Death of Riley Read online

  He stopped and put his hands on my shoulders. “That's my girl,” he said, kissing me on the forehead.

  “Should we try the Ramble today?” I motioned to the inviting woodland path that disappeared into the undergrowth to my left. The area of Central Park known as the Ramble was made up of a series of winding, intersecting paths through a thickly wooded copse. Only a few steps into the woods and it was hard to believe that you were in the middle of a big city. It was also one of the few places where it was possible to steal a kiss undisturbed.

  But Daniel shook his head. “It's too hot for walking today. Why don't we head for that ice cream parlor?”

  “Ice cream? That would be wonderful!” On a hot day like this, ice cream won out over kisses with me too. I had only just tasted my first ice cream and was still amazed at a place where such luxuries were available every day.

  Daniel smiled at my excitement. “Don't ever change, will you?”

  “I might well turn into a severe and snooty spinster when Miss Van Woekem starts to influence me,” I retorted.

  He laughed and slipped his arm around my waist. In spite of the heat and the fact that this was surely not proper behavior for a park on a Sunday, I wasn't about to stop him. We joined the stream of Sunday strollers on the wide East Drive. Half of New York had to be here. The upper crust passed by in their open carriages, oblivious to the stream of pedestrians beside them. On the sandy footpath it was ordinary people like ourselves, severe Italian mothers dressed all in black with a fleet of noisy bambinos, Jewish families with bearded patriarchs and solemn little boys with skullcaps on their heads, proud fathers pushing tall perambulators—every language under the sun being spoken around us. As we neared the gate the noise level rose—music from a carrousel competed with an Italian hurdy-gurdy man and the shouts of the ice cream seller. I knew that Daniel wouldn't buy ice cream in the park. You never knew what it was made from, he said, and typhoid fever was always a worry in the hot weather.

  Suddenly a dapper little man in a dark brown suit and derby hat stepped out in front of us.

  “Hold it right there!” he shouted.

  “It's all right. He's only taking our photo,” Daniel whispered as I started in alarm. “He's one of the park photographers.”

  I saw then that the man was pointing a little black box at us and we heard a click.

  “There you are, sir. Lovely souvenir of the day,” he said, nodding seriously. He had a strange accent that seemed to be a mixture of London Cockney and Bowery New York. He came up to Daniel. “Here's my card if you care to stop by the studio and purchase the photo for your lady friend.”

  As he handed Daniel his card he moved closer and I thought I saw his hand go to Daniel's pocket. It was over in a fraction of a second, so that I didn't know whether to believe my eyes. For a moment I was too startled to act, then, as I grabbed Daniel's arm to warn him, I saw the man's hand move away from Daniel again, and it was empty. I didn't want to make a scene, so I kept quiet until we had walked past the photographer.

  “I think that man tried to pick your pocket,” I whispered.

  “Then he was out of luck,” Daniel said, smiling. “I only keep my handkerchief in that pocket.”

  He slipped his hand into the pocket and I noticed the change in his expression. “Yes, the fellow was unlucky all right,” he said, taking my arm. “Come on, let's get that ice cream.”

  Two

  A crisply starched maid showed me into the refined brick house with wrought-iron balconies on South Gramercy Park.

  “Miss Murphy, ma'am,” she said and dropped a curtsy before retiring. The old woman who sat in the highbacked chair by the window looked as if she had been chiseled from marble. Her face had shrunk to a living skull but the eyes that fastened on me were still very alive.

  “Well, come in, girl. Don't just stand there,” she said in a sharp, gravelly voice that sounded as if it had dried out like its owner. “What is your name?”

  “Molly. Molly Murphy.” Her look was so intense that I was startled.

  She sniffed. “Molly—a nickname only suitable for peasants and servants. You were presumably baptized with a Christian name.”

  “I was baptized Mary Margaret.”

  “And that is a little too pretentious for someone in your station. Nobody below the middle class needs two names. I shall call you just plain Mary.”

  “You can call all you like, but I won't answer.” I had recovered enough to challenge her stare. “My name's Molly. Always has been. If you don't like it, you can always call me Miss Murphy.”

  She opened her mouth, went to say something, then shut it again with a “hmmph.”

  “Let me take a look at you.”

  I could feel those dark boot-button eyes boring into me. “Are you not wearing a corset, girl?”

  “I've never worn one,” I said. “Back where I come from, we didn't go in for such things.”

  She made a disproving tut-tutting noise. “Daniel mentioned that you were newly arrived from Ireland, but he didn't say that you'd come straight from the bogs. When you leave here today I'll give you the money and you'll go to my costumier and have yourself fitted for a corset. And as for the rest of your clothing—I suppose I can't expect you to wear black in this summer heat. Do you possess a plain gray dress?”

  “I don't possess much of anything,” I said. “I had to leave most of my things behind in Ireland.”

  I didn't mention the reason I'd had to leave in a hurry. Nobody knew that but me. Nobody was going to know it.

  “I'll have my housekeeper see if there is anything suitable for you in the servant's closet,” she said.

  “I understood that you wanted a companion, not a servant.” Again I matched stares with her. With that hooked nose and those black little eyes she reminded me of some kind of bird. A bird of prey, definitely. “I don't get out much anymore,” she said. “I like to be surrounded by things that are pleasing to the eye.” My gaze followed hers around the room. It was indeed pleasing to the eye— not cluttered with too many knickknacks like other wellto-do rooms I had seen, it managed to be austere and elegant at the same time. The furniture was well-polished mahogany, with lots of silk cushions; a mahogany bookcase filled with rich leather tomes took up most of one wall. There was a lamp with a shade like a miniature stained-glass window and a couple of good, if somber, paintings hung on the walls. Not what one would call a woman's room, but a room of definite good taste.

  “The lamp is from Mr. Tiffany,” she said, noticing my eyes falling on it. “My one concession to the latest fads. And the painting over the fireplace—”

  “Looks as if it's of the Flemish School,” I said, studying the dark and rather too real-looking still life of a dead pheasant and some fruit. “Is it a copy of a Vermeer?”

  She snorted. I couldn't tell if the sound was pleased or contemptuous. “It is a Vermeer,” she said. “Arid how do you come to know about painting? Are they hanging Vermeers in Irish cottages these days?”

  “I'm not uneducated, even though I may not be fashionably dressed. Our governess was a great devotee of art. She had visited all the fine galleries of Europe.”

  “You had a governess?” She looked at me incredulously.

  “I was educated with the land-owner's daughters,” I answered, hoping she wouldn't interrogate further on this topic.

  She stared at me in a way that could be considered rude among equals, obviously deciding whether I was lying to her or too impudent to keep. “You have a nice enough face,” she said at last, “and you carry yourself well, but that outfit has definitely seen better days. I'll have my dressmaker come in and measure you up. Maybe not gray. Doesn't do justice to the hair, which would be quite striking if properly arranged.” In deference to my companion's position I had managed to twist my unruly red curls into a severe bun. Not too successfully, I might add. Trying to tame my hair was like trying to hold back the ocean.

  “So if you know about art, and you were educated by a governess,
you presumably know how to read more than penny dreadfuls.”

  “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.

  Three

  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 agi
tated.

  “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.”