Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  Across the wide vestibule, opposite Julie Redmond’s front door, was apartment 3-C, owned by Miss Elizabeth Fitzpatrick. She had discovered the body and then phoned her nephew, her doctor, and her local police station—in that order—before going into mild shock.

  As Sigrid started to knock, the door was flung open by Miss Fitzpatrick’s doctor. He was a bouncy little man with a chirping voice and a bustling air of great importance.

  “When did they start putting women on homicide cases?” he clucked disapprovingly. “She’ll be asleep in fifteen minutes, so you’d better hurry with your questions. I told her you’d stay until her nephew gets back from the drugstore with her tranquilizers, okay?”

  Without pausing for Sigrid’s answer, he bounced over to the elevator.

  Sigrid shrugged and entered the apartment and immediately stumbled over a hassock.

  “Do watch your step, young lady!” said an acerbic voice. Apologizing, Sigrid groped her way forward, half blind in the darkened room. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw a wispy figure lying on a massive Victorian couch that was piled with small velvet and satin cushions. With her soft white curls caught up in a loose bundle atop her head and her gold-rimmed glasses, Miss Fitzpatrick looked like an illustration from a child’s old-fashioned picture book.

  All around her, ornately carved tables and curio stands pushed against overstuffed chairs and Tiffany lamps. White lace doilies lay like winter snowflakes on all the arms of the furniture, and linen antimacassars anachronistically protected the upholstered backs from men who no longer slicked their hair with Macassar oil.

  Fragile glass figurines and beaded flower arrangements crowded all available surfaces, and on the walls were more bouquets of pressed flowers in gilt frames as well as puritan­faced photographs of unsmiling men and women dressed in turn-of-the-century styles. Around the room, tortoise-framed mirrors with crazed silver distorted everything they reflected.

  The Redmond apartment had been starkly modern and so uncluttered as to seem bare, but Miss Fitzpatrick’s—

  For a moment, Sigrid had the mad impression that she’d blundered into a secondhand-furniture shop.

  “I do have some nice things, don’t I?” the old lady asked proudly, misinterpreting Sigrid’s stare. “The only benefit of outliving everyone is that one ends up with all the family heirlooms. But you mustn’t waste time gawking. Didn’t you hear the doctor? He gave me something to calm my nerves.”

  She gestured to a dainty spool chair beside the sofa. “Sit there.”

  “Or, no—” she countered as she took in the policewoman’s tall frame, “perhaps you’d better sit on the loveseat.”

  Miss Fitzpatrick was quite tiny. Less than five feet high, with fine thin features beneath her topknot of white curls, she examined Sigrid with bright-eyed curiosity.

  “I had heard that ladies do everything these days, but investigating murder?” she asked disapprovingly. “Rather young, are you not? Or am I so very old? I’m eighty-seven, you know. Eighty-seven next month, that is. How old are you?”

  Reminding herself that she was in charge, Sigrid pulled the sturdiest chair she could see up to the sofa (“Mind you don’t scuff the rug!”), smiled pleasantly, and firmly overrode Miss Fitzpatrick’s questions with one of her own. “Do you recall what time you found Mrs. Redmond?”

  “Of course I do! I assure you I am not senile!” She glared at Sigrid from her nest of cushions, her chin proudly defiant. “It was one-fifteen. I was on my way downstairs to check my mailbox. Disgraceful the way our postal service has deteriorated. When I was a child, Mama could mail her grocery order in the morning and the groceries would arrive in the afternoon. Only one delivery a day now and no precise schedule. Still delivery is usually made by a quarter past one, so that is when I go down for my walk around the block and to pick up my mail. Although these days, it’s mostly just my bank statements and circulars addressed to occupant. Attrition, you know. When one lives to be eighty-seven, most of one’s friends and relatives are dead.

  “Do you know when I felt truly old?” she asked. “It was two years ago when the last person who had known me as a child died. Ninety-three, he was. Now there’s no one left who remembers me in my perambulator any more. A silly thing to care about, is it not?”

  For a moment, her proud chin wavered and her bright blue eyes clouded with pain behind the shining glasses.

