“She didn’t have time to put on a dress because she had to get there by one o’clock,” said the rabbi quietly “And she knew he would be there because that was the time he was supposed to ring in at the police box.”
Lanigan stared at him. “You mean—Bill Norman?”
The rabbi nodded.
“But that’s impossible. He just became engaged to Bud Ramsay’s girl. I went to the engagement party. It was that very night. I was one of the guests of honor.”
“Yes, I know. That was the announcement over the radio. I called the station today and checked. Think about it for a minute, and keep in mind the fact that the girl was pregnant. According to all those who knew her, the only time she was ever in the company of men—socially, that is—was her one excursion to Old Town, the Policemen’s Ball. I suggest she met Norman there.”
“You’re not suggesting the keel for her little ship was laid at the Policemen’s Ball?”
“Hardly. That was back in February. But that’s where she first made Norman’s acquaintance. I’m not sure how it was renewed, but I can imagine. Like most laymen, I know that the patrolman on his beat is required to call in at regular intervals. I had always assumed that like a night watchman in a factory, the time between calls depended on the length of time it took him to walk from one box to the next.”
“Well, not exactly,” Lanigan began. “He’s given a certain leeway.”
“So I discovered some weeks ago when I was called on to settle a dispute between two members of our congregation. One of them had to get into a house late at night without a key, and the cab driver rounded up the patrolman on duty who made it a practice to stop off nearby for an unofficial coffee break.”
“It’s an eight-hour tour of duty. You can’t expect a man to be on his feet all that time without a rest,” said Lanigan defensively. “And in the winter a man has to warm up every now and then.”
“Of course,” the rabbi agreed, “and thinking it over, I realized that it was only common sense to allow him considerable leeway, if only because of the investigating he might have to do along the way. I spoke to Officer Johnson, who patrols this same beat during the day, and he explained that the night patrolman usually makes his own arrangements. On this route, for example, he stops with the night watchman for a while at the Gordon block. Then there is the milk plant, and when Stanley was staying overnight at the temple that was another stop. Now here is the Serafino house, and except for the children who are asleep upstairs Elspeth is all alone until two o’clock or later every morning. Along comes a dashing young policeman, a bachelor moreover, who has to ring in a box on the corner of Maple and Vine streets at one o’clock and whose beat then takes him down Vine Street right near the Serafino house. So on cold, bitter nights, what better arrangement than to drop in on the girl for a hot cup of coffee and a pleasant chat for half an hour before going out into the night again.”
“But how about Thursdays? Wouldn’t she expect him to take her out on her night off?”
“Why should he? She was seeing him every other night in the week. And he was on night duty, so he needed his sleep during the day. I imagine she loved him and presumed that he loved her. She probably expected to marry him. There is nothing to indicate she was a loose girl. On the contrary, that’s probably why she did not go out with other men and refused to double-date with Celia. She considered herself engaged.”
“It’s ingenious,” admitted Lanigan, “but it’s all conjectural.”
“Granted, but it all adds up. And it enables us to reconstruct the events of that fatal Thursday in the only way that makes sense. She suspects she’s pregnant, so she goes to an obstetrician on her day off. She gets dressed up nicely, not forgetting to wear a wedding ring. Was it her mother’s, or did she buy it in the fond hope that she would be wearing it legitimately shortly? At the doctor’s office, she gives her name as Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, not because of Bronstein whom she hadn’t met as yet but because it is a common name like Smith and because it is natural to retain the same initials. She is examined and the doctor tells her she is pregnant.
“Now Bronstein said that when he first saw her in the restaurant, she kept glancing at the clock as if she were waiting for someone. I imagine you have since verified with the waitresses that she didn’t order when she first came into the restaurant. My guess is that since they normally didn’t see each other on Thursdays, she had phoned her lover and made a special appointment with him.”
“The doctor’s secretary said she asked if there was a pay station in the building,” Lanigan remarked.
The rabbi nodded. “Norman must have agreed, or at least said he would try to make it, so she went to the Surfside to wait.”
“Yet she went out with Bronstein.”
“She probably felt hurt when he didn’t show up—hurt and perhaps apprehensive. Bronstein said that he went over only when he decided she had been, er—stood up, and then all he did was ask her to join him because he did not like to eat alone. He was a much older man and she probably saw no danger in it. After all, she was in a restaurant, a public place. During the course of the meal, she evidently concluded that he was a decent sort, so she consented to spend the evening with him. She probably wanted company badly—she must have been feeling pretty blue at the time. He brought her home and she got ready for bed. She had taken off her dress when she heard the announcement of Norman’s engagement.”
“So knowing that Norman was due to ring in at Maple and Vine at one o’clock and it was then, say, five of, she had to dash. She threw on her coat and because it was raining and she had several blocks to go, her raincoat over that, and went to meet him. Is that it, rabbi?”
“I would say so.”
“And then what do you think happened?”
“Well, it was raining, and quite hard. He had seen my car parked outside the temple and I suppose he suggested they get in and talk it over. They got in the back seat and he offered her a cigarette. They talked for a while. Perhaps they quarreled. Perhaps she threatened to go to his fiancée. So he seized the chain she was wearing and twisted. He could not leave the body in the car, of course, since I suppose he was expected to give at least a cursory inspection to any vehicle parked outside all night. If the body had been found in the car, he’d have had some explaining to do. So he carried it out to the grass plot and hid it behind the wall. The handbag had slid to the floor and he just didn’t notice it.”
“Of course you realize, rabbi, that we don’t have an iota of proof for any of this.”
The rabbi nodded.
