by Rhys Bowen
I took a couple of deep breaths to pluck up courage, climbed the last flight of stairs, and knocked on the door. The woman who opened it could have been anybody’s maiden aunt. She was slight, refined looking, dressed in a gray dress with wider skirts than are fashionable nowadays. Her hair was matching gray, and she wore a light net over it. She would seem, to anybody she met, to be a gentlewoman who had known better days and now possibly eked out a living as a seamstress.
“Mrs. Butler?” I asked.
“Miss Murphy?” She smiled. “Come in, dear. I’m expecting you. I’ve made some iced tea.”
The door closed behind us.
“It was brave of you to come.” She motioned to a Queen Anne–style armchair. The furniture was old and shabby but had been good once. I sat. She poured iced tea into a tall glass and handed it to me. “Now before we go any further, I must make sure that your condition is what you think it is. No sense in going to a lot of trouble for nothing, is there?” She smiled sweetly. I sipped iced tea.
“Now, what makes you think that you are having a baby? You have had a recent—encounter with a young man?”
I nodded.
“And you’ve missed your monthly, have you?”
I nodded again.
“Any other symptoms?”
“I’m horribly sick all the time, and dizzy, and I passed out.”
“And your breasts—are they tender?”
I put my hand to one and realized that it did feel tender to the touch.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Then I don’t think there’s much doubt. I’ll double-check before I do the operation, of course, but I think we can safely say that we are sure.” She took a drink from her own glass. “And there’s no chance the young man can marry you? I always think of this as a last resort, seeing that it’s not without its own risks. I haven’t lost a girl for many years, you understand, but there is always the risk of bleeding and infection.”
“The young man is in no position to marry me at the moment,” I said. “He is in jail. He may be there for a while.”
“Oh dear. That’s not good. Still, you’re better off not being saddled to a criminal type. Trust me. Mr. Butler was the same—always into some illegal scheme or other. Always hoping to get rich quick, and of course he never did.”
“What happened to him?”
“Same as your sweetheart, my dear. Twenty years in Sing Sing and me constantly running away from his creditors. We had a nice house once. Still, you didn’t come here to hear my problems. Now this is my usual procedure on such occasions. I’ve found it works successfully for most girls: a good-sized glass of gin to start with. That not only makes you less anxious, but it will dull the pain later—and it can help get things started. It’s not for nothing that it’s known as Mother’s Ruin.” The smile this time was quite wicked. “And when the gin starts to work, a hot bath, hot as you can take it, plus a mixture of my own that seems to work wonders with starting contractions. Then I go in and open things up. Not very pleasant but it will be all over by morning and you can go home. All right?”
I nodded again. It was hard to speak.
“And my friend Mrs. Goodwin told me your financial circumstances, so shall we just say twenty dollars will take care of my fee? I never ask a girl to pay beyond her means.”
“That’s good of you.”
“Don’t worry. I make up for it with the society ladies.” Again there was that wicked smile. “I make them pay through the nose for my silence.”
I got out my checkbook. She looked horrified, and then she laughed. “Oh no, honey. Cash only, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave a trail for the police to follow. I have no wish to join my husband behind bars.”
“I didn’t bring cash. I can go to the bank and withdraw the money in the morning.”
“Of course you can. You’re a friend of Mrs. Goodwin. I trust you. So let’s get started, shall we? No sense in waiting and brooding about it too long, I always say.”
She opened an ornate mahogany cabinet and took out a gin bottle. Then she poured a generous tumblerful.
“Get that down you,” she said. “You’ll feel better. You know what they say, don’t you? Lots and lots, no tiny tots.”
I gave a nervous laugh at the double meaning. She watched me as I swallowed the gin. I had never drunk spirits apart from a brandy when I had been taken ill once. It was like firewater. I coughed and my eyes streamed.
“Small sips,” she said. “Don’t try to knock it back at once if you aren’t a hardened drinker.”
