Hush Now, Don’t You Cry (18 page)

I looked across at the packets of aspirin lying on the dresser. That old doctor had dismissed it as newfangled, but my friend Emily had brought it for me from her pharmacy when I had come down with a bad case of influenza and it had definitely helped. I was going to try, regardless of whatever that doctor had said. I went downstairs and mixed a dose with water. Then I hesitated for a moment before adding a second packet.

I carried it to the bedside. I glanced out of the window. The first rays of dawn were streaked across the Eastern sky. It was almost day. Outside my window a bird began to chirp—tentatively at first and then more confidently. It all seemed so calm and serene and normal, almost as if that bird was mocking me. Was this to be the last day of my present life? That thought flashed through my mind. I looked at the tumbler in my hand.

“I’m not going to let you die, Daniel Sullivan!” I shouted at him. “Do you hear that? I will not let you die.”

I lifted his head, forced his mouth open, and tipped the liquid down his throat. He coughed and retched and fought, then fell back like a dead thing. Immediately afterward I was scared at what I had done. But it was too late. He had swallowed most of it.

“On fire,” he whispered. “I’m on fire.”

Again I didn’t hesitate. I pulled off the bedclothes. I ran to get a wet wash cloth, then I lifted his nightshirt and I began to sponge him down. He moaned, tried to sit up, then collapsed again. He lay so still that I thought for a moment I had killed him. I covered him with the sheet and heard him take a faint breath. At least he was still breathing. I rested my head on the pillow beside him. “I love you,” I whispered. I took his hot hand in mine and closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew a shaft of bright sunlight hit me full in the face. I woke with a start, wondering for a moment where I was and why my neck hurt like billy-o. Then I saw Daniel lying on the bed beside me. His breath was no longer ragged and his face looked peaceful. I touched his hand and it was cool. I sat there, staring at him unblinking.
Dead.
The word tried to force its way into my head, however hard I tried to push it back. Daniel was dead. He had died while I had slept. I hadn’t even had a chance to say good-bye to him. A great bubble of rage and despair came into my throat.

“No!” I shouted. “No. No.”

Daniel’s eyes flickered slowly open. “What’s all this racket about?” he murmured in a husky voice.

Nineteen

For a moment I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Then his eyes focused on me and he smiled with recognition.

“Daniel. You’re alive.” I threw myself on him and covered his cheek and forehead with kisses.

“What have I done to deserve such a display of affection?” he asked, bringing the words out with difficulty as if it was a big effort to talk.

“You nearly died, you idiot,” I said. “I’ve been up with you all night. The doctor was here and he had pretty much given up hope. And the priest gave you the last rites.”

“That’s funny. I seem to remember hearing Latin and I kept telling myself that I was late for church and I’d get into trouble. I believe I thought I was still an altar boy.” He turned away and stared up at the ceiling. “I had all kinds of bad dreams. People trying to kill me. Monsters trying to swallow me alive.”

“I know. You were hallucinating. You kept thrashing around and kicking the covers off.”

“I was too hot.”

“I know you were. That doctor told me to keep you covered so that you’d sweat out the disease, but I couldn’t stand to see you as hot as that. I took the covers off and sponged you down.”

“Typical Molly, doing exactly what she was told not to.” He gave me a tired smile and closed his eyes again.

“I was scared that I’d killed you,” I said. “I was so scared, Daniel. I thought you were going to die.” And a great hiccupping sob escaped from my throat.

He reached up and stroked my cheek. “There, there,” he said. “Don’t cry. I’m still here and everything’s going to be just fine.”

“Yes,” I said, unable to stop the tears now. “Everything will be just fine. I’ll go and make us both a cup of tea.”

Daniel had just fallen asleep again when there was a tap at my front door and Mrs. Flannery was standing there. “We’ve just come back from church, so I thought I ought to stop by and see how you were doing,” she said and she came into the front hall without being invited.

“Oh, church. Is it Sunday?”

She nodded. “A terrible business. They go so quickly with pneumonia, don’t they? But at least my brother gave him the last rites, and that’s a comfort, isn’t it?”

“Mrs. Flannery, he’s fine. That is, he’s not fine yet, but he’s much better. The fever broke. He’s breathing almost normally again.”

