The Edge of Dreams (24 page)

“We must look into learned societies,” Gus said. “Perhaps there is a society dedicated to the study of dreams, or the study of the mind.”

“Quite possible,” I said, “and there are also German clubs in the city. If I were a single man, far from home, I’d want a place where I could speak my own language and eat my own food.”

“Brilliant idea, Molly.” Gus beamed. “And the German consulate. Presumably he’ll have checked in with them. And we should receive a reply from Professor Freud any day now. We just have to be patient.”

Gus sighed. “It’s hard to be patient when a young girl’s life and sanity are at stake. Perhaps I will dare to visit her again, in case she has had a more detailed dream.”

So they had their quest and I had mine. The only piece of positive news was that Lieutenant Yeats had agreed to exhume the bodies of Mabel’s parents, in the hope that he could find out what had killed them.

“I had a talk with him,” Daniel reported, when he arrived home that night. “As you say, he’s a cocky young devil. He thinks he has enough to put the girl in the dock without any autopsy. And the way he told it, Molly, I can see his reasoning. The fire definitely started in the parents’ bedroom. They can’t tell if an overturned lamp caused it. The lamp’s glass was shattered, but then it would have exploded in the fire. It’s possible that some kind of fire starter may have been used, because the area surrounding the parents’ beds burned the most fiercely.”

“How awful. Yeats is suggesting that someone deliberately poured something flammable around their beds?”

Daniel nodded. “Gasoline perhaps. It looks that way.”

“So we’re definitely looking at a murder here?”

“Yeats thinks so. And his other point that your friends might not want to hear is that the parents’ window was open, and the fire escape had been activated. Now the girl’s room was close to the stairs. If the fire had started and she had awoken, smelling smoke or seeing flames, she could have run down the stairs to safety. But we know that she didn’t do that, because the front door was locked. The servants got out through the kitchen door, and they didn’t see her. If Mabel had gone into her parents’ room and seen it already burning, there was no way she could have passed their bed and crossed the room without showing at least some sign of having been in a fire. It might even have been impossible to have reached the window after the fire started.”

“So we have to conclude that she was in her parents’ room before the fire, and that she got out down the fire escape before the fire took hold,” I said.

“That’s what we have to conclude, Molly. I trust your friends are no longer attempting their mumbo jumbo on the girl?”

“It’s not mumbo jumbo,” I said angrily. “Gus trained with
the
expert on the interpretation of dreams. But she admits herself that this is beyond her capabilities. They have written to Vienna for advice and are trying to trace one of Freud’s fellow doctors who has been in America giving lectures. He was known to be in New York earlier this year. Gus has been asking about him at the university, but with no luck so far. When they receive an answer to their letter, let’s hope we know more.”

“A sad case,” Daniel said. “But it’s not the first time I have seen a young person, an apparently sane and devoted child, calmly murder a parent. Maybe they had forbidden her to do something she liked, and she acted in a fit of anger. Emotions run so high at that stage of life.”

I shook my head. “I still can’t believe it of Mabel. She seems such a gentle, delicate little thing. And if she had caused the fire herself, would she still find the event so traumatic?”

“She may have regretted it instantly, but it was too late to stop it,” Daniel said. “Young people act so much on impulse. I know I did. Didn’t you?”

I smiled. “I didn’t have much chance to act on impulse in a cottage in Ireland. We were miles from anywhere, and there was nothing worth doing anyway, apart from letting a boy walk me part of the way home from a dance. Besides, by Mabel’s age I had a father and three young brothers to take care of, and that was a full-time job.”

He nodded with understanding. “Anyway, thank God this girl is not your problem,” he added. “And let’s hope that Gus Walcott is sensible enough to know her own limitations.”

“I told you she has admitted the case is beyond her scope and is seeking out an alienist who might have studied the interpretation of dreams. We’ve been recommended a Dr. Otto Werner from Munich who is highly regarded and was known to be in New York earlier this year.”

Daniel stroked his chin. “Otto Werner. That name rings a bell. I’ve come across it recently. He might have testified as an expert witness on some court case I attended.”

