Bless the Bride

by Rhys Bowen

  A hand came over my mouth and I was yanked backward. I tried to struggle but the hand clamped over my mouth and nose, making it impossible to breathe. I hadn’t realized how strong he was. I was being half dragged, half carried backward down a sort of tunnel. I flailed, fought, and tried to breathe. I could feel singing in my head. Spots danced in front of my eyes and my only thought was one of fury—that I had let this man get the better of me, and that I was going to die before my wedding.

  “Damnation,” I heard Monty mutter before I blacked out.

  * * *

  I gradually came back to consciousness, like a swimmer coming up from deep water. I was lying on a hard surface in almost total darkness. I lay there, gasping for breath like a landed fish. As I breathed I was conscious of a cloying smoky smell that I couldn’t place. My eyes became used to the darkness and I saw a wooden ceiling, only a foot or two above my head. A moment of panic shot through me that I was lying in a coffin. Then I noticed a fire was glowing nearby. As my lungs tried to work properly again I felt something hard and foul-tasting in my mouth. I gasped in smoke, making me cough and retch.

  I knew where I was now—an opium den and not the mock kind of Mr. Connors’s. The cold hard object in my mouth appeared to be the long stem of a pipe, the bowl of which was propped over a glowing brazier. I saw similar pinpoints of light in similar cubicles around the walls and the darker shape of figures lying in tiers around the walls. I tried to move my hand, but my limbs felt lethargic as if they didn’t fully belong to me. If I managed to get my mouth free and shouted for help, would anyone here be awake enough to help me? My eyes wanted to close. I fought the sleep that was overcoming me. Was Monty still here, watching me? Enjoying the spectacle of my being drugged by opium, or had he merely half suffocated me and then left me to give the appearance of an opium addict while he made his getaway?

  I had no idea how long I had been unconscious or how much opium I had already breathed in. I was horribly aware of the singing in my head and that my arms and legs were no longer obeying me. If Monty was still watching me, my only course was to breathe as little as possible, feign sleep, and hope that he’d leave.

  I shut my eyes and let my mouth droop open, making what I hoped were the snoring noises of one on opium. I think I may have drifted off because suddenly I was floating, my body completely weightless and my arms propelling me though the bluest of skies with no effort at all like swimming in a warm ocean. Brilliantly green fields were below me, greener than anything I had seen in Ireland, and the air felt sweet and fresh. It came to me that there was nothing to worry about. All would be well.

  Except a word hovered at the back of my consciousness. Daniel. Daniel. I repeated it and forced my eyes open. Something I had to tell Daniel. I tried to sit up and banged my head hard on that ceiling of the bunk above mine. The pain was enough to bring me back to some degree of consciousness. Daniel. Had to tell Daniel … I tried to get to my feet. My legs felt as if they were remote objects over which I had no control, and I had to cling onto the edge of my bunk while the world swung around me. Have to get out. Get out, I muttered. I staggered across to the wall and felt my way around until I came to a door. It took me a long time to find a latch and make my fingers lift it, then to push open the door. I stepped outside, trying to see where I was going, but I couldn’t focus on anything. In truth I didn’t know where I was. Just two things, darkness and Daniel, echoed through the hollow of my mind.

  There was a bad smell in my dark passage and that helped to bring me to some kind of reality, but I still couldn’t make my brain function enough to tell me where I was or where I needed to go. I staggered forward, feeling the rough brickwork of the arched wall on my hand. I heard noises ahead—voices, harsh and loud; the chink of crockery; a fiddle played badly. As I stepped out to see what it was, a burst of gunfire sounded right beside me. I leaped back, half fell, and was grabbed by strong arms. I fought myself free.

  “Okay, missie. Only firecracker. Firecracker for holiday,” a voice said.

  Firecracker. My fuzzy mind played with the word. Another burst made me jump again. Danger. Had to get away from here. But I wasn’t sure in which direction safety lay. I started to walk. Then I heard a voice.

