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

I couldn’t think of anything else he might do for me, but I promised I’d call on him if I was in need. I watched him swagger off with a whole dollar in his pocket. Then I continued on my way to Washington Square. Was it significant that the person who had paid the urchin to deliver a note had looked like a student? Perhaps there was a connection to the university after all. Then I had a thought that pricked my balloon of optimism. The man Daniel was seeking was clever and cocky. The student had probably only been one in a chain of delivery boys. The writer of the note had probably paid the student to deliver it. The student had gotten cold feet as he approached police headquarters and decided to pay a street child to do his dirty work instead. I was no nearer to the truth.

I stood looking across Washington Square, where students stood in clusters or headed to class, books tucked earnestly under their arms, and my gaze fell onto Fritz’s café. The person who paid a street boy to deliver the note to police headquarters had been young, and skinny, and looked like a student. A student—responsible for such diverse crimes? It didn’t make sense. I toyed with what I had suggested before, that some kind of secret society, a modern-day Hellfire Club, was responsible for the killings. Somehow I couldn’t make myself believe it. Then I decided on a more plausible explanation. Students are always hard up. Some, like Simon Grossman, have run up gambling debts they can’t tell their parents about. Maybe there was a puppet master responsible for these crimes, paying a student, or students, to do his bidding. And Simon, essentially honorable, had refused and threatened to go to the police, and had been silenced with cyanide.

I looked up as spatters of rain fell onto me. I realized I should have brought a brolly with me, but I wasn’t going to waste time going home now. I was energized by the thought of having something positive to tell Daniel. And I’d also mention my earlier visit to Fritz’s café, where it was hinted that Simon had run afoul of Italians with his gambling debts.

So I ignored the threat of rain and was passing the fire station when I heard someone calling me. It was Abe, one of the firemen.

“You were the lady who asked me about the fire on Eleventh Street,” he said. “You asked if there was anything strange or unusual. Well, I thought about it, and I remembered something. The little girl had something in her hand when I saw her carried away.”

“What sort of something?” I asked.

“Paper,” he said. “A piece of paper.”

“And what happened to it?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. The whole roof fell in just about then and I had no time to think.”

My heart beat faster. Was it possible there had been a note after all, clutched in the sleeping girl’s hand? I thanked him, and instead of going to the El station I walked up Sixth Avenue to Eleventh Street. The skeleton of Mabel’s burned house was a sorry sight. Two blackened box trees outside what had once been front steps leading to a front door. The rest was little more than a pile of rubble. I tried to pick my way around, but realized this was too much for me. I couldn’t risk falling again in my present condition. But I would tell Daniel when I saw him that there might, indeed, have been a note.

So I resumed my former mission and went across to catch the Third Avenue El up to Thirty-second Street, where Simon Grossman had lived with his parents. It was in the respectable Murray Hill neighborhood and the house itself was a pleasant brownstone, like the others in the block, but was distinguished by having a brass plate beside the door, advertising L. Grossman, Physician.