Her face lit up. “Well, that’s a miracle, isn’t it? I’m so happy for you, my dear. Mrs. McCreedy was going to send over one of the local girls to help you out but I’ll be happy to cook you a good breakfast. What would you say to ham and eggs and maybe some flapjacks? Perhaps your man could take a lightly boiled egg?”

I was going to turn her down but then I realized how drained I felt. “If you’re sure you don’t mind,” I said.

She took off her hat, hanging it on the peg. “Nonsense. I’ve been used to hard work all my life,” she said. “It doesn’t come easily to me to have servants fussing around and me not lifting a finger. Why I cooked and cleaned for the six of us when our parents died and I was just eleven years old. Brian went out to work at twelve to support us all but I had to become the mother.”

“I had to do the same thing,” I said. “My mother died and I had to stop my schooling to look after my little brothers.”

“Did you now? At least it makes us stronger people, doesn’t it? More able to handle trouble and tragedy.” She went through into the kitchen.

“It was good of you to come,” I said.

“To tell the truth I was glad to get away for a bit. I can’t take the atmosphere in that house. Suspicion and innuendo and snapping at each other. What’s more, they’re already arguing over where poor Brian’s to be buried. Joseph wants him to have a grand funeral with all the trappings in New York. He says Brian would have wanted it, being a public figure and all. But Irene thinks he’d want to be buried here, beside his beloved granddaughter. She says he loved this place and he was happy here for the first time in his life.”

“So who will win?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. I suppose it will come down to who is his heir. And Brian may well have left instructions for his final resting place. He was the sort of man who liked to organize everything. For all I know he may have a funeral plot all picked out, and even the hymns they’re to sing in St. Patrick’s.”

“You can still have a memorial service for him at St. Patrick’s even if he’s buried here, can’t you?” I suggested.

“I don’t see why not. The boys at Tammany Hall put on a grand funeral for their members. They’d go to town for Brian.”

“I’m sure they would.”

She bustled around my kitchen, knowing with the instinct of one who has cooked and cleaned all her life where to find things. “I told them all this bickering over the funeral is premature, seeing that the police won’t release the body to us yet.”

“No, I suppose you’ll have to wait until after the autopsy results are known.”

She took a knife and started slicing bread, holding it to her breast and cutting it toward her as my mother had always done. Frankly I had always been scared that she’d slice into herself but she never had. And Mrs. Flannery looked as if she knew what she was doing as well.

“A terrible business, isn’t it? I can’t stop thinking about him. If ever there was a man full of life, it was Brian. Full of energy, always had one grand scheme or another.”

“A great tragedy,” I said.

“A great tragedy or a great crime,” she said. “I can scarcely believe that someone deliberately tried to kill him, but that’s what that policeman seems to think, doesn’t he? I mean, who would do such a thing?”

“Someone with a grudge against your brother.”

“But who would come all the way out here, to this remote spot to do it?”

“Maybe it was easier to find him alone out here,” I said. “Or someone didn’t originally mean to kill him but seized the opportunity.”

“If it wasn’t an outsider, then it had to be one of us,” she said quietly. “That’s the thought I can’t get out of my mind. One of our family. But it couldn’t be. Just couldn’t.”

“I’m sure the police will find the person who did it,” I said, although I was not at all sure.

“My poor little Sam is so cut up about it,’ she said. “Hardly said a word since it happened and not eaten a thing either, which is shocking in itself if you knew Sam. Eats like a horse that boy. Always has. Skinny as a rake too. I don’t know where he puts it sometimes but he sure loves to eat.” She smiled for a moment then her face became solemn again. “I don’t know what will happen to him now. He was starting to run wild until Brian took him under his wing. With a no-good father like that and my poor daughter burdened with a new baby every year it’s no wonder that no one had time for the boy. He started running with the wrong crowd—going with a gang, you know. Junior Eastman, he called himself.”

“I know the Eastmans. In fact I’ve met Monk Eastman more than once.”

“Holy Mother—have you indeed?”

“I used to have my own detective agency. Sometimes it took me to the less savory parts of the city. And Monk recruits them young. Your Sam is well out of it.”