  “Follow me, if you please, ladies and gentlemen. We are now in the heart of Chinatown. There is danger and depravity all around us, so please stay close to me. We wouldn’t want the little ladies to be shipped off as white slaves, would we?”

  Even in my befuddled state I recognized the voice. Connors. Slumming tours. I was saved. I staggered toward him.

  “Mr. Connors, I need help,” I tried to say. But the words only came out as a moaning jumble of sounds with no discernible consonants. Instead of offering help, Connors shepherded his group hastily to one side, steering them past me like a herd of sheep.

  “There you are, that’s one of them,” Connors said, his voice booming through a megaphone. “I promised you’d see opium addicts and there you are. You can see how low ordinary white folks have fallen, under the spell of this awful drug.”

  “No wait, listen,” I tried to say, but they swept past me and away.

  Then another hand grabbed my arm. “You poor dear woman,” a voice said. “Have no fear. I’ve come to save you. Yes, there is salvation in the Lord. Come back to the mission with me and I’ll help you break the bonds of the devil’s drug.” I could vaguely make out a trim shape of woman in a gray outfit and old-fashioned gray bonnet. “Come on,” she said again. “Let me take you to the mission. I promise you won’t regret it. The Lord has sent me to find you and lead you on the road to recovery.”

  I wanted to laugh. I wanted to tell her I was Molly Murphy, private investigator and about to be married to a respectable police captain, but again my mouth made only animal-like sounds. One thing was clear. I didn’t want to go with her. Had to find Daniel and tell him … I couldn’t remember what I had to tell him, but it was important.

  She was just trying to drag me away when I heard another voice. “Miss Murphy! Holy Mother of God, it’s Miss Murphy, Albert. What has happened to you, my dear? Albert, take her arm. We must get her into the house.”

  And I was half carried in through a front door. “Are you sick, my dear? Has someone attacked you? Your dress is all torn.”

  I tried to tell her with my useless lips, again producing only the incomprehensible words one makes when half asleep.

  “Looks to me as if she’s been drugged,” a male voice said.

  “Then we’d better leave her to sleep it off,” said the woman’s voice. “Wasn’t it lucky that the wind got up and we came back from the picnic early, or who knows what might have happened to her?”

  Someone put a cup to my lips and I sipped water.

  “It’s coffee she needs,” the male voice said. “If coffee can cure a hangover, it should help with other drugs, shouldn’t it?”

  They lay me down and tucked a blanket around me. “It’s all right, my dear. You’re quite safe now,” the woman said.

  I closed my eyes. Quite safe now. I knew there was some reason I shouldn’t sleep, but it had gone again. I closed my eyes and retreated into dreams.

  Thirty-three

  It was the smell of coffee that aroused me. It crept into the peaceful landscape in which I was residing until my brain formed the word “coffee” and I came to consciousness. Aileen Chiu was standing in front of me, holding a cup.

  “I let you sleep it off,” she said, “but I guess you’d now like a nice cup of coffee to clear your head.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “A little past nine in the evening.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said as memory returned. “I’ll be too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “To stop him from crossing the border and getting away.” I sat up, closing my eyes as the world swung around. “The murderer,” I added. “Can you send someone to police headquarters and get Captain Sullivan?”

  “Why yes, I’ll s
end my son, Joe, right away,” she said, “but what’s this about a murderer?”

  “The man who killed Mr. Lee. He dragged me into an opium den and drugged me while he got away,” I said.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she muttered, crossing herself. “You poor dear. What an experience. You’re lucky to have escaped with your life.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, realizing as I spoke the words how true they were. I was alive and soon Daniel was going to come and all would be well—except that I’d slept so long that Monty Warrington-Chase would be in Canada and nobody would bother to pursue someone who killed Chinese people. At least Sarah would be safe now—an awful thought struck me. Had he taken her with him?

