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

I stood on the sidewalk and opened my list of fatalities again to check the address:

May 10. Dolly Willis. 285 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn. (Feebleminded woman of 62. Lived with her sister. Pushed into the path of a speeding trolley.)

Note said: “Trolley and Dolly rhyme. A fitting end this time.”

One thing that struck me now was that the murderer knew her name. Had he only learned it when someone in the crowd peered down at her body and exclaimed, “Why, that’s Dolly Willis!”? Or had he known it all along, meaning that this wasn’t a random killing after all? For some reason, had Dolly Willis had to die?

When I had studied the list in my bedroom the night before, it had come to me what an enigmatic individual we were dealing with. In almost every case I’d handled during my life as a detective, some pattern had started to emerge—a method of killing, a motive, even a time of day or a place. Here there was nothing. No clue, no link. Just notes addressed to Captain Daniel Sullivan. I continued along the street until I stood across from Dolly’s house. It was a small wooden structure, like the rest of the houses on the block. It looked as if it could do with a good coat of paint, but was otherwise a nice enough little place. As I watched, a trolley passed, going rather fast, followed by a carriage and an automobile. Dolly had indeed lived on a dangerous street. It struck me that Molly also rhymed with trolley, as he had written on the note.

Had he killed people in ways that rhymed? I wondered. But I couldn’t make anything of Simon and cyanide or Marie and arsenic so I quickly abandoned that theory. I did, however, look very carefully both ways before I crossed the street myself. The idea that I had been the intended target in the train crash was still at the back of my mind. Maybe the murderer had been shadowing me ever since, waiting for the right moment. Then I told myself that this was foolish. He could have brushed against me and stabbed me on crowded Fulton Street yesterday. He could even have come in through my open bedroom window and … I stopped, shuddering at the thought, and pushed it from my mind.

On the corner, two houses from where Dolly had lived, was a small general store. I decided I might do well to glean some information before I visited Dolly’s sister. I went in and asked for a pad of writing paper. The woman behind the counter smiled as she handed it to me. “Pleasant day for this time of year, isn’t it?” she said.

“It is indeed,” I replied. “Sometimes I think that fall is the best time in this part of the world.”

“You’re not from here yourself, I can tell,” she said.

“No. I’ve been in the city nearly five years now. And yourself?”

“Born in Germany but brought over here as a baby,” she said. “It’s a good life compared to what we left, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said. “If you can just stay out of the way of those trolleys zooming up and down your street.”

“Aren’t they the very devil himself,” she said. “We had an old lady knocked down by one of them this spring. Knocked down and killed, she was, and a sweet old thing that never said a wrong word in her life.”

“I read about it in the paper,” I said. “Wasn’t she a bit mentally defective?”

“Simple, she was. Not crazy, just simple. Mind like a child. Easily led. But always had a big smile when you spoke to her. Her sister used to send her out to do the errands, and she’d hand me a piece of paper with the shopping list on it. Couldn’t read, you see.” She gave me a conspiratorial smile. “I’d sometimes slip a candy or two into her bag. She was very fond of her candy.”

The shop was still empty. I leaned closer. “There was some talk that she didn’t step out in front of the trolley, she was pushed.”

The woman shook her head. “That’s what I heard too. But who would do a thing like that? Only maybe if someone was in a hurry and jostling to get to the front of the crowd. Leastways I never heard that anyone saw anything. Only the poor dear woman lurching forward, right under the wheels of that trolley. I heard the screams and looked up, and by then it was all over, of course.”

“You didn’t see anyone running away or acting strangely, then?”

She shook her head. “I did not. They were all clustered around her, trying to help her, but of course it was too late. I heard one man say ‘Let me through, I’m a doctor.’ But he couldn’t do anything.”

“Her sister must have been devastated,” I said.

“She was. Still is, poor dear. They were so close, those two—Dolly just worshipped her sister. Relied on her for everything. And now poor Miss Willis is all alone. I feel so bad for her when she comes in here, lingering on to talk to me because she’s nobody else to talk to. Gave up everything for that sister of hers—had a good job, you know. Well treated, with a fine family.”

“Really?” I said.