Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #5)

“They received notes from a secret admirer. The notes were slipped into their pockets—easy enough to do in this kind of crowd. So they didn’t know who they were going to meet. And listen to this. The one girl who was still alive when they found her—her last words were ‘Tree. Tree.’” I shook his arm desperately. “Hurry, please, or he’ll get away. You must believe me.”


“Oh, I believe you,” he said. “I’d better get you out of here before there’s any trouble. This way then.”

He whisked me along the narrow passage, opened a door, and held it for me to pass through ahead of him. I stepped through it and stopped. I wasn’t outside at all. I was in a small room.

“This isn’t the way out,” I said.

“No, I’m afraid it isn’t.” Quigley was blocking the doorway and the tree man was right behind him.

“Who have we got here, Carter?” the tree man asked, following Quigley into the room and closing the door behind them.

“She knows about you, Jimmy. She’s figured it out,” Quigley said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you.”

“You can’t do that. You promised. And if you do, I’ll talk. I’ll tell them…”

Something had just struck me. “Carter?” I interrupted. “Who is Carter?”

“I am,” Quigley answered. “That’s my name. Carter Quigley.”

I stood there, my heart still racing, digesting this fact. “Then you are Letitia’s fiancé?” I blurted out.

“How the devil did you know about Letitia?” he exclaimed.

“Arabella Norton asked me to find her. I’m a detective, remember.”

“Well done,” he said. “Your detective skills are not bad for a woman. Better than that stupid Goodwin female. If you hadn’t come along, she’d never have got this far.”

“But don’t you understand,” I exclaimed, looking from one man to the other, “this man killed your fiancée. Those dead girls weren’t prostitutes at all. Your fiancée was one of them. That day she came to Coney Island and…” My voice drifted into silence. I was watching his face. He was not shocked, not angry. He was, if anything, amused.

“You do know,” I said, “you know he killed the woman you were going to marry, and you didn’t do anything about it? What sort of man are you? If you knew who the East Side Ripper was, why in God’s name didn’t you arrest him?”

“I had my reasons,” Quigley said.

“He made me do it,” the tree man countered.

“Oh, come on, Jimmy. Don’t play the martyr. I made you do it?”

“You did. I didn’t want to kill her. She was nice. She didn’t look at me like the others.”

I stared at Quigley. “You had him kill Letitia?”

“What else could I do?” Quigley said calmly. “I asked her to let me out of our engagement, but she refused. There was no other way out.”

“You had her killed because she wouldn’t release you from your engagement?” I couldn’t disguise my disgust.

“You don’t know what she was like,” Quigley sounded angry now. “She was a hysterical female. She was smothering me. I couldn’t see my life trapped with her. And a court case with her whimpering on the witness stand would have wrecked my career.”

I looked back at the tree man. “You said he made you kill her. How could he make you do something like that? What kind of hold does he have over you?”

Jimmy looked away. “He found out about something I did wrong,” he muttered.

“I found out about the others, didn’t I, Jimmy?” Carter Quigley said calmly. “That first girl you strangled under the pier?”

“That was an accident!” Jimmy shouted. “I told you it was an accident. She tried to scream. I had to stop her.”

“And the second one? She was an accident, too?”

“No, but she laughed at me. She said, ‘What a freak. Can you imagine making love to that?’”

“So you lured her back here alone and killed her,” I said. It was hard to take in what I was hearing.

“I found you making a pathetic attempt to hide the body, didn’t I, Jimmy?”

“I see.” I digested this. “And you let him go free on condition he killed your fiancée? You brought Letitia here to be killed?” I couldn’t hide my revulsion as I stared at him. An image of that delicate little face floated into my mind. I imagined her coming here, her arm slipped trustingly through his, and then being left to face that unimaginable horror.

“I told you. He made me do it,” Jimmy said angrily.

“But then you got the taste for it, didn’t you, Jimmy?” Carter said. “Those other girls? It is time you were stopped.”

“Dressing them as prostitutes,” I said. “Whose idea was that?”

“Mine, of course,” Carter said. “Nobody ever cares about dead prostitutes. If this silly fool hadn’t started killing so many of them, nobody would ever have found out. Of course, nobody has found out yet. Paxton is a simpleton who will never get to the truth, and McIver—well, he’s a lazy son of a bitch. They rely on me to do the work.”

In a blinding flash I saw. “Daniel Sullivan.” I could hardly make the words come out. “You were the one.”