In a Gilded Cage (4 page)

“They care about you so much that they show no concern for your delicate state of health,” Daniel said.

“They also expressed concern that the parade might be too much for me, but I asked to join them.”

“I suppose they have as much trouble trying to control your actions as I do,” Daniel said at last, “but please think twice in the future before embarking on such a venture. Think of the harm something like this could do to your own career prospects, as well as to my reputation. You are now known to be my future bride, even if it is not official yet. And how do you think Mr. Macy would react next time he wanted to hire a female detective?”

“You do have a point there,” I admitted.

“Amazing. We actually agree on something.” He turned to me with a quizzical smile. “We may yet have a future together, Miss Headstrong.”

“Only if you stop behaving like a typical male and trying to order me around.”

“But I am a typical male, Molly. I can’t help the way I was raised. I can’t help the society I was raised in. And I only act this way because I love you and want to protect you.”

I opened my mouth to say that I didn’t need to be loved and protected, but then of course I realized that I did. Daniel noted my silence, then reached across and covered my hand with his, giving my fingers a fond squeeze.

Five

B
y that evening I found, to my annoyance, that Daniel had been right. I felt tired, achy, and feverish and went to bed with a cup of hot broth. The next morning it hurt me to breathe and I became seriously alarmed. I remembered Daniel’s story of the young constable whose influenza turned to pneumonia and who was dead within three days.

“This will never do,” I said. I got up, dressed, and went to the nearest dispensary, where I was given a bottle of tonic. I was told that it contained both iron and brewer’s yeast and that it was what I needed to build me up. It looked and tasted like tar, so I suppose it had to be doing me some good.

I crawled home and went back to bed, wondering exactly what pneumonia felt like and what I should do about it. My own mother had died of pneumonia and I could still remember her rasping breath and her skin, which felt burning to the touch. What I really wanted was Sid and Gus to come over and take care of me, so when I was awakened by knocking I made it rapidly down the stairs and opened the front door. Only when I realized that the person standing there was neither Sid nor Gus did I remember that I was in my nightgown, with my hair wild and unbrushed.

“Miss Murphy—Molly,” the person said. “It’s Emily. Emily Boswell. We met yesterday.”

“Forgive me,” I stammered. “I’ve not been feeling well and I thought it was Sid or Gus come to visit.”

“I’m sorry to hear you are unwell. I’ll go away and come back on another occasion then, shall I? Or is there something I could do for you? Let me at least help you back to bed.”

She came in. The house was in no state to admit strangers but I was beyond caring. She took me upstairs and tucked me back in my bed. “You’re feverish,” she said, feeling my brow.

“Yes, I had almost recovered from a nasty bout of influenza and I’m afraid that yesterday’s little antics have brought a relapse.”

“Dear me. Are you taking anything to bring down that fever?”

“I went to the dispensary and they gave me a tonic.”

“Tonic?” she said scornfully. “A lot of good that will do.”

“They said it contained iron and would be good to strengthen my blood.”

“To build you up, yes, although there are plenty of quack tonics circulating at the moment that do nothing for you. But you should have been given aspirin. It does wonders in bringing down a fever. It’s only available with a doctor’s prescription, but I can go and bring you some from our pharmacy.”

“Really, that’s too much trouble,” I protested, but she ignored me. “I’ll be back shortly,” she said, and she was. What’s more, she had brought chicken soup from the Jewish delicatessen as well as the aspirin. She mixed the powder with water and handed it to me. “Drink it right down,” she said. “It tastes horribly bitter but it really is a wonder drug.”

I did as I was told, then sat up and sipped the chicken soup. It was delicious. “You are extremely good to go to all this trouble,” I said.

“No trouble. We women must help each other whenever we can,” she said. “The Lord knows that any man will flee from you as fast as he can at the least hint of sickness. I notice that even my own Ned will take a couple of steps away from the counter when a sick person comes into our drugstore, or find some excuse to be busy so that I have to wait on that particular customer.” She laughed merrily.

“I’m sorry, I never did find out why you came to see me in the first place,” I said. “Was it to bring me more information on our cause?”

“No, it was more personal than that, I’m afraid,” she said. “I want to engage your services.”

“Holy mother of God!” I couldn’t have been more surprised. “As a detective, you mean?”

She nodded. “Look, if you don’t feel up to discussing it this evening, I quite understand. I should leave you to sleep and come back when you are well.”

“Certainly not,” I said. “Now I’m intrigued. You should know that I was born curious and won’t rest until I know all the details.”

“Very well.” She smiled. “But first I should say that I work for my living. I have saved a little but my funds are limited. I don’t know what your fees might be, but I fear I might not be able to pay them.”

“My fees can be discussed when I hear the nature of your case and decide whether it is something within the scope of my agency,” I said. “I’m sure we can reach some kind of agreement that will not bankrupt you and will satisfy me.”

“Very well.” She perched at the bottom of my bed, her hands folded primly on her lap. “Let me first give you my background. My parents were missionaries in China. They died in a cholera epidemic when I was a baby. I was miraculously spared and brought back to America, where I was raised by a couple called Lynch. One of them was a distant relative of my mother—a second cousin, I believe. Anyway, they were good enough to raise me, and I called them ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle.’”

She paused and fiddled with the ribbon on her hat. “Aunt Lydia died when I was five. I remember her as pretty and gentle. She was much younger than Uncle Horace and was always of a sickly constitution. My image of her is lying in bed, propped up among pillows, her face as white as the pillows around her. After she died my uncle hired a series of governesses for me. He showed me no love or affection and actually went out of his way to avoid contact with me. Whether he blamed me in some way for his wife’s death, or whether his grief at her passing made him bitter, I can’t say. As I said, I was very young when she died.

