“It’s not for you to criticize your employer,” I said sharply and watched her flinch as if I’d slapped her. Then I relented, of course. “Captain Sullivan is under a great deal of worry at the moment. A policeman’s job is never the easiest and right now I think he’s battling a major problem. Not that he ever confides in me, but if his current bad temper is anything to go on, then I’d say he had a particularly difficult case on his hands. It’s our job to make sure his life is as pleasant as possible when he comes home.”
She nodded silently as she lifted Liam out of his high chair and bore him away up the stairs. I cleaned away the aftermath of Liam’s breakfast and considered my little speech. I realized it had been a pep talk for me as well as Aggie, because I had found Daniel’s current black mood hard to take. More than once I’d wondered why I ever thought that it had been a good idea to leave my life of freedom and independence as a private investigator to get married. I think I’d expected to be able to share in his work, mulling over complicated cases with him and giving him the benefit of my own experience as a detective. But that hadn’t happened. Daniel remained tight-lipped about his work. He was gone from morning till night most days and only popped in for a hasty meal. A quick peck on the cheek as he ran out of the door again was the best I could hope for. For better or worse rang through my head. That was what I’d promised at the altar. I sighed and put the dishes in the sink for Aggie. Then I went up to my room to change my clothes. A walk in the sunshine would soon do wonders for my current mood.
Aggie was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs with Liam already strapped in his buggy. “You could take those letters with you to read,” she said, handing them to me.
I laughed. “I believe you’re more interested in my mail than I am.”
“I love hearing about foreign parts,” she said. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
“I’ll read Miss Goldfarb’s letter to you later if you like,” I said. Aggie hadn’t yet managed to learn to read, in spite of my efforts to teach her. I put on my hat, adjusting it in front of the hall mirror, then Aggie helped me maneuver the buggy down the front steps.
“I hope you have a nice walk, Mrs. Sullivan,” she called after me as I set off.
I almost asked her again to come with us, but I reminded myself that she was the servant and the laundry was her job. I’d bring her a cake for tea, I decided. She loved the cakes I brought from the French bakery around the corner. As Liam and I bumped over the cobbles of Patchin Place I couldn’t help glancing across at the doorway of number 9. It had been two months now since my friends Elena Goldfarb and Augusta Walcott, more familiarly known as Sid and Gus, had taken it into their heads to go to Paris, so that Gus could study art with the best painters of the day. I had never thought that Gus’s talent for painting was as great as she believed it to be, but her cousin Willie Walcott had gone to study in Paris and was now apparently making a name for himself as a painter of the Impressionist school. He had promised introductions for Sid and Gus.
From their letters they seemed to be having a roaring good time, while I missed them terribly. I had come to count on their comforting presence across the street, their extravagant parties, and their bohemian lifestyle that Daniel only just tolerated for my sake. With Sid and Gus, life was never boring. You never knew when you’d open their front door and find the front parlor turned into a Mongolian yurt or a Turkish harem. They never had to worry about the day-to-day trivialities of normal life. They had enough money to live as they wanted, according to their rules. This is not to say that they were always frivolous. They were keen supporters of the suffrage movement and I missed attending those meetings at their house as well.
I sighed as I came out onto Greenwich Avenue and steered Liam’s buggy around a pile of steaming horse droppings. Ah, well. They’d grow tired of Paris and come home eventually, wouldn’t they? And in the meantime I had a husband to look after and a son to raise. Things could be worse. Liam leaned forward in the buggy, urging me to go faster, and babbled in delight when an automobile drove past us, its driver’s long scarf streaming out in the breeze behind him as he steered the contraption around a slow moving dray. Just like his father, I thought, smiling at his excitement. We were seeing more and more automobiles these days. I know Daniel secretly hankered after one. He was allowed to drive the police vehicle when there was a special need, but that didn’t include giving his family a ride.