Annie's Stories (7 page)

Rumor was Owen McNulty came from a wealthy family but preferred to make his own way in life. So long as the man could do that, Stephen admired his industry and the fact that he wanted to give his bride all he could. Stephen wished to follow that example. If only he could take Davis up on his offer and stash away some funds for his own hoped-for nuptials.

“Carry on, Mr. Adams.”

As Stephen made his way up the sidewalk, the presence of a man on horseback caught his attention. He wore a bolero tie, the type Westerners sported, and he sat so straight in the saddle that his slight build bore him no disadvantage. So confident was his pose, Stephen found him hard to ignore. The man glanced toward Hawkins House as he rode by, then caught Stephen’s eye and gave him a nod. Dark curly hair and an attitude befitting the most determined lawman . . . or criminal thug. For some reason Stephen was reminded of the shadowy man who earlier had been pounding the letter box, but he had not gotten a good
look at him. There were plenty of odd sorts on his route. No reason he should think those two might be one and the same. Stephen acknowledged the horseman and then gathered the mail for house number 503.

Out of the ordinary? Odd? Indeed. There was nothing mundane about the streets of New York.

8

O
N
T
HURSDAY MORNING,
just as Annie finished trimming all the candlewicks on the main floor, a loud rapping erupted at the front door. She hurried to answer it.

A man dressed in dark-blue clothing and a string tie stood on the stoop.

“May I help you?”

He glanced to the candlewick trimmer in her hand. “The housekeeper, I assume?”

“I am. And you are?”

“Clayton Cooper of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, miss.” He pointed to a silver badge, official looking, but unlike the one Grace’s betrothed wore. “I planned to come by earlier, but headquarters sent me off on an unrelated case.” He cleared his throat. “Oh, never mind that. I am here now.”

“Oh, aye . . . What do you want?” She started to slowly close the door a bit in case she needed to push him out. She had never seen a detective or whatever he claimed to be in the neighborhood before, and she wondered if this might be Kirsten’s shadow.

He slipped a brogue against the doorjamb.

“I have duties to attend to, sir, so I must ask again what your business is here.”

“Forgive me. I am here to inquire about a young lady, someone who has on occasion entered your house late at night.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Thankfully Mrs. Hawkins arrived. “What business do you have with our boarders, sir?”

“Just asking questions.”

The woman edged Annie away and strained her neck like a goose, showing her dominance at her own front door. “We will not betray the privacy of our boarders, sir, but you can be confident there is no unruliness here.”

The man smirked. “I do not doubt that, madam, but I must leave you a warning. If for some reason we are both mistaken, it will be my duty to report your establishment to the city and have your boardinghouse closed.”

“Closed? Mrs. Hawkins, what does he mean?”

“Let me handle this, love.”

If Hawkins House were shut down and all the occupants scattered, where would Annie go? She had not yet saved enough of her own money.

Mrs. Hawkins huffed. “That cannot happen, sir.”

“Oh, it can. There is enough evidence, I believe, to inform the committees that exist in this city to put an end to ill-reputable houses that your boardinghouse is one of them.”

“I am well aware of the citizen committees, young man, and they have no cause to do such a thing.”

The man clicked his tongue. “But perhaps we can avoid all that. I must speak to this newest boarder of yours.”

Annie’s knees went weak, and her stomach turned as her thoughts raced back to the laundry, where someone once wanted to “speak to her.” The tone in this Pinkerton man’s voice rang with the same malicious intent.

Mrs. Hawkins did not back down. “I do not see what business she has with you, sir.”

“I am investigating a case, and I assure you I have only the best interest of the public at heart.”

“Come back next week.” Mrs. Hawkins nearly slammed the door in the man’s face.

Annie followed the woman into the parlor. “What does he mean? What case?”

“I don’t know. Men like that . . . they cannot be allowed to bully women,” the Hawk said, stomping her thick-heeled shoe on the rug. “I cannot imagine why he decided to pay us a visit.”

Annie’s instincts about the rude man when she’d first opened the door to him must have been correct. “I . . . uh . . . I should have told you she came in late. I was going to
 
—”

“I see. He observed Kirsten keeping late hours and assumed the worst. Well, I will deal with Kirsten, but that man! He is much more important in his own eyes than his station merits. He is one nosy neighbor I’ve never seen before. Did he introduce himself before I came to the door?”

“He did. He disturbed me, so I forgot his name. Connell or Crayton
 
—I don’t know. Said he was from a detective agency.”

“Pinkerton’s?”

“Aye, that is what he said.”

