Death of Riley (3 page)

“There's nothing I like better.” I let my eyes wander to the bookcase on the back wall. “I love to read whenever I can.”

“In which case maybe you'll turn out to be satisfactory after all, in spite of appearances. You can start by reading to me now. What do you like to read?”

“Oh, the novels of Charles Dickens—”

“Popular sentimental drivel, written for the masses,” she said. “Why does one need to read about squalor when there is already too much on one's doorstep?”

“Jane Austen, then.”

“Feminine frippery. You won't find many novels in this house, Miss Murphy. I believe that reading should be for two purposes only—to educate and to uplift. Now if you will pick up that slim volume lying on the sofa, you may read to me from it. It is a newly published account of last year's atrocities in China, written by the sister of a missionary who was beheaded. I am very much afraid there are some races that we shall never succeed in civilizing or Christianizing.”

“The Chinese have a very old civilization and they might not have wanted to be Christianized,” I pointed out.

“What rubbish you talk, girl. It is our duty to spread the Gospel. But then I suppose you are another of those Holy Romans. You've never learned the lessons of Martin Luther or John Calvin, more's the pity. And now my goddaughter is thinking of marrying one. 4 You'd better bring the boy in line before the wedding,’ I told her, because I'll not attend any service where they swing incense and pray to idols.”

I decided this was a time to keep my mouth shut and went to get the book.

“But Arabella is a headstrong girl and probably doesn't care a fig for anyone's opinion, even mine, though she knows she'll inherit everything from me,” she added as I crossed the room.

I realized I was gritting my teeth with a forced smile on my face. I hoped Daniel realized what I was doing for him, because I wasn't sure who was going to break first, I or Miss Van Woekem. A white fur rug was lying behind the sofa. As I went to step on it, it leaped up, yowling, and clawed at me. So there were to be cats, after all.

“Watch what you're doing, clumsy girl,” Miss Van Woekem snapped. “Now you've quite upset Princess Yasmin.”

I forbore to say that Princess Yasmin had quite upset me as well. The large white Persian sat watching me with a look of utter disdain. I reached carefully past her to get the book. I need not have worried. She turned her back on me and started licking a paw as if I were of no consequence whatever.

At the end of an hour's reading the maid reappeared to announce luncheon.

“I will take mine here, on a tray,” Miss Van Woekem announced. “Miss Murphy will eat at the dining table.” She nodded for me to close the book. “You read surprisingly well for one of your station. The accent is uncouth, of course, but I am pleasingly surprised. Maybe you'll do after aU.”

“And maybe I won't,” I thought as I followed the maid to the dining room. If Daniel thought this was easy work, he had never tried it.

I spent an uneasy meal sitting alone at a vast polished mahogany table, with the maid waiting attendance behind me. I won't say I didn't enjoy it, however. For one who has always had ideas above her station, according to my mother, this was the way I should have been eating all my life. And the food was delicious—some sort of cold fish mousse and salad, fresh fruit and tiny meringues for dessert and freshly made lemonade to drink. I began to think better of the job, especially when I discovered that Miss Van W. took an afternoon nap and I was free to browse in her library.

After tea taken at the little table in the sitting room, she instructed me to get her bath chair ready. The maid brought it into the front hall—an impressive wicker contraption on wheels—and helped Miss Van W. into it.

“You can wheel me around the gardens, girl. It is the most pleasant place to be at this time of day.”

The central square of Gramercy Park was an ironrailed garden filled with trees, shrubs and flowers. I wheeled her across the street to the park's entrance, a wrought-iron gate facing the north side. As I approached, an elderly couple was leaving. The man, with impressive white mustaches, took off his boater, gave a sweeping bow, then held the gate open for us to pass through.

“Good evening, Miss Van Woekem. Seasonably warm again, wouldn't you say?”

Miss Van Woekem nodded to him. “Since it's July, that goes without saying. Good day to you.”

As we passed into the gardens, she muttered to me, “Odious man. Just because he knew McKinley in Ohio, he thinks he can forget that his father was a grocer.”

