into the warm interior. I got a few stares, as not many unescorted women would dare to attend a vaudeville performance, especially one that contained some burlesque acts. I don’t know what I hoped to see, but I needed time to put my thoughts in order. And maybe afterwards, I could slip past the hostile doorman and have a chance to speak to the chorus girls.
The show started with a lively song and dance number, the words a little naughty, the girls wearing skimpy costumes and high boots. There were some wolf whistles from the men in the audience. Then came a pretty chanteuse who sat on a swing and sang about the boy she loved. Then an act with performing dogs, then a risqué fan dance. I had just decided that I was wasting my time sitting here. Joshua Clements used to frequent this theater but no longer came. Then on came the Great Zambezi, magician and prestidigitator extraordinaire. Ever since I had been mixed up with Houdini, I had been fascinated with illusionists. This one was not in Houdini’s league but was entertaining enough. He produced an empty cage, covered it with a cloth, removed the cloth and—voilà—there was a dove in it. He put an apple in a box, rotated the box, and the apple had disappeared. Rotated it again, and the apple now had a bite taken out of it.
“It’s all done by mirrors,” I heard a man behind me say to his friend. “You just need to get the right angle.”
I sat there as if transfixed. All done by mirrors. Of course it was. How blind I had been. I fought my way out of the theater and around to the stage door again.
“You again?” the stage door keeper growled.
“That girl who left. The one Joshua Clements was sweet on. Was she in the chorus?” I asked.
“Maisie?” he said, inadvertently giving me her name. “No, she was assistant to the magician we had before this one. Marvo the Magnificent. His real name was Alfie Banks. He moved on to a vaudeville show in Chicago, I believe. I don’t know if she went with him.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
He grunted.
Instead of going home, I went straight to police headquarters on Mulberry Street. Daniel wasn’t there, but I wrote him a message and left it on his desk. Please try to be home early this evening, I wrote. Very important.
As I walked home from the trolley car, I tried to put my thoughts into order. Someone had been playing tricks on Mrs. Clements, trying to work on her mind and make her think she was going crazy. But Joshua Clements wasn’t home when any of these strange occurrences had taken place. He had stopped going to the theater when the girl he was pursuing left. So where had she gone? I stopped in my tracks, because now I knew the answer to that. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? The quiet little Irish miss appearing out of the blue, so sympathetic and understanding, worried about her dear cousin. And I realized that all the time I had felt something was wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it.
It was all that “Faith and begorrah” in her speech. She had been trying so hard to sound Irish, but young people in Ireland didn’t really use those words. It was the older women who did. And once I found one thing wrong with her speech, I realized there were others. I went to the dispensary and was not surprised to find there was nothing wrong with the wine. Of course there wouldn’t be. That was why they had made me so welcome at dinner. They had wanted a witness that Mrs. Clements was going out of her mind.
Chapter 6
I reported to Sid and Gus what I had found out, then waited impatiently for Daniel’s return. He came home just before seven.
“What is it, Molly?” he asked, a worried look on his face. “I got your note and I figured you’d never call me home like this if it wasn’t really important.”
“It’s very important, Daniel,” I said. “Someone’s life is at stake.”
He frowned.. “Molly, you’ve not been doing more of your detective work behind my back, have you?”
“Not intentionally,” I said. “Let me tell you the story, and please don’t interrupt until I’m finished. I told you I met a pleasant woman at Sid and Gus’s party and that she invited me to her house on Fifth Avenue to meet her young cousin, newly arrived from Ireland. All of that was true. But then she confided that she’d really sought me out because she had learned that I was a detective and she feared that either her house was haunted or she was losing her mind. She described a face she had seen in the mirror, curtains wafting. I went to the house and saw her take a drink from a cup of coffee, then fling it away, saying it tasted bitter. When her wine tasted bitter at dinner last night, I took it away to be tested.”
“Molly—you took this upon yourself after we agreed…” Daniel began but I cut him off.
“I know. I should have brought this matter to you, but I knew how busy you were and time was of the essence. This woman could have been poisoned by now.”
“And was the wine poisoned?” he asked.
“That’s the point. There was nothing wrong with it.”
“So the poor woman is going crazy?”
“That’s what her husband and his mistress would want us to think,” I said. And I related my visit to the theater.
“A hard case to prove, Molly,” he said when I was done. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go with me to their house tonight.”
“But we have not been invited. We can’t just barge in, and I couldn’t arrest them on your suspicions.”
“I have an open invitation from Mrs. Clements, and she’ll be waiting to hear about her wine. I need your presence there because I’ll be safe with a police officer, and you can see what’s happening for yourself.”
He looked at me long and hard and then nodded. “Very well,” he said. “You’ve not often been wrong in your deductions and hunches before. In fact, if you had been a man, I’d have hired you in a second.”
I threw my arms around his neck. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
He smiled. “Better than ‘I love you’ and ‘Will you marry me?’”
