Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald)

by Margaret Maron

  “It’s not that,” she assured him, heading for the kitchen. “I just hope you washed it thoroughly.”

  Tramegra trailed after her. “Washed?” he said. “Well, of course I did. At least I rinsed it under the tap. I mean, how dirty could it be growing in that jar? Oh dear! It wasn’t poison, was it? I was so certain it was parsley. I never thought about hemlock or nightshade!”

  Upon meeting Sigrid, Tramegra had instantly decided to write a murder thriller and kept hoping she would give him authentic details which would inspire a bestseller. So far, he’d been disappointed by what she’d let drop of her day-to-day cases. Did she never handle anything exotic? Something with blow darts or tarantulas? “Guns are commonplace, and blunt instruments are so tacky,” he kept complaining.

  Now he was excited by the possibility that she’d finally relented, had actually brought home a poisonous plant that he could use in a story.

  “It was only parsley,” said Sigrid, deflating his hopes. “But there were caterpillars on it. Swallowtail butterfly larvae.”

  She took a magnifying glass from a pencil jar on the counter and examined the clump of parsley which remained inside the jar. Three hairy little worms still munched away with single­minded devotion. She tried to remember just how many Jill Gill had given her. Three seemed about right, but she’d certainly examine each forkful of any broccoli casserole Roman served her, just in case.

  As might have been predicted, Tramegra’s magpie attention was diverted by the caterpillars.

  Sigrid was unclear about his finances, but she suspected that a small income from some unknown source paid for necessities. For the extravagances of his life, he sold bits and scraps of freelance writing to magazines, newspapers and trade journals. Tramegra’s markets, like Flea Market Living, were seldom the high-paying slick magazines, but this never discouraged him.

  Under his enthusiastic questions, Sigrid relayed everything Dr. Gill had told her about the different life stages of this particular butterfly and was amused to see Roman’s interest turn calculating.

  “It’s a natural for Jack and Jill or Humpty Dumpty,” he said.

  “Or—with some really sharp pictures—Ranger Rick. Tie in the scientific and environmental aspect. I shall call it ‘City Pets for City Kids.’”

  “They eat parsley, celery tops, and dill,” said Sigrid, more than willing to delegate their care to someone else. Nauman was quite mistaken if he thought she yearned for small, fuzzy creatures to coo over.

  She glanced at the time and realized that he must be far out over the Atlantic by now. And she didn’t miss him at all, she told herself, as she watched Roman dish out the broccoli casserole.

  CHAPTER 9

  The night was a mixed success for Eliza Fitzpatrick. As she’d guessed (and hoped), Aunt Elizabeth refused to listen to reason and would not allow herself to be dislodged.

  Gilbert Fitzpatrick presented cogent legalistic arguments, but Aunt Elizabeth remained adamant and, in Eliza’s view, her logic was impeccable: Julie Redmond’s killer had accomplished what he desired and had departed unobserved. Lack of witnesses and the open door were proof that he had not been disturbed or hurried, so there was little reason to suppose that he would return. And even if he did, continued Aunt Elizabeth, why would he bother with her? Indeed, how could he, when a policeman had been left there on guard?

  “But you shouldn’t be alone now,” Fitzpatrick had argued. “You have taken a sedative and if you should fall—”

  “I am much more likely to fall in your home than in my own,” Aunt Elizabeth had said crisply. Her apartment might look like an overcrowded antique store, but every footstool and hand­hooked scatter rug occupied a familiar spot and she could thread her way through the maze blindfolded if need be.

  Her nephew conceded that the same could not be said for his home.

  “I’ll stay over, if you like,” Eliza volunteered.

  Her father looked at her suspiciously.

  “I can finish reading Wuthering Heights here just as well as at home,” Eliza said, rummaging in her book bag for note cards and trying to appear indifferent as to whether or not she’d be allowed to spend the night next door to a real murder scene.

  Her air was convincing and he had finally departed for the night, fussily making sure that the door was double-locked behind him,

  Her mother, more perceptive, had rung up a half hour later. “I want your word of honor that you won’t go chasing all over that building tonight,” she said.