  Sigrid’s voice was gentle as she asked, “Exactly how did you discover the body, Miss Fitzpatrick?”

  “Her door was ajar. Quite careless, it seemed. An open invitation to thieves. Then I saw that her papers were tossed around on her desk as if it’d been burglarized. However untidy Mrs. Redmond’s morals—divorcing her husband, seeing other men—I gathered she was most insistent upon neatness and order.” In answer to Sigrid’s inquiring gaze, she explained, “No, we had only a nodding acquaintance, but her cleaning woman also cleans for me. A most talkative person,” she added.

  “As a neighbor though,” continued Miss Fitzpatrick, “I felt it my duty to go inside and offer my assistance.”

  “But weren’t you afraid the thief might still be there?” asked Sigrid, who’d warmed to the old woman’s crisp spirit.

  “One doesn’t have to be a policeman to realize how highly illogical that would be.”

  “Illogical?”

  “The door, of course. Only the most bungling thief would leave a door half open while he worked. Surely even a policewoman would know that?” Miss Fitzpatrick pursed her lips disapprovingly.

  “To continue: I entered the kitchen and saw Mrs. Redmond on the floor. I thought she had fainted or perhaps been struck unconscious by the intruder, but she was cold when I touched her.”

  Again, Miss Fitzpatrick’s prim diction faltered. “Quite, quite cold. When one is eighty-seven, death can be a frightening thing.”

  “And you saw no one?” asked Sigrid. Miss Fitzpatrick shook her head.

  “What about earlier? Did you see or hear anything that might help us?”

  “I don’t know if it’s pertinent, but I did hear her voice raised in anger this morning. The wall between our two kitchens is quite thin. I assure you I have never had the least desire to eavesdrop, but one is sometimes compelled to hear things one would rather not.”

  As the sedative she’d been given began to take effect, Miss Fitzpatrick smothered a dainty yawn.

  “And you heard something this morning?”

  “Somewhat earlier I had heard her shrieking at the boy, but that was not unusual. She seemed most unmotherly. Later, I heard her speak quite loudly to the effect, ‘He’s mine and you can damn well stay away from him!’”

  “Did you hear the other person?”

  “Only indistinctly. The voice was so low I couldn’t even say if it were a man or a woman.”

  Another ladylike yawn was hidden behind thin, gnarled fingers and Miss Fitzpatrick’s eyelids drooped perceptibly.

  “And the time?”

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but time has little relevance to me now. All I can be certain of is that it was sometime in midmorning. After six-thirty when I breakfast, but well before twelve­thirty, when I have my lunch.”

  She yawned again and said politely, “Please excuse me.” Then rearranging a handful of ruffled pillows to support her neat white head, Miss Elizabeth Fitzpatrick closed her eyes and was instantly asleep.

  Sigrid glanced at her watch. Three o’clock. Almost two hours since the murder had been discovered and all she’d learned was that Julie Redmond had had at least one visitor that morning. Someone with whom she’d quarreled. And who had killed her?

  The front door of the apartment opened, and a younger, masculine replica of Miss Fitzpatrick entered, maneuvering through the maze of furniture with familiar dexterity. His eyes were a darker blue and his hair was steel gray instead of white, but he had his aunt’s crisp authority and spoke with the same precision as he introduced himself.

  “I am Gilbert Fitzpatrick, my aunt�
�s attorney. You should have waited until I was present to question her.”

  “You thought we might consider her a suspect?” Sigrid asked mildly.

  “Of course not! Nevertheless—” He left his objections unvoiced as he examined his watch impatiently. “Where is that girl?”

  “Did you know Mrs. Redmond?” Sigrid asked.

  The lawyer had disappeared down a hallway and seemed not to have heard her. When he reappeared, he carried a puffy silk comforter which he tucked around Miss Fitzpatrick with fussy care. As he gently removed the old lady’s glasses, the front door opened again, admitting a young girl who carried notebooks and several high school textbooks which she dumped in the nearest chair.

  “Lieutenant Harald, my daughter,” he said, regarding the girl with a mixture of pride and admonition.

