In Like Flynn (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #4)

“I'll tell the nurse and she can decide the right way to do it.”


“I think it should come from you, Barney. She’s just lost her mother. She needs to know she can count on her father.”

He sighed. “I suppose you're right, but I never know the right thing to say to children. I was too busy to get to know Brendan and now I've been the same with Eileen. And Theresa always kept her shut away in her own quarters.”

“I expect she wanted to know she was safe,” I suggested.

“Yes,” he said. “I expect that was it.”

“So you'll tell her?”

“I'll try.”

“I'll visit her later this morning, if you like,” I said. “She seems to like me. And at that age they have little concept of tragedy. I remember my own brother Thomas wanting to know if we could still go to the fair the day my mother died.”

Barney managed a smile. “Lucky for them,” he said. “We seem to carry around tragedy with us all the time.”

He trudged back up the stairs like a man carrying a heavy load. I went back to my room, washed and dressed hurriedly One glance in the mirror and I could see what Daniel meant about my appearance. I looked terrible, drawn and haggard—great hollow circles around my eyes, hair plastered to my forehead. Not exactly desirable. I rinsed my hair in the basin and brushed it back. I even wished I had been daring enough to bring rouge to put on my cheeks; at least that might have made me look more human. As I tied back my straggly hair, a chilling thought struck me. Everyone assumed that Theresa had killed herself, but if someone was trying to poison me, had that same person also succeeded in poisoning her?

The question was why. Had I stumbled upon a secret or a piece of knowledge I didn't even realize I possessed? In which case, had Theresa stumbled upon the same piece of knowledge? And why kill her now? I came up with a chilling reply to that one—the alienist. An outsider had come to the house who was about to probe Theresa’s deepest thoughts and fears. He had suggested hypnotizing her, during which she would have no control over what she revealed. And it was Barney who had been so adamantly against hypnosis. I turned to stare out of the window, watching the peaceful river scene outside as I digested this thought. Could Barney have used the advent of the alienist as an excuse to do away with a wife who was no use to him?

I shook my head. I just couldn't believe that. I had been with Barney and his grief and confusion seemed so genuine. If he had masterminded the whole thing, then the man was a brilliant actor. But 1 had to admit that it did seem logical. He had set the scene beautifully—protesting the arrival of Dr. Bimbaum, claiming that Theresa was worse after his session with her and could easily be driven over the edge, then forbidding the hypnotism. I hugged my arms to myself, shivering in early morning chill.

They were not my family, I reminded myself, and yet in my short time there I had become fond of Theresa, and of Barney, too, in a way. And Theresa had come to rely on me. If she had had any suspicions about anyone in the house, she could have shared them with me when we sat reading poetry together.

I felt a wave of weakness and grabbed at the window ledge, sending pigeons flapping from the gutter above my room. Was that it? Did someone fear that Theresa had divulged a secret to me during the time we were alone together? Certainly my cramps and vomiting started immediately after we had spent the day in Theresa’s room. But if someone wanted me dead, why not do a better job of it? Was this method designed to make it look like a natural death and not arouse suspicion—so that I'd get weaker and weaker until the final dose finished me off?

I shivered again. It was almost beyond belief that someone in this house was plotting my death. And yet I had seen evil and insanity before. I had faced murderers and guns and I knew what desperate men would do if threatened. It was just that this quiet country home was so removed from the back streets of New York.

I pulled out my notebook and sat at my desk, trying to harness my racing thoughts.

Baby kidnapped, I wrote. Margie McAlister killed. Molly slowly poisoned. Theresa dead. Four tragic events, the latter three of which would not be investigated as murders. People would say this was a cursed house, and find comparisons with other families who experienced more than their fair share of tragedy. But my year as an investigator had brought me to believe that not much happens by coincidence. If there were four deaths in one place and three of them within a week, then they had to be linked. Most probably there had to be one person behind them. The most logical assumption was that the circumstances surrounding the first of the events, the baby’s kidnapping, led to the next three. And this came back to my next theory—that there was a master planner, a puppeteer behind the kidnapping, and Albert Morell was the puppet.