by Lionel White
Mrs. Kitteridge, who had followed his progress around the side of the house, stood silently watching him for several minutes. The dog seemed in some sort of agony, and she spoke to him gently. He ignored her and continued his weird wailing.
The first thought which occurred to Mrs. Kitteridge was that, in attempting to bury the bone, he had encountered some broken glass, or perhaps a rusty tin can, and inj ured himself. She attempted to approach him, but as she did, he turned and galloped off, still howling. Mrs. Kitteridge noticed that he no longer had the bone. With a thought of possibly retrieving it, and also investigating to see what might have caused the dog’s strange behavior, Mrs.
Kitteridge went at once to her garage to get a rake. She would lift the branches of the juniper and see what might be beneath them. Passing out of the garage she noticed one of her rose bushes needed attention—it was a yellow climber and had fallen away from the trellis next to the garage on which it was supposed to climb—and so she attended to that. Thus, it wasn’t until almost an hour had passed that she took the rake and lifted the profuse foliage of the low-growing evergreen.
What she saw affected her almost in the same way as that grisly sight had affected the multicolored animal. Mrs. Kitteridge, looking down on the prone and slightly twisted body lying on its face with the long blond hair stained red with blood, did not, however, howl. A more civilized member of the animal kingdom, she merely gasped and for several frozen seconds, stood there staring with her mouth wide open and the color slowly draining from her face.
It is an index to Mrs. Kitteridge's character, and a compliment to her breeding, that she didn’t scream. Several things were at once apparent as her gentle eyes took in the scene. The body was that of a young girl and the girl was dead. The killer, whoever he or she might be, had apparently slain the girl somewhere else and dragged the body to this spot in an attempt to conceal it. Mrs. Kitteridge could see that one small slipper was half off and that there were two distinct marks where the feet had dragged across the soft earth. That part of the face which lay exposed beneath the flare of long blond hair, indicated that this girl had been extremely attractive. The purple red blood, already dried and caked, on that hair, showed all too clearly that her attacker had crushed the thin shell of her cranium with a “blunt instrument.” And the disheveled appearance of the clothes—the child's skirt was torn and lay creased and rumpled almost up to her waist and her bare legs above the bobby socks were badly scratched and bruised—would indicate that she had been violently and criminally attacked, just previous to her death.
Mrs. Kitteridge backed out from under the bush and turned and entered her house. There was a certain amount of confusion in reaching the proper people at the poEce station, but within three minutes Mrs. Kitteridge was telling her story. Within five minutes of the time that Lieutenant Giddeon had finished listening to Len Neilsen’s strange tale concerning his discovery of a murdered man out at Fairlawn Acres, he was hearing the details of Mrs. Kitteridge’s grim discovery. The Eeutenant arrived at Fairlawn less than eight minutes after the nearest radio patrol car had drawn up in front of Mrs. Kitteridge’s neatly kept home.
Under normal circumstances, Len himself would have returned in time to have witnessed the convergence of police vehicles on the street in front of his and his immediate neighbors’ residences. As it was, however, Lenhadthedis-tinctionof being just about the only resident of that particular section of Fairlawn who was not present during the first hysterical hour as the neighborhood turned out en masse to wallow in the sensationalism of the gruesome find.
There were two other persons conspicuous by their absence. Reginald Parson Kitteridge was in the basement of a friend’s home in Great Neck playing darts. It is a significant comment on his wife’s character that although she knew where he was and what he was doing at the time, it never occurred to her to call him up and tell him the news. She was appreciative of the fact that the weekly dart games were almost his only hobby and pleasure and she could see no reason for interfering with the regularity of his pastime.
The other person absent was the newest resident of the street—Gerald Tomlinson. Mr. Tomlinson’s failure to be present was for a far more significant reason than that of Mr. Kitteridge. Tomlinson, at the exact moment when Lieutenant Giddeon was parting the juniper bush to lean over the dead girl’s body, was busily occupied with a dead body of his own. To be exact, he was removing his particular cadaver from the trunk of his car in a lonely spot in upper Putnam County and preparing to lower it into a fresh dug, shallow grave.
