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

*

I was deep in thought as I left Terrence Daughtery’s house. I went around the house and tried to find a back alley where a man could have entered. But there was none. The tiny yards backed onto each other. Someone would have had to climb fences to reach the Daughterys’ yard. And the houses faced each other, close enough together that an intruder ran a huge risk of being seen, or of his victim’s screams being heard. Like all the other crimes it made no sense, and I found myself thinking that if there had not been an incriminating note sent to Daniel, I’d have suspected Terrence of getting rid of an overbearing mother. He certainly had the temperament to have snapped after being criticized one time too many. But there was the note claiming responsibility, and I didn’t think that Terrence could have committed the other murders. He’d have lacked the gumption to walk through a crowded café and tip cyanide into a coffee cup, or to have climbed through a judge’s wife’s window and administered arsenic to her.

I started to walk faster and faster as my thoughts tumbled around. Poor old Dolly, whom everyone loved. Simon Grossman was also a likable sort of fellow whom everyone liked. But Dolly needed looking after, and Simon had secret vices. And Terrence adored his mother, but she was overbearing and critical and kept him under her thumb. And the judge’s wife was a semi-invalid. Was it possible that our murderer thought he was doing good deeds and ridding the victims’ dear ones of a burden? It was an intriguing thought, but I couldn’t go along with it. The man who wrote those notes was vicious and arrogant and self-centered. He would not do good deeds. He would not even care how other people felt. If our suspicions were true, he had even made a train plunge to its doom in the hope of killing one person. And according to Daniel, that one person might have been me.

I looked around uneasily and walked a little faster. Was he watching me at this moment? I remembered the feeling of being followed as I made my way to the station to catch that fateful train. I felt no such prickling on the back of my neck now, but it did confirm that my sixth sense did warn me on occasion of imminent danger.

I came out to the bustle of Fifth Avenue just as the skies darkened and plump raindrops spattered down onto the sidewalk. I sighed. I knew I should have returned home for my brolly. Now I’d be well and truly soaked. I darted forward until I came to a portico, jutting out across the sidewalk. Other pedestrians had similar ideas, and we crowded in together as the rain turned into a deluge.

“Stand aside, please, ladies and gentlemen,” a loud voice boomed. “You can’t block the entrance. Our customers must be able to come in and out.”

Through the crowd I saw that he was a military type, wearing some kind of uniform with a lot of braid. I wondered for a moment if we were standing outside a swank hotel, but couldn’t think of one on this stretch of Fifth Avenue. Then someone in front of me shifted and I could see in through the plate-glass windows. A marble floor. Mahogany desks and a counter with pigeonholes along one wall. It was a bank. Obviously a bank with affluent clients, I thought, if they could employ such an imposing doorman.

I wondered if Mabel’s mother’s father owned such a bank, and if Mabel’s father had been one of those serious young men in frock coats who sat at their desks, scribbling away, surreptitiously glancing at the owner’s daughter as she swept past him, not aware of his existence. How had he won her heart? I wondered. Thunder rumbled nearby and there was a flash of lightning, making a child standing close by scream.

“It’s all right, my pet,” a woman said. “It’s only lightning. It can’t hurt us under here.”

I felt as if I’d been hit by a bolt of lightning myself, because I had just realized something. Old Miss Willis had said that her former employer had owned a bank. We had a connection.





Twenty-six

I waited impatiently for Daniel, but he didn’t come home for dinner. I put Liam to bed and read a story with Bridie. Daniel’s dinner was rapidly drying out in the oven, and still he didn’t come. In the end tiredness won out, and I got ready for bed. I was half asleep when I heard the front door shut quietly and then his footsteps creeping up the stairs.

“Not asleep?” he asked, noticing that I hadn’t turned out the gas lamp on the wall.

“I waited up for you,” I said.