“Just as good,” I replied. “It’s wonderful to be loved, but it’s also good to be respected.”
He gave me a gentle kiss, then ruffled my hair. “Come on, then. Let’s get this over with.”
We walked together up Fifth Avenue, our feet slithering on newly trampled snow. It felt good to hang on to Daniel’s arm and to feel his solid and comforting presence beside me, because I wasn’t looking forward to what we had to do.
Ada, the maid, looked surprised to see us. “They’re at dinner, Mrs. Sullivan. I didn’t realize you were expected.”
“We are not,” I said. �
�But I was passing and thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce my husband to my new friends.”
“You’d better come in, then.” She opened wide the door for us. “Let me take your overcoats. I see it’s been snowing again.”
“Just starting to snow,” I said as Daniel helped me off with my cape.
Three surprised faces looked up at us as we went into the dining room.
“I’m sorry to disturb your meal like this,” I said, “but I felt I should come right away, and I’ve brought my husband, Captain Sullivan, with me, because he should hear what I’m going to say.”
There was tense silence as they all stared at me. “I had the glass of wine tested,” I said, “and I’m sorry to inform you that there was indeed a poisonous substance in it. Someone in this house is undoubtedly trying to poison you, Mrs. Clements.”
I saw Daniel give me a strange look, but he was wise enough to say nothing. Joshua Clements, however, had risen to his feet. “That’s nonsense. Utter rubbish. Nobody’s trying to poison her. She must have put the stuff in there herself, because she’s going out of her mind. Perhaps she’s even trying to do away with herself.”
Noreen had gone as white as a sheet. “Poison her? No, that’s not right,” she said.
“All the same, the police will have to be called in, won’t they, Daniel?” I went on. “There will be a thorough investigation of everyone in this house.”
“But you saw for yourself,” Noreen said in her oh-so-Irish voice. “You were there when she saw the face in the mirror. There was nobody in the room behind her. She was imagining it.”
“Would you excuse me for a moment?” I said. “Daniel, please make sure nobody leaves this room.”
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re overstepping the bounds, young woman,” Clements bellowed. “This is my house. Come back here.”
But I had already gone. I ran upstairs and into Noreen’s room. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I came down again. “If you’d please follow me upstairs,” I said. “I think we can explain the face in the mirror.”
They really had no choice but to follow me, although Clements blustered that I was intruding on his privacy and had no right and was as crazy as his wife. I opened the door to Mrs. Clements’s bedroom and bade them all come inside. She gasped. “It’s there. The face in my mirror.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “It’s on a magic lantern slide over in Noreen’s room right across the hall. The magic lantern projects the face to a mirror in her room which is perfectly angled to project to your mirror when both doors are open just wide enough. And guess what else I found on Noreen’s dressing table? A little bottle of bitter aloes. Dip a spoon into that, let it dry, and any coffee stirred with it will taste awful. Of course, that wasn’t what you used for the red wine. That was just good old plain watercress, wasn’t it?”
Noreen started to say something, then glanced at Mr. Clements.
“You can’t prove any of this nonsense,” he snapped..
“Oh, and I expect we’ll find a nice black thread tied to the curtains that twitched, won’t we, Maisie?” I smiled at her sweetly.
“Who is Maisie?” Mrs. Clements asked.
“Your dear cousin from Ireland. That’s her real name. She’s a vaudeville artiste here in New York. A magician’s assistant and your husband’s mistress.”
Mrs. Clements looked from one face to the other. “If you wanted to leave me, why put me through this torture? Why not ask me for a divorce? I would not have stood in your way.”
“Because you’d take your money with you,” I said before he could answer. “And they couldn’t dispose of you, because your money dies with you. They wanted you alive, but out of their way, in an insane asylum. Did you know in the state of New York it takes only the signature of one doctor plus a family member to have someone committed? They had plenty of evidence that you were going insane, didn’t they? And me as a witness?”
Mrs. Clements put her hand to her throat. “I can’t believe that even you could be this cruel, Joshua. After all I did for you. My money bought this house. Set you up in business, and this is how you repay me.”
Noreen/Maisie was looking daggers at me. “What tipped you off?” she said. “It can’t have been my accent. I’ve always been a great one for accents.”
“You used the wrong words, for one thing,” I said. “You’re supposedly straight from Ireland, and yet you called it a ‘sidewalk.’ In Ireland, it’s the ‘pavement.’ It took me a long time to get that straight. And you said ‘fall.’ We’d say ‘autumn.’ And those things at the window? We don’t call them drapes. They are curtains to us. You might have had the accent right, but your vocabulary gave you away.”
“Think you’re so smart, do you?” she snarled. “Well, try proving any of this.”
“Oh, I think attempted murder is easy enough to prove,” Daniel said.
“Attempted murder?” Joshua spluttered. “There was no attempted murder.”
“There will be, by the time I’ve built a case,” Daniel said. “And it will carry a nice, long sentence. Committing a sane person to the horrors of an asylum is worse than murder in my book. I’ll make damned sure you don’t get off.” He looked around. “Is there a telephone in this house?”