  I sipped the coffee, feeling normality returning. I was conscious of voices, a door slamming; then I lay back again until I heard a voice I recognized. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

  And Daniel burst into the room. He dropped to his knees, enveloping me in his arms. “Thank God,” he murmured, burying his face in my hair. “Thank God. I was going out of my mind with worry. I’ve had men combing the city for you.” And then as he held me away I saw that his eyes were moist with tears. “Where the devil did you get to? I thought I told you to go straight home and wait for me.”

  “I intended to,” I said. “I was on my way home when he grabbed me.”

  “Who grabbed you?”

  “Monty Warrington-Chase,” I said. “He committed both the murders, Daniel.”

  “Monty? What the deuce did he have to do with Chinatown?”

  “Opium addict,” I said. “Lee Sing Tai was blackmailing him and threatening to tell Sarah’s family.”

  “He told you all this?”

  “I figured most of it out for myself,” I said. “I actually found the piece of paper with his signature on it, but I suppose he must have taken it when I was unconscious.”

  “He knocked you out?”

  “I think he tried to kill me, but then someone was coming or his conscience got the better of him, and he dumped me in an opium den instead,” I said. “You must stop him, Daniel. He said he was going to the border. That must mean Canada, I suppose.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it must be several hours. The Chius found me in the street and brought me home with them. I wanted to tell them to find you, but I was so drugged that I couldn’t form any words.”

  “I’ll tell the constable outside to get things moving, and I’ll arrange for someone to take you home,” Daniel said. He was gone for a moment, then came striding up to me. “Just a minute. You found the piece of paper with his signature on it? Where did you find this paper?”

  “In Lee’s cabinet,” I answered, realizing that I should not have mentioned this fact.

  “You went back to Lee’s place?”

  “Only because there was a constable standing outside the door, so I knew I’d be safe,” I said. “I hadn’t realized that Monty came in across the roof.”

  “Molly, what did I tell you?” Daniel was glaring at me now.

  “Two seconds ago you were crying and thanking God I was still alive,” I said. “Now you’re looking at me as if you could kill me.”

  “Did it occur to you it’s because I love you?” he said. “If anything happened to you—well, I don’t want to picture life without you. And yet you continue to put yourself in harm’s way.”

  “I don’t put myself in harm’s way deliberately,” I said. “Harm’s way just seems to find me.”

  “Not any longer,” Daniel said. “If you don’t behave yourself from now on, we’ll go and live with my mother. There. How’s that for a threat.”

  “Terrifying,” I said, managing a smile. I took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry about all of this, Daniel. I knew I shouldn’t get involved from the beginning. I thought I was helping, but I wasn’t.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Daniel said. “You’ve solved my case for me. We’ll have men watching all border crossings so we’ve a still good chance of catching him.”

  “But if he’s taken that signature with him, you’ll have no proof.”

  “My dear girl, I told you, I have a nice set of fingerprints on that statue. If Monty’s match—well then. There we are. The courts have never yet allowed us to admit fingerprints as evidence, but they’ll have to soon. And at very least you’ve stopped your friend Sarah from marrying him.”

  “Poor Sarah,” I said. “She might really love him. I know how I’d feel it you turned out to be a drug fiend or a murderer.”

  Daniel actually laughed. “That’s one thing you can say for me. I’m a straightforward kind of guy. What you see is what you get.”

  I looked at him with love in my eyes. “That’s just fine with me,” I said.

  * * *

  I arrived back at Sid and Gus’s to find a beaming Bo Kei with Frederick beside her. He had been released that afternoon and they were already planning what they should do next.

  “I will be forever in gratitude, Missie Molly,” Bo Kei said. “You have given me my life and my happiness.”

  Well, at least I’d done something right. They were going to go back to Canada where they felt that Chinese people had a better chance of leading normal lives. This made me think of Monty crossing the border. Had the police been too late to catch him? Would the Canadian authorities return him?

