Time of Fog and Fire: A Molly Murphy Mystery (Molly Murphy Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A

export business. His company has an office in London and one in Havana. He is sometimes gone for months at a time.”
    “Oh, that must be hard for you,” I said. “Can he not take you with him when he travels?”
    She looked away from me then. “I’m afraid I have a delicate constitution. I do not travel well. I get seasick and Wilbur gets impatient with me. So it is easier this way, although I find the loneliness hard to bear.”
    “My husband is also away at the moment,” I said. “I hate to be parted from him, so I understand your feelings.”
    She took my hand. “Do you? I’m so glad I met you this evening. May I be so bold as to invite you to visit me while your husband is away? I don’t live too far from here. Just on Eighth Avenue.”
    “I live close by too,” I said. “On Patchin Place, just off Greenwich Avenue. And I’d be delighted to come and visit.”
    “You’ll bring your child?”
    “I’m afraid he’s eighteen months old and into everything at the moment,” I said.
    “Oh, but it always cheers me to have a lively youngster about the place. Do say you’ll bring him—for tea, maybe?”
    “Very well,” I said.
    Sid came over to join us then. “This is my dear friend Molly Sullivan I was telling you about,” she said and I noticed she had a young man beside her. He was less fashionably dressed than most of the company and looked rather skinny and undernourished. More like the students who frequented Washington Square near my home, in fact. “Molly, this is Richard Graves, who edits a magazine I sometimes write articles for. His magazine is a great champion of the suffrage movement. He is doing a piece on women in a man’s world and I told him that you had run a successful detective agency.”
    “I don’t know about successful,” I said. “I managed to solve cases without getting myself killed.”
    We laughed.
    “I’d be most interested in interviewing you, Mrs. Sullivan,” Mr. Graves said. “I am anxious to show the world that real women are not little wallflowers and violets who must be cosseted, but can handle almost any job as well as a man.”
    “Not quite as well always,” I said. “You try chasing a suspect in tight skirts and pointed little shoes. We are severely hampered both in prejudice and clothing.”
    “Absolutely right!” Sid interjected. “But clothing is designed by men, is it not, to keep up the illusion that women are delicate flowers, and thus to keep them in their place.”
    “Although some like yourself refuse to accept such conditions and conventions,” Mr. Graves said, smiling at Sid, who was wearing a man’s smoking jacket and trousers this evening.
    “Of course. I have never been one to be bound by the rules,” Sid said. “All the more reason I admire someone like Molly, who is the devoted wife and mother and still manages such impressive feats.”
    “Oh really, Sid.” I blushed with embarrassment. “I worked because I had to keep my head above water. Had I been blessed with money I doubt that I should have chosen a career as a detective.”
    Sid smiled. “I can’t picture you ever being content to sit at home and hold tea parties.”
    “Maybe not.”
    Mr. Graves touched my arm lightly. “So may I count on you, Mrs. Sullivan? You could come to my office or I could come to your residence. Whichever is more convenient for you.”
    I was tempted. I suppose I was flattered. But a small warning voice was going off in my head. If Daniel’s bosses were looking for excuses to get rid of him might they not jump on an article like this in which Daniel’s wife his portrayed as a great detective? At the very least he’d take a ribbing that I had been solving his cases for him, and at worst his superiors could claim that he had been improperly involving me in police work.
    “This might not be a good idea,” I said. “You see my husband is a police officer. If there was any suggestion that I had helped him with his cases you can see what