Oh Danny Boy (20 page)

I should tell them the truth now. I tried to form the words in my head, but I couldn’t. Then it occurred to me that by tomorrow Mrs. Goodwin might have set up an appointment for me with a certain lady. Whether I would have the nerve to keep that appointment, I really couldn’t say.

“I’ll take a rest soon, I promise you,” I said.

The next morning I woke to gray skies and steady, unrelenting rain. Hardly the sort of day to be out and about. Not that I felt much like being out and about anyway. My day started with a bout of sickness that left me feeling hollow and frail. And I didn’t want to miss Mrs. Goodwin’s visit. I hoped she’d stop by on her way home after her night shift. I felt excited and anxious at the same time, as if I was waiting for the results of an important examination. Don’t get your hopes up, I told myself. Perhaps the woman will want too much money. Perhaps she’ll refuse to see me. And if she agreed? My heart started racing at the thought of it. Was there any sin worse in the universe than killing your own child? And yet what sort of life would it be for the both of us? How could I go through with this on my own?

By midday Mrs. Goodwin still had not appeared. The rain had subsided to a light drizzle, and I paced impatiently. At last I could stand it no longer. If she hadn’t come by now, then surely she had gone home after her long night vigil and was now sleeping. I wouldn’t be likely to see her before this evening. I should go to the
Herald
and see what the fearsome Miss Pritchard had uncovered for me.

I was just turning onto Sixth Avenue when I saw a young policeman heading my way with purposeful strides and recognized him as Constable Byrne. Hope surged that he had
come to escort me to Daniel again. He tipped his helmet as he approached me.

“Miss Murphy,” he said, “I’ve been asked to deliver this note to you.”

“Is it from Captain Sullivan?” I asked.

“I’m afraid it isn’t. It’s from one of our matrons. She apologized for not coming herself, but she was exhausted after a night in the rain and felt that she had to get some rest if she wasn’t to come down with a dreadful chill.”

He handed me the envelope.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it. So you haven’t had a chance to see Captain Sullivan again?”

“No, miss.”

“And you’ve heard nothing? What are they saying about him at headquarters?”

“Nothing, miss. They’re saying nothing. It’s as if he never existed.”

“And what about this investigation that Quigley and McIver are leading? Is there any talk at the station about that? Any hunches? Any suspects?”

He grinned. “If there are, miss, they don’t share them with me. I’m just a constable on the beat. But I was assigned to that patrol myself the other day. Dreary work standing on a street corner and nothing happening.”

“You didn’t see any suspicious vehicles then?”

“What kind of vehicles?”

“Carriages? Large and presumably enclosed carriages?”

“Oh no, miss. Nothing like that. In fact, the only vehicles to pass me during one twelve-hour shift were delivery drays, a couple of hansoms, and one automobile. That was about it. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” I said and declined to go into details. Maybe it would be better if nobody at police headquarters knew I was following this case.

He shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Well, I best be getting back then, miss. I’ve work to do.”

“Of course you have, Constable. Thank you again.”

He nodded, then turned on his heel. I couldn’t help wondering if I should have tipped him. But since I was currently more of a pauper than he, it seemed a strange thought. The moment he was gone, I tore open the envelope.

I noted the clever way the letter was phrased so that there was nothing incriminating in it. So Mrs. Goodwin suspected that other eyes might read her letter, did she? That was interesting. I found myself trembling. “Mrs. Rose Butler, 231 Allen Street.” I said the words out loud, like a chant, over and over. And she was prepared to see me tonight, if I dared to go through with it. My hand strayed involuntarily to my stomach. Eight o’clock, I thought. That gave me almost eight hours to think about it. All the more reason to throw myself into my work so fully that I didn’t have time to think.

I climbed the steps to the El station and headed back to Herald Square. Today I had taken rather more trouble with my appearance, wearing my business suit and tying my hair back with a black bow. The lady in archives seemed to approve, and she nodded at me in almost kindly fashion.

“I have located a good sampling of material for you on the commissioner. What a fine man. I’m glad he is to be honored.”

She indicated that I should sit at a long, mahogany table, then produced a box of typewritten sheets, yellowed newspaper clippings, photographs, and etchings. I sat under one of the ceiling lamps and started to work my way through. Mr. Partridge, it seemed, had led an exemplary life. He had been commended for his hard work and devotion to duty by Theodore Roosevelt, when the latter had been commissioner of police himself. He had served in various other boring city departments—ways and means and public works—nothing glamorous and certainly nothing controversial. A short biography detailed his background as son of an Episcopal minister, his education at Princeton, his time as a lawyer, his marriage to a highly suitable young woman, and the birth of four daughters.

I started to flip through the pictures. There were photographs of Mr. Partridge shaking hands with Teddy Roosevelt, with the mayor, with the chief of police upon his appointment. Then I found myself looking at a photograph that made my pulse quicken. The headline stated:
CITY BUSINESSMEN WELCOME IRISH CHAMPION TO NEW YORK.
And
several smiling men stood around a handsome racehorse. At last I had my link. Mr. Partridge was part of the syndicate that owned the winning horse that day at Brighton Race Track.

