The Ghost of Christmas Past by Rhys Bowen

Author:Rhys Bowen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Sixteen

When Daniel and I were finally alone in our bedroom and the children were asleep I sat at the dressing table, brushing out my hair. Daniel came up behind me and stood looking at my reflection in the mirror.

“You’re still a handsome woman, Molly Murphy Sullivan,” he said. He ran his hands over my shoulders and caressed my neck. A shiver went through me. I glanced up at him and smiled.

“That’s more like the girl I married,” he said. “Recently you’ve been looking as if you’ve the weight of the world on your shoulders. So coming here was the right thing to do after all?”

“Maybe it was,” I said. “I think I’ve been wounded in too many ways recently. I just needed time to heal.”

“And now you think you are finally healed?”

“I’m on that path,” I said. “My thoughts are no longer all turned inward. I have that missing child to think about.”

“I wouldn’t get any hopes up about finding her after all this time.” Daniel’s hands still massaged my shoulders.

“I don’t know. Something that was brought up today made me realize there were aspects we haven’t looked into yet.” I swiveled to look at him. “This Henry person that the old lady mistook you for. He obviously used to be a guest here, but doesn’t come anymore? We know the servants were all in the ballroom, having their own party when the child disappeared. But we don’t know if there were guests in the house, just like we are, for Christmas. Why has nobody mentioned them?”

“You are suggesting that one of their guests went off with the child? Rather far-fetched, don’t you think? For one thing they’d be able to give names and addresses to the police and track the person down rapidly, and for another, why would someone who was a guest in their house want to steal their child?”

“I don’t know. Madness? Revenge? The desire for a child of their own?”

Daniel wagged a finger at me. “Molly, if this was suspected, every policeman in New York State would be hunting for the person. They would have been found.”

I thought he was probably right, but I didn’t want to give up so quickly. “Remember that case you were investigating where I was able to help you? The young girl who was having those dreams?” Daniel grunted. I don’t think he liked to admit that I had actually solved something the police had been working on for months. “Remember that unbalanced young man was trying to take the girl with him on a ship? Who knows whether something like that happened to the Van Aikens’ child and she was taken to South America or God knows where?”

“Do you not think that every port would have been notified? Every passenger list checked?”

“They would have traveled under an assumed name.”

“And you do not find it odd that Cedric and Winnie have not mentioned this? Have kept quiet about it all these years? If your friend Augusta ran off with Liam would

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