Bless the Bride (33 page)

“I intended to,” I said. “I was on my way home when he grabbed me.”

“Who grabbed you?”

“Monty Warrington-Chase,” I said. “He committed both the murders, Daniel.”

“Monty? What the deuce did he have to do with Chinatown?”

“Opium addict,” I said. “Lee Sing Tai was blackmailing him and threatening to tell Sarah’s family.”

“He told you all this?”

“I figured most of it out for myself,” I said. “I actually found the piece of paper with his signature on it, but I suppose he must have taken it when I was unconscious.”

“He knocked you out?”

“I think he tried to kill me, but then someone was coming or his conscience got the better of him, and he dumped me in an opium den instead,” I said. “You must stop him, Daniel. He said he was going to the border. That must mean Canada, I suppose.”

“How long ago was this?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it must be several hours. The Chius found me in the street and brought me home with them. I wanted to tell them to find you, but I was so drugged that I couldn’t form any words.”

“I’ll tell the constable outside to get things moving, and I’ll arrange for someone to take you home,” Daniel said. He was gone for a moment, then came striding up to me. “Just a minute. You found the piece of paper with his signature on it? Where did you find this paper?”

“In Lee’s cabinet,” I answered, realizing that I should not have mentioned this fact.

“You went back to Lee’s place?”

“Only because there was a constable standing outside the door, so I knew I’d be safe,” I said. “I hadn’t realized that Monty came in across the roof.”

“Molly, what did I tell you?” Daniel was glaring at me now.

“Two seconds ago you were crying and thanking God I was still alive,” I said. “Now you’re looking at me as if you could kill me.”

“Did it occur to you it’s because I love you?” he said. “If anything happened to you—well, I don’t want to picture life without you. And yet you continue to put yourself in harm’s way.”

“I don’t put myself in harm’s way deliberately,” I said. “Harm’s way just seems to find me.”

“Not any longer,” Daniel said. “If you don’t behave yourself from now on, we’ll go and live with my mother. There. How’s that for a threat.”

“Terrifying,” I said, managing a smile. I took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry about all of this, Daniel. I knew I shouldn’t get involved from the beginning. I thought I was helping, but I wasn’t.”

“I don’t know about that,” Daniel said. “You’ve solved my case for me. We’ll have men watching all border crossings so we’ve a still good chance of catching him.”

“But if he’s taken that signature with him, you’ll have no proof.”

“My dear girl, I told you, I have a nice set of fingerprints on that statue. If Monty’s match—well then. There we are. The courts have never yet allowed us to admit fingerprints as evidence, but they’ll have to soon. And at very least you’ve stopped your friend Sarah from marrying him.”

“Poor Sarah,” I said. “She might really love him. I know how I’d feel it you turned out to be a drug fiend or a murderer.”

Daniel actually laughed. “That’s one thing you can say for me. I’m a straightforward kind of guy. What you see is what you get.”

I looked at him with love in my eyes. “That’s just fine with me,” I said.

*   *   *

I arrived back at Sid and Gus’s to find a beaming Bo Kei with Frederick beside her. He had been released that afternoon and they were already planning what they should do next.

“I will be forever in gratitude, Missie Molly,” Bo Kei said. “You have given me my life and my happiness.”

Well, at least I’d done something right. They were going to go back to Canada where they felt that Chinese people had a better chance of leading normal lives. This made me think of Monty crossing the border. Had the police been too late to catch him? Would the Canadian authorities return him?

We didn’t learn the truth until a few days later. Monty had been apprehended trying to sail out of Montreal on a ship bound for England. He had died of a drug overdose that night, whether intentionally or accidentally we’d never know. Given his position in society, it would have been unlikely that he would have had to face a harsh punishment for the crime of killing Chinese. He might even have walked away a free man. Sarah was with us when Daniel came to tell us the news.

“I’m glad he’s not going to prison,” Sarah said. She sat staring down at her hands, her face betraying no emotion. “I know that addiction causes people to do all kinds of wicked, reckless things. Poor Monty, I believe he tried to tell me about it once, in a subtle way. He said that he’d fallen from his polo pony in India and broken his ribs. The pain had been so great that they’d fed him a constant supply of morphine. I suppose the addiction started then.”

