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

She handed me the plate of gingerbread and then said, “The police were here. They asked me if anyone might want to harm Dolly. What a terrible thing to say. Everyone loved Dolly. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body.”


I nodded in sympathetic understanding. “You don’t have any unfriendly neighbors who might harbor a grudge? There are some really strange people in the world, aren’t there?”

“Not our neighbors. I’ve known them all my life. Nobody moves much in this part of town. We’re like a little village. Take care of each other. They were all so kind when my mother died, and now Dolly.”

“When you worked as a maid, did you live away from home?” I asked, biting into deliciously moist gingerbread.

“I did. I didn’t really want to leave them, but I wasn’t qualified for anything but domestic service and I was lucky with my employer. I was with Mr. Cornelius for twenty-five years. I saw his younger son born and his poor wife die. I really felt part of that family. We all did. So it came as a shock to leave … not that I didn’t want to come home, but all the same…”

“I thought—the lady at the corner shop told me that you had come into money. That’s why you came home.”

“Well, yes, that’s true,” she said. “Mr. Cornelius did leave me a nice legacy when he died, and I probably would have left my position anyway, but it came as a shock, Mr. Marcus telling me that my services were no longer required. He didn’t put it as bluntly as that, you understand, but he said he was going to have the whole house refurbished and simplify his lifestyle, and he didn’t want so many servants. So he was getting rid of me—me who had looked after him most of his life after his mother died. I can tell you that hurt. Such a selfish, arrogant young man he grew up to be.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It must have been really hard for you, losing your employer and your job.”

“Oh, I’m not complaining,” she said. “I have a tidy little sum from Mr. Cornelius. Mr. Marcus couldn’t take that away from me if he tried. If there was one thing Mr. Cornelius knew, it was how to tie up money properly. Well, he would, wouldn’t he, seeing as he’d been a banker all his life.”

We talked a little about the other dangers I was supposedly writing about—the dangers of electricity, and I told her the story about the woman whose lamp fell into the bathtub and electrocuted her. She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m just glad I’m not raising a family in these troubled times,” she said. “They talk about progress, but it seems to me it just brings more heartache and grief.”

I thought it was time for me to leave and I stood up, placing my cup and plate back on the tray. “You’ve been very kind to give me your time,” I said.

“Not at all,” she said. “The house seems awful quiet without Dolly here. Always singing, she was, in that funny little high voice of hers. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear it.”

She escorted me to the front door. I tried to think if there was anything else I could ask her. I couldn’t imagine that she had pushed her own sister. Neither had anyone else from her neighborhood, apparently. Everyone loved Dolly. The only note of disquiet was Miss Willis’s bitterness at having been cast out by her employers after so many years of service. Mr. Marcus—she had said he was the arrogant one. But surely he could have nothing to do with the death of a simple soul.

“Your former employers,” I said. “They lived in Manhattan?”

“Oh, yes. A fine big house on the Upper East Side. But I heard Mr. Marcus let it out, or sold it, and went to live in the Dakota building in one of those fancy apartments. That’s the way things go, isn’t it? You build a legacy for your children, and they don’t appreciate it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t run his father’s bank into the ground. Never was good with money as a young man. Still, that’s not my concern, is it? Nothing to do with me what he does anymore.”





Twenty-two

“Ah, there you are, just in time for lunch,” Mother Sullivan greeted me as I returned to Patchin Place, hot, tired, and aching. “Had a nice walk? Did you find anything?”

“Find anything?” I looked at her cautiously, wondering what she meant, and whether she had gleaned information from listening in to my chats with Daniel.

“I thought you were on the hunt for more items for the kitchen,” she said. “I mentioned that we could do with a bigger mixing bowl and an egg whisk. It’s too tiring to make a good custard without an egg whisk.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I didn’t go shopping this morning. I don’t really feel up to facing the crowded stores yet. I’m scared I might get bumped into and injure myself further.”

“So where did you go?” she asked, pointedly. “Just out for a walk, was it, because you were gone a long time.”