“You wouldn’t know where to find him, would you?”

“If he did appear in court, his address would be in the records somewhere. I’ll ask one of the clerks to look it up for you.”

“Thank you. That would be grand. We need something to start going right, don’t we?”

He nodded, staring out past me, through the window at the darkened street. “Although you should realize that bringing in an expert to treat your young girl might not help her cause, Molly.” He turned back to me and held my gaze. “He might be able to prove that she did kill her parents. He might return her to sanity and bring back the full memory of what happened. There are many possible outcomes, not all of them good.”

“I know that. But it’s a risk that has to be taken. Didn’t you yourself say that it’s better to know the truth than to not know?”

“I did.” He got up and walked across to the window, pulled back the lace curtain, and stared out—something I noticed he had done several times since we’d moved back to the house. And I realized that he would never feel completely safe here again, never feel that he could protect his family after what had happened to us.

I went over to him, and ran my hand down his stubbly cheek. “It will be all right, Daniel. We will be all right. Don’t worry.”

He sighed and let me lead him away.

“There is one thing that crossed my mind,” I said tentatively. “The fire was at the beginning of August. Could it possibly be your missing murder?”

“You’re saying the fire was started by an intruder? Isn’t that just grasping at straws to get your girl off the hook? I know you want to think she’s innocent, but…”

“Hold your horses there, Daniel Sullivan.” I put a warning hand on his lapel. “I’m just saying it’s a remarkable coincidence that it fits into your killer’s pattern. It’s something we should consider.”

“I’d need some sort of evidence before I considered it,” he said. “Where was the note? He is a creature of habit, after all.”

“Maybe it got lost in the mail, or it was given to a small boy who failed to deliver it,” I suggested.

“Maybe.” He sighed again. “I wish I could find just one morsel of truth in the case of my note writer. Four months, and I am none the wiser.”

“I’ll start visiting the victims’ relatives tomorrow,” I said. “Maybe something will come to light. And Nuala’s sons may actually find the boy who delivered the notes. We may get a description of your killer.”

Again he stared out past me, as if he was trying to see something in the darkness—maybe that figurative light at the end of the tunnel. “At this moment I’m feeling pretty low. Even if we catch him, he’s such a cunning devil that we’d have a tough time pinning any of the crimes on him.”

“He’ll make one mistake in the end,” I said. “They always do. You’ve always said that yourself, haven’t you? He’s so cocky that he won’t be as careful. Like using an urchin to deliver his note. We’ll find the right boy and get a good description.”

Daniel looked at my face and managed a weak smile. “I’m glad you’re so optimistic, Molly. You need optimism for both of us at this moment.”

I didn’t tell him that I was no more optimistic than he, but just clinging to shreds of hope that some good would come from my own plans.

*   *   *

The next morning I awoke early, resolved to tackle the first names on Daniel’s list of victims’ relatives that day. On the trolley over the Brooklyn Bridge, I tried to come up with a good reason to give for my visit, one that wouldn’t link me to Daniel. I decided I was working for a ladies’ magazine, doing an article on the dangers of electric trolleys. I alighted from just such a vehicle, and watched a large lady with a shopping basket over her arm have to sprint across the street as the trolley I had been riding took off again, ringing its bell furiously.

I stood on the sidewalk and opened my list of fatalities again to check the address:

May 10. Dolly Willis. 285 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn. (Feebleminded woman of 62. Lived with her sister. Pushed into the path of a speeding trolley.)

Note said: “Trolley and Dolly rhyme. A fitting end this time.”

One thing that struck me now was that the murderer knew her name. Had he only learned it when someone in the crowd peered down at her body and exclaimed, “Why, that’s Dolly Willis!”? Or had he known it all along, meaning that this wasn’t a random killing after all? For some reason, had Dolly Willis had to die?