  Eliza Fitzpatrick was fifteen and seemed to have inherited the family traits of small bones and self-assurance although she was still too young and ingenuous to maintain it for long.

  She offered her hand formally, then beamed at Sigrid. “A police officer. Neat! Does that mean you’re in charge and you can boss around all those men over there? How long have you been a lieutenant?”

  “Don’t be inquisitive, Eliza!” her father said sharply. “Lieutenant Harald does not have time to answer frivolous questions. Pay attention, please. When your Aunt Elizabeth awakens, this is the medicine the doctor’s prescribed, should she feel faint again. You will pack a small case with the overnight things she’ll require and I’ll pick you both up before dinner.”

  “Okay,” the girl said cheerfully, “but I’ll bet you a dollar she won’t come home with us.”

  “Mr. Fitzpatrick,” Sigrid interrupted firmly.

  “Yes, yes, I heard you before,” said the lawyer. “You wanted to know if I was acquainted with Mrs. Redmond?” He took a deep breath. “Certainly not! My aunt had introduced her and we occasionally met in passing, but that was the extent of our acquaintance.”

  “What about you, Eliza?”

  “It was the same for my daughter,” said Gilbert Fitzpatrick brusquely and held the door open for Sigrid. “Shall we go before we disturb my aunt?”

  Sigrid had no choice but to follow him, but she’d noticed the way Eliza’s chin had come up defiantly when her father denied any real knowledge of Julie Redmond, and she made a mental note to see the girl again when Mr. Fitzpatrick wasn’t around.

  CHAPTER 4

  Once more Detective Tildon met Sigrid in the open doorway to apartment 3-D.

  “The doorman said her ex-husband was here this morning,” he reported significantly. “Arrived around ten-fifteen, left about eleven. And 3-B just came back. Mrs. Cavatori. She’s got the Redmond kid with her, cute little guy. I told her you’d be right in to see them.”

  “You’d better come, too, since you’re the child expert,” Sigrid said. She crossed the vestibule and rang the bell at 3-B. It was opened almost immediately by a plump, vibrant woman in her early sixties.

  “Mrs. Cavatori? I’m Lieutenant Harald and this is Detective Tildon. May we come in?”

  “Ma sicuro, Lieutenant, certainly; but please—the boy—he must not hear. A moment only, per favore.”

  She closed the door behind them and gestured toward chairs in the living room; then carrying a toy clown, she bustled away to the rear of the apartment and a moment later they heard her voice, cheerful and loving, mingled with that of a young child.

  Located on the street side of the building, the Cavatori apartment was rather larger than the rear ones of Julie Redmond’s or Miss Fitzpatrick’s, and the mood was different again. The decor was more formal, yet there was a warm, homey feeling.

  Money—lots of money—had probably been spent on the rooms they could see from where they stood, but it was money spent for comfort, not ostentation. The furnishings were old, solid, and of obvious quality; and everything seemed cherished. All the glass, from window panes to Venetian ashtrays, sparkled and the gleaming wood surfaces exuded an old-fashioned smell of beeswax and lemon oil.

  A long, intricately carved, marble-topped chest ranged against one wall and a large bowl of anemones and jonquils on the nearer end almost obscured the groupings beyond. Just above the chest top, a crystal rosary hung from the wall in graceful loops, its gold crucifix barely clearing the flame tip of the single votive candle. Several silver-framed photographs—two or three turn-of-the-century portraits, a couple of informal family snapshots, and one of a dark-haired youth—clustered about the candle. Across the room, dark red drapes had been looped back to let in afternoon sun across thick white carpets.

  Mrs. Cavatori returned and clucked and bustled as she scolded them for not sitting. A maid trailed in her wake with a tray heavily laden with coffee and sweet pastries. In Luisa Cavatori’s experience, few were the occasions that couldn’t be eased with food or drink. No visitor had ever gone away from her home hungry.

  She seemed like a classic Italian signora—plump, bossy, with expressive black eyes and excited gestures—and Sigrid recognized that the woman was incapable of sitting if there were the remotest possibility of a guest’s hunger or thirst.