I sipped, coughed, and sipped some more. It was not unpleasant tasting but strange—like no flavor I had encountered before. By the time I had finished, I was already feeling the first effects. Mrs. Butler got to her feet. “I’ll leave you for a while until it really starts working. You won’t want to sit and make polite conversation at a time like this. I’ve a copy of Ladies’ Home Journal for you to read, and I’ll go and make sure the water is hot for your bath.”
She slipped through the door beside the liquor cabinet. I opened the magazine and tried to make my mind concentrate. There were articles on using oatmeal and cucumber to freshen the complexion, one on cleaning brassware, and a full-page drawing of a Gibson Girl. My head started to feel strange. The Gibson Girl was blurring. I turned a page and found myself looking at the “Good Mother’s Guide to Raising Healthy Children.” The picture showed a young woman bouncing a chubby baby on her knee. The baby had big dark eyes, a mass of unruly dark curls, and was screaming with delight.
Suddenly I flung down the magazine and got to my feet. What was I thinking? It had nothing to do with my Irish Catholic upbringing or with hellfire. It didn’t matter that my life ahead looked bleak or that I had no way to provide for a child. It wasn’t even that I was scared. This was my baby we were talking about—mine and Daniel’s. If it lived it would look just like that chubby darling on the page, and I was about to kill it before it ever had a chance to laugh or be cuddled or to know what life was about. My heart was hammering so hard that I could scarcely move. I tiptoed across the room and picked up my purse from the table and my umbrella from the stand. I made it to the front door. I held my breath as it opened. I slipped out and closed it silently behind me. Then I positively ran down the stairs and out into the night.
The rain had picked up again as I came out onto the street. That glass of gin was already starting to affect me and I clutched at railings, trying to get my balance. When I closed my eyes, the world swung around. This was terrible. I was already showing signs of being drunk, and I had to make it home somehow. I certainly didn’t want to appear drunk on the El, to say nothing of running the risk of falling off the platform! And I didn’t have enough money in my purse to cover a cab fare, so I’d just have to walk. At least walking in the rain would help sober me up.
My driving wish was to get away from Allen Street as quickly as possible, which wasn’t easy, given that my feet didn’t want to obey me. I turned left onto the first cross street and struck out in the direction of the Bowery. I’d gone a couple of blocks when it really hit me what I had just done.
“You’ve burned your bridges now, my girl,” I said to myself severely. “Letting your stupid heart rule your head again. Now what do you think you’re going to do?”
“Muddle through as always,” came the reply. I reached the Bowery and decided to keep on going to Broadway, where I could catch the trolley, if I was in any condition to climb aboard. As I approached the next intersection, I came upon a commotion. A crowd was gathered, half in the street, half on the sidewalk.
“Now move along, move along,” I heard a voice shouting and saw a policeman trying to disperse them.
An ambulance came galloping up, bell clanging, from the direction of Broadway.
“Did anyone see what happened?” a voice was shouting. I looked at the speaker and saw that it was Detective Quigley. Then I glanced up at the building on the corner and saw the street name. Elizabeth Street. It must be ano
ther victim. In spite of my unsteadiness, I wormed my way into the crowd. A woman’s body, dressed all in black, was lying huddled in the gutter, while water and debris from the storm sloshed around it.
“It came so fast, it was all over in a second,” a woman said. “I barely had a chance to pull my little girl out of the way.”
“What kind of vehicle was it?” Quigley asked.
“I just heard the racket as it came around the corner, and I saw those galloping hooves,” the woman said. “He was driving like a madman. The poor thing stood no chance. I believe it almost came up on the sidewalk.”
“Maybe it was a runaway horse,” someone else suggested.
“It was almost as if it was coming after her,” a man commented.
“I heard the scream and saw this big black shape disappearing into the night,” someone else ventured.
“No signs or anything on the wagon?” Quigley asked. “Nothing to give away what it was? A private carriage, do you think?”