“Down on the table in the front hall,” Mrs. Clements said.
“If you think I’m going to let you—” Joshua Clements came at Daniel. He was a bigger man. He made a lunge at Daniel, but Daniel was ready for him. He grabbed Joshua’s arm and twisted it behind his back, bringing him down to his knees with a howl of pain.
“Go and telephone headquarters, Molly. Tell them Captain Sullivan needs backup and a here immediately.”
As I went to do as he’d asked, Maisie said, “Well, I ain’t sticking around to go to no lousy jail.” She tried to push past, fighting her way out of the room. I turned to block her as she came out the door, but Mrs. Clements picked up a vase and brought it crashing onto Maisie’s head. Maisie slumped to the floor.
“That felt good,” she said, giving me a delighted smile.
The police arrived soon afterwards, and Joshua and Maisie were bundled off.
“You’ll never make this stick, you know.” Joshua was still blustering. “No proof at all.”
“I’d say attacking a police officer is enough to lock you away, for starters,” Daniel said. He turned to Mrs. Clements. “Will you be all right here alone, ma’am? You are welcome to come to our house if you’d rather.”
“Oh no, thank you,” she said. “I have to get used to living alone. I think I may come to like it.” She took my hand. “Thank you for everything,” she said. “You have saved my life. You have given me back my life.”
I felt tears stinging my eyes and could only nod. “I’m glad I was able to help,” I said.
Suddenly it was all too much for me. I had been feeling hot and clammy for a while, and now it became overwhelming. I felt as if I might faint. The room swung around. Mrs. Clements eyed me suspiciously. “You are not well, my dear?”
“I’ll be fine when I get home,” I said, fanning myself with my gloves. “All the excitement, I expect.”
“Would you like to come and sit down, and I’ll have Ada bring you some brandy?”
“Yes, why don’t you, Molly?” Daniel said. “I have to go to Mulberry Street with them.”
“No, I’ll be all right,” I said. “I’d rather go home.”
“Let me get you a cab.” Mrs. Clements stood at the front door. “It’s snowing hard.”
“It’s really not far,” I said. “I’m sure I can walk.”
“Nonsense. I’m happy to pay for one,” she said, then looked back at me with an impish smile. “After all, I’ve got plenty of money.”
Postscript
The next morning, I was still not feeling well. I wondered if it was the emotional scene of the previous evening, but Daniel was concerned enough about me to call the doctor. The examinati
on was brief; then the doctor stood up. “That room across the hall,” he said. “What do you use it for?”
“Nothing at the moment,” I said, surprised by his question. Was he about to tell me I had a contagious fever and needed to be confined away from my husband?
“Then start getting it ready as a nursery,” he said. “Around September, I’d say at a guess.” He nodded curtly and stomped down the stairs.
I gave an excited squeal and rushed downstairs to Daniel’s waiting arms.
Also by Rhys Bowen
The Molly Murphy Mysteries
Hush Now, Don’t You Cry
Bless the Bride
The Last Illusion
In a Gilded Cage
Tell Me, Pretty Maiden
In Dublin’s Fair City
Oh Danny Boy
In Like Flynn
For the Love of Mike
Death of Riley
Murphy’s Law
The Constable Evans Mysteries
Evanly Bodies
Evan Blessed
Evan’s Gate
Evan Only Knows
Evans to Betsy
Evan Can Wait
Evan and Elle
Evanly Choirs
Evan Help Us
Evans Above
The Royal Spyness Mysteries
Her Royal Spyness
A Royal Pain
Royal Flush
Royal Blood
Naughty In Nice
The Twelve Clues of Christmas
Read on for an excerpt from The Family Way by Rhys Bowen, coming from Minotaur Books in March 2013:
Chapter One
New York City, July 1904
Satan finds work for idle hands to do. That was one of my mother’s favorite sayings if she ever caught me daydreaming or lying on my back on the turf, staring up at the white clouds that raced across the sky. I could almost hear her voice, with its strong Irish brogue, as I sat on the sofa and sipped a glass of lemonade on a hot July day.
Frankly, I rather wished that Satan would find me something to do with my idle hands because I was dying of boredom. All my life I’d been used to hard work, forced to care for my father and three young brothers after my mother went to her heavenly rest. (At least I presume that’s where she went. She certainly thought she deserved it.) And now, for the first time in my life, I was a lady of leisure. Ever since I found out I was in the family way, back in February, Daniel had treated me as if I was made of fine porcelain. For the first few months I was glad of his solicitous behavior toward me as I was horribly sick. In fact I began to feel more sympathy for my mother, who had gone through this at least four times. But then, at the start of the fourth month, a miraculous change occurred. I awoke one morning to find that I felt well and hungry and full of energy. Daniel, however, still insisted that I did as little as possible, did not exert myself, took no risks, and generally behave like one of those helpless females I so despised.