When I had studied the list in my bedroom the night before, it had come to me what an enigmatic individual we were dealing with. In almost every case I’d handled during my life as a detective, some pattern had started to emerge—a method of killing, a motive, even a time of day or a place. Here there was nothing. No clue, no link. Just notes addressed to
Captain Daniel Sullivan
. I continued along the street until I stood across from Dolly’s house. It was a small wooden structure, like the rest of the houses on the block. It looked as if it could do with a good coat of paint, but was otherwise a nice enough little place. As I watched, a trolley passed, going rather fast, followed by a carriage and an automobile. Dolly had indeed lived on a dangerous street. It struck me that Molly also rhymed with trolley, as he had written on the note.

Had he killed people in ways that rhymed?
I wondered. But I couldn’t make anything of Simon and cyanide or Marie and arsenic so I quickly abandoned that theory. I did, however, look very carefully both ways before I crossed the street myself. The idea that I had been the intended target in the train crash was still at the back of my mind. Maybe the murderer had been shadowing me ever since, waiting for the right moment. Then I told myself that this was foolish. He could have brushed against me and stabbed me on crowded Fulton Street yesterday. He could even have come in through my open bedroom window and … I stopped, shuddering at the thought, and pushed it from my mind.

On the corner, two houses from where Dolly had lived, was a small general store. I decided I might do well to glean some information before I visited Dolly’s sister. I went in and asked for a pad of writing paper. The woman behind the counter smiled as she handed it to me. “Pleasant day for this time of year, isn’t it?” she said.

“It is indeed,” I replied. “Sometimes I think that fall is the best time in this part of the world.”

“You’re not from here yourself, I can tell,” she said.

“No. I’ve been in the city nearly five years now. And yourself?”

“Born in Germany but brought over here as a baby,” she said. “It’s a good life compared to what we left, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I said. “If you can just stay out of the way of those trolleys zooming up and down your street.”

“Aren’t they the very devil himself,” she said. “We had an old lady knocked down by one of them this spring. Knocked down and killed, she was, and a sweet old thing that never said a wrong word in her life.”

“I read about it in the paper,” I said. “Wasn’t she a bit mentally defective?”

“Simple, she was. Not crazy, just simple. Mind like a child. Easily led. But always had a big smile when you spoke to her. Her sister used to send her out to do the errands, and she’d hand me a piece of paper with the shopping list on it. Couldn’t read, you see.” She gave me a conspiratorial smile. “I’d sometimes slip a candy or two into her bag. She was very fond of her candy.”

The shop was still empty. I leaned closer. “There was some talk that she didn’t step out in front of the trolley, she was pushed.”

The woman shook her head. “That’s what I heard too. But who would do a thing like that? Only maybe if someone was in a hurry and jostling to get to the front of the crowd. Leastways I never heard that anyone saw anything. Only the poor dear woman lurching forward, right under the wheels of that trolley. I heard the screams and looked up, and by then it was all over, of course.”

“You didn’t see anyone running away or acting strangely, then?”

She shook her head. “I did not. They were all clustered around her, trying to help her, but of course it was too late. I heard one man say ‘Let me through, I’m a doctor.’ But he couldn’t do anything.”

“Her sister must have been devastated,” I said.

“She was. Still is, poor dear. They were so close, those two—Dolly just worshipped her sister. Relied on her for everything. And now poor Miss Willis is all alone. I feel so bad for her when she comes in here, lingering on to talk to me because she’s nobody else to talk to. Gave up everything for that sister of hers—had a good job, you know. Well treated, with a fine family.”

“Really?” I said.

“Oh, yes. An influential family in Manhattan. She was head parlor maid there. Then she came into some money, and left the job to look after her mother and sister.”

I might have stayed longer, but several customers entered at once, so I thanked the shopkeeper and left. Not that I had learned anything from our little chat, I thought. Maybe I was rusty and needed to ask better questions.

I paused outside Miss Willis’s house and took a deep breath. It had been a while since I’d been a detective, prying into other people’s secrets, and it’s amazing how soon one gets out of practice. I repeated my opening remarks to myself in my head before I knocked on the door.

It was opened by a middle-aged woman with a colorless face, her hair, streaked with gray, was drawn back in a severe bun. She was dressed in black and she looked warily at me.

“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked.