City of Promise (27 page)

“Josh, this is Tess o’ . . .” She managed only the first words of the introduction, then began to crumple.

That collapse broke his astonished paralysis and he reached for her, catching her before she fell and pulled her toward him, inviting the woman with her into the house only with the command that she close the door behind them. She did that, then strode in front of him, saying, “Here, sir. Let me get that,” as she dashed for the door to the office he’d pulled shut when he came out into the hall.

“No! Not in there. The next door.” Half carrying and half dragging Mollie, meanwhile. Cursing the fact that he could not pick her up properly because his balance was too impaired by the extent of his own fatigue.

The creature—she was as snow-covered as his wife, but wearing a broad-brimmed hat of some sort that carried half a foot of white frosting—yanked open the door to the dining room and let him go past her with Mollie, then entered behind them. After which she made at once for the tantalus on the sideboard. “Just what’s wanted. This ain’t locked, is it, sir?” Answering her own question by lifting the wooden lid and grabbing the decanter of brandy. “Where might the glasses . . . Ah, here we are.” She helped herself to those as well and poured three generous tots, managing to carry all three to where Josh had put Mollie in a chair and was using the nearest bit of cloth he could find, a lace doily, to both dry her face and rub some life back into it.

“She’s a game one,” Tess said, putting the brandy down and taking the seat opposite them. “Walked here from Fulton Street we did. I
figure it took us best part of three hours. And her in that condition, as she told me on the way. Won’t probably do her or the baby no harm, but let her have a sip of that brandy, sir. Bound to bring her round.” With that she tossed back the drink she’d poured for herself and stood up to get another.

Mollie grew feverish during the night, sleeping only in fits and starts and frequently calling his name, but apparently not much comforted by anything he said, only by his arms around her. For his part Josh slept hardly at all. He listened for every sound. There were few, the heavy snow muting even the usual creaking of the house, but he was unable to forget that the corpse of a murdered man lay on the floor below. He hadn’t undressed, conscious of the fact that as soon as the storm abated and there was some daylight he must go and find, first, the police and, second, a doctor for Mollie. Or perhaps the order should be reversed. Nothing would, after all, bring George Higgins back to life.

“In her condition . . .” the woman had said. Tess somebody. He wasn’t sure he’d heard a last name. Presumably that meant Mollie had claimed she was expecting a child. Odd that she’d confided in a stranger when she hadn’t told him. Or perhaps not, given the circumstances in which she’d found herself. Struggling through the snow on foot that way . . . it must have felt at times like the last journey she was to take on earth.

She muttered his name again and he stroked her forehead and spoke quiet and he hoped soothing words into her ear. And when she called out, “Tess, don’t go!,” assured her that the woman who’d brought her home was sleeping upstairs in the room across from Mrs. Hannity’s.

He’d gone back earlier and checked on the sorry business in the office where, of course, nothing had changed. Then he’d locked both the hall door and those from the dining room, and tried to shut out of his mind the fact that a man who worked for him, who was in some sense
his responsibility, had been murdered under his roof. And for a reason that was, as far as Josh was concerned, totally unfathomable.

Then, around two a.m. according to the tolling clock on the nearby Presbyterian church, the question he’d thus far forgotten to consider surfaced in his mind. What in holy hell had Mollie been doing down on Fulton Street?

Josh woke after a few hours of exhausted sleep to the aroma of frying eggs and bacon and brewing coffee. Mollie was asleep, though her face was still flushed with fever. He got out of the bed and, after a splash of cold water in lieu of a proper wash and shave, went downstairs to see if somehow Mrs. Hannity had managed to get home and resume her duties.

It was, however, Tess who was setting out food in the dining room. “Thought you could use some breakfast, sir. And since there weren’t no one else to cook it, I made free. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all, Miss . . . Or is it Mrs.? And I’m sorry, I don’t remember the name.”

“Mrs. Mary Teresa Santucci,” she said. “Widow. But everyone calls me Tess. Or Tess o’ the Roses if we’re being formal. And I’m sure you know why,” she added with a bob of her head.

The hat was free of snow and the pink-and-yellow silk roses were dry, and it was apparent she did not intend to take the thing off indoors or out. “I suspect I can guess, Tess of the Roses. And I realize I have not thanked you properly for bringing my wife home. I am quite sure she would not have found her way without you. I’m very grateful.”

“You’re entirely welcome. And I’m grateful as well. For the warm dry bed,” she added, seeing his look of puzzlement. “Now, sir, you sit down and eat some breakfast, and I’ll go up and sit with Mrs. Turner until you’re done.”

“Can you stay for a time after that, Tess? I must go and find a doctor for her, and . . . deal with some other urgent business. You’ll be properly compensated, of course.”

“Glad to,” Tess said gaily. “I’ll be here long as you need me.”

