That Sunday at mass, Una was so nervous she stood when she should have knelt and knelt when she should have sat. She mixed up the “Pater Noster” and “Gloria Patri,” and tripped on the laces of her new boots on her way to communion. But Conor, seated only one pew away, didn’t seem to notice. Seeing him now in the low light that filtered in through the stained-glass windows, she was all the more certain he was the killer. Like always, he waited for her at the base of the church steps when the service was over to walk her home.
“I was worried I wouldn’t see you today,” he said. “Someone said you’d been expelled.”
Even though Una had expected this and practiced her answer, her voice came out thin. “That was Miss Mackinlay. An Ulster Scot by blood, but people were always mistaking her for Irish and mixing the two of us up.”
“So you ain’t been expelled?”
She shook her head with all too much vigor, then tried to make up for it with an over-wide smile. She needed to calm down. This was no different from any other ruse. Never mind that she had only one shot to lay her trap.
“Well, I sure am glad to hear it.”
They walked a short distance in silence, then spoke again at the same time.
“Conor, I—”
“Fine day for—”
Una gave a tittering laugh. “You first.”
“I was going to say it’s a remarkably fine day after that snap of cold we had. How’s about we take the long way by the river?”
“That would be lovely,” she forced herself to say, despite the niggling feeling in her gut.
They stopped in the shade of the overhead el tracks and let a carriage pass before heading on toward the river.
“And you?”
“What? . . . Oh, yes . . . I was . . . I wanted to ask a little favor.”
He flashed her a rakish smile. “Why, anything for you, Miss Kelly.”
“Do you remember when I thought that dowdy old attendant might have killed that woman in the Insane Pavilion?”
His expression cooled. “I thought you’d put that crazy idea out of your head.”
“Yes, I had. Completely. But then I met a woman, a patient, who was terrified of falling asleep at night. Wouldn’t take chloral or even a nip of brandy after supper. When I asked her what she was afraid of, she said she’d heard of another woman, a friend of hers, who’d come to the hospital after taking too much liquor and been strangled in her sleep. Strangled. Just like the woman from the Insane Pavilion.”
“That woman hanged herself.”
“Maybe. They never found the rope or sheet she did it with, remember? And this woman—the patient who refused to sleep—says she thinks the man who killed her friend murdered a third person near the Points.”
Conor took her arm and pulled her to the edge of the sidewalk beneath a storefront awning. His fingers pressed into her flesh, not so hard as to be painful, but certainly beyond the bounds of what could be considered polite or friendly. He looked behind them at the sparsely populated sidewalk and loosened his hold. “Miss Kelly, you shouldn’t pay any mind to such babble. It ain’t becoming of a nurse. Or a lady.”
“But she knows the man, Conor. Says she could identify him.”
He dropped her arm and took a step back. “Did she tell ya who it was?” Una shook her head.
“Why don’t she go to the police?” “She’s too afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“She has a past. Just what she didn’t say. Stealing maybe. Vagrancy. But if she’s right, I could go to the police for her.”
He shook his head and started off again toward the river. Una took a steadying breath, then hurried after him. “Please, I know that doesn’t exactly make her the most trusted of sources, but I have to at least hear her story. What if she’s right and this man hurts someone else?” Out of desperation, she looped an arm through his, resting her hand in the crook of his elbow. It was a risky, intimate gesture, but he didn’t pull away. “I
couldn’t live with myself, Conor, knowing I was responsible for someone else’s death.”
They reached the river, and Conor’s pace slowed. The water lapped at the dock, and seagulls called from above.
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me,” he said.
“She wouldn’t tell me any more at the hospital but said I could come to see her at a lodging house on Baxter Street tonight after she was discharged.” Una kept hold of his arm and donned her best doe-eyed expression. “I don’t know that part of the city very well. I was hoping you’d come along too, just in case her motives aren’t entirely honest.”
He looked away from her, first toward the river, then at the hulking gray hospital less than a block ahead. Una followed his gaze. The wine and wafer she’d taken at mass sat heavy in her empty stomach. Bellevue had seemed so dismal when she’d first arrived. A sleeping stone behemoth that might awaken at any moment and swallow her whole. Now it felt like home. The first real home she’d known since her mother’s death. Would its high brick walls ever welcome her again?
Conor startled her by placing a hand over hers. “Baxter Street, ya say?” She nodded. “Near Grand.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, after dark,” she said.
“And this woman who thinks she’s caught herself a murderer, she’ll be alone?”
“I expect so, yes. Will you come?”
“Aye, I’ll come.” He patted her hand, his faraway gaze sending a prickle over her skin. “You’re too trusting, Miss Kelly. Too trusting by a mile.”
