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

Daniel chuckled. “My wife was not made for drawing room chatter,” he said. He cut himself a large slice of cake and took a bite, nodding with satisfaction.

“What are you doing home so early?” I asked. “Don’t tell me they’ve given you an afternoon off?”

“They haven’t. I came straight from the morgue because I thought you and your friends would want to know.”

“If the talk’s to be about morgues and dead bodies, could you please carry it on in another room?” Mother Sullivan said. “I wish to enjoy my tea.”

“I don’t want to hear about dead bodies either,” Bridie said. “I’ll have nightmares.”

Daniel got up. “Very well. Come along, Molly. Into the study.”

I followed him and he closed the door behind us. “Very interesting autopsy,” he said.

“Of the Hamilton girl’s parents?”

He nodded. “I wangled myself an invitation, since the pathologist is an old friend of mine. Yeats declined to attend. I think he felt it would offend his delicate nature.” He grinned.

“And you found something?”

“It’s not conclusive yet. It will need further testing, but my pathologist friend worked in South America as a young doctor. He thinks the muscle tissue shows evidence of curare having been administered.”

“Curare?” The word meant nothing to me.

“It’s a poison made from vines in South America. The natives tip their arrows with it and fire it at animals they are hunting. It doesn’t kill the animal, but it paralyzes it so that they can dispatch it at their leisure.”

“How horrible. How would anyone get his hands on curare, unless he too had been to South America?”

“I understand that there is some interest in it now among the medical community. Experiments are being done to see if it can be used as a possible anesthetic,” he said.

I stood still, staring past him into the backyard, where the wind was swirling fallen leaves, trying to make sense of this. “So the doctor thinks that someone injected Mabel’s parents with curare, and then set fire to their bedroom?”

“It would seem that way.”

“But that means…” I paused, letting the full horror of this sink in, “that they could have been awake but paralyzed as they were burned to death. That’s monstrous, Daniel.” I put my hand up to my mouth, breathing deeply before I could say the next words. “And it’s all too possible that Mabel witnessed this. No wonder it has driven her to the brink of madness—to watch one’s parents burned, and to know you can do nothing to help them.”

“It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?” he said, looking at me with tender concern.

“Now you have to believe what I suggested—that the man who set the fire is the same one you are seeking,” I said. “To kill in this manner. This man is a fiend and must be stopped.”

“I suppose I must agree that the fiendish nature of these murders might possibly indicate the same man. But I still come back to the absence of a note.”

“Perhaps he did send a note, and it got lost in the mail,” I suggested. “Perhaps he went to post the note at the main post office and noticed your men, watching, and lost his nerve.”

“Then why not have it delivered by hand, as the last two have been?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But one thing makes me very happy. It now doesn’t seem likely that Mabel killed or drugged her parents and set their room on fire. There is no way that a young girl could get her hands on this curare or know how to administer it.”

“Then let’s hope the evidence is conclusive,” Daniel said. “For your sake as well as hers.”

I sank onto the nearest chair as if the burden of all this knowledge was suddenly too much for me. “What happens to Mabel now?” I asked. “Would it be right to try and bring her memory back? Or would the memory of that scene be too much to bear?”

“I’m not an alienist,” he said. “We’d need to get a professional opinion. But if it would help identify a killer, then I’m afraid it would have to be done, whatever the consequences to her sanity might be.”

“Poor child,” I said. “I can’t decide whether it would be better to know the truth or to continue to be haunted by these nightmares.”

“In the end it’s always better to know,” Daniel said. “But we’ll do nothing in a hurry, I promise you that.”

“There is another thing that we can be thankful for,” I said. “It means that this crime is now part of your investigation, doesn’t it? You’ll take over and Lieutenant Yeats will no longer be able to torment Mabel.”

“I expect he’ll still be involved,” Daniel said, “but now working under me.”

“Which means he can’t do anything without your permission. No dragging Mabel off to the Tombs, or even threatening it.”