  Resigned, she and Tillie accepted cups and saucers, then had to wait until the rapid burst of questions and exclamations about Julie Redmond’s death had subsided before Sigrid could interpolate her own questions.

  “What time did I last see Julie? Only this morning, of course. About ten-thirty. When I take Timmy to the circus. Povero bimbo! All week he has been so excited for this day. He is like the grandson we never had, and Julie has no nursemaid, so I borrow him often. All week I have promised him the circus and today I take him.”

  “Did Mrs. Redmond seem upset or worried about anything?”

  “Worried? No. Upset? She is easy to upset. Timmy had spilled cereal on his new pants and she was, as you say, upset about that, but—”

  An expressive shrug and a humorous downward tug of her lips showed how little importance Mrs. Cavatori attached to that domestic crisis and Sigrid recalled Miss Fitzpatrick’s remarks about the dead woman’s frequent outbursts at the child.

  “No, when we left, she was sitting with another cup of coffee. She was like you, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Cavatori scolded. “Too skinny and all the time not a drop of cream or sugar in her coffee.”

  Her plump hands advanced with the cream pitcher once more and Sigrid hastily moved her cup out of range.

  “Had she said anything about expecting visitors or going out later?”

  “There was a dress at Saks she saw in the paper. I told her not to hurry. I would give Timmy his nap. Since he was a baby we have a little bed for him here.”

  Tillie’s neat shorthand covered several notebook pages as, with only a little encouragement, the woman filled in their picture of Julie Redmond, beginning with her marriage to Karl Redmond four years ago.

  Redmond’s father had been a courtly old-country gentleman who had owned one of those hole-in-the-wall shops down on Canal Street, one of those shops whose grimy facade hid a sultan’s glittering treasure trove of cut and uncut gems.

  Old Mr. Redmond had anglicized his name, but otherwise he’d been as unpretentious as his shop and he had run his business with old-fashioned methods, treating his shimmering wares as casually as a grocer might treat cheeses and pickles. It had provided a comfortable, honorable living and should have done the same for his only son.

  Old Mr. Redmond had not approved his son’s choice of wife, explained Mrs. Cavatori, but he had given them the apartment across the hall as a wedding gift, which was how she had met the Redmonds.

  “So beautiful Julie was. Like a principessa from a fairy story. But I do not think she had a nice family when she was little.”

  In other words, Julie Redmond had beauty, but her antecedents were implicit in her brother.

  “That Mickey Novak! He has bad eyes. Cold. They look at you and they do not see a person. They see how much money you have and if he can get some of it.”

  Sigrid knew
the type. “Did he visit his sister often?”

  Mrs. Cavatori shrugged disdainfully. “Only since last year. Before that, he was in prison.”

  Detective Tildon looked at Sigrid expressively and added an extra question mark to Mickey Novak’s name.

  Mrs. Cavatori intercepted their look. “You think him?” she asked. É possibile. Many times they fight together. Not open, you understand, but underneath—like two dogs that circle around each other. Once he called her an ugly name and she slapped him. Hard. He looked like he could kill her, but I was there and Timmy. Maybe today—?”

  Sigrid murmured that they’d certainly be talking to Mickey Novak, but for the present, if Mrs. Cavatori would go on with her narrative?

  The woman nodded.

  “Julie and Karl, they were not happy together. Who can say why? Both good people, but Karl is quiet and not bossy and Julie—such a hard worker, never a speck of dirt in her house, Timmy always dressed so nice—but maybe she needed Karl to tell her to shut up sometimes.

  “You, Lieutenant, you are a professional woman, but you listen when your husband speaks, no?”

  “I’m not married,” Sigrid said stiffly

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Cavatori sympathetically. “Never mind, Lieutenant, you are still a young woman.”

  Tillie kept his eyes fastened on his notebook.

  “When were the Redmonds divorced?” Sigrid asked.

  “Last spring. Everything went wrong for them then. First Mr. Redmond, then the business, then the divorce.”

  Mrs. Cavatori was unclear about all the details of how the business failed, but old Mr. Redmond’s death the previous spring was still fresh in her memory.

  “The police came then, too, to talk to Karl and Julie, so maybe you know all about it, Lieutenant?”