  “Oh, Mom!”

  “Don’t ‘Oh, Mom’ me,” said maternal authority. “I don’t know what you thought you’d be missing if you didn’t stay there tonight, but you’re not to poke your nose into things that don’t concern you. I mean it, Eliza.”

  “I was just trying to be helpful,” said Eliza, injured.

  “So long as you limit your helpfulness to Aunt Elizabeth,” her mother replied. “I knew it was a mistake to let you read all those Nancy Drew books.”

  Eliza laughed and hung up the phone.

  Until ten o’clock, when Aunt Elizabeth finally toddled off to bed, she had been the dutiful, studious niece; had, in truth, finished reading Wuthering Heights and jotted down the main points she wanted to make in her paper about repressed sexuality and the status of women in the nineteenth century. But with Aunt Elizabeth safely tucked away, she had tiptoed down to the front door and peered through the fisheye peephole that provided a good view of the vestibule from the elevator on the left to the stairwell doors opposite,

  Beyond the corner of the stairwell, she could just see the edge of Officer Hodson’s blue bulk as he sat absorbed in an evening newspaper.

  Without a single qualm—five or ten feet from Aunt Elizabeth’s threshold hardly constituted chasing all over the building, she rationalized—Eliza opened the door and gave Hodson a friendly smile.

  “Doesn’t it get lonely being on guard all night?” she asked.

  The silent building, the vestibule’s indirect lighting, the lateness of the hour—all were conducive to introspective conversation. Eliza planned to study law herself; and with her budding lawyer’s skill, it took her only ten minutes to lead Officer Hodson from a philosophic discussion of routine police work into a general highlighting of some of the more interesting cases he’d worked on. Ten minutes more and they were into the specifics of Julie Redmond’s murder, with Hodson pooh-poohing any exotic solutions.

  “It’ll be the ex-husband or a lover or the lover boy’s ex-girlfriend. You’ll see.”

  “How do you know she had a lover?”

  “Cupcakes like that’ve always got a guy on the string,” Hodson said flatly.

  Eliza started to argue about judging a woman by her looks, but then she recalled that repressed sexuality hadn’t exactly been one of Julie’s hang-ups. She conceded the point and sat down on the carpeted floor near him. “Is it always a husband or boyfriend?”

  “Or a brother or even a son. At least the ones we solve usually are. Murder’s about the most personal crime you can get,” he explained, remembering some of the lectures he’d attended at John Jay when he was still trying to make sergeant. “That’s what they mean by domestic. It just stands to reason: Who hates you enough to kill you? Somebody who knows you good. And who knows you that good? Your family and your best friends, that’s who!”

  “And when it’s not domestic?” asked Eliza.

  “When the killer doesn’t know his victim?”

  Eliza nodded.

  “If we don’t nail him in the act, then those are the ones that get dumped in the dead-end files. If they ever get solved, it’s usually because a car gets stopped for a license check or the guy gets a speeding ticket. Pure dumb luck, most of the time.”

  A product of a scientific technological era, Eliza had grown up thinking one could punch the proper data into an electronic keyboard and a precise answer correct to six decimal points would magically appear. She was slightly shocked to realize how easily an impersonal murder coul
d go undetected and hoped that wouldn’t be the case here. “Does Lieutenant Harald think it’s a boyfriend?” she asked eagerly.

  Hodson shrugged, not wanting to admit that a precinct cop was hardly the lieutenant’s first sounding board.

  “They say she doesn’t guess—just waits until she knows. I hear she’s got a pretty good batting average,” he added generously.

  This was what Eliza had really come to hear. Hitching her jeans more comfortably, she drew her knees up together, propped her small pointed chin on them and settled herself to pump Officer Hodson on all he knew about Lieutenant Harald.

  “Eliza!” exclaimed a scandalized voice. “What on earth are you doing out there alone—unchaperoned!—at this time of night?”

  The girl guiltily jumped to her feet.

