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

“How did you know?” he asked. “How did you find out?”


“People don’t often change their personality,” I said. “Dr. Piper spoke warmly of Dr. Werner. He called him ‘a fine man.’ But the Dr. Werner I met was a curt and unpleasant individual, with no bedside manner. And all the murders were so clearly linked to Edward Deveraux, it made sense that you were alive somewhere. Then I realized that you planned your escape as soon as you heard that Dr. Werner was coming to visit the institution, and you realized he resembled you in build and appearance. You started growing a beard. You developed an interest in birds because he was a keen bird-watcher. You took him for a walk to the one part of the estate where you could kill him easily. When he looked up for the hawk’s nest, you hit him over the head with a rock, switched clothes with him, then hurled him down onto the rocks—having first smashed in his face so that he would not be recognized. Dr. Piper mentioned that you had trimmed your beard in anticipation of the doctor’s arrival. You smeared yourself with mud and blood to indicate a struggle, and so that the facial differences between you would not be noticed, and you double-checked the placing of the monocle in the little mirror you carried for that purpose—am I correct?”

He was looking at me with narrowed eyes, like a snake. “You’re intelligent, for a woman,” he said. “Too bad I didn’t get rid of you in that train crash.”

“Who were you aiming for—Marcus or me?” I felt surprisingly calm now, feeling the coldness of the glass syringe against my palm.

“Marcus, of course, but when I found you were on board, well, you were an added treat. Too bad you didn’t take the sleeping mixture I left for you at the hospital, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“That was you? Funny. I sensed danger then. I often do. I’m Irish. We have the sixth sense.”

“Do you sense danger now, Mrs. Sullivan?” he asked. “You should.”

“I believe I’m the one with the power at this moment, Mr. Deveraux,” I said. My voice sounded more confident that I really felt. “I know what’s in this syringe. You were planning to do to me what you did to Mabel’s parents, weren’t you?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “I set fire to them. But I rigged up this house to explode after I leave. It was a sort of small-scale practice for the real thing. I like to get my details right. Everything has to work smoothly. And by the time the house goes up, Dr. Werner will have been at sea for two days.”

“You’ve failed in one little detail,” I said. “The ship radioed that you were not on board. And I also happened to find out that a Mr. Edwards was sailing to South America with his daughter. Couldn’t you have come up with a more creative name?”

His eyes narrowed. “You might have the syringe, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m closer to the door. There’s no way out of here, you know, and once I’ve set the timer, there is no stopping it. You’ll hear the ticking until boom. It will be too late.”

He smiled then. It was the smile of evil, such as I had rarely seen before.

“Why has it been so important to you to ruin so many lives?” I said. “Once you escaped from the asylum, you could have taken the next boat to Europe, and nobody would ever have found you.”

“Because those people sentenced me to a life of hell,” he said. “That stupid maid and my own tutor who gave evidence against me, that doctor who certified me as insane, the ridiculous judge, trying to be nice. They deserved to be punished.”

“You deserved to be punished for killing your father, surely?”

“But I didn’t kill my father. That’s the whole point. I went into his study, stumbled over his body, and came running out to get help. But I was so much in shock that I started laughing. And I had blood on my hands. And I was the strange one, the pitiful one. Nobody believed me. So they all deserved to die. Just as you will die now because your husband was bent on convicting me.”

As he talked he had been inching toward the door. Suddenly he leaped through the doorway and went to close the door. I flung myself at the door and sank the needle into his hand, pushing hard on the plunger. I heard him cry out as the door slammed shut with me inside. I stood there, again in darkness, my heart pounding. Would a small amount of curare in his hand be enough to incapacitate him? How long before it worked? Long enough for him to escape and activate the switch?

I tried to turn the doorknob. The door resisted. I shoved with all my might, and it inched open. I saw that Edward Deveraux’s paralyzed body had been blocking it. He was lying like a broken puppet, his head and limbs at odd angles, his eyes wide open and staring at me. I gave him the briefest of glances as I stepped over him, then ran past him up a flight of steep steps, and opened a door into the passage.