The Edge of Dreams (Molly Murphy Mysteries Book 14) Page 23

  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.

  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.”

  “And the bathroom is upstairs?”

  He nodded. “It is. My mother had an indoor bathroom put in when we moved here after my father died. My mother was a very modern woman, Mrs. Murphy. She was forward-looking in her ways. That’s why she jumped at the chance to have electricity installed in the house when it came to our part of the city. And look what it brought us.” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop tears.

  “So do I understand that the police believe someone climbed in through an open upstairs window?”

  “That’s what they said. I find it quite amazing, myself. We have a small backyard, but the houses behind look onto our back windows. Anyone might have seen a person trying to climb up the wall.”

  “He came up the drainpipe, I suppose?”

  “Drainpipe or the creeper. We’ve a creeper growing up the wall. That made it easier for him, damn him.” Then he blinked and shot me an anguished look. “I do apologize for my language, Mrs. Murphy. It is only my intense suffering, I assure you. Mother would never have permitted…”

  “I quite understand, Mr. Daughtery,” I said. “No offense taken. So did the police have any suggestion as to why someone would have entered the house and killed your mother? Was it perhaps a burglar who saw you leave for work and assumed the house was empty? He climbed in and was startled to find your mother in her bath … and when she started to scream, he panicked and silenced her?”

  “I suppose that might be plausible,” he said. “I can’t come up with any other reason.”

  “She had no enemies that you can think of?”

  He looked shocked. “Mrs. Murphy, my mother wasn’t always an easy woman. She could be critical of shoddy work. She sometimes fell out with the neighbors if they were too loud or behaved in a way she did not consider seemly, but one does not kill for such trivialities.”

  Of course he was right. One did not kill unless there was a really good reason.


  “I’m surprised that nobody heard her screams through an open window,” I said. “Did nobody hear her and summon the constable?”

  “Nobody. The fiend must have silenced her instantly, when she was too terrified to scream.”

  “Have there been any other similar crimes in the neighborhood? Any burglaries through open windows? Any other murders?”

  “None that I’ve heard of. And one always hears of murders, doesn’t one?”

  I stood up. “I shouldn’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Daughtery. I realize now that you don’t blame electricity for what happened. I was lucky to have caught you at home, wasn’t I? I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d just try to visit you, but in truth I expected you’d be at work. What sort of job do you do?”

  He looked away from me. “I haven’t been able to work since my mother died. I’ve completely lost my nerve, Mrs. Murphy. When I go out, I see the face of a murderer in everyone I pass.”

  “What was your profession until this?”

  I could tell he appreciated the use of that word, rather than “job” “I received a first-class education, Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “My mother scrimped and saved to send me to Princeton, where my father went. She wanted me to go into one of the professions, preferably law. But I contracted rheumatic fever in my last year of college and it affected my heart. So I’ve had to take it easy ever since. I’ve been a private tutor for many years.”

  “To the same family?”

  He smiled. “Children grow up. I find that I stay with one family for five years or so, then the children go on to school or college. I was with my current family for three years. Two charming little girls, aged eight and ten. But of course they had to find a new tutor when I couldn’t return. So I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to face the world again. Actually I’m thinking of moving out of the city, to a small town, where life isn’t quite as dangerous.” He paused, staring at the clock on the mantel that was now chiming eleven. “There have been too many tragedies, Mrs. Murphy. Too much evil. Life should not be full of tragedy and loss.”

  I held out my hand. “I wish you well, Mr. Daughtery. I hope you find peace in a new life.”

  He took my hand. His was moist and unpleasant, rather like touching a dead fish. “You are very kind, but nothing can ever bring back my mother. I have nothing to live for now.”

  * * *

  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.

  “You shouldn’t have done that. I grabbed a bite to eat at an Italian place on Mulberry. I’m acquiring quite a taste for spaghetti and meatballs. You’ll have to learn how to cook it.” He grinned as he sat on the bed and started to unlace his boots.

  “I stayed awake because I’ve come up with something.” I sat up, propping myself up with pillows. “First of all, I might have come up with proof that the Hamiltons’ murder was linked to the others. One of the firemen remembered seeing Mabel carried away with a piece of paper clutched in her hand. I tried to look at the burned house, but I decided it was too dangerous for me to be clambering over burned-out ruins.”

  “Very wise,” Daniel said. “But that’s certainly interesting.”

  “And there’s more,” I said, inching toward him down the bed. “I was reminded today that Mabel Hamilton’s father worked in his father-in-law’s bank.”

  “That’s right. Her mother was Susan Masters. Of Deveraux and Masters—important merchant bankers.”

  “It didn’t occur to me before,” I went on, excitedly now, “but Miss Willis mentioned that her former employer owned a bank. It’s our first connection, isn’t it?”

  “A tenuous one,” Daniel said. “There are plenty of banks in the city, and I don’t really see what Miss Willis’s former employer had to do with her sister’s death. Did the Willis woman mention her employer’s name?”


  “She did. But called him Mr. Cornelius. So not the same bank, but at least we’re in the same field for once.”

  He looked up at me sharply. “Cornelius Deveraux?”

  “Oh.” I sat up straight, staring at him as I digested this. “You are suggesting that Cornelius was his first name?”

  “It’s not a very usual name, is it? And two banks owned by someone called Cornelius really would be strange.”

  I was trying to recall all the details of my conversation with Miss Willis. “His son was called Marcus, I believe.”

  “Then we are talking about the same person. Marcus Deveraux. He inherited when his father was killed, years ago. I remember him now. Arrogant little prig he was too.”

  “So there is a real connection,” I said. “We finally have a real connection, Daniel.”

  “Or a remarkable coincidence.” He still didn’t look as excited as I felt.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. You must go and see Marcus Deveraux first thing tomorrow.”

  “You are suggesting that Marcus Deveraux might somehow be behind this?”

  “As the killer?” I paused to consider this, as that hadn’t been what I’d meant at all. “No, probably not,” I said. “It doesn’t seem that a man who owns a bank would have any reason to kill the sister of a former employee—although he did fire her after his father died. Why would he do that?”

  “I thought we discussed this and concluded he probably thought he was doing her a favor—he knew of her loyalty, and he wanted to make sure that she had the freedom to enjoy her inheritance.”

  “And yet you called him an arrogant little prig. And from the way Miss Willis described him, he didn’t sound like a particularly kind-hearted person.” I was warming to my subject now. “And Mabel’s aunt and uncle would know if there was any kind of feud or falling out between Marcus Deveraux and his partner’s daughter. Maybe…” I wagged an excited finger. “Listen, Daniel. Maybe there was some provision in the partnership that left everything, including Mr. Masters’s share, to Marcus Deveraux if Susan died. Maybe that was the real murder—the one he wanted to accomplish and disguised with the other, random killings. That’s why there was no note at the beginning of August.”