“You thought that the killer had come looking for me?” I had lowered my voice in case Sid or Gus was still within earshot. “Aren’t we reading too much into this, Daniel? Do you have any reason to believe that he was responsible for yesterday’s crash, or that I was a target?”
He sighed and sank onto the small upright chair by the window. “We are none the wiser, as usual. The signalman has been questioned and swears that he saw the disk on the front of the locomotive indicating a Sixth Avenue train, and the engineer swears that the train bore the correct disk, that he put it on himself.”
“He’s right. The train definitely said Ninth Avenue when it came into my station. No question about it. What disk is on the engine now?”
“None,” he said. “That’s the interesting part. There is no disk to be seen. And the locomotive didn’t come off the track.”
“So that adds fuel to your belief that your killer orchestrated this. Somehow he changed the disk while the train was in the station and then removed the disk before there could be any investigation.”
“It does seem that way.”
“And was there any person of note on board that we know of?”
“Persons of note rarely travel in crowded El carriages,” he said.
“And speaking of ‘of note’—no more notes have arrived, I take it?”
“Not as far as I know. But then I wouldn’t expect one.” He held out a large envelope. “I’ve had one of our men write out a list of the various victims for you. This is for your eyes only, remember. Your friends should not be privy to this.” I noticed that he tried to avoid calling Sid and Gus by their nicknames, as if they were too shocking to be spoken out loud. It was another small way of displaying his disapproval of their unacceptable lifestyle.
I opened the clasp on the envelope and took out several sheets of typewritten paper.
“They are in chronological order,” Daniel said.
I was already reading the first sheet. “‘May 10: Dolly Willis. 285 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn. (Feebleminded woman of sixty-two. Lived with her sister. Pushed into the path of a speeding trolley.)
“‘Note said: “Trolley and Dolly rhyme. A fitting end this time.”’”
I looked up. “‘This time’? Does that mean there might have been other times before that you don’t know about?”
Daniel frowned. “Now, that’s an interesting thought. There are always unsolved homicides in the city, and in cases like this one, deaths that might never have been ruled a homicide. If we hadn’t received the note it might never have been established that she had been pushed under a trolley.”
“You mean that she was a feebleminded woman and could have stepped into the path of a trolley without assistance?”
“Quite possible. And people were intent on waiting to cross the street themselves so no one would have noticed the well-timed push. It was hard to come up with witnesses a few days later, and only one person said that the old woman seemed to have suddenly gone pitching forward.”
I paused, digesting this. “So this man may have been perfecting his methods for ages before the first death we know about?”
Daniel sighed. “It’s possible. Yes. But we’d have no way of knowing if the deaths were ruled accidents, or if he didn’t manage to kill the first times.”
I read on down the page: “‘May 31: Simon Grossman. Age twenty. Lived with parents, Dr. and Mrs. Grossman, 258 Fifth Avenue. Student at New York University. Drank a cup of coffee laced with cyanide in Fritz’s, a crowded coffee shop frequented by students on MacDougal Street.
“‘The note said: “Simon says good-bye, or would if he could speak.”’”
I looked up at Daniel. “A student at New York University. And I take it not in any way related to poor old Dolly?”
“Not in any way. He was the son of a well-respected doctor, and she lived with her sister who was a former housemaid.”
“And she had never been employed by the doctor, I take it?”
“She had not. She worked for a prominent banker, was given a little legacy when he died, and went home to take care of her mother and sister in Brooklyn. The mother passed away a few years ago, and the two sisters lived happily together until this.”
“How sad,” I said. “And how senseless. A feebleminded woman couldn’t have been a threat to anybody, could she? Why choose her, I wonder.”
Daniel shook his head. “I wish I could tell you.”
“I see what you mean when you say there’s no connection. A simpleminded old woman and a university student, and such different methods of murder. In your experience, does a poisoner normally resort to a more violent crime?”