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

Now I hesitated. If I went up the front steps and knocked at the front door, presumably it would be answered by the doctor’s receptionist, and I’d have to make up an excuse for why I had come. I tried to think of an illness I could feign. Then suddenly I realized I couldn’t do this. When I had been a detective I had been a single woman, alone in the city and living by my wits. Now I was married with a child of my own. Simon had been the apple of his father’s eye. I simply couldn’t question Dr. Grossman about who might have wanted to see him dead. I had no right to open old wounds. I could picture all too well how I would feel if anything terrible had happened to Liam and some inquisitive female came to quiz me about it. I was sure Daniel would have done a thorough job. Surely he’d found out about Simon’s gambling debts and the Italian connection, and he would have already looked into them. But as I’d said to the young men in the café, dropping cyanide into a coffee cup was not their mode of operation. A knife between the ribs as Simon walked home late at night would do the job efficiently, with less risk of being caught. My second theory of a puppet master, making students do his dirty work, seemed more plausible. And I was certain Simon’s parents would know nothing about that.

Having come this far, I really didn’t want to walk away empty-handed. If there was any hint of gossip, the servants would know of it, and I’d found it was usually easier to get servants to talk. I went around the corner to see if there was a servant’s entrance at the back of the house, but could find no other way in. So I was forced to walk away. In truth I was rather disgusted with myself that I had not been able to face Simon’s parents, or even to have questioned a servant. I was becoming soft and sentimental since I’d had a child. I tried to focus my thoughts on the next person on the list. The judge’s wife, poisoned with arsenic. And I realized that I lacked the gumption to go there either. What excuse could I give to a judge to get him to talk about his wife’s death? Men in his position were skilled at sniffing out falsehoods and impostors. He’d see through any lame excuse in a minute, and I could hardly say that I was secretly helping the police to solve his wife’s murder. Judges have connections, and if he complained about me to the commissioner, or another of Daniel’s superiors, my husband would be in more trouble.

So the next person I could possibly question was Terrence Daughtery, the son of the woman who had been electrocuted in her bathtub. That involved a crosstown jitney, still horse-drawn and moving at a snail’s pace. I realized it was quite probable he’d be at work at this hour and I’d be wasting my time, but when I tapped on the door of the unassuming house in Chelsea it was answered by a painfully thin man, pasty-faced and with soulful dark eyes, probably in his thirties or early forties. His hair was already receding, and he was wearing a black mourning suit that made him look even paler. He glanced at me warily.

“Can I help you?” he asked. He had a high, clipped, almost effeminate voice.

I decided to use the magazine ploy again. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr. Daughtery,” I said. “My name is Mrs. Murphy. I work for a women’s magazine, and I’ve been asked to write a piece on the dangers of the modern age, especially the introduction of electricity into the home. I understand that you have recently experienced a tragedy brought about by electricity. I wondered if you’d share your feelings with our readers, and perhaps be able to warn them.”

He continued to stare, trying to size me up. “My feelings?” he said with bitterness in his voice. “What do you imagine my feelings are? I’ve lost the best mother in the world. She sacrificed everything to give me a good education. She took care of me through a long illness. And to die in this way … I still can’t get over the unfairness of it.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I can understand how painful it must be to talk about it. But if we can make one other family aware of the dangers of these newfangled household appliances, then at least some small good will come out if this tragedy, won’t it?”

“I’m not sure that we can blame the lamp or electricity,” he said. He looked up and down the street, then said, “I suppose you’d better come in. Mother would not have approved of chatting on the doorstep like common servants.”

I followed him into a dark and gloomy room. It hadn’t been dusted in a while, and I suspected it was only used for visitors, of whom there had been none recently. I sat on a faded brocade sofa, while he took the armchair by the fire. I noticed he didn’t offer me any refreshment.

“Now,” I continued. “You were just saying that one couldn’t blame the lamp or the electricity for your mother’s death. Am I wrong in thinking that a lamp fell into the bathtub full of water and electrocuted your mother?”

He winced as if I’d struck him. “That is correct,” he said. “But the police indicated that it might not have been an accident. They suggested that an intruder might have done this foul thing, quite deliberately.”

“Killed your mother, you mean? Why?”

He shrugged. “Why indeed? That’s what I’ve been asking myself ever since that awful day. Who would have wanted to kill her?”

“How did someone get into the house while your mother was taking a bath?” I said. “Did she not lock the front door?”

“Always. She was afraid of being alone in the city. She always went to the front door with me as I left for work, stood and waved as I walked down the block, and then went inside and locked the door.”

“So how did an intruder get in?”

Again that wince of pain. “She always opened the bathroom window when she took a bath, otherwise the room steamed up too much. She took a bath regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays, to be ready for church on Sunday, you know. Always at eight o’clock, right after I left for work.”