For a moment I was jubilant. I’ve got you now, John Partridge, I thought. Then I found myself rethinking things. So John Partridge was part owner of a horse that had won on that fateful day. Didn’t that just make it a lucky coincidence? The man I had spoken to at the racetrack hadn’t thought that any horse had a clear chance of winning with the favorite removed. And even if the worst had happened, even if Mr. Partridge’s syndicate had been responsible for doping the favorite, they would have made sure that they could not be directly connected to the crime. They were, after all, powerful city businessmen. Such men have underlings to do their dirty work. And even if Daniel had discovered that Partridge was part of the syndicate, was it really so damning?

I started to write these thoughts in a letter to Daniel, then thought better of it. It was quite possible that all his mail would be read by unfriendly eyes. I certainly didn’t want to make things worse for him. I’d have to approach his lawyer and see if we could arrange another visit to The Tombs. And I still hadn’t found out if someone was paying his lawyer to lose the case…. Once again I felt overwhelmed by everything that lay ahead of me. Even if I proved that Mr. Partridge was privy to horse doping, I couldn’t prove that he had planted the money on Daniel himself. It wouldn’t release Daniel from prison.

It looked as if I had no choice but to go through with tonight’s appointment after all.

I arrived home by three o’clock. That left five more hours to brood. I looked out of my upstairs window across the street to Number Nine. I longed to have company, but I knew I couldn’t. Sid and Gus were so perceptive of my moods. They would ask me what was wrong, and I might well break down and tell them. Not that they would judge me, but I couldn’t do it. So I penned a note to Mr. Atkinson, the lawyer, requesting a chance to meet with Daniel as soon as possible to report on newly surfaced information that might help his case. If Atkinson was a spy for someone, then that might just cause a stir.

There was no sign of Sid or Gus all afternoon. I half hoped that Mrs. Goodwin would stop by in person. God knows I could have used a friendly face and a chat because I was definitely going through last-minute jitters about what lay ahead of me. Seven-thirty came at last and I set out. I had packed a nightgown, hairbrush, and face flannel in a bag, just as if I was going for a visit to a friend. I had also brought my checkbook with me. I had no idea how much she would want or how much I could really afford. There was still some of Paddy Riley’s money left, but it was dwindling fast with the lease on the house, at least through October, and no money coming in. I also had no idea whether I would actually have the nerve to go through with it when I reached Mrs. Butler’s house.

It was still raining and I held an umbrella over me as I
splashed through puddles along Fourth Street to First Avenue. I knew that First turned into Allen Street on the other side of Houston. I suppose I could have taken a horse-drawn bus to get me across town, but they were generally slower than walking. Besides, the cold water splashing up around my ankles kept me tied to reality at this moment when everything else felt decidedly unreal. I don’t think I had ever felt more alone, not even when I fled from Ireland. Not even when I was thrown out of Nuala’s house after I first arrived in Manhattan.

As I crossed from West to East, the streets became more crowded, and as I turned south on First, it became positively clogged with humanity. The street itself under the El was lined with pushcarts trying to avoid the worst of the rain, and the pedestrians were channeled along a narrow path between storefronts and carts, accosted from both sides by merchants shouting their wares. At any other time I would have enjoyed the lively scene. Now the crowd was just an added nuisance through which I had to negotiate.

I should have taken the El after all because it was a long way down Allen Street. I crossed Rivington, then Delancey. At Rivington I looked longingly toward the East River to where Jacob lived. How long ago it seemed that I had hurried down to his studio by the river and he had welcomed me with a glass of tea. Then life had been safe and relatively un-complicated. If only I had felt differently about him. What a pity I wasn’t willing to settle for security over love.

Still, there was no point in brooding over what might have been. I was trapped in the present, and there was no way out but through 231 Allen Street. It was a tall tenement like any other, rising five or six floors high. The ground floor was occupied by a tailor shop. Gaslights were on and someone was still working. I went in and asked for Mrs. Butler. From the way the man looked at me, I guessed he knew what Mrs. Butler did as a profession.

“Fourth Floor, at the front.” He almost spat out the words.

This is how you would be treated every day of your life with an illegitimate child, I reminded myself and started to
climb the stairs. There were raised voices on the second floor—a woman and man yelling at each other in what sounded like Italian. If I could hear so easily through this closed door, what would happen if I cried out later? I hadn’t thought about the pain that might be involved. Now I did. I had seen women in childbirth screaming and crying and imploring the Blessed Virgin to take them out of their misery. I hesitated and took the next flight more slowly. I couldn’t turn back now, could I? After all, Mrs. Goodwin was risking her own career by getting involved on my behalf with something so horribly illegal.

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 another 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.