“I think you’re being too kind,” Sid said. “You’re well rid of him, Sarah. Now that you’re no longer engaged we can tell you that we thought him a selfish, arrogant brute who would have made your life miserable.”

“Why didn’t you say this to me before?”

“Because we know that people fall in love with the most unsuitable types,” Gus added. “And if you really were in love with him, it was not up to us to stop you.”

Sarah gave a sad sort of smile. “I don’t think I ever was truly in love with him. I can’t have been because I felt such a sense of relief when I heard he had fled to Canada. And I’m not heartbroken that he died. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’m sure he didn’t love me either. He was only marrying me for my money.”

“That’s the same with Molly and me.” Daniel patted my hand. “I’m only marrying her for her money.”

“So you’re off back to Westchester tomorrow for the final wedding preparations, are you?” Sarah asked.

I nodded. “Final fittings on my dress, that kind of thing. If you think you could bear it, I’d like you to come to the wedding too.”

“I’d like to, if only to see Sid and Gus dressed as bridesmaids.” Sarah managed a smile.

“I’ll have you know that Gus and I will be the most demure and correct bridesmaids in the history of weddings,” Sid said. “You wait until you see us in lavender.”

“I must be going.” Daniel got to his feet. “I only came to tell you the news and I have paperwork to finish tonight if I want to be free to come with you tomorrow to my mother’s. Ladies, I bid you farewell.” And he bowed correctly.

I walked with him to the door. “How is it that you have time to come with me? I thought you were working on a big case you couldn’t tell me about.”

“I was.” He paused. “It is concluded, satisfactorily as far as the commissioner is concerned, in spite of you, Miss Murphy.”

“What did I do?”

“I was ordered by the commissioner to look into corruption in the New York City police—a task I found most repugnant, as you can imagine. Spying on my fellow officers and turning them in. I can tell you, that goes against the grain; but I had no choice in the matter. I obey orders. As you can imagine, a good deal of my attention was focused on the issue of accepting bribes. I was spying on Kear and Bobby Lee when you barged in on me. They were about to conclude a lucrative deal. Luckily I was able to nail him anyway—something I don’t regret too much, as I couldn’t stand the man. The commissioner hopes that a couple of examples like this will put the fear of God into the rest of the force. We shall see. On a policeman’s pay it’s all too easy to accept bribes and sometimes it’s expedient to work on both sides of the law.”

“But you’ll never do that,” I said.

“If I did, you’d never hear about it.” He laughed. Then he took me into his arms and kissed me.

*   *   *

The next day when I went back to Mrs. Sullivan’s house I took little Bridie with me. When I went to Cherry Street to deliver the wedding invitation, Seamus had let me know that he wasn’t planning to attend. Had to be near the docks in case the ship decided to sail, was how he put it, but I got the feeling that he’d feel out of place at a fancy wedding in Westchester County. So he said his good-byes to his daughter and she trotted off with me, holding my hand and scarcely a look back at her father and brother.

To my relief Mrs. Sullivan made her quite welcome, indicating she was pleased to have a flower girl in the bridal procession after all. She set about making a dress for her and was delighted that Bridie proved a quick learner with her needle. “Why she’s better at it than you,” she said, looking up at me with triumph in her eyes. “I think she’ll make a splendid little helper for my maid.”

I was sure she would, but I had other ideas by this time. I took Daniel aside when he came up to see how we were getting along.

“Listen, how would you feel about starting married life with a child in the house?” I asked him.

He looked at me suspiciously. “Are you trying to tell me—because we haven’t … for some time.”

I laughed. “Not ours. I was thinking of Bridie. I’m sure she’d be fine with your mother, but I’m thinking she’d be a grand little helper for me, especially when the babies come, and she could continue her schooling.”

“But my mother’s grown quite fond of her,” he said. “And I think we should get off to a better start with just the two of us on our own. Later when we’re settled, we can discuss it again if you like.”

So now Bridie had people actually fighting over her. I could see that Daniel’s mother liked having someone to look after again, which was just fine with me. I suspected that Bridie would not end up as any maid’s helper. She would be spoiled and would learn to play croquet with the local young ladies.