In spite of the chill and winter weather, Tomlinson was sweating profusely. He had just finished digging the grave in the frozen earth with a mattock he had carried alongside the body in the trunk of the car. The absence of Kitteridge and Tomlinson during that first grim hour was neither noticed at the time by their neighbors and police, or commented upon later. The absence of Len Neilsen, however, was a far different matter.
To the very last, Len found it extremely difficult to explain this absence of his, both to Allie, his wife, and to Lieutenant Giddeon. Afterward, when Len did attempt an explanation, Giddeon would remind him that he, Len, had said he was returning directly home from the police station. So why did Len go to a saloon instead?
But to Allie, the idea of Len’s going to a saloon made even less sense than it did to Giddeon. As Allie herself reminded Len each time the subject would come up, Len had never in his life been in a saloon in the morning. And that morning of all mornings! She simply couldn’t understand it. In Allie’s favor one thing must be said; in discussing Len’s visit to a saloon on that fatal Saturday morning, she never once brought up the fact that it had been Len’s drinking the previous evening which had involved him in the tragedy in the first place.
The strange part of it all lay in Len’s complete inability to explain exactly what had driven him on a direct route from Lieutenant Giddeon’s office to the tavern out on Jericho Turnpike, halfway between the police station and Fairlawn. How could he explain that he merely wanted a quiet secluded spot to sit and think? And how could he explain that the thing he was thinking about, the thing he was trying to figure out, was whether or not the Lieutenant may have been right after all; that maybe he had been merely drunk or crazy or something and just imagined the whole thing?
No, he couldn’t explain that—not after finally getting home a couple of hours later that afternoon, a little tipsy as a result of the several beers on top of last night’s drinking, and finding out about the murdered girl.
The absence of Len, as well as the Messrs. Tomlinson and Kitteridge, was more than offset by the number of Fairlawn residents who did find time that Saturday morning to crowd and jostle around as Lieutenant Giddeon and his more than a dozen police associates converged on the spot where a ruthless and brutal murderer had discarded the slender young body of Louisa Mary Julio beneath Mrs. Kitteridge's private juniper bush.
That it was Louisa’s body was established beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt within three minutes of the time the first police car arrived on the scene and one husky patrolman hurried to question Mrs. Kitteridge while his partner stood guard in the driveway to hold back those curious and macabre neighbors who were so soon to gather.
Kathleen Julio, her large handsome face red with anger, was just leaving the front door of the McNally home, several houses down the street on Crescent Drive, when the police car arrived. Mrs. Julio was both angry and worried. Only an hour before she had discovered for the first time that Louisa had failed to return home the previous evening after her baby-sitting chore. The fact that there was so long a delay in her discovery of the girl’s absence is not as unusual as it might seem.
Mrs. Julio was the mother of six children and she was also a very careless and possibly even inattentive mother. On the other hand, six children, ranging in age from seven to nineteen, combined with a highly temperamental husband, had, over a period of years, given Mrs. Julio a certain aloofness to the irregularities of her life and
her sprawling, brawling household. She was used to Louisa’s being out late at night when the girl would baby-sit for the neighbors’ children and she never worried as Louisa had her own key and it was the custom for the man of whatever family Louisa sat for, to see the girl to her home at the end of the evening.
When Mrs. Julio had gotten up on Saturday morning, she followed her usual routine. She fed first her husband and then the younger children. Then she opened the morning newspaper and read it in the kitchen as the older children prepared their own breakfasts. The fact that Louisa had not been among the others hadn’t particularly worried her. She always let the child sleep late after being out on a baby-sitting job the previous evening. Thus it wasn t until Mrs. Julio happened to go into the room shared by Louisa and one of her younger sisters, sometime around midmoming, and noticed Louisa’s unslept-in bed, that she first realized the girl was missing. A quick and high-pitched questioning of the other children soon revealed that no one had seen Louisa since the previous evening.