  We didn’t learn the truth until a few days later. Monty had been apprehended trying to sail out of Montreal on a ship bound for England. He had died of a drug overdose that night, whether intentionally or accidentally we’d never know. Given his position in society, it would have been unlikely that he would have had to face a harsh punishment for the crime of killing Chinese. He might even have walked away a free man. Sarah was with us when Daniel came to tell us the news.

  “I’m glad he’s not going to prison,” Sarah said. She sat staring down at her hands, her face betraying no emotion. “I know that addiction causes people to do all kinds of wicked, reckless things. Poor Monty, I believe he tried to tell me about it once, in a subtle way. He said that he’d fallen from his polo pony in India and broken his ribs. The pain had been so great that they’d fed him a constant supply of morphine. I suppose the addiction started then.”

  “I think you’re being too kind,” Sid said. “You’re well rid of him, Sarah. Now that you’re no longer engaged we can tell you that we thought him a selfish, arrogant brute who would have made your life miserable.”

  “Why didn’t you say this to me before?”

  “Because we know that people fall in love with the most unsuitable types,” Gus added. “And if you really were in love with him, it was not up to us to stop you.”

  Sarah gave a sad sort of smile. “I don’t think I ever was truly in love with him. I can’t have been because I felt such a sense of relief when I heard he had fled to Canada. And I’m not heartbroken that he died. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m sure he didn’t love me either. He was only marrying me for my money.”

  “That’s the same with Molly and me.” Daniel patted my hand. “I’m only marrying her for her money.”

  “So you’re off back to Westchester tomorrow for the final wedding preparations, are you?” Sarah asked.

  I nodded. “Final fittings on my dress, that kind of thing. If you think you could bear it, I’d like you to come to the wedding too.”

  “I’d like to, if only to see Sid and Gus dressed as bridesmaids.” Sarah managed a smile.

  “I’ll have you know that Gus and I will be the most demure and correct bridesmaids in the history of weddings,” Sid said. “You wait until you see us in lavender.”

  “I must be going.” Daniel got to his feet. “I only came to tell you the news and I have paperwork to finish tonight if I want to be free to come with you tomorrow to my mother’s. Ladies, I bid you farewell.” And he bowed correctly.

  I walked with him to the door. “How is it that you h
ave time to come with me? I thought you were working on a big case you couldn’t tell me about.”

  “I was.” He paused. “It is concluded, satisfactorily as far as the commissioner is concerned, in spite of you, Miss Murphy.”

  “What did I do?”

  “I was ordered by the commissioner to look into corruption in the New York City police—a task I found most repugnant, as you can imagine. Spying on my fellow officers and turning them in. I can tell you, that goes against the grain; but I had no choice in the matter. I obey orders. As you can imagine, a good deal of my attention was focused on the issue of accepting bribes. I was spying on Kear and Bobby Lee when you barged in on me. They were about to conclude a lucrative deal. Luckily I was able to nail him anyway—something I don’t regret too much, as I couldn’t stand the man. The commissioner hopes that a couple of examples like this will put the fear of God into the rest of the force. We shall see. On a policeman’s pay it’s all too easy to accept bribes and sometimes it’s expedient to work on both sides of the law.”

  “But you’ll never do that,” I said.

  “If I did, you’d never hear about it.” He laughed. Then he took me into his arms and kissed me.

  * * *

  The next day when I went back to Mrs. Sullivan’s house I took little Bridie with me. When I went to Cherry Street to deliver the wedding invitation, Seamus had let me know that he wasn’t planning to attend. Had to be near the docks in case the ship decided to sail, was how he put it, but I got the feeling that he’d feel out of place at a fancy wedding in Westchester County. So he said his good-byes to his daughter and she trotted off with me, holding my hand and scarcely a look back at her father and brother.

  To my relief Mrs. Sullivan made her quite welcome, indicating she was pleased to have a flower girl in the bridal procession after all. She set about making a dress for her and was delighted that Bridie proved a quick learner with her needle. “Why she’s better at it than you,” she said, looking up at me with triumph in her eyes. “I think she’ll make a splendid little helper for my maid.”