Bold Sons of Erin (33 page)

She held out her hand to me.

“Looks like we’re partners, ducks. I ’ope we may be friends, if only quiet-like.”

I took her hand in mine. Twas warm, though gloved in black kid. As a gentlemen, I could do no less, you understand.

I had not even begun to think about the implications of our new relationship. Nor did I wish to ponder it just then. I only wanted a breath of cold, clean air, to verify that all was real and not some laudanum dream.

But Mrs. Walker had me prisoner and would not release my hand. Her face was fittingly earnest, though I misapprehended the reason until she spoke again.

“Major Jones . . .” she began, seeking for the proper words to reach me. I fear she thought me something of an ogre, for she had grown to view all men as pliant and I was not.

I was about to excuse myself, when the woman found her tongue.

“ . . . Major Jones, forgive me do, but I ’ave to seize upon this opportunity, for Mary says you been obstinate. I don’t know where to turn, I don’t, and I’m desperate, I am. Even Mr. Evans, God bless ’im, was no ’elp to me in the matter, and you’re the last ’ope I ’ave, with your ’igh connections.”

She clutched my hand as a young recruit clings to his musket while marching into a volley.

“ . . . Nobody cares, not a one of them,” she said bitterly, “though gay enough the brood of them carried on when Kathleen gave them their ’appiness of an evening.” Tears returned to her eyes, though different in temper from those shed in the office. There was anger now, even rage. “They won’t ’ear a whisper
about ’er fate, not a bloody one of them will. Not that Fatty Gowen or the magistrate, nor any man among them, they’re all so afraid of their secrets pouring out.” She could no longer control herself and she sobbed. “I fear the poor girl’s been murdered these two months.”

“KATHLEEN BOLAND WAS A LOVELY LITTLE THING,” Mrs. Walker told me. “Not twenty years old, she wasn’t, but wild as a camp full of gypsies.”

We sat in Mrs. Walker’s private parlor, a room I found extraordinarily pink. It had that gimcrack lavishness that heathens sometimes get up to, all flimsy and false when you take a second look. I found it not lascivious, but sad.

I could not invite her home, of course, so her residence had remained our only choice. Understanding she was, for she led me in through the alley door, sparing me the embarrassment of the front entrance, where company might be encountered. Nonetheless, one missy in relaxed apparel emerged from the kitchen and hooked her arm through mine, declaring, “I’m game, if you are, Shorty,” but Mrs. Walker gave the lass a reprimand that stung her to a blush.

“I ’ad to put some manners on Kathleen,” my hostess told me from her nest of pillows. “When she came around knocking and asking for work, she was raring to take on two or three gents at a time, if the money was flowing. I would ’ave turned ’er away from my door for the shame of ’er, if she ’adn’t been as pretty as you please. But I left ’er in no doubt, I did, that I always keep an establishment of the ’ighest tastes and quality. Our gentlemen visitors ain’t allowed no more than a smile and a squeeze in the public rooms, for I won’t ’ave Sodom and Gomorrah under
my
roof. I always tell my girls, I tell them,
‘Ladies, just show the boys enough to give them a proper ’int of what they’re in for. And close your door be’ind you when you’re entertaining, for a gentleman is easily embarrassed.’”

She sighed over her professional travails. “I tell you, Major Jones, just as I told Kathleen that very first day when I seen ’er, all looking fresh and pert as the flowers in May . . . I said to ’er, ‘One at a time and easy does it, and wash up proper after.’ Dr. Carr keeps telling them, but it’s a battle to get them to listen, and the careless ones pay the price.” Mrs. Walker had chatted herself into a disheartened state. “It’s rare to meet a proper young lady these days. Though Kathleen Boland could ’ave passed for a princess. Until she opened that shanty-Irish mouth of ’er’s.”

I sat there listening and not listening. I still had not gotten very far past the name. Kathleen Boland. Boland. Kathleen . . .

“What color hair did the lass have?” I asked. I fear I interrupted Mrs. Walker, which is rude. But she did not seem to mind.