Louisa’s father had left for work by this time—he was a musician and had to go to New York for a practice session each Saturday morning—and so Mrs. Julio had at once thrust her thick arms into the sleeves of her mouton fur coat and, not bothering with a covering for her head, had started for the McNally house. Mrs. McNally, eyes red and last night’s blurred make-up still on her face, had answered the door, her feet in broken slippers and a faded, rather soiled bathrobe tied around her waist. It had been an extremely unsatisfactory interview.
Mrs. McNally was only able to tell Louisa’s mother that the girl had leftfor her home sometime after midnight the previous evening. No, Mr. McNally had not walked the girl home. Why not? Mr. McNally had been drunk. And why hadn’t Mrs. McNally taken the girl home? Because Mrs. McNally didn’t want to leave her baby alone and for Mrs. Julio’s information, being in the house with Mr. McNally when he was drunk was exactly like being alone.
Furthermore, Mrs. McNally could see no reason in the world why the girl shouldn’t be perfectly safe walking the three or four blocks to her home, no matter what the hour.
Mrs. Julio began to say something about the criminality of permitting a young girl, a mere child...
Mrs. McNally interrupted to tell Mrs. Julio that anyone who demanded a dollar and twenty-five cents an hour for baby-sitting was not to be considered a mere child.
It was at this point that Mrs. Julio told Mrs. McNally exactly what she thought of her and turned to leave, yelling that she would report the whole thing to the police at once. The words were hardly out of her mouth, when, the door of the McNally place having slammed behind her furious back, Mrs. Julio started down the steps and spotted the police car at the curb several hundred yards away. She made for it at once.
At that moment the patrolman, who had been talking with Mrs. Kit-teridge, quickly came out of the house and spoke to his fellow officer, at the same time pointing toward the juniper bush at the side of the drive. This second patrolman, a kind - looking elderly man whose amazing girth around the middle would have kept him off any metropolitan police force, at once turned and went toward the bush. He raised its branches from the ground and leaned down to peer under them as his partner hurried back into the house.
A moment later and Mrs. Julio was looking over his shoulder.
Mrs. Julio screamed.
The confusion of the next few minutes, as the patrolman attempted to pull Mrs. Julio away from her daughter’s dead body and later as his partner came to his aid, served to hopelessly erase whatever footprints there might have been in the immediate vicinity of the body and which had not already been obliterated by the mongrel dog and by Mrs. Kitteridge.
It was also unfortunate that the hot early morning sun had already melted the last traces of the previous evening’s snow.
Mrs. Julio was still screaming by the time Lieutenant Giddeon reached the scene, accompanied by his partner, Sergeant Dan Finnerty. But somewhere during the course of her hysterical crying and sobbing, she had firmly established that the dead girl was her missing daughter. Her piercing shrieks had also attracted more than a hundred men, women and children from nearby houses.
Allie Neilsen’s awareness of the commotion came at the sound of Mrs. Julio’s first scream. She turned and listened for a moment, not quite sure, and then as the cries continued to penetrate her living room, where she sat nervously on the couch watching young Bill playing with his trains, Allie stood up and went to the window. She could see nothing.
It was while she was pulling on a light tweed coat and preparing to go to the front door that she heard the sirens of the approaching ambulance, which had been called immediately after Mrs. Kitteridge had first notified the police.
One thought and one thought alone came to Allie Neilsen. Len had been right. Len had not been dreaming. There had been a dead man and now not only Len knew about it but the police knew as well. It was with almost a sense of relief that Allie opened the front door of her house, turning at the same time to tell Billy to keep on playing and that she would be right back.
Allie walked swiftly down the flagstone path to the sidewalk and immediately saw the crowd gathering in front of Mrs. Kitteridge’s home, several hundred feet down the street.