“When I was about sixteen he called me into his study and said that he was going to do his duty and abide by my parents’ wishes that I go to Vassar, but I was to understand that this concluded his obligation to me. When I graduated it was up to me to make my own way in the world and I could no longer consider his residence as my home, nor expect any future financial assistance.”

“I suppose that seems fair enough,” I said.

She nodded. “Although he is a rich man and a small allowance would hardly make a dent in his cigar budget, and one might have thought that he would welcome some companionship in that big, empty house. He has a mansion on Seventy-ninth Street, just off Fifth Avenue, you know.”

“My, then he is wealthy.”

“Oh, indeed. He owns mills in Massachusetts as well as various other commercial enterprises.”

“I am told that it is not uncommon for rich men to have become rich because they don’t like to part with their money.”

“That’s true enough.” She laughed. “My uncle is a regular penny-pincher. I remember getting a severe dressing-down as a small child because I had scuffed the toes of my shoes by dragging my feet on a swing. ‘Do you think shoes grow on trees?’ he demanded. And I am stuck with Mr. McPherson at the drugstore—another skinflint. It is lucky that Ned is employed there too, or I’d never have been able to obtain the aspirin for you. Old McPherson would never give anything away.”

“Really, I have no wish to get you into trouble at work,” I said, attempting to sit up.

“Honestly, Molly. A packet of aspirin powder costs pennies. And Mr. McPherson can dock it from my wages if he so chooses. God knows he pays me little enough. If I had been a male assistant, he would have had to cough up at least five more dollars a week.”

“To continue with your story,” I reminded her. “You have told me that you are an orphan and have been raised by distant relatives who felt they were doing their duty but showed you little affection.”

She nodded. “So now I am alone in the world. I had accepted that and was prepared to make the best of my situation when a strange thing happened. A few weeks ago I served a couple at the drugstore. The wife’s face was badly scarred, poor thing, and she wondered if there was some kind of cream or preparation that would make the scars fade. Well, it happens that Ned has been experimenting with ladies’ cosmetics. He’s been copying some of the recipes from Paris and he’s actually getting rather good at it. In fact he plans to open his own business someday, if he can save up enough money for capital.”

“An ambitious young man then,” I commented.

She nodded. “He is. Very ambitious. Anyway, I called Ned out of the dispensary and while we were chatting it transpired that the cause of the wife’s disfiguration was smallpox that she had contracted while they were serving as missionaries in China. They had only recently returned home.” She looked up at me. “Of course, when I heard that, I asked them immediately if they had been in China long and had known my parents. They had, indeed, been in China for twenty years but could not recall meeting a Mr. and Mrs. Boswell.”

She paused, studying her hands for a moment before continuing, “Naturally I was disappointed at the time, but China is a big country and I expect that missionaries work in comparative isolation. So I thought no more about it. Afterward, however, I began to wonder: had I been told the truth about my parents? I recalled that even my sweet Aunt Lydia had changed the subject when I wanted to know details about my mother and father. And why had there been no photographs, no mementos, even from frugal missionaries? Was there in fact some kind of scandal about them—had they somehow disgraced the family name, which was why Uncle Horace wanted nothing to do with me? And then an even more disturbing thought crept into my mind—was it possible that I had been left money and Uncle Horace had cheated me out of my inheritance?” She looked up at me with that keen, fierce gaze. “So you see Miss Murphy, Molly, I have to know the truth, however unpleasant it is.”

“Could you not approach your uncle and demand to be told?”

“My uncle refuses to see me again. I have been to the house a couple of times but on each occasion I was informed that he was away from home, seeing to his business affairs. I left him notes on both occasions but received no reply.”

“Which only reinforced your suspicions that all was not right,” I suggested.

She nodded vehemently. “So now I have to know. Can you help me, Molly? Can you tell me who I am?”

“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Although I have to say that I don’t have the resources to go to China on your behalf.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she said. “But there are missionary societies headquartered here in the United States.”

“Of course,” I said. “I will certainly approach them. I know little of Protestants or missionaries but I am willing to learn.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” She reached forward and clasped my hands in hers. “I can’t tell you what this will mean to me to finally know the truth.”

“I can’t guarantee that I will come to the truth,” I said, “and I can’t guarantee that you will be happy with the news.”

“I understand that. But I have to know. It is even more important right now. If Ned asks me to marry him, as I suspect he soon will, then I need to accept with no reservations. I can’t have him marrying someone whose parent committed some kind of crime, for example.”

“Oh come on, Emily,” I said. “I’m sure Ned loves you for yourself, and you are not responsible for the behavior of your parents.”

“But what about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children? If, for example, I had a murderer for a father? Would that trait not have a chance of coming out in me someday?”

“Then perhaps I should have tested the chicken soup first,” I said, and we both laughed.

“Really, Emily, I think you are worrying too much about this,” I said. “I’m sure the explanation will be a simple one—most likely your Uncle Horace taking your inheritance for himself, by the sound of it.”

Emily got to her feet. “I should leave you now. I have taken too much of your time when you should be resting. Let us talk again when you are fully recovered.”

“Where can I contact you?” I asked.

“Here is my address.” She handed me a card on which her name and address were written in a neat, sloping hand, as well as the name and address of her drugstore.

“My room is on West Seventy-seventh,” she said, as I examined it. “It is around the corner from my place of employment on Columbus Avenue. Highly convenient, as Mr. McPherson can’t abide tardiness. He docks money from our pay packets if we are but one minute late.”

“He sounds like a regular old tartar,” I said. “Why don’t you leave and find employment somewhere else?”

She blushed. “Because of Ned, of course. And one day if we are married, then I won’t have to work.”