Oh Danny Boy (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #5)

At last, suitably rested, I deposited the chicken in the meat safe at home and set out to find Gentleman Jack Brady. Usually I covered great distances on foot around the city, having been used to walking miles at home. But I had done enough walking in today’s heat. I paid the five cents to ride the Sixth Avenue El up to Twenty-third and then sat patiently on the horse-drawn trolley along Twenty-third out to Ninth Avenue. It was a pleasant neighborhood of middle-class respectability, unlike either Greenwich Village or the Lower East Side, which were my usual haunts. Housewives were out scrubbing front steps and polishing brass door knockers. Children were playing with tops or jacks on the sidewalks. I passed a little girl, solemnly pushing a doll’s carriage, and thought about Bridie. However much I rejoiced in my present lack of responsibility, I really missed her sweet little face.

It was easy enough to find Ma Collins’s Boarding House, since the sign was painted in unsteady letters over the front door. I knocked, waited, and the door was opened by a sour-faced woman who seemed to be the epitome of landladies: hair pulled severely from her face, hard eyes, hard mouth, and the look of a perpetual smell under her nose.

“Yes?” she demanded. “If it’s one of my boarders you’re looking for, I don’t allow my gentlemen to receive lady callers.”

“I am looking for one of your gentlemen,” I said, “but only to give him a message from a friend. I assure you I have no designs on any of your boarders.”

“Which one is it?” she asked, still barring the door with her hand resting on the doorpost.

“You have a Mr. John Sykes staying here, I understand,” I said. “I’d like a word with him in private, if you have a parlor where we could talk.”

“He’s not here,” she said.

“When do you expect him to return?”

She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Gone. Done a bunk, if you ask me. Not that I care. Room was paid for a week in advance.”

“He’s gone, you say? Has he taken his things?”

“Didn’t bring much to start with. Just one carpetbag and that’s gone.”

“And he didn’t say where he might be going?”

She shrugged again. “Didn’t say a word. Ate his breakfast with the other boarders. I was down in the scullery doing the washing, and when I put the lunchtime meal on the table, he didn’t show up. And Millie, who helps me with the beds, said that his stuff had gone.”

“Oh dear.” I stood staring at her, not sure what to do next. “Do you have any kind of home address for him, anywhere I might find him?”

“What’s he done, run out owing you money, or worse?”

“I’ve never even met the man, but a friend of mine needs to pass him an urgent message, and I agreed to be the messenger, that’s all.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you, miss,” she said. “I have to get back to my pie now, or I’ll have burned the crust.” Then she shut the door. This was a complication Daniel couldn’t have foreseen. He had told me that Jack Brady had to lie low because his face would be recognized. Maybe somebody had recognized him, and he’d had to make a swift getaway. So where would he have gone? If he was still waiting for Daniel to set up his fight, he wouldn’t have gone far. My next step should be to go to Daniel’s rooms and see what I could find there. Maybe I could leave a note for Jack Brady with Daniel’s landlady, in case he showed up looking for Daniel.

I walked around the corner to West Twenty-third and the brownstone where Daniel had rooms.

“Why, if it isn’t Miss Murphy! How lovely to see you again, my dear,” Mrs. O’Shea exclaimed as she opened the door. “It’s been a long time since you boarded with us. How have you been faring?”

“Not too badly,” I said. “And yourself?”

“Can’t complain either, except for this terrible business with the captain. I expect you’ve heard about it or you wouldn’t be here.”

I nodded. “I gather the police came to search his rooms.”

“They did indeed. Acted as if he was the worst criminal in creation. ‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ I told them. ‘Captain Sullivan’s the finest gentleman on the force,’ but they just pushed me out of the way. Louts, the lot of them.”

“Did they find anything?”

She shook her head. “They took some papers away, I believe, but they weren’t here long. And as for poor Captain Sullivan, I don’t even know what’s happened to him.”

“He’s in The Tombs,” I said, and nodded as she gasped in horror.

“Holy Mother of God.” She crossed herself. “What on earth could he have done to warrant that?”

“Nothing. Someone’s out to get him,” I said. “They planted evidence. That’s why I’ve come to see if there’s anything I can do to help him. I wondered if I could see his rooms? I expect they’ve taken away anything useful, but it couldn’t hurt to look, could it?”

“It certainly couldn’t. That poor man. It makes my blood boil after what you told me. Come on in, do. And take a glass of iced tea with me first.”

I accepted readily.

“I’m also looking for one of Captain Sullivan’s friends,” I told her, as she put the glass in front of me at the parlor table. “A big chap, going by the name of John Sykes, I understand. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

She nodded. “A man like you describe came here with Captain Sullivan, about a week ago it must have been. A big, burly man, ugly as sin. We just exchanged pleasantries as they went up the stairs.”

“So you don’t know where I might find him now? He hasn’t come by since then?”