“Brian stepped in as soon as he found out,” she said. “He brought the boy to live with him and started him working for the company as messenger boy. Made sure he worked him hard too so that he had no time for bad companions. But now what? I’d take him in, of course, but he doesn’t listen to an old woman. And Joseph—well, Joseph only cares about himself and money. And a fine sort of example he’d be for the boy. Look how Terrence has turned out.”

“He seems a pleasant enough young man to me,” I said.

She sniffed. “My dear. I can’t tell you the number of times his father has had to pay his bills—gambling debts, unpaid wine bills, girls he’s got in the family way. His mother has washed her hands of him, I can tell you. And even Brian could do nothing for once, because Jo wouldn’t let him take over the boy. They almost came to blows over it.”

She lifted the egg from the boiling water and found an eggcup. “You’ll no doubt want to take this up to him yourself,” she said.

I agreed and carried the tray upstairs. Daniel roused as I came into the room and I helped him into a sitting position. He was as weak as a kitten and lay back gasping as I propped pillows behind him.

“Try and get some of that egg down you,” I said. “You need building up now.”

“I can’t think how I let something like a little cold get the better of me,” he said. “And look at you—the picture of health.”

“Just you remember who the strong one is,” I said, smiling.

I paused, hearing a knock at the front door, then Mrs. Flannery’s voice.

“I hope that’s not Prescott again,” Daniel said. “I don’t feel in any state to speak to him now.”

Words were being exchanged downstairs. I couldn’t make them out but then I heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. I stepped out to intercept the visitor and found that it was the doctor.

“Mrs. Sullivan,” he said. “I’ve just been told the good news about your husband. So the fever broke by itself, did it? Oh, that is a relief. I have to tell you that I was expecting the worst this morning. I didn’t think the poor man would make it through the night.”

“Not only made it through the night but is currently eating breakfast,” I said and ushered him into the bedroom.

“You are a fortunate young man, sir,” he said to Daniel. “You clearly have a strong constitution to fight off the disease when it had such a grip on you.” He took out his stethoscope and started listening to Daniel’s chest. When he’d finished he nodded.

“Not out of the woods yet by any means,” he said. “There’s still a lot of fluid on the lungs. So no exertion, no excitement for a while yet. You’re not to move from this bed until I say so, and that’s an order.”

I followed him down the stairs. “Thank you for coming out in the night like that,” I said. “I’m so relieved. If I write out a telegram, I wonder could you arrange to have it sent from the telegraph office when you go back to town? I don’t want to leave him yet but I’d like his dear ones to know that he’s not going to die.”

The doctor shook his head and at first I thought he was refusing to send the telegram, but then he leaned closer to me. “I’d wait a little longer if I were you. He is not out of the woods yet. A relapse is all too possible with a disease like pneumonia. I’ve seen it many times. So hold off sending your good news for a while and make sure you keep him in bed, keep him quiet, on an invalid diet.”

“I will, don’t worry. You’ll be sending us the bill, will you?”

“I most certainly will. Extra money for being woken from my beauty sleep.” He smiled and patted my hand before he put his hat on his head and departed.

A young woman called Martha arrived soon after and Mrs. Flannery went back to the bickering at the big house. Daniel was asleep when I came to collect his tray, so I left Martha busy in the kitchen and went outside. I felt that I needed a breath of ocean air in my lungs after everything I’d been through that night. It was another perfect day for sailing, with a stiff breeze and puffy white clouds racing across a blue sky. I expected that Archie Van Horn was miffed that he couldn’t compete in his yacht races.

There was no sign of the family, nor of the gardeners and I strolled through the trees and down to the ocean front. Then I sat on a log and watched the sea birds and the waves. The sound of feet on gravel made me look up and there came the two little boys in their identical sailor suits, marching side by side at a great rate down the path, while their nursemaid struggled to keep up with them, gasping every now and then, “Slow down, boys. Do you hear me? Slow down.”

As the boys came closer to me I stood up. “Are you two in trouble again?” I asked.

They stopped and grinned at me. “We’re not allowed to play, you see,” the older one
(Was it Alex?)
said. “Because of grandpapa. And it was so boring sitting in the house and reading on a fine day that we begged Mama and she said we could walk around the grounds if Bridget stayed with us, but we weren’t to run.”