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

Twenty-one

The next day I meant to begin my own investigation, visiting the victims’ relatives, but when I got up and dressed I realized I just didn’t feel up to facing more public transportation and crossing the bridge to Brooklyn. Daniel went off to work early in the morning and came back at night tired, frustrated, and with little to report. They had been through a list of long-term prisoners who had recently been released from Sing Sing, as well as prisoners who had died in custody, and none of them had been cases that Daniel had investigated. Back to square one.

Sid and Gus came over to report on their search for Dr. Otto Werner—so far without success. Gus said that she had been met with patronization bordering on rudeness from professors at the university medical school. One thought the whole branch of psychiatry had no medical basis or future. Another had no time for women outside the kitchen (or presumably the bedroom, Sid had added). And none of them had met Dr. Otto Werner.

“We must look into learned societies,” Gus said. “Perhaps there is a society dedicated to the study of dreams, or the study of the mind.”

“Quite possible,” I said, “and there are also German clubs in the city. If I were a single man, far from home, I’d want a place where I could speak my own language and eat my own food.”

“Brilliant idea, Molly.” Gus beamed. “And the German consulate. Presumably he’ll have checked in with them. And we should receive a reply from Professor Freud any day now. We just have to be patient.”

Gus sighed. “It’s hard to be patient when a young girl’s life and sanity are at stake. Perhaps I will dare to visit her again, in case she has had a more detailed dream.”

So they had their quest and I had mine. The only piece of positive news was that Lieutenant Yeats had agreed to exhume the bodies of Mabel’s parents, in the hope that he could find out what had killed them.

“I had a talk with him,” Daniel reported, when he arrived home that night. “As you say, he’s a cocky young devil. He thinks he has enough to put the girl in the dock without any autopsy. And the way he told it, Molly, I can see his reasoning. The fire definitely started in the parents’ bedroom. They can’t tell if an overturned lamp caused it. The lamp’s glass was shattered, but then it would have exploded in the fire. It’s possible that some kind of fire starter may have been used, because the area surrounding the parents’ beds burned the most fiercely.”

“How awful. Yeats is suggesting that someone deliberately poured something flammable around their beds?”

Daniel nodded. “Gasoline perhaps. It looks that way.”

“So we’re definitely looking at a murder here?”

“Yeats thinks so. And his other point that your friends might not want to hear is that the parents’ window was open, and the fire escape had been activated. Now the girl’s room was close to the stairs. If the fire had started and she had awoken, smelling smoke or seeing flames, she could have run down the stairs to safety. But we know that she didn’t do that, because the front door was locked. The servants got out through the kitchen door, and they didn’t see her. If Mabel had gone into her parents’ room and seen it already burning, there was no way she could have passed their bed and crossed the room without showing at least some sign of having been in a fire. It might even have been impossible to have reached the window after the fire started.”

“So we have to conclude that she was in her parents’ room before the fire, and that she got out down the fire escape before the fire took hold,” I said.

“That’s what we have to conclude, Molly. I trust your friends are no longer attempting their mumbo jumbo on the girl?”

“It’s not mumbo jumbo,” I said angrily. “Gus trained with the expert on the interpretation of dreams. But she admits herself that this is beyond her capabilities. They have written to Vienna for advice and are trying to trace one of Freud’s fellow doctors who has been in America giving lectures. He was known to be in New York earlier this year. Gus has been asking about him at the university, but with no luck so far. When they receive an answer to their letter, let’s hope we know more.”

“A sad case,” Daniel said. “But it’s not the first time I have seen a young person, an apparently sane and devoted child, calmly murder a parent. Maybe they had forbidden her to do something she liked, and she acted in a fit of anger. Emotions run so high at that stage of life.”

I shook my head. “I still can’t believe it of Mabel. She seems such a gentle, delicate little thing. And if she had caused the fire herself, would she still find the event so traumatic?”