“But it certainly does all hang together,” Lanigan went on reflectively. “If she had gone to the Ramsays with her story, that would have ended his engagement to Alice. I know the Ramsays. Decent people—but proud. I also thought I knew him.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the rabbi. “You had this all figured out and then went to the Serafinos’ to check your theory?”
“Not really. I had a vague notion, but it was not until I had seen the radio in the girl’s room that the explanation began to form. Of course, I had an advantage over you because I had reason to be suspicious of Officer Norman from the beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“He denied that he saw me, but I knew that he had. What reason could he have? Since he did not know me, it could not be a personal dislike. If he had admitted seeing me, it would not have helped his position in any way—only mine. It would have established the fact that I had already left the temple well before the murder had been committed. But if he were guilty or in some way involved, wouldn’t it be to his advantage to have suspicion point at someone else?”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, rabbi?”
“Because it was only a suspicion, and besides, it is not easy for a rabbi to point a finger at a man and say he is a murderer.”
Lanigan was silent.
“Of course we still have no real proof,” the rabbi ventured.
“I’m not worried about getting it.”
“
What do you propose to do?”
“Well, at the moment,” said Lanigan, “I’m not sure whether to ask Norman what Elspeth Bleech said to him on the phone Thursday afternoon, or why he didn’t keep his appointment with her at the Surfside Restaurant. In the meantime, I’ll arrange for that girl Celia to have a look at him. She said Elspeth was with one man most of the evening at the Policemen’s Ball. If your theory’s right, I figure that would be Norman. And we’ll question the Simpsons who live across the street from the Serafinos. If he saw her as often as you think he did, they may have noticed him going in there late at night.” His lips relaxed in a tight little smile. “When we know what we’re looking for, rabbi, we don’t have too much trouble finding it.”
28
THE BOARD MEETING WAS UNUSUAL IN THAT THE RABBI WAS present. When Jacob Wasserman had come to him and asked if he would be willing to sit with the board at their regular meeting, he was pleased and grateful.
“You don’t have to, you know. I mean, we won’t hold it against you if you don’t come to a meeting, or to any of them for that matter. I just want you to know that any time you choose to come, we’ll be happy to have you.”
And now he was present at his first meeting. He listened carefully to the secretary read the minutes of the previous meeting. He was most attentive during the reports of the chairmen of various committees. The principal piece of Old Business was a motion to floodlight the parking lot at night.
The original motion had been made by Al Becker and he now rose to speak. “I’ve done a little checking around. We’ve got this electrical contractor that does a lot of work for us and I had him come out and look the place over and give us a very rough figure as to the cost. According to him, we can do it in one of two ways. Either put up three towers, which would come to about twelve hundred apiece, or we could put up six special floodlights mounted on the temple itself. Mounting them would be cheaper, but it would spoil the outline of the building. We could get those for five hundred apiece, so it’s three thousand against thirty-six hundred. Then we’d have to have a clock arrangement to turn the lights on and off automatically. That wouldn’t cost much, but we’d have to figure in the cost of electricity. All told, the job could be done for five thousand bucks at the outside.”
Becker was nettled at the groan from those around the table. “I know it’s a lot of money, but this is necessary. I’m glad our rabbi is here today because no one knows better than he how important it is to have our parking lot lit up at night.”
“But think what it will cost us year after year, Al. You can’t put sixty-watt bulbs in those babies. In the winter, that can be about fourteen hours.”
“Would you rather have the place become a lovers’ lane, or maybe have another little business like the one we had?” Becker shot back.
“In the summer, those lights will attract a zillion mosquitoes.”
“So—they’ll be up around near the light, won’t they? If anything, it will keep the grounds free of them.”
“That’s not the way it works up at the driving range. When they have those lights on, the mosquitoes are all over the place.”
“And how do you think the people that live nearby are going to like having a place the size of the parking lot lit up all night?”
The rabbi murmured something.
“What is it, rabbi?” Mr. Wasserman asked. “Did you want to say something on this matter?”
“I was just thinking,” said the rabbi diffidently, “there’s only one car entrance to the parking lot. Why can’t you just put up a gate?”
There was sudden silence. Then they all started to explain it to each other.
“Sure, it’s asphalt so nobody would come there except in a car.”
“There are bushes and shrubs all around the front. All we’d have to block off is the driveway.”
“Stanley could close it every night and open it first thing in the morning.”
“Even if Stanley weren’t around some night and a committee wanted to hold a meeting, so they could park their cars in the street.”
As suddenly as they had begun, they stopped and looked at their young rabbi with respect and admiration.
The rabbi was at home, a large volume on the desk in front of him, when his wife came to the door of the study. “Chief Lanigan is here, dear.”
The rabbi started to rise, but Lanigan said, “Don’t get up, rabbi.” Then he noticed the volume on the desk. “Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all.”
“Nothing special,” Lanigan went on. “Ever since we solved the case I’ve missed our little chats. But I was in the neighborhood, so out of habit I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”
The rabbi smiled his pleasure.
“I just came up against a little bit of pedantry that might amuse you,” Lanigan said. “You know, every two weeks I have to submit the salary schedule for the department to the town comptroller for audit and approval. I list the regular hours worked by each man, overtime if any, special assignments, and then total it up for each man. You understand?”
The rabbi nodded.
“Well, I had the whole thing turned back to me”—Lanigan could not keep the exasperation from showing in his voice—“because Patrolman Norman was included for his full tour of duty. The comptroller claimed he should have been docked for all the time after he killed the girl because, as a criminal, he was no longer entitled to be on the police payroll. How do you like that? I don’t know whether to fight him on it, or just drop the item and forget about it.”
The rabbi pursed his lips and then glanced at the big book on his desk. He smiled. “Shall we see what the Talmud says?”
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late Page 20
