The Edge of Dreams (Molly Murphy Mysteries Book 14) Page 14

  I lay back and tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come and my head throbbed. So I got up and held a hot washcloth to my temples. I actually felt better when I was up and moving around, so I dressed and went downstairs to find Bridie and Liam rolling a ball to each other down the length of the hallway. “Ba!” Liam said excitedly. “Ba!”

  It seems he was learning new words almost every day now, and I beamed at him with pride.

  “Yes, it’s a ball, isn’t it? You like playing with Bridie, don’t you?”

  “Ba!” Liam said again, impatient for her to roll the ball back to him.

  How nice it would be to be a child again, I thought. Not a care in the world except playing, eating, and sleeping. Then I remembered that Mabel was little more than a child, and she carried a terrible burden around with her. I wondered if she would ever be free of it.

  Mrs. Sullivan looked up from the kitchen, her hands and apron white with flour. “I thought I’d make a stew and dumplings today. It was always one of Daniel’s favorites.” Then a frown crossed her face. “But what are you doing out of bed? Daniel said you were supposed to rest and do nothing until you recovered from the accident.”

  “I feel better when I’m up than when I was lying down,” I said. “Can I help?”

  “No, you cannot. You go through to the parlor and put your feet up. All that rushing around and excitement yesterday was clearly too much for you. Fires and murder, indeed. I never let my husband bring his work home with him. If he ever tried to mention a case he was working on, he got a black look from me, and he hushed up again quickly.”

  “But I enjoy discussing Daniel’s work with him,” I said. “Remember I was a detective myself once. I might even be able to offer him some insight when he’s dealing with a difficult case.”

  “You’ve a young child to think about now,” she said, glancing at Liam chasing the ball. “Do you want him to grow up thinking that the world is full of murders and crimes? He’s a right to think that the world is a safe and lovely place. It’s up to a mother to create that kind of haven for her children.”

  She was right, of course. I certainly didn’t want Liam growing up thinking that the world was full of danger. But then he’d been in danger himself already and didn’t seem any the worse for it. Certainly no sign of the sort of bad dreams Mabel was experiencing. But I did take Mrs. Sullivan’s point. From now on, any discussion of Daniel’s cases would be when Liam was safely in bed.

  My headache lingered through most of the morning, even after I’d drunk a cup of coffee. I had a suspicion that Sid’s strong Turkish coffee might well do the trick. Normally I could hardly bear to swallow it, and the spoon almost stood upright in the cup, but today I needed it. However Mother Sullivan was so adamant that I lie and rest that I didn’t want to risk creating a scene and incurring Daniel’s wrath when he came home. I suppose I must have become meeker since my marriage.

  I didn’t feel like reading, and I never felt like sewing. I couldn’t even concentrate on the list of things I needed to buy for the house, as Mabel’s and Daniel’s cases kept flashing through my mind. I was dying to get out and do something. I wondered if anyone had spoken to the firemen who were called on the night Mabel’s parents died. Might they have seen anything strange? Since Mabel’s parents’ house had only been on Eleventh Street, and thus within easy walking distance of my home, the fire engine would probably have come from the Jefferson Market fire station, at the bottom of Patchin Place. And nobody could object to my stretching my legs that far.

  I had just moved on to Daniel’s case and was going through the list of victims again, trying to find anything they had in common, when to my delight, I heard a door slamming across the street and saw Sid and Gus heading in my direction. My mother-in-law responded to the knock on the front door and I heard her say, “No visitors today, I’m afraid. She overdid things yesterday and isn’t feeling at all well.”

  That was too much for me. I got up from the sofa and went to the door. “That doesn’t include my friends, Mother Sullivan. What I need now is cheering up, and I’m sure they can do just that. Do we have any coffee left in the pot?”

  She shot me an angry look, but she let Sid and Gus come in and stalked off to the kitchen.

  “Not what you’d call a warm welcome,” Sid said in a low voice. “Is she really banning all visitors, or is it just we who are persona non grata? I have the feeling she disapproves of us.”

  “She was just doing what she thought was best for me,” I said, just in case she was listening. “I really didn’t feel well this morning. I also had a horrible dream last night. Maybe Gus can interpret it for me. I’ve actually had it a couple of times before.”

  “When did you start having it?” Gus asked.

  “After the accident. When I was lying in the hospital.”

  “So it’s not a long-term problem you’ve been dealing with.”

  “No.” I took a deep breath, making myself recall the details of the dream. “I’m lying in a dark, confined space, and I can hear water dripping and there is a horrible rumbling all around me, and I know I have to get out before it’s too late.”

  Gus looked at me and smiled. “I don’t think that one is too hard to interpret, Molly. You were in a train crash. Didn’t you say you passed out and when you came to your senses there were people lying on top of you? And I’m sure the rumbling was the motor of the train still running nearby. You’re just reliving a moment of great terror, the way Mabel is.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, “although in my dream it feels as if I’m underground, and I can’t breathe properly.”