  Without her gold-rimmed glasses, Miss Elizabeth Fitzpatrick looked even tinier than usual, but the tendrils of white curls which sprang around her face did nothing to soften her outraged propriety, and her dignity triumphed even over a pink ruffled nightgown.

  “What would your father say if he found you here?”

  Eliza sighed and said goodnight to Hodson, who watched her follow a scolding Miss Fitzpatrick back inside 3-C. He regretted the interruption almost as much as Eliza had. Now the evening stretched ahead with nothing to break the monotony.

  To give Miss Fitzpatrick her due, she did not belabor Eliza with disapproval once her niece was properly back inside the apartment and pointed toward the bed in the guest room. They said goodnight to each other, then Eliza brushed her teeth and slipped into the oversized football sweatshirt that constituted her nightgown. The sweatshirt—bright red with a gold numeral—struck an incongruous note in the turn-of-the century bedroom.

  The spool bed was covered in white dimity spread and dust ruffles and had a matching tester with ruffles and shirrs overhead. It always made Eliza feel like a character in Little Women. Unfortunately, the soft, fluffy bed had a surprisingly lumpy mattress and it usually took her half the night to come to terms with it.

  Tonight was no different. She kept drifting off to sleep, snuggling deeper into the covers, then coming uncomfortably awake as a leg or arm tried to accommodate an unexpected mound or depression. She thought of Julie and wondered where her body was now.

  Among the tenants of the Rensselaer Building, few were given to riotous parties or late nights; and by two, the elevator seemed to have made its last run of the evening. Silence enfolded the building and Officer Hodson had put aside his newspaper and fought his heavy eyelids to a compromise: He would close them, but that certainly didn’t mean he was going to sleep.

  Within minutes, his lower lip had dropped and his breathing came slower and heavier as he lost his tenuous hold on consciousness.

  He was oblivious when someone entered the vestibule almost noiselessly through the stair door and watched him with uneasiness before moving silently away.

  At two-thirty Eliza gave up on the lumpy bed and crept down the hall to the kitchen, pausing first by her aunt’s door to listen to the faint, ladylike snores. Out in the kitchen, she tried not to rattle the utensils too loudly as she measured cocoa, sugar, and milk into a saucepan. Experience had taught her that only a large mug of hot chocolate would relax her enough to finish the night on that mattress.

  Up to this point, she could say with perfect truthfulness that cocoa had been her only reason for getting up. But adding an extra cup of milk to the saucepan bordered on deliberate calculation.

  They’re guardians of public welfare and safety, she argued silently. Support your local police. Wasn’t Dad always saying that citizens weren’t properly appreciative? Didn’t Aunt Elizabeth believe in charity? How much could it hurt to offer a cup of cocoa to a public servant? She certainly wouldn’t stay.

  Well . . . she’d only stay long enough for him to drink it so she could bring the cup back. Nobody could complain about that.

  All the same, Eliza slipped back down to her room and pulled on her jeans before tiptoeing barefooted to the front door. She’d be in enough trouble if Aunt Elizabeth caught her. Catching her with only a sweatshirt on would probably shock the old darling worse than finding Julie’s body.

  Grinning at the thought, Eliza pressed her eye to the peep­hole and was frozen by the scene in the vestibule outside.

  At first, it looked as though Officer Hodson had been knocked unconscious by the tall, stooped-shouldered man who stood over him and glared down with clenched fists. Hodson’s body seemed loose in the chair, his eyes were closed, and his head drooped to one side. But the stealthy way in which the man moved away made Eliza realize that Hodson was only sleeping. The door was virtually soundproof, but she was willing to bet that there was no jingle as one of the ubiquitous Dorritts separated the passkeys on his ring and fitted one into a lock.

  His gaunt, pendulous head turned once more to the sleeping officer before he disappeared inside the apartment.

  Eliza gave him time to get well away from the door, then darted across the vestibule and shook Hodson.

  He jerked awake, but it was only the girl again, not one of his superiors, thank God! He started to relax when she shook him again and hissed, “It’s one of the doormen! He used a passkey to get into that apartment.”