Ten minutes later Allie Neilsen returned to her own home. Her cheeks were drained of color and there was a dazed, unbelieving look on her pretty, heart-shaped face. She held one small hand to her partly opened mouth as she once more entered her living room. Almost aimlessly, she half slouched on the couch, not bothering to remove her coat. She didn’t even hear young Billy as he repeatedly tugged at her skirt and asked questions.
She was thinking of Len. Thinking of Len and of a dead man with a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. She was thinking of Len sitting across the table from her less than a dozen hours ago with his scratched and bloody face and his wild eyes, telling her... telling her about...
She stopped thinking then for a second and when next she was conscious of the workings of her mind she was thinking of the slender body of a murdered fifteen-year-old girl lying in her own blood under a juniper bush a few doors down the street.
Suddenly the tears welled in Allie’s large blue eyes and her throat contracted and she fell half sidewise on the couch and there was no sound at all as her shoulders convulsively shook.
Billy Neilsen looked at his mother with wide, uncomprehensive eyes for a full minute. And then his arms went around her knees and he hugged her tightly and he too began to cry. His crying, however, was anything but silent.
McNally came to only after the full impact of the pitcher of ice-cold water struck him in the face. He was swinging his arms like a channel swimmer and sputtering as he pulled himself to a sitting position on the bed. It took him a full minute to clear his head sufficiently to look up to where Myrtle stood staring at him.
“Jesus, ” Howard said. “Jesus Christ on a mountain top. What the hell kind ofa way is that to...”
“Howard, for God’s sake, Howard, wake up.”
Even in his half-sleepy, half-hung-over condition, Howard McNally somehow realized that this was not just one of Myrtle’s usual capricious angers, not one of her all too often violent exercises of temper in arousing him from a sound sleep. He sensed at once, without even being conscious of her chalklike face and hollow, half-hysterical eyes, that something was wrong. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“Howard, for God’s sake get up. Get up at once!”
“What—what in the name...”
"Howard, listen to me!”
“Yeah, all right. I’m listening. But what the hell is the...”
“Howard, for God's sake shut up and listen. Are you awake? Can you understand...”
“I’m half drowned, but I’m awake. Go ahead and...”
“Howard—it's the girl. Louisa.”
Fora second Howard stared meaninglessly at his wife. A slow blush began to spread over his face.
"Yeah. Well. So...”
“Lo
uisa. The baby-sitter. She’s been murdered. They found her body over in the Kitteridges’ yardjustnow. Oh God...”
Howard’s mouth suddenly fell wide and the blood left his face even faster than it had started to fill it a moment before.
“What in the name of Christ are you saying, Myrtle! My God, are you still drunk? What...”
“Murdered, Howard. Her head all beaten in and her clothes tom and... oh my God!”
Myrtle sank down on the side of the bed and Howard quickly turned and got out on the opposite side. He was stark naked, but he didn’t bother to reach for the dressing gown lying on the chair next to the bed, or the leather slippers under it. He walked to the kitchen and reached for the whiskey bottle and poured a juice glass a third of the way lull. He drank it straight without a chaser and then refilled it, this time halfway. A moment later and he was back in the bedroom handing it to Myrtle.
She downed it in a single gulp and then, for several minutes, the two of them just sat there, Myrtle on the bed and Howard in a chair a couple of feet away, and stared at each other.
“Tell me about it,” Howard said at last, his voice hollow and barely above a whisper.
Myrtle continued to stare at him and her head moved almost imperceptibly from side to side. She barely opened her lips when at last she spoke.
“Maybe you better tell me about it,” she said at last.
Howard reached over and slapped her hard across the face, several times, and Myrtle merely sat there. Then she began to cry.
It took a full twenty-five minutes for her natural female curiosity to overcome her fear. But ultimately and inevitably Marian Tomlinson, Gerald Tomlinson’s sister-in-law, succumbed to the stronger of her two emotions. The curiosity was aroused by the commotion that was going on down the street. The fear, of course, was of Gerald, her dead husband’s brother. Gerald’s last instructions, upon leaving the house, had been clear and concise.