  “You were buried under bodies in the train, so your brain is playing with the notion of being buried,” Gus said. “Now, what I want you to do, the next time you dream it, is to take control of it. Visualize a square of light in one corner and say to yourself, ‘Why, there is a way out after all.’”

  “One can really do that in a dream?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes. And it’s very effective. If you wake up after the nightmare, you make yourself go back to sleep, fall back into the dream, only this time you make it have a positive outcome. You face the monster. You stop the horse from running away with you. I’m told it really does work.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “And of course it would make sense that I’m dreaming about my terror in the train crash.”

  “And you know you have to get out in a hurry because the car is hanging over the edge and might fall,” Sid said.

  “You’re right.” I beamed at both of them. “I feel so much better now.”

  We looked up as Mrs. Sullivan came in carrying a tray with coffee cups and cookies.

  “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Sullivan,” Gus said. “But you should have called us. There was no need for you to carry it through yourself.”

  “Oh, it was no trouble,” she said as she put the tray down on the low table.

  “Won’t you come and join us?” I asked.

  “No, thank you, dear. I’ve the lunch to prepare and I want young Bridie to keep up with her lessons. I’ve set her some arithmetic to do. She’s not too keen on long division.”

  “We’d be happy to help with Bridie’s lessons, wouldn’t we, Sid?” Gus asked.

  “No, thank you kindly. I’d rather do it myself,” My mother-in-law said quickly. And she made a hasty retreat. Sid and Gus looked at each other and started to laugh.

  “Obviously we’d be a corrupting influence on young Bridie,” Sid muttered. She looked around. “So where is the divine Liam today?”

  “Just went down for his morning nap,” I said. “He’s been playing so hard with Bridie that for once he was exhausted. Otherwise he resists naps these days.”

  “We were considering going back to see Mabel Hamilton today,” Gus said, “and we wondered if you wanted to come with us. But, given the circumstances, you’d better not go anywhere today. We’ll have to report back to you.”

  “Do you think Mabel will want to see you again so soon
?” I asked. “She became so agitated yesterday. Will she be prepared to discuss her dreams this time?”

  “Maybe not,” Gus said. “But she might have dreamed again last night and written it down. I also wanted to pursue what she said about sleepwalking. That might be significant.”

  Sid looked at me as she put down her coffee cup. “Yesterday you started to ask her something about sleepwalking, Molly. What were you going to say?”

  “I was about to suggest that she might have gone into her parents’ room and knocked over a lamp in her sleep, or even tried to light the gas, and, being asleep, when something went wrong and flames shot up, she’d gotten out down the fire escape without waking.” Then I shook my head. “But that’s not possible, is it? She’d wake if she saw flames.”

  “I suppose it might be possible,” Gus said. “If she is prone to episodes of deep sleepwalking. I gather such sufferers can do amazing things without waking. But that still doesn’t explain why her parents didn’t leap up immediately once they were conscious of the flames.”

  “I thought of that too,” I said. “And also, I didn’t want to lay an additional burden on Mabel by suggesting she might have caused the fire in her sleep. But I’m as curious as you are about why the parents didn’t escape. Something must have prevented them. And if they were found in their beds, it really does suggest that someone had drugged them or even killed them first.”

  Gus sighed. “So you are really in agreement with that beastly detective, and believe that Mabel killed her parents and then started the fire to cover up her deed?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “We have to examine the possibility that somebody else killed her parents.”

  “But there were only two maids and a cook in the house, and one of them also was killed in the fire. The other two were burned.”

  “Then we have to consider an intruder,” I said. “Daniel says he’ll try to suggest that the bodies should be exhumed and an autopsy take place. But you could do something for me if you go to see Mabel today—you could find out her father’s profession. Whether he had any known enemies, or feuds within the family. Ask tactfully, please, but we need to know whether Mrs. Hamilton suspects that someone had a reason to see Mabel’s parents dead.”

  Sid looked up excitedly as she put down her coffee cup. “So what you are suggesting is that Mabel might have witnessed her parents’ murder. And what she saw was so horrible that she has shut the memories of it deep inside her head?”

  “I am considering that it could be a possibility,” I said.

  “The snake.” Sid looked at Gus. “Is it possible she really did see a snake? Someone brought a poisonous snake into the room and induced it to bite both parents?”

  “How horrible.” Gus shivered. “Can snakes be trained to bite on command? Wouldn’t the parents have woken and cried out if a great snake had struck at them?”

  “If someone else was in the room,” I began, trying to picture the scene, “he could have repositioned their bodies in their beds before he set the room on fire.”

  “But that leaves another question,” Sid said. “If Mabel saw this, why didn’t he kill her too?”

  “He didn’t see her,” Gus suggested. “She tiptoed away and escaped down the fire escape. Perhaps she feigned sleep so he wouldn’t harm her. Perhaps she really passed out with terror.”

  I looked at Gus and nodded. “That sounds possible,” I said. “And I had another idea. I wonder if anybody ever questioned the firemen. Did they see anybody running away? Or anything else they thought of as unusual?”