  “What?” Hodson stood up sharply, his hand automatically unsnapping his holster. Puzzled, he noted the unbroken seals on both doors of the Redmond apartment.

  “Not there,” whispered the girl. “He went into the Bitzers’ apartment.” She pointed to 3-A.

  “Which door?” Hodson whispered back.

  “The main one.”

  “Okay, you go back inside and close your door,” he directed. Insulted as she felt at being treated like a child, Eliza knew the futility of arguing with bullheaded authority. She retreated to the far side of her aunt’s threshold, but kept the door open a tiny crack; and when Hodson tried the door of 3-A, she was watching with her breath held.

  The door opened silently at his touch and over his shoulder, Eliza saw that the lights were on inside the entry. Hodson stepped through the door and Eliza followed unnoticed a few feet behind him.

  The formal rooms were dark, but as they turned the corner and passed through an opening to the service hall, light could be seen streaming from the kitchen and they heard the clink of glass on porcelain. Suddenly aware of her presence, Hodson glared at her and motioned for her to go back, but Eliza stubbornly held her ground.

  Resigned, Hodson rushed forward into the kitchen with his revolver in hand. “Okay, Dorritt!” he cried.

  He was drawn up short by the old man’s innocuous appearance. Whichever Dorritt it was, he was engaged in nothing more sinister than emptying a bottle of milk into the sink.

  Hodson holstered his gun. “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked curiously.

  “Thought you were sleeping,” muttered the doorman.

  “That’s what you were supposed to think,” said Hodson with a wink at Eliza. Let the old geezer think I set a trap for him, he thought, and hoped the girl wouldn’t give away the game.

  “Think I didn’t catch on to why you kept coming up and offering to give me a break?” Even as he said it, Hodson realized that his words actually did match the facts. By damn, Dorritt had been back and forth all evening trying to get him away from the third floor! “But why this apartment and not the other one?” he asked.

  “My job,” the man answered sullenly. “Keep an eye on the place when tenants are gone.”

  “At three o’clock in the morning?” exclaimed Eliza. Dorritt shrugged his thin shoulders inside his worn navy blue sweater.

  “Okay,” said Hodson. “That’s it. Leave that bottle right there on the sink and let’s go.”

  Mutely, Dorritt doused the lights. Hodson and Eliza followed him down the hall and at the front door, the policeman waited for him to lock up and then took the keys.

  “Gotta have ’em,” Dorritt protested.

  “You can get ’em back from my sergeant or the li
eutenant tomorrow,” Hodson said heartlessly. “Now beat it!”

  He looked at Eliza. “You, too, kid.”

  Dorritt punched the elevator button and Eliza had almost reached her aunt’s door when she paused and said, “You don’t smoke, do you, Mr. Dorritt?”

  “What kind of a question’s that?” growled Hodson. Dorritt’s natural inclination was to remain silent, but thinking it would annoy the policeman if he answered her, he shook his head and gave a negative grunt.

  Thoughtfully, Eliza bolted and chained the door and trailed down the hallway.

  “Eliza?”

  Her heart sinking, Eliza opened the door to her aunt’s room. “Can’t you sleep, dear?” murmured Aunt Elizabeth. “Why don’t you prepare yourself a nice cup of cocoa?”

  “I think I will,” she answered gratefully. “Good night, Aunt Elizabeth.”

  “Sleep well, dear. And don’t forget to turn off the stove.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The telephone trilled next to Julie Redmond’s bed and was echoed by an extension in the sunlit kitchen. Detective Tildon reluctantly pulled his attention from the dead woman’s surprisingly complex bank records and carried his empty coffee cup down to the kitchen where he picked up the receiver on the fifth ring.

  “Hello?” he answered cautiously, in case the caller was their still unidentified George.

  “Couldn’t resist it, could you, Tillie?” asked the lieutenant’s voice.

  “I finished those reports on the Harrison case before I came over,” Tillie said defensively. “Left them on your desk. Anyhow,” he added, “aren’t you off duty?”

  “Oh well,” said Sigrid.