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

“Only the two servants who escaped. They were in a pretty bad way and we had them taken to St. Vincent’s.”


“But nobody else, maybe running away from the fire, or hanging around, watching it?”

They looked at me strangely then.

“You always get a crowd watching a fire,” the first one said. “But running away? Are you trying to suggest the fire was started on purpose?”

“Isn’t that possible? Didn’t you say the flames were unnaturally fierce?”

He sucked in through his teeth. “Yeah. Maybe. But to answer your earlier question. When we’re on our way to a fire, that’s all we’re thinking about. Horses at a flat-out gallop. Ringing that bell like crazy and the blood pounding in your head. You don’t have time to notice anything else.”

That pretty much summed it up. They wouldn’t have had time to notice any clues. I could go to the ruins of the house myself, I supposed. But I doubted I would find anything there to show who might have started that fire. I remembered the ruins of my own house, and how it was impossible to find anything among the rubble. The only thing I had learned was that the firemen had had to carry Mabel out of the back garden in a hurry, as the bushes were already starting to burn. If she had killed her parents and started a fire, would she have stayed where she would also be in danger of being burned?

I was halfway down Patchin Place when something the fireman had said struck me. The fire had been at the beginning of August. It couldn’t possibly be Daniel’s missing murder, could it? I toyed with this notion all the way home. If only I could somehow prove that the crime was carried out by an intruder, then I could save Mabel. I wasn’t at all sure how I could do this, but I’d give it a darned good try!

Now that I had some small campaign plan, I felt better as I went into the house. Mother Sullivan looked up from the kitchen table, her apron and hands covered in flour.

“Ah, there you are,” she said. “I became worried when you were gone so long.”

“We met an old friend who is sailing home to Germany this week,” I said.

“To Germany? My, but you have an assortment of diverse friends.”

“He’s a doctor I met during my detective work,” I said. “A doctor of the mind. An alienist.”

“Really?” She brushed flour from her apron. “Too bad he’s sailing for home, or he could have helped those friends of yours with their problem.”

Sometimes she was rather too astute.

“Whatever you’re baking smells wonderful,” I said.

“It’s just a few more jam tarts, since they seem to be Liam’s favorites.” She smiled at him. “Not that he can really eat them yet, but he does love sucking out the jam.”

I put Liam into his high chair and mashed some carrots for his meal. Bridie begged to feed them to him, so I took the opportunity to slip across the street to Gus and Sid. I found Sid at the stove, cooking feverishly, while Gus was surrounded by textbooks in the German language.

“Drat and blast,” she was saying as I came into the kitchen, “what does gewalt mean again? I know wald is forest, but I don’t see how a forest fits into this sentence.”

“I’ll look it up for you.” Sid went over to an enormous dictionary. “Really, German is such an annoying language,” she said as she flicked through pages. “Too many words. Here we are. Gewalt. Violence. Force.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.” Gus looked up at me and smiled. “I’m trying to continue my studies, but it’s not easy because all of the books are in German. Any luck with your doctor?”

“I found him, but he’s returning to Germany in two days,” I said.

“How frustrating. So near and yet so far,” Gus said. “Did he have any advice for us?”

“He said the snake image might just be the universal monster of our nightmares, the embodiment of her fear that night, and he warned against trying to read too much into Mabel’s dreams. He also stressed that she needs the help of a trained alienist if she is suffering from amnesia.”

“We know that,” Gus said testily. “But the question is where to find one.”

“He did mention the name of a German doctor who had been working with Freud but came over here earlier this year. A Dr. Otto Werner.”

Gus looked at Sid with an excited expression on her face. “We heard that name, didn’t we? Do you remember at that little wine cellar, someone said it was too bad we weren’t in New York, or we could have entertained Dr. Werner while he was visiting America. They spoke highly of him. He’s supposed to be brilliant. Did your doctor know where we might find him?”