The Edge of Dreams(15)

Daniel sank onto the bed beside me. “Do you know what I thought? I thought you’d been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” I couldn’t help grinning. “And who was likely to burst into a hospital ward and kidnap me?”

“It’s no joke, Molly,” he said quietly. “I haven’t shared the details of this case I’m working on with you until now, because it didn’t concern you. Now I’m afraid it does concern you—at least to a certain degree. We received another note today.”

“What did it say?”

“It said, ‘If at first you don’t succeed. Better luck next time.’”

“Which meant he’d tried to kill somebody and had been thwarted by your increased police presence?”

He shook his head. “He enclosed a clipping from the early edition of the evening newspaper. A clipping about the train accident.”

“The train accident—but surely, it was just that. He can’t be trying to claim that he caused it, can he?”

Daniel was still staring at me. I shook my head. “Impossible, Daniel. The man is delusional. Someone forgot to switch the points and sent a Ninth Avenue train around the curve on the Sixth Avenue route.”

“We’ll know more when we’ve questioned the man in the signal box and the locomotive driver,” he said. “Of course it’s not unheard of that someone claims credit for a spectacular accident, or even comes forward to confess to a murder he couldn’t possibly have committed. But in this case he had promised to kill on a certain day, and he tried to keep that promise.”

I stared at the silk counterpane with its swirls of bright flowers and tried to make sense of what he was saying. “So you think he arranged this train to crash, knowing that a particular person was on board, only not all the carriages came off the rails, and the person he had in mind was not killed?”

“It’s a possibility,” he said.

“So that might have been what he meant by ‘saving the best for last,’” I said. “Not a prominent person, but a spectacular event. It must have seemed rather spectacular to him if he was watching—the train racing around that curve and then jumping the tracks and plunging downward.” I looked up to meet Daniel’s gaze. “Do we know if any prominent people were on that train?”

He cleared his throat. “You were on that train,” he said.

I gave an uneasy laugh. “Me?”

He nodded. “You said something to me the other night that made an impression. You said the one thing linking all the deaths was me. All the notes were sent to me, not to other officers.”

“So you think it might be someone with a grudge against you?”

“It’s a possibility,” he said. “And what better way to get back at me than killing you.”

I thought for a moment, then shook my head again. “That’s rubbish, Daniel. He could not have known which train I would take. In fact, I was going to board the Sixth Avenue train that came right before it. Only…” I broke off.

“Only what?” Daniel asked sharply, reading my expression.

“A man came running past and bumped into me, knocking me backward. By the time I had righted myself the doors had closed.”

“Did you happen to see what this man looked like?”

“No, it was all a blur. The platform was horribly crowded. I had Liam in my arms. I was most concerned about holding onto him and not falling. But it was a young man, I think. Slim—at least not portly. Wearing some kind of dark suit, dark hat.” I paused, frowning. “That’s all. As I said, it was all a blur.”

Daniel sighed.

“But how could he…” I began.

“He made you miss the Sixth Avenue train, Molly. Knowing that a Ninth Avenue was following it.”

“But he didn’t know I’d take the Ninth Avenue train. I might well have waited for the next Sixth Avenue—after all, that station was much more convenient for me. That is what I was planning to do actually, until I decided to stop at the French bakery and bring Sid and Gus their favorite croissants. And if he was on the platform, having bumped into me, he could hardly be in the signal box, changing the points, could he?”

“It does all sound rather far-fetched, I agree. And maybe I’m reading too much into this, because it was my wife and child in danger. But the man is an opportunist, Molly. He has taken tremendous risks before, and we know he didn’t succeed in killing the person he wanted to kill today.”

“If at first you don’t succeed,” I said. “The rest of that phrase is ‘try, try again.’ That’s not very encouraging, is it?”