“It didn’t know if it wanted to be red or brown, it didn’t. But she had an ’andsome crop of it.”

“Might you describe it as ‘cinnamon’ in color?”

Mrs. Boland considered my proposition. “I suppose that’s as good a way as any to describe it. She ’ad a great flash to ’er, Kathleen did. The other girls were as jealous as old maids at a cotillion. Shall I call for some tea, then, shall I?”

I declined her offer. I feared the very contagion of the place. “And she come from Heckschersville, Miss Boland did?”

Mrs. Walker betrayed her surprise. “And just ’ow did you know that?” A doubtful look darkened her brow. “I don’t recall you ever coming around to—”

“No, Mrs. Walker. Nothing of the kind. It is only that a fellow in my position hears things.”

“Well, you’re ’earing more than I do. Since poor Kathleen disappeared that first week in September, mum’s the word among the ’igh and mighty. Oh, they were all ’appy enough to take an interest in ’er while she was alive, the sort who wouldn’t
’ave tipped their ’ats to ’er in the street. But now that she’s gone, it’s as if the girl never existed.”

“So . . . Kathleen Boland was from Heckschersville and she—”

“And that’s where she took ’erself off to, the morning I saw the last of ’er. ‘I’m only away for the Monday and Tuesday,’ says she, ‘for I’ve things to put in order bye and bye.’” Mrs. Walker took on the sentimental look that is a ready companion to immorality. “She never showed ’er face among us again. I know something awful’s ’appened to ’er. She’s murdered, sure as there’s secrets kept at the bank. Murdered as dead as a salted cod. For we found almost three ’undred dollars in ’er room, and she ain’t been back for it. I’m still ’olding it for ’er, I am. I keep things honest and fair in my establishment, though the girls all wanted to spend it on a wake. They’ve got the Irish ’abits, even those that ’aven’t a drop of Irish blood. ‘And what if she ain’t dead?’ I told them, although I know she is. If I can’t put that money back in ’er ’and, it’s going in the poor-box.”

My hostess tutted over life’s misfortunes. “Saving up ’er money for ’er betterment, Kathleen was. Though I think she liked the life well enough . . . she would ’ave found some parts of it ’ard to give up, and pity the man who ever tried to bind ’er. She was ruined from the start, and she enjoyed it, our Kathleen. No ’arm intended to the poor child’s memory.”

“So, Kathleen Boland returned to Heckschersville. To put something in order. And you are convinced she was murdered?”

“Well, she ain’t come back, now ’as she? With three ’undred dollars left in ’er room. And wasn’t the poor thing terrified when she left us? ‘I don’t want to go, but I ’ave to,’ that’s what she said to me. She was frightened as the deuce, with her gabbing of witches.”

“Witches?”

Of a sudden, Mrs. Walker smiled. I do believe the room brightened around us. It even appeared that she still possessed all her teeth. Nor were they fouled.

“You’re going to ’elp me, then, are you? Oh, I says to Mrs. Jones, to your Mary, says I, ‘E’s a romper, that ’usband of yours, even if ’e likes to pretend ’e’s a parson.’ I knew you’d ’ave an ’eart for a poor, murdered girl.”

“I will help you, if I can, Mrs. Walker. Indeed, I believe I may be able to get to the truth of things rather quickly now. But when you speak of witches . . . did Kathleen Boland believe—”

“Family problems, it was. With ’er brother. ‘Danny’ she called ’im. Danny Boland. She loved ’im up and down, the poor girl did, for ’e was all the family what was left to ’er. The brother ’ad a wife that was a trouble to ’im. And I don’t mean a trouble of the usual sort.”

“The ‘usual sort’?”

“You know. The woman nagging, and the ’usband drinking and wasting all ’is earnings. Or roving about. Fighting to break their bones. There wasn’t none of that sort of thing between them. Kathleen said ’er brother was the very model of an ’usband.”

“And Mrs. Boland? Was she a ‘very model’ of a wife? Or was she . . . one of these witches you spoke of?”

