Murphy's Law

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Authors: Rhys Bowen
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
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beds, whispering her name, bending to search under each bed, carefully stepping over each sleeping body, until I had covered the entire dormitory. She wasn't there. I ran out into hallway. One dim light glowed at the far end. Where could she have gone? What would have made a child like her, frightened of her own shadow, go off into the terrifying unknown shadows of a strange building?
    There were a couple of lavatories just down the hall from the dormitory. I tried them both but she wasn't there, either. I must wake someone, I decided. I must get help. I started to run, blindly, my footsteps echoing back from newly painted walls and stone floors. Someone must be awake in the eerie silence of this sleeping building. I came around a corner and there she was, heading for an open doorway.
    "Bridie," I called. She didn't respond. I ran up to her and went to grab her before she entered the room. "Bridie, what on earth were you thinking to ..." Then I saw that her eyes were wide open and staring, like a person possessed. It took me a moment to realize that she was sleepwalking. Poor little mite, after all the shocks of that day, no wonder her sleep was unsettled. I remembered that it can be harmful to wake sleepwalkers too abruptly. I moved ahead of her and was about to kneel to wake her as gently as possible when a figure loomed out of the dark room ahead of us.
    "Where the hell do you think you're going?" a big voice bellowed.
    I swept up the terrified child and looked up to see a big man in the peaked cap and braided uniform of a guard.
    "This is the men's dormitory," he said, coming up to us in such a threatening way that I backed hastily. "What are you doing hanging around here?"
    "I'm sorry, but the little girl was sleepwalking," I said. "There's no need to shout
    at us. We're going back to the women's dormitory this minute."
    "And make sure you stay there," he thundered, "Or you'll be sent back where you came from."
    I could feel him watching us as I carried the sobbing child back to the safety of the women's dormitory. When I went to sleep again, it was with my arm tightly around Bridie. I wasn't taking any chances.
    Women were stirring around me. It was hardly light and the room was distinctly chilly. Surely there was no need to get us up before dawn, was there? But there were lights on in the hallway outside and I could hear alarmed voices shouting and running feet. Something was wrong. A fire? Maybe this grand new building wasn't as fireproof as they thought. But I couldn't smell smoke, and it certainly wasn't what you could describe as warm.
    At that moment the electric light was turned on in our room and a guard stood in the doorway. "Everybody up and downstairs to the dining room now," the guard commanded. "There's coffee down there. Wait until you're told what to do next."
    He hurried us out and down the stairs to the dining hall. Men from our ship were already sitting at one of the long tables. Wives went to join husbands. I could hear the whisper running from table to table like wildfire. "Yes, in our very room. I saw it myself. Horrible, it was ... poor man ..."
    I glimpsed Michael Larkin sitting among the men. He usually looked pale but today he looked positively ashen. I hurried up to him. "I'm so glad to see you're still here," I said. "Do you know what happened?"
    A woman leaned across him. "A man was killed," she said in a hoarse whisper.
    "An accident?" I asked.
    A man farther down the table leaned toward us. "No accident. The fellow had his throat slit from ear to ear."
    "A fight?" The man shook his head. "In his sleep, it must have been. Someone who knew what he was doing, that's for sure--and a powerful sharp knife. I was only three beds away and I heard nothing. None of us heard a thing."
    "The poor man," the woman beside me said, crossing herself. "To come all this way and then that. Still, he did ask for trouble, didn't he?"
    "Who was it?" I asked. "Someone we knew?"
    Before Michael could answer, the

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