I pushed her around the park, enjoying the shade under the trees, the sweet-smelling shrubs and the banks of glorious flowers. I noticed a man in a brown suit and derby standing among those trees, blending into the shade as we passed. I wondered if he was a gardener, but he wasn't doing anything and there was no sign of tools. He just stood there, staring up at a house on the south side of the park, and didn't even notice us.

In the distance a clock struck six. “Time to go,” Miss Van Woekem said. “I must change for dinner. My god daughter may be joining me, if she doesn't get a better offer, that is. She is in town for a few days of shopping. You may push me home.”

I wheeled her to the park gate and leaned on it. It remained firmly shut.

“Didn't you bring the key, girl?” she asked in annoyance.

“Key? I didn't know there was a key.” I felt my face flushing.

“Of all the stupidity! Of course there's a key. We don't want to admit riffraff, do we?”

“You might have mentioned it before we set off,” I said.

“You are most insolent and do not know your place.”

“I thought you required a companion, which, by definition, is not a subordinate,” I said. “If I don't suit you, then maybe you should look elsewhere.”

We stared at each other like two dogs whose territories have overlapped.

“I think I'll manage to whip you into shape eventually,” she said with a slight glint that could have been a twinkle in her eyes. “And you had better find a way to get us out of this park before nightfall.”

I left the chair in the shade and walked around the gardens, hoping to attract the attention of a passerby outside the railings. But the square was deserted apart from two women servants who hurried along the far side and a carriage that passed me at a brisk trot, too quickly to be hailed. As I approached the southeast corner, which was the most wooded, I remembered the man in brown. I hadn't seen him leave the park, and he would have to have a key for us. But he was no longer standing under the trees. I looked around. No movement except for a squirrel that darted across the lawn.

Just then a large shrub close to the railing rustled. The movement was too big to have been caused by another squirrel. A cat, maybe. I moved closer, then froze when I saw the man in brown crouching down beside the shrub. He turned and looked around, nervously. I managed to shrink back behind a tree trunk just in time. Obviously satisfied that there was nobody to see him, he grasped one of the railings, removed it, slipped through the opening and then replaced the railing. It was all over in a second. I watched him brush himself off and walk down the street whistling.

I was so impressed with what I had seen that it took me a moment to realize I had seen him before. He was the same man who had taken our photograph in Central Park.

Th
ree

I didn't think any more of the strange incident until the next day. I presumed that the man merely wanted to access the gardens without owning a resident's key. The cool shade was certainly tempting on these stifling summer days when the heat rose from the cobblestones and reflected from the brick walls.

I had followed his example and made my exit through the loose railing, then picked up a key from the maid, not disclosing to Miss Van Woekem the details of how I had made my escape. I had, however, noted the railing for future use.

I had arrived home that night to find my landlady very agitated.

“Well, here you are at last, Miss Murphy, and not a moment too soon.” She stepped out into the hallway, blocking my passage up the stairs. She had an uncanny habit of doing this, no matter what time of day I came home. She was one of those women my mother used to call “lace-curtain” Irish—nothing better to do than sit behind her lace curtains and snoop at the world.

“Why, what has happened, Mrs. O'Hallaran?” I asked.

“All hell has broken loose up there.” She indicated the stairs. “Half the rabble from the Lower East Side, if you ask me.”

“Oh, that will be his cousin's family.” My heart sank. My least favorite people in the city of New York.

“A fleet of wild children making so much noise that I had to send himself up after them. Any more noise and they're out.” She turned back to me. “I was given to understand that Captain Sullivan recommended you as a quiet and sober young woman. Now look what you've brought into the house.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. O'Hallaran,” I said, “but I did explain to you about the O'Connors. I felt responsible for those children, packed like sardines into that awful tenement room, and their poor mother dying back home in Ireland.”

My landlady's grim expression softened. “Well, you would, wouldn't you. Any decent, God-fearing woman would. Poor little mites in a strange country and their dear mother maybe already up there with the angels.” She paused to cross herself. “There's nothing wrong with those two that a firm hand wouldn't mend, but those cousins…”

“I couldn't agree more,” I muttered. “I'll speak to them myself.”

“Yes, you do that, Miss Murphy. I'd be most obliged.”