“Could have been,” the first woman answered. “I tell you, I was more concerned about my little girl. It missed her by inches.”
“Make way, now,” a voice commanded, and the ambulance boys pushed through the crowd, carrying a collapsible stretcher.
“What happened?” one of them asked, squatting cautiously beside the body.
“She was run down by a wagon,” someone volunteered. “It came right at her and didn’t stop.”
“Is she still alive or is this another morgue job?”
“I felt a pulse,” Quigley said. “Get her to the hospital, as quick as you can, for God’s sake.”
“Easy now, Bert. She could have any number of broken bones,” the first ambulance man said. They bent to lift the frail form from the street. I didn’t want to see if her face was disfigured like the rest, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking. She was wearing a black bonnet and as they turned her around her arm flopped over like a rag doll’s. I gasped in horror. It was Mrs. Goodwin.
“Come along. Step back, please. Let them through. Go on. Go to your homes.” A constable forced the crowd back, his billy club in his hand.
The stretcher was put into the back of the ambulance. The doors closed and it galloped off into the night.
TWENTY-SIX
I must follow it, I thought, and broke into a shambling run. My legs refused to obey me. I tripped, fell, and the smell of dog and refuse came up to meet me. As I sat there, with the world swaying violently, I realized that I was in no state to go to any hospital. They certainly wouldn’t let me see Sabella Goodwin, and I ran the risk of being arrested for intoxication. I had no wish to spend a night in a Jefferson Market jail cell ever again. I just prayed she was still alive, and that someone was with her if she imparted a dying message. Because she must have discovered something that made the East Side Ripper scared enough to take the appalling risk of running her down on a city street, with other people as witnesses. At least now we knew that the theory about the large, dark vehicle had been correct. Maybe she had spotted such a vehicle earlier and gone to investigate. Perhaps she could now identify it.
Somehow I made it home. I let myself into my house and crawled up to bed. I felt terrible—not just because of the effect of the gin, but because I had lost a woman I had come to admire enormously. More than that—my one ally had been taken from me. How could I possibly go on with this investigation alone? Then all at once I sat up in bed. It wasn’t my case, was it? Nothing we had discovered pointed to any connection between the East Side Ripper and Daniel’s imprisonment. He admitted he had just been assigned to take over with little to go on. And now with John Partridge’s link to the racing syndicate, I even had a motive for him to have plotted Daniel’s arrest. So it didn’t matter if I was off the Ripper investigation. I felt relief but also annoyance. I didn’t like to leave things half-finished. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about it anymore. Quigley and McIver were hardly likely to share their findings with me.
About an hour after I’d gone to bed I woke from a half doze to a bad attack of cramps. I lay, hugging my knees to me as my insides were wracked with pain. At first I wondered if it was something I had eaten until I remembered the gin. Mrs. Butler had made me drink it for this very purpose. Mother’s Ruin, she had called it and given me a significant wink. I got up and paced around, hugging my arms to my stomach. Did this mean I was going to lose the baby, after all? I knew now with complete certainty that I didn’t want that to happen.
Please no, I prayed silently.
I went downstairs and made myself a cup of tea, then sat at the kitchen table, sipping the hot liquid and hoping for the cramps to subside. After a while they did seem to lessen in strength. I crawled back to bed and lay curled up in a ball. Eventually I must have drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke bright sun was streaming in through my bedroom window. Birds were chirping. I sat up and realized I had survived the night. The cramps had gone. My baby was still there. I felt like a new person. I had literally been given a new lease on life. I jumped up and almost ran down the stairs. I snatched a quick breakfast before making my way to Saint Vincent’s Hospital.
The sister at the reception desk was not the same one I had met before. She looked at me with horror.
“Visiting hours are posted on the wall over there,” she said. “We certainly don’t allow strangers tramping all over the hospital at seven in the morning.”
“But this is important. A lady was brought in here last night by ambulance. Mrs. Goodwin.”
