In Dublin's Fair City (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #6)

“Tell me, Ryan,” Gus said, steering the conversation onto a new topic, “what has happened to the good Dr. Birnbaum these days?”


“We’ve parted company, alas,” Ryan said. “I think, like Daniel, he found my company detrimental to his professional standing in the community. Even though I tried so hard to be moderate in all things and actually wore an ordinary dinner jacket in the evenings, I fear my reputation had preceded me. We parted amicably.”

“I’m sorry,” Sid said.

“Don’t be,” Ryan said. “The world is full of wonderful new opportunities, I always find.”

I looked at him with affection. These were my friends who sailed through life determined to wring every ounce of pleasure and excitement from it. Nothing about them was ordinary or plain or boring.

The cab came to a halt outside an imposing brick building. I’d glanced up at it from the outside before, admiring the Moorish colonnades and the tower that seemed to go up into the sky, but I’d never been inside. Never dreamed I’d have the chance to go inside.

Fashionably dressed theater crowds were milling around on the sidewalk. Beggars and hawkers hovered in the gutters, swarming up to each carriage or cab as it came to a halt. Flowers were thrust at us. Hands reached up imploringly, but Ryan whisked us successfully in through an archway and up a flight of steps. As we entered the rooftop cabaret I was deinitely overawed and hung back as Ryan forged his wayinto the room. The room was decorated with statues in archways, tall palm trees around the walls, and Moorish style chandeliers. The floor space was packed with an absolute throng of people, through which waiters with trays of food and champagne dodged and darted, trays held high above their heads. On the stage at the far end a Negro band was playing some kind of modern syncopated music to which several brave couples were attempting to dance with strange, jerky movements. The noise level in the crowd almost drowned out the band. Jewels glittered and sparkled in the gleam of the electric lightbulbs that festooned the chandeliers. Handsome men in tails, glamorous women, sporting ostrich plumes in their coiffures, mingled with theater folk as outrageously dressed as Ryan.

Ryan swept ahead of us into the fray, arms open wide, greeting, embracing, beaming. He seemed to know everybody. Gus and Sid also seemed to have their share of acquaintances, and I felt like Cinderella. I stood there while the crowd pressed around me, feeling dowdy and out of place and wishing I hadn’t come. A tray of champagne appeared. I accepted a glass when offered, reminding myself an affair like this had been beyond my wildest dreams just two years ago. I was here in the liveliest city in the world, mingling with its most fashionable residents. Not bad for a girl from a peasant cottage in Ballykillin. I resolved to have a good time no matter what and drained my glass.

“Oh, there you are, Molly. Your champagne glass is empty. Let me get you another,” Ryan said, returning to my side.

“The champagne certainly seems to be flowing tonight, doesn’t it?” I commented.

“Literally,” he answered. “Have you seen the fountain yet?” He dragged me across the room. And there in one corner was a fountain, flowing, if my eyes didn’t deceive me, with champagne. “Holy mother, what will they think of next?” I muttered and Ryan laughed. “Tommy Burke has a reputation to live up to,” he said. “If his parties are not the talk of the town, then he feels he has failed.come on, let's try to ind him.”

We fought our way through the crowd. It was a warm, muggy night to start with. In that confined space it was stiflingly hot, and the smells of competing perfumes, cigars, and perspiring bodies made me feel as ifI might faint. I was relieved when Ryan came to a halt next to a large man in tails. He was middle aged with a good head of wiry gray hair, big boned, beefy, round faced, red cheeked, like an Irish peasant. He had a glass in one hand and a cigar in the other, and he was talking with animation to a gorgeous auburn-haired woman in a stunning white silk gown with a train that she carried over one white-gloved wrist.

For once even Ryan appeared to be overawed. He waited for a lull in the conversation before he tapped the man on the arm. “Here she is, Tommy. Miss Molly Murphy. I promised I’d produce her and I have.”

The man turned and his shrewd little black boot-button eyes looked me up and down appraisingly.

“Miss Molly Murphy, eh?” he said, and stuck out a beefy hand. “I’m delighted to meet you, young woman.”

“Delighted to meet you too, sir,” I said, “but I’m intrigued as to why you wanted to meet me, Mr. Burke. You’re not thinking of offering me a part in your next play, are you?”