Mrs. Hawkins chuckled sarcastically. “A Pinkerton? Dodgy, that is.” She pointed a finger at Annie. “Those men think they are above the law. We’ll have nothing to do with them.”

“Who are they? Do they have authority?” Annie realized she probably didn’t know enough about the laws in America to understand if they were truly in danger. If she thought God cared, she would have gotten down on her knees right then and prayed that there were no Magdalene Laundries in Manhattan for Pinkertons to send innocent girls to.

“Private detectives. They have an office in Manhattan, but according to the papers, they spend most of their time tracking down bank robbers and locomotive bandits. Surely he has better things to do than annoy us.”

“Can he do that, Mrs. Hawkins? Can he get this house shut down?”

Tears came to the woman’s eyes. “I do not want to turn anyone away, love. I asked God to send me those he wants me to provide for and encourage. It is not for me to decide who is worthy, but if the other aid societies suspect someone in this house is operating in an immoral capacity, it could possibly happen even without that Pinkerton sticking his nose in my business.” She plopped down into her chair.

Annie didn’t know what Kirsten might have done, but if the aid societies knew that the housekeeper had once been sent to a Magdalene Laundry, they might think ill enough of her to cause trouble. It was Neil’s fault . . . Well, Aileen’s truly, but the whole mess followed Annie, haunting her dreams. She could still remember that day clearly. . . .

“Oh, I’ll send her. Don’t think I won’t, Cora.”

Aileen was the cause of Neil’s discontent, or at least she added fuel to it with her account of what happened after Da’s burial. Annie wished she could have had a fair chance to explain what really took place.

A fisherman’s son, Johnny Flynn, followed behind her as the mourning party left the grave. Annie had only met him a day earlier when folks stopped by her father’s wake.

“Say, Annie, I’m awfully sorry.”

She turned around. The lad’s face drooped the way someone’s does when they feel helpless trying to cheer you up. She forced a wee smile. The other mourners passed them by on the road to the O’Shannons’. Neil was expected to feed them all,
and she knew he wasn’t happy about it. She wanted to take her time getting back.

Johnny leaned against a standing stone and waved her over. He showed her the flask in his pocket. She shook her head.

“Aw, I wish I could make ye feel better, Annie Gallagher.”

“I wish you could too.” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but she’d done it.

He pulled her close and pressed his lips hard against hers. She did not want to be kissed like that, but she felt so weak and hurt and limp that at first she did not push away. He dug his fingers so hard into her arms that even if she’d had the strength, she might not have been able to escape him. She leaned as far away from his clutch as she could when he suddenly let go. She gasped, feeling the need to pull her arms across her chest like a shield. He smirked. The smell of whiskey hung like a cloud. She stepped backward.

“Ye liked that, didn’t ye, lass? Well, there’s more
 
—”

She spun around to see what had interrupted him. Aileen O’Shannon stood on the road glaring not at Johnny Flynn, whom she’d said was her sweetheart, but at her.

Annie pulled her cousin aside. “Your man is an
eejit
. What are you thinking taking up with him, Aileen?”

“Is that the way of it? You trying to force my lad to kiss you?”

“What?” Annie dropped Aileen’s arm and took a step back to be sure it was Aileen herself she was looking at. “My poor da is fresh in the grave. Why would I do such a thing?”

But Aileen held tight to her story, saying Annie was a loose woman as her mother must have been. The pain of hearing those words still stabbed needles in Annie’s heart.

Then, not long after her father’s burial, Annie prepared to bring in the morning’s milking and paused outside the front door, listening to shouting within the house.

“Not there, Neil. Say you won’t. Poor Kate’s daughter.”

“Kate’s daughter has got more than you know. Look here.”

She peeked in the window. Her father’s writing desk lay on the table. Neil clutched her accounting book. How dare he. There was only a wee bit of cash in there, but he had it in his grimy hands. She was about to barge in when Neil shouted again.

“Ever since I heard she was Kate’s daughter, I knew this day would come. She and Johnny Flynn, right there in a sacred churchyard. No shame at all, that one. No telling how she let him touch her.”

“Aw, Neil, have ye no mercy?”

“Mercy, ye say? For women like her? She’s the spawn of my sister, and she’ll be turning out to be just like her, mark my words. Don’t ye know she’s been on the road with that Protestant tinker father of hers, Cora?”

Annie shook her head in an attempt to dislodge the memory. Mrs. Hawkins was correct. Men should not be allowed to bully innocent women. Aileen might have been her accuser, but it was Neil who had stolen Annie’s freedom. Who knows what folks might choose to believe, though she’d been innocent enough. A private detective could find out things. That’s what they did.

