“I’m not saying you should do either, Mr. Lynch, although I think we could make a good case in court for a share of Lydia’s money. But Emily has suffered from loneliness all her life and so have you. I thought maybe you might find that you could be solace for each other. You could at least give it a try.”
He crossed the room and stared at himself in the mirror above the fireplace. “I’m an old man, Miss Murphy. Set in my ways. What you’re asking goes too much against the grain.”
“Then at least start by making her a small allowance so that she doesn’t have to live in one room in a seedy boarding house.”
“Is that what she does?”
“She has a job but the pay isn’t wonderful and it’s hard for a woman alone to find somewhere respectable and safe to live.”
“And a young man?” he asked. “Does she have a young man?”
“She does, but he is also struggling to make his way in the world. He is apprenticed to a druggist and learning that profession. I understand he’s very smart and ambitious. Rather like yourself at the same age, I suspect.”
“I see,” he said. “You’ll now tell her everything you told me, I suppose?”
“Unless you’d like to tell her yourself.”
“I don’t think I could bring myself to do that.”
“Then I’ll tell her.”
“She’ll hate me, won’t she?”
“I don’t think she’s brimming over with love for you at the moment,” I said, and he laughed.
“You’re a rum one, Miss Murphy. And you’ve got guts, I’ll say that for you.”
“So may I tell her to call on you if she wants to?”
“I suppose so,” he said at length.
Twenty-four
One case closed most satisfactorily, I said to myself as I left Horace Lynch. I like it when the threads all tie up neatly. And if all went well, Emily and Horace might find some companionship. I wanted to go straight to Emily and tell her the truth, but of course she’d be spending the rest of the day with Ned and his mother. How wonderful it would be for them if Horace Lynch did decide to give her some of her mother’s money. Ned would have the funds to start his own company and Emily could work at his side. The perfect match, in fact, rather like Daniel and me.
I had two strands of Dorcas’s hair wrapped in my handkerchief, so I went straight to Daniel’s apartment, hoping he might be there. But he wasn’t.
“Called into work early, he was,” Mrs. O’Shea said. “They never give that poor man a moment’s peace. I tell you, Miss Murphy, if you marry that one you won’t be in for a quiet life.”
“I’d find a quiet life rather boring, I suspect,” I said with a smile. “And how are your children, still sick?”
“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” she said. “They went through chicken pox and now the doctor says it’s ringworm. Still, he’s given us the medicine to treat it and let’s hope that will be the end of it.”
I went up to his rooms and left the hairs in an envelope on his desk with a note about where they came from. Then I had the whole of an afternoon ahead of me. And a beautiful afternoon it was too—bright, warm, just the right kind of day for a stroll in the park, or even a row on the lake. Of course these activities would be no fun alone. I walked along Twenty-third until I came to Madison Square. The little park was looking lovely and I sat on a bench for a while, enjoying the sun on my face and watching children play.
I should put my work to one side today and just enjoy myself, I thought. I’ve concluded one case and the other—well, perhaps the other was never a crime in the first place. But I found I couldn’t let it go. Too many coincidences, for one thing. Fanny falling sick right after she asked me to snoop on her wandering husband and announced plans to divorce him. Dorcas falling sick after a visit to Fanny. Honoria falling sick after a visit to Dorcas. All three could have been the flu, of course, and I would have been prepared to believe that if someone hadn’t tried to run me down with that carriage, and snooped inside my house.
We could wait and see if Daniel and Ned turned up any arsenic in Dorcas’s hair, or in the