“Ah yes, a terrible accident.”
“It was no accident, she was run down,” I said. “She’s a police matron, and she was on an important case.”
“And what is your interest in this?” she asked starchily. “Are you some kind of reporter?”
“I’m—” I was about to say I was on the case with her, then I changed my mind. “I’m her sister,” I said. “I got word that she had been struck by a runaway horse, but they couldn’t tell me any more.”
She looked at me with those piercing nun’s eyes that have made any number of young children blurt out sins. “Her sister, are you? I understand that she survived the night but remains unconscious.”
“Is there any chance I could see her? It might bring her back to consciousness to hear my voice.”
As I said this I was stricken with conscience. We had never discussed Mrs. Goodwin’s family situation. It was very possible that she had children who should be at her bedside, not a woman she hardly knew. Their voices might bring her back to the world of the living. Mine certainly wouldn’t.
It was of no matter. The sister shook her head. “She’s allowed no visitors until further notice. Doctor’s orders. Absolute peace and quiet, that’s what he said. I told the same to the policemen who came last night.”
“If I come back at visiting time, I’ll be allowed to see her then?” I asked.
“If she is allowed visitors and has regained consciousness.”
She made a motion to go back to her paperwork. I still hovered, reluctant to take no for an answer. She was still alive, that was good news. “And which ward is she in?”
Those eyes were fixed on me again in an innocent stare, but she understood all right. She was thinking that I’d find my way there the moment her back was turned, which had obviously been my intention. “She’s under observation at the moment. I can’t say which ward she’ll be transferred to if and when she awakes.”
I stood looking down the long, white-tiled hallway. Nuns floated up and down it in pairs, gliding almost like ghosts. There were too many of them for me to slip past unnoticed. I’ll have to find myself a nun’s outfit, I thought, as I admitted defeat. I remembered Paddy Riley’s complete wardrobe of disguises. I needed to start my own.
Back home I experimented with bedsheets and my one good tablecloth, but I couldn’t come up with anything that looked like a believable Sister of Charity. If only they wore simple veils, like the nuns at Saint Finbar’s at home, I might have
gotten away with it. Now all I could do was wait.
The midday post brought a letter from J. Atkinson, attorney at law. He assured me that Daniel’s case was progressing nicely. However, if I had come up with new information that might be pertinent to the case, would I please drop him a note to share it with him. He didn’t think an interview with Daniel himself could be arranged at this time without jeopardizing his own position and responsibility.
“Damn you,” I muttered. Not words I’d have said out loud to anyone, but they felt good in my own kitchen. If he really was working for Daniel’s enemy, wouldn’t he just love me to deliver everything I’d found out so that he could report it to his boss. If I’d found out anything important, it would then be suppressed. If I had found out anything important, my own life could be in jeopardy.
Wait a second, I thought. Such drama! What had I found out? Not much, except that Mr. Partridge might have been part of the racehorse-doping scandal and he was visiting The Tombs in the near future. Interesting facts, but to be shared with Daniel alone. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that, if Atkinson wouldn’t get me into The Tombs, and it wasn’t visiting day until the end of the month.
The other interesting fact to be shared with Daniel was that someone had tried to kill Mrs. Goodwin and might well have succeeded. That was surely important, but the police were already onto it, questioning witnesses even as I arrived on the scene.
I did my household chores, which had been neglected for the past week, hung out a line of laundry in the backyard, and had some of my homemade soup. I felt better today and had an appetite. One small blessing to be enjoyed. Then the moment I had washed up, I went back to Saint Vincent’s. I was going to get in to see Mrs. Goodwin this afternoon by hook or by crook.
On my way I stopped off at the Jefferson Market and bought a bunch of roses. As I approached the hospital, I saw two policemen emerging and recognized one of them. His face lit up in recognition when he saw me. “Why, Miss Murphy. What a lucky coincidence. I’ve been wanting to contact you for the past few days, but the wife had mislaid your new address.”