Josh was torn between rushing to the front door to see if there had been any effort to clear the street—City Hall was notoriously slow to dispatch shovel men to residential streets like this one—and doing something about his empty belly. The judgment was quickly made. He hadn’t eaten since a hasty lunch of some bread and cheese the day before and he was, he realized, ravenous. He sat down and practically fell on the food, and only after he’d dispatched four eggs and three rashers of bacon, along with a healthy helping of hashed potatoes and three pieces of toast and two cups of coffee, did he go and open the front door.

The path made by Mollie and Tess when they climbed the front steps was still mostly visible, so the snow must have stopped falling soon after they came home. Now there was bright sun, intensified when it bounced off a gleaming white world. Josh heard the sound of voices, and when he looked to his right he could see gangs of young boys with shovels over their shoulders going from house to house offering to clear a path for the homeowner. “Over here!” he called and three lads made their way to him, wading through waist-high drifts.

“How’s Broadway look?” Josh asked.

“Shoveled clear as far as Twentieth Street,” one of the boys answered.

“And Fifth Avenue?”

“Only up as far as the hospital on Sixteenth.”

“That will do very well,” Josh said. “Get started shoveling my front steps and the alley back to the stable. Meanwhile I’m going to write a couple of notes and one of you can deliver them.”

When he came back five minutes later the boys had the front stoop clear and were starting on the passage. The biggest of them spotted Josh and pushed the smallest—a towhead wielding a shovel that was taller than he was—into his path. “I take it you’re to be the errand boy,” Josh said.

“Yes, sir. Where am I to go, sir?”

“First to New York Hospital. Sixteenth and Fifth. Ask for Dr. Simon
Turner and don’t put this note into the hands of anyone else.” Josh was quite certain his brother would have remained at his post once the storm began, so no question but Simon would be at the hospital now. “After that take this second note to the police office on Broadway. Give it to the first copper you see.”

Four hours later the police were carrying George Higgins’s body out the front door that according to them had been forced open sometime the previous day—it had never occurred to Josh to look—and Simon was seated in the dining room waiting for him to come and eat a midday meal prepared by Tess o’ the Roses. “Course no one’s been to the markets yesterday nor today, but I found a bit of leftover ham pie still smells likely and some beans I set to soak, and there’s a cabbage and plenty of potatoes, so I can make do if you want.”

Josh said indeed he did want, and having seen off the last of the coppers he went gratefully to the table, glad not only for the hot and appetizing food but for the fact that his brother was there to share it with him. Simon had already told him Mollie’s fever had broken, and that with proper rest the prognosis was excellent.

“What an unbelievable, miserable business,” Josh said as he sat down. “I wouldn’t believe it if I read it in a book by some overwrought lady novelist. The mad woman in the attic and the dwarf dead in the drawing room as was.”

“You’re missing the governess, however. There’s always a governess. Seriously, Josh, the dwarf worked for you?”

“Yes. Down in the foundry.”

“Making steel for your tower of shelves in which to stack people. Like bags of flour.”

Josh blinked. That had been Trenton Clifford’s analogy. “I keep telling you,” he said, helping himself, meanwhile, to generous portions of the food Tess had spread on the table, “those flats are going to be commodious and affordable for ordinary folk, and a damn sight better
than living in one of the family residences that right now is pretty much their only choice.”

“Have any been leased?”

“Not yet. And this rotten weather is not going to help.”

“It will pass. Listen, about the dwarf . . . You said you hadn’t sent for him.”

“I did not. I was uptown at Sixty-Third Street almost since first light, and when I came home, I . . . Look here, Simon, I’ve been explaining this to the coppers for the past few hours. Do you mind if I don’t go over it all again? I don’t know why he was here, or how he got in, or what reason he may have had for turning over my office the way he apparently did. Though I suppose it could have been whoever killed him. Any further reports on Mollie?”

“She’s sleeping now. I’ve given her a sedative and I expect she’ll stay asleep all day, but she’s doing remarkably well. She’s quite a strong woman, your wife, for all her looking like a reed. Though apparently she won’t for much longer.”

“Ah. I gather then she told you she was expecting.” Simon and Tess and God knows who else; only he, apparently, was not in Mollie’s confidence.

“She did,” Simon said. “She estimates going on for three months and I concur. She wants a doctor, by the way. Not a midwife as will lock her up for months on end in this ‘confinement’ nonsense that’s their stock-in-trade, and I think she’s entirely correct. You should allow it, Josh. A doctor will cost a bit more, but it’s much the wiser course than one of these nattering women who have no proper medical training.”

“Yes, of course. But . . . Not you, Simon.” He blurted out the words, then realized they might sound offensive. “I mean, I’m sure you’re a fine doctor. It’s just—”

The younger man guffawed loudly. “Of course not me! Don’t be stupid. Doctors aren’t encouraged to treat their relations. Besides, we don’t all do everything these days as it was in Papa’s time. Mollie must have a proper obstetrician. I’ll ask around if you like. And if you don’t
mind his knowing, I’ll talk to Papa. He’s still very much esteemed in the profession. Any number of doctors come to talk to him about what-all. He’ll have some ideas on who would be best.”