Mrs. O'Malley's Midnight Mystery by M. Louisa Locke

Author:M. Louisa Locke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M. Louisa Locke

CHAPTER 4

Sunday, early morning, October 9, 1881

St. Mary’s Hospital, Rincon Hill

* * *

As Mrs. O’Malley walked out of the front doors of St. Mary’s Hospital, just past five, it was to see the city below blanketed by a thick fog. The grounds of the hospital itself, on Rincon Hill, were clear, but the only features in the rest of the city that she could see were the tips of some of the masts of the ships down at the docks and, as she moved towards First, the tops of Russian, Nob, and Telegraph hills to the north.

She shivered and pulled her shawl around her shoulders, wishing she’d worn her woolen cloak when she came to work last night. She also should have waited for the night porter Jerome this morning. He usually walked down the hill with her, but a new patient had just arrived at the hospital, and he had to help get her up into her room. She never felt easy walking home in a fog, not being able to judge whether the men she passed were simply honest folk trudging off to work or drunks stumbling on their way home.

Mrs. O’Malley hadn’t wanted to wait for Jerome because she wanted to go straight home before she went to early mass at St. Patrick’s on Mission, just in case Patrick McGee stopped by to tell her what he had discovered in his investigations early this morning. Now, seeing the thickness of the fog, she doubted that he had been successful—given that it was probably impossible for someone on the roof of the Union Hotel to be able to make out people walking on the streets below.

“Mrs. O’Malley?”

As if she had conjured him, Patrick McGee appeared out of the fog, looking quite official in his dark navy-blue uniform. He tipped his high-crowned derby and said, “I hoped I would catch you before you started home. I wanted to tell you what happened, but I didn’t think it a good idea to be seen going into your place, not after I had my little official run-in with your three men this morning.”

“Oh, Patrick, you found them?”

The young man nodded and offered his elbow for her to take, quite like she was some fine lady. He did have nice manners.

“Yes, I did, ma’am, although I’m afraid I haven’t learned anything of great importance yet.”

Mrs. O’Malley said, “Was the fog too thick? I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to see anyone, even if the men did show.”

“I did have to abandon my idea of using the Union Hotel rooftop as a look-out. But the fog actually worked in my favor. I was able to stand in a doorway of a shop on the corner of Mission and Beale, and the fog made it pretty much impossible for anyone on the street to see me. When I got there about three, the street was silent as a tomb. Hadn’t been there for more than forty-five minutes when I heard men’s voices, coming from up near Market.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.