The Edge of Dreams (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #14)

I took a deep breath, because I wasn’t sure I should be telling him. “I went to see Marcus Deveraux this morning,” I said.

A spasm of surprise and annoyance crossed his face. “What made you do that?”

“I had to meet him for myself. To get an impression of him and of his brother.”

“Molly, that was highly irregular. I hope you didn’t say you were working with the police?”

“Hold your horses, Daniel, and don’t scowl like that,” I said. “As it happened I had a perfect excuse. Remember that I told you a man on my train carriage had saved Liam when we fell from the tracks? It was him, Daniel. Marcus Deveraux. He recognized me instantly, and of course I made it appear that I had come to thank him in person.”

“Smart of you.” He nodded approval.

I was about to go on that I had warned him he might be in danger, and that the train crash might have been aimed at killing him, but I thought that might be overstepping things. “And he certainly had no love for his dead brother. I think he actually said that the world was better off without him. He couldn’t think of anybody who might have been close enough to his brother to want to avenge him. According to Marcus he had no friends.”

“Then the answer must lie at the insane asylum,” Daniel said. “It’s possible that he formed a close attachment to another inmate there … maybe one who was due to be released.”

I nodded. “Yes, that would make sense. But are people released from places like that?”

“We’ll have to see, won’t we? It could even be one of his minders, I suppose, but I find that hard to believe. In my experience, people who work in places like that are heartless sort of individuals who don’t want to get close to their charges. And that butcher’s wife certainly fit the bill. Hard as nails, I’d say. I wouldn’t have wanted to be married to her.”

I stared past Daniel and down the hall, thinking. “If someone decided to avenge Edward Deveraux’s death by punishing those who had found him guilty, then they must have believed he was wrongly accused.”

“He may have convinced some unbalanced person of that,” Daniel said, “but there was no question of his guilt. He was alone in the house with his father at that moment, apart from old and reliable servants. If I remember correctly, the servants heard an argument going on, and the father said Edward was a disgrace to the family, or something similar. Then Edward came out of the study with blood all over him and laughed when he said his father was dead. How could he have been innocent?”

I nodded. “Maybe he felt he was justified, if his father had insulted him, or even was planning to send him away somewhere, if he felt Edward was an embarrassment to the family.”

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know now. But it was one of my first cases, and I was keen and determined to do the right thing, and I was in no doubt that he was guilty.” Daniel took another bite of the pie and nodded approval at his mother. “This is good,” he added.





Thirty-one

So we were going to take a trip up the Hudson to a place called Woodstock. Personally I couldn’t see what good it would do. Edward Deveraux had thrown himself from a bridge there many months ago. But the chance to have a day out with my husband was not to be missed. And just possibly, we might learn something that would fill in a still-missing piece of the puzzle. We were in luck. The day dawned bright and clear. Liam waved bye-bye quite happily as we set off. I had expected to depart from Grand Central Terminal, as the Hudson River trains I had taken before left from that station. Instead, Daniel said that we were to take the West Shore Line. The trains were less frequent, but at least we’d be on the right side of the river and not have to take a ferry, which would be dependent on the weather and the whims of the boatman.