Mrs. Hawkins tapped her fingers together. “Tonight I’ll wait up for Kirsten. This is my fault for not being more heedful. She’s been coming in after I’ve gone to bed, and I cannot allow that. I will speak to her boss if I must.”

Annie returned to her chores. As she wiped down the kerosene lamp globes, her hands trembled. One Pinkerton man should not be allowed to make them turn Kirsten away. Not only was America a place where a leader could be assassinated; it was also a place where people could lose their homes over mere hearsay.

Seek your place of refuge.

“Did you say something, Mrs. Hawkins?”

“No. Why?”

She waved her hand in front of her face. “’Twas nothing.” Just something she’d heard somewhere that had popped into her head. Worry does terrible things to the mind.

The message boy who sometimes ran errands for them knocked at the kitchen door wearing brown cotton knickers and matching jacket, the ragged uniform of a hardworking lad. Annie opened the door to speak to him. He bent at his waist to catch his breath. “Here to tell Mrs. Hawkins, miss, that the ship she’s waiting fer just arrived on Ellis Island.”

Mrs. Hawkins came up behind her. “Thank you, Jules.” She reached around Annie and put a few coins in the lad’s outstretched palm. “Now straight to your mum with that, you hear? You don’t want to be walking about the streets with money in your pocket.”

“No, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” He bounded down the steps.

“And don’t be stopping for lemon drops and licorice,” she called after him.

Annie shut the door. “Aileen is here.” Could things get any worse?

“Not quite here yet. She’s at Ellis Island. You know how long that can take. We’ll go down to the docks before supper. She will be expecting you, I suppose.”

“She will be quite uninformed, Mrs. Hawkins.”

“Well, I’m sure someone will explain things to her. Don’t worry.”

She wasn’t worried, not about Aileen. As she stared out the window and watched Jules meld into the mass of New York pedestrians on the street, Annie thought about the characters
in the book she’d been reading. No immigration station in Oz, but the shock of entering a whole new world was not very different, she supposed. Dorothy had realized Oz was far removed from Kansas, and likewise, Aileen would see that New York was nothing like the west of Ireland.

With hours to wait, she and Mrs. Hawkins returned to their chores. The lavender scent lingering on the sheets Annie folded reminded her of Irish meadows she and her da had traversed. Snowdrops in the spring, heather in the summer. If ever home had a fragrance, this was it. She breathed it in, wondering if once Aileen arrived, the place would reek of the damp rock walls of the Ireland she’d tried to forget.

When she finished with the laundry, she paused at her room and went to the desk by the window, where her father’s tattered Bible lay. Father Weldon had rescued it from Neil along with the writing desk. She’d never asked how much he’d had to pay him for it. She opened it, remembering what the priest had told her. “There are some things that must be remembered always. The Bible tells us to do this with God’s Word, you understand?” Perhaps God could speak to her that way. She had little hope of it, seeing as God had abandoned her in that Magdalene Laundry, but Da had loved the stories in the Bible, and for that reason she thought it worth trying.

She flipped to the New Testament and stopped at a verse in 1 Timothy.
“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”
Such had been done to her. Angry tears stung her eyes. She’d wanted to hear God tell her she had a place with him. That he’d not turned from her. But all she heard was scolding about her attitude toward her cousin.

Annie wiped her eyes and laid her head down on the book. Truly, she knew that with no one to meet her at Ellis Island,
Aileen very well could end up in one of those horrible places, and as insufferable as that lass was, she did not deserve that.

It was late afternoon when she finished cleaning. As she was wringing out the rags in the scullery’s utility sink, Mrs. Hawkins found her. “Go freshen up, love. We’ll go down and see about your cousin. I’ve ordered a coach to take us to the ferry.”

“Kind of you, Mrs. Hawkins. I could have taken the trolley to Battery Park and caught the ferry myself.”

“Nonsense. She is family, is she not?” Without waiting for an answer, she added, “I would not hear of it. When you’re ready, meet me in the garden. I’ve instructed the driver to wait out back.”

Annie exited the scullery by the back door, a washing-up rag in one hand and a comb in the other. ’Twas the curse of the Irish to have so much hair.

She finished quickly, and soon Mrs. Hawkins and she were on their way. They passed businesses and massive buildings; their function she didn’t know. A few newsboys shouted from street corners, and men in black bowler hats darted periodically across the carriage’s path. It seemed to Annie everyone had a place to go.