I sighed as I walked up the stairs. Little had I known what I was taking on when I escorted two children across the Atlantic to their father. I had expected to deliver them and vanish from their lives, but I had found that hard to do. They were, as Mrs. O'Hallaran had said, poor little mites. I couldn't leave them jammed into a two-room apartment with that dragon of a cousin Nuala and her terrible family. It had been a case of hate at first sight for both of us when the children and I arrived from Ellis Island. Nuala couldn't have made me less welcome, even though I had nowhere else to go. Which was why I wanted to rescue Seamus and his little family from that squalor as soon as Daniel found me this wonderful attic on East Fourth Street. I had grown very fond of young Seamus, whom I now nicknamed Shameyboy, and little Bridie. Taking care of them seemed the least I could do for their poor mother, Kathleen, who must have been worrying her heart out back home in Ireland. It had been with misgivings that I had left them to go to Miss Van Woekem's. They were so small to be alone all day in such a vast city while their father worked eighteen-hour shifts digging the tunnel for the new underground railway. I had to remind myself that they needed to learn to stand on their own feet. New York was the kind of place where only the strongest survived. And after all, I wasn't related to them. Working for Miss Van Woekem would be a way of easing them into independence, I decided as I mounted the second flight of stairs. It would be up to Seamus to take responsibility for his own children.

The next morning passed quickly and remarkably smoothly as Miss Van Woekem sent me on an errand to match her knitting wool. When I returned from a successful mission, I found her staring out of her window.

“There is a strange man in the gardens,” she said, not looking up. “He has been there all morning.”

I joined her at the window. It was the man in the brown suit.

“He was there yesterday,” I said. “Standing in the same place.”

“I don't like the sound of it,” Miss Van Woekem said. “Probably a burglar, deciding which house to break into.”

“He's taking an awfully long time to decide,” I said. “If he's been standing there all morning and yesterday too.”

“He's watching our movements and seeing when a house might be unoccupied. Go and find a constable and bring him here.”

I did as she asked and returned with a large red-faced constable I had found on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-first Street.

“A strange man in the gardens, you say, miss?” he asked, slapping his nightstick against his palm to show he was ready for action. “We'll soon take care of him. What exactly was he doing? Making a nuisance of himself?”

“No, just standing there and staring up at one of the houses.”

We came into Gramercy Park. “Where exactly was he when you saw him last?” the constable asked in a low voice. I pointed out the southwest corner. He nodded. “We'll stroll by on the other side, casual-like, so that he thinks we haven't noticed him. Then I'll slip into the park and nab him.”

“There he is,” I whispered. “See, under that big tree.”

He gave a quick look, then looked again. “Why, he's nothing to worry about, miss. That's old Paddy. I know him well. Wouldn't harm a fly. I expect he's doing a spot of bird-watching. That's what he'd be doing.”

I reported this to Miss Van Woekem. “Bird-watching?” she exclaimed. “I wasn't aware that any birds nested on the second floor of houses. Still, if the police think he's harmless … upon their heads be it if there is a break-in.”

While she took her nap that afternoon I looked out of the window again. Just what was he doing there? Then I saw the glint of something flashing in the sunlight. Field glasses! The man was using field glasses to watch the house. Then, of course, it hit me. He wasn't a burglar at all. He was some kind of investigator. And the constable must have known what he was doing. He may even have been working with the police …

My mind went back to our encounter with him on Sunday afternoon. Daniel's relaxed smile when I told him the man had tried to pick his pocket and then his change of expression when he put his hand into that pocket. How could I have been so blind? The man hadn't tried to take anything from Daniel's pocket. He had put something into it.

I felt a rush of excitement. I had talked to Daniel about setting myself up as an investigator, but I had no idea how to go about it. When I had tried to solve a real crime, I had stumbled over clues by good or bad luck, more than through my own skill. Now here, before my eyes, was the real thing. As soon as I got off work I would go and see Daniel at police headquarters. I'd make him tell me everything he knew about the man in the brown suit. If the man was, indeed, working with the police, and not a gangster, then I'd go and ask him to take me on as an apprentice.