During the next week I had plenty to occupy me, so that I had no time to think about crime and detection and specifically what had just happened to me in Chinatown. My days were filled with the minutiae of arranging a wedding, from ordering the ham from the butcher to the flowers for the church and the final fittings on my wedding gown. None of it seemed real until I awoke one morning and realized it was my wedding day. I looked out of my window to a perfect blue sky. Mrs. Sullivan had arranged a hearty breakfast, but I couldn’t eat a thing. While I was still toying with my boiled egg Sid and Gus arrived from New York, dressed so conventionally that I hardly recognized them.

We went up to my room and they helped me into my dress. It was all creamy silk and lace, and when I looked at myself in the looking glass, I hardly recognized myself. I was no longer the Irish tomboy—I was an elegant woman, about to be married.

I saw Mrs. Sullivan standing in the doorway, watching me admiring myself. She looked pleased and proud. I went over to her and gave her a hug. “Thank you, it’s wonderful,” I said.

“You look grand,” she said, going quite pink. “I only wish that my dear husband had lived to see this day.”

So wonders would never cease. She actually approved of me. Then a second wonder happened as Sid and Gus came back, having turned into demure young ladies in dresses of lavender silk.

“The carriage has come,” Bridie called, looking out of the window. “And it’s beautiful and it’s got two white horses, like Cinderella.”

In truth I felt like a magic princess. The others went down and I stood alone in the room, still looking at my reflection. In an hour’s time I’d be a married woman, Mrs. Daniel Sullivan. I’d have given up my freedom. I’d no longer be hunting people through Chinatown or the Lower East Side. I’d be expected to behave sedately and do the kind of things wives did. For a second I felt a twinge of panic. Then I thought—was it really such fun to be risking my life on a daily basis, not knowing where my next dollar was coming from? And was Mrs. Daniel Sullivan such a bad thing to be?

“Molly, come on, we’ll be late,” Mrs. Sullivan called from the stairs.

“Coming,” I called and went down to meet my future.

I climbed into the open carriage and we rode to the church, my veil blowing out behind me in the wind. The organ was playing as I went up the path to the church, with Bridie walking ahead of me. The organist switched to the wedding march. There were so many people in the pews, and as all those faces turned toward me, I was suddenly overcome with shyness and self-consciousness until I spotted Daniel. He was standing there by the altar in his dark suit, his unruly hair combed into submission, and he was staring at me with a strange look of wonder on his face, as if he’d just seen me for the first time. And he looked so handsome he almost took my breath away.

“This is the man I’m going to marry,” I whispered and almost had to pinch myself. Mrs. Daniel Sullivan wasn’t a bad thing to be at all.

I started to walk up the aisle toward him, hardly conscious of Bridie ahead of me or Sid and Gus following just behind. As I came close to the altar, Daniel held out his hand to me. His eyes were smiling.

The next bit was something of a blur. Then we were walking down the aisle together, my hand tucked through his arm and people were throwing rice as we stepped out into the bright sunshine.

“Well, Mrs. Sullivan?” Daniel said. “I’ve finally tamed the wild Irish girl.”

“Don’t you believe it.” I laughed.

Then it was back to the house for a magnificent spread of food and toasts and champagne. I had always known that Daniel moved in society, but I was surprised at the number of distinguished people who were attending. Daniel introduced me to aldermen and members of the Four Hundred. Even Mr. John Wilkie, head of the Secret Service with whom Daniel had recently worked, had come up from Washington. Actually I had worked for him too, unbeknownst to my bridegroom!

“So you’re giving up your profession, are you?” he said as he came to congratulate us. “I must say I’m disappointed. Such a waste of talent, Sullivan. I was hoping to recruit her.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Daniel said. “I am delighted I can finally stop worrying about her and know that she’s safely at home.”

The reception line moved on. For a while I had felt like a stranger at my own wedding until I realized that I did know quite a few of the guests. There were several of Daniel’s fellow officers, including my friend and female detective Mrs. Goodwin. I was delighted to see old Miss Van Woekem, the distinguished lady who had taken me under her wing when I first arrived in New York. Sarah Lindley had come, looking rather pale and sad, but giving me a kiss and a brave smile. “It was for the best, wasn’t it?” she whispered to me. I nodded.