Mrs. Walker rolled her eyes toward Heaven. “‘Witches’ might be one way of putting it. And a nice way, if you ask Dolly Walker. You know ’ow superstitious the Irish are, with their spells and curses and whatnot. But the woman was Bedlam mad, I could tell that much from ’earing Kathleen talk. And none too nice in ’er morals, thank you, and ’er a married woman,” Mrs. Walker added, not without indignation.

I would learn in the years to come that Dolly Walker had an almost ferociously prim sense of how the world should be beyond her walls. Her views were not terribly unlike my own, in some regards. Although I do not mean to suggest a comparison. She once proposed to me that, if wives would carry themselves proper when they went about their business, her establishment would go bankrupt in a fortnight. Her profession taught her the virtues of fidelity, and she always valued kindness above all, although you would not trick her out of a penny. And, to be
fair, she never asked for a penny that was not hers by right.

But let that bide.

“What else did Kathleen say about Mary Boland?”

Again, she regarded me with a level of curiosity that approached suspicion. “You know of ’er, too, then? Mary Boland?”

“I have heard some things said of her, though in another association.”

“Well, witch or no witch, she sounds like the queen of all the sluts to me,” Mrs. Walker declared. “And she don’t go collecting for it, neither. At least not to ’ear Kathleen tell it. Kathleen was against that marriage from the start, for the woman ’ad a terrible reputation, even among her own kind. I can’t say what Kathleen believed down in her ’eart of ’earts, but she swore to me this Mary was a fairy woman. A ‘changeling,’ she called ’er. The sort what draws men on, whether they’re wishing to go or not. The Irish call it ‘putting the come-’ither’ on a body. But if you ask Dolly Walker, I just call it waving about what shouldn’t be waved in public. Not by a lady.”

Mrs. Walker grimaced, rendering her fair face unappealing, if only briefly. “Oh, ‘come-’ithers’ and spells be buggered. It ain’t ’alf so fanciful as that. Look ’ere, Major Jones. Some girls ’ave it, some don’t, and there’s an end to it. And I’ve known many a foolish woman in a position like mine who took such a one as that Mary Boland into ’er establishment, thinking the men would come knocking down the doors to get at ’er. But that’s just the trouble. They
do
come knocking down the doors, and shooting pistols and throwing knives, or pitching acid at the face what troubles them. Killing themselves in the yard, and a dozen kinds of foolishness besides. No, a lady in my position needs to know ’er girls, and she’s a fool if she takes on the sort that don’t know when to stop. Or what can’t stop themselves or the gentlemen.” She shook her head. “It’s bad enough when a fellow can’t control ’imself. But a body expects more discipline from a woman.”

“So . . . even after her marriage . . . Mrs. Boland was . . . liberal with her favors?”

“She would’ve disgraced the very ’ore of Babylon,” Mrs. Walker said, “if the ’alf of what Kathleen told me was true. And ’er a married woman, disgracing ’er own good fortune.” She looked at me again. “Oh, Mrs. Jones is a lucky one, I can tell you that. For she kept ’er wits about ’er when she went to ’er picking. She knew it ain’t the shiny apples what tastes. I wish I’d ’ad ’er sense in the days of my youth and my innocence . . .”

Twas curious, see. I felt compelled to console the woman by telling her not all marriages were perfect in their arrangements. That hearts stray, however much we Christians may regret it. But she seemed to have convinced herself that marriage was the highest form of good, despite the abundant evidence she must have seen to the contrary. But who among us does not have illusions? And I was not about to criticize the institution of marriage to a woman of her calling. Besides, my thoughts were teeming and tumbling, and straying far afield from the dells of happiness.

Is it witchery, then, when a woman makes a man adore her? Is that all it takes to lead from the bed to the gallows? Or to the stake? I do not believe in spells. But I have had some acquaintance with desire. In my case, it was full of the madness of love. But I have seen love change to the madness of hatred. Was Mary Boland a “witch” because men wanted her? Or did men want her because such things as witches exist among us? Even if their magic is of the flesh?