  “When firemen are summoned to a fire, Molly, their one thought is to put it out,” Sid said. “They don’t automatically play detective like you. If someone was hiding in the bushes or walking away casually down the street, or even standing there watching the flames, they’d never have noticed.”

  “You’re probably right.” I sighed. “But all the same, I think I’ll go and talk to them. Just in case.”

  Sixteen

  I thought about taking a walk to the fire station, or even seeing if I felt up to taking Bridie to see her relatives, but my mother-in-law was adamant that I should not move all day. I was fed my lunch and sent back to bed. Sid and Gus returned later that afternoon, just as I was waking from a nap. I heard thunderous knocking on the front door, then Sid’s voice and my mother-in-law saying in a firm and disapproving voice, “She’s asleep. I’m afraid you’ll have to come back later.”

  I tried to sit up and get out of bed rapidly, but these were things that still could not be done in a hurry without a good deal of pain. I had just swung my legs over the side of the bed when I heard the front door close again and watched Sid and Gus crossing Patchin Place to their own front door. Although I was dying of curiosity, I forced myself to wash my face and tidy my hair before I went downstairs.

  “I suppose that knocking at the front door woke you?” Mrs. Sullivan said. “It was those two ladies from across the street pestering you again. You’d think they’d nothing better to do than come bothering you all day.”

  “But they were coming to report on a visit they had just made,” I said. “I asked them to. And they don’t bother me. I welcome their company.”

  “If you say so.” Mrs. Sullivan sniffed. “Are we expecting your man home tonight at a reasonable hour?”

  I smiled. “You were married to a policeman. You know that one can never expect him home at any hour. One is grateful when he arrives.”

  “That’s the truth,” she said. “Many’s the night I’ve paced up and down the hallway, listening for the sound of his footsteps. Why Daniel had to follow his father into such a dangerous profession I’ll never know. We sent him to Columbia for that very reason—so that he could become a lawyer or something equally safe and respectable. But no, he couldn’t wait to graduate and join his father in the police force.”

  “A man has to do what he loves and what he has a talent for,” I said, and in my head I asked: Why couldn’t a woman likewise do what she loved and had a talent for? Why did we all have to accept that our lot was to be wives and mothers and to want nothing more? And it crossed my mind again that my nightmare might have something to do with being trapped in domesticity.

  “Where is Liam?” I asked. And before she could answer, Liam came tottering out from the kitchen. He had a jammy mouth, and I suspected that his grandmother had been baking jam tarts.

  “Mama.” He gave me a beaming smile.

  “Well, look at you, my precious,” I said. “Aren’t you having a good time? You’ve Bridie to play with and Grandma to make you good things to eat.”

  “Did you finish that tart then?” Mrs. Sullivan asked. “You’re not having another one now. It will spoil your supper. Come on, let’s clean up your face before you wipe it off on your mother’s nice dress.”

  She swept him off to the kitchen. I followed.

  “There is tea in the pot,” she said. “And the tarts are fresh from the oven.”

  “You’re spoiling us. You really shouldn’t go to all this trouble.” I reached across to take a tart.

  “It’s no trouble. It’s good to have someone to look after.” She wiped a protesting Liam’s face, then set him down.

  “I thought we might have a small celebration for Liam’s birthday tomorrow,” I said. “Seeing that it’s Sunday and there is a slight chance that Daniel might have the afternoon free.”

  “I’ll bake him a cake then.” She looked quite pleased. “And some little sandwiches, do you think?”

  “And Sid and Gus said they’d bring some food over with them.”

  “Oh, so they are coming too.” She gave me a cold stare.

  “Of course. They are Liam’s aunties. They’ve been very good to us.”

  She sniffed. “If you say so.” She turned to go back to the kitchen table, then looked back at me. “Oh, and what Mass do you go to tomorrow?”

  Oh, Lord. I had forgotten that Sunday for her meant attendance at Mass. She never missed, like the good
Catholic that she was.

  “It’s seven thirty at St. Joseph’s on the square, I believe,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll not join you this time. It takes me a while to get ready at the moment and all that kneeling and standing is a bit much for me.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Bridie and I will go. And Daniel too, if he’s home.”

  “I think I’ll pay a visit across the street before suppertime,” I said, “And I’ll take Liam with me. His aunties love to see him and they were asking after him earlier.”

  “Just as you wish.” Her face had become a stony mask. “If you really think it’s wise and you are up to it.”

  “It’s only a few yards across the street,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll be just grand.” I turned to Liam. “Shall we go and see Auntie Sid and Gus?” I asked, and he set off instantly with determined steps for the front door before I’d finished the sentence. I picked him up and we crossed the street.

  Gus looked delighted as she opened the front door. “Well, here you are,” she said. “We thought you were to be kept away from us for the rest of the day. And you’ve brought our favorite man too. Molly’s here, Sid,” she called. “And our favorite young man too.”