Murder in Greenwich Village

by Liz Freeland

  We strode past him at a quick yet still dignified pace.

  “Callie!” His wail at our backs echoed around the dark block, plaintive and desperate.

  “You did right,” I said to her under my breath.

  “Oh, hang what’s right.” Callie scowled at the pavement. “I’m not noble. I just don’t like liars, is all. A man who would cheat on his wife would cheat on anybody.”

  Her trembling arm belied her tough tone. After first meeting Sawyer, Callie had been over the moon. A month passed before she’d learned about the wife and children, and that discovery had been through her own detective work, not any pang of conscience on Sawyer’s part.

  “I’m sure he’s got the message now,” I said. “You made it plenty clear you wouldn’t see him again under any circumstances.”

  Callie whipped toward me. “Oh no, did I really?”

  Her worried expression confused me. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with him, would you?”

  “Well, for instance, if he got divorced . . .”

  “You just said you couldn’t trust him.”

  “But if he were to divorce his wife and marry me, that would be a whole different ballgame.”

  “Exactly. He might cheat on you.”

  “But I would be his wife. I’d have leverage, and security.”

  “What kind of security can there be in marriage to a man who’s already set one wife aside?”

  “More security than I’ve got now, or ever had. Have you ever woken up before dawn on a winter morning to do farm chores? Have you ever had chilblains from milking cows?”

  “But you’re here now, and you have ambitions. The stage, remember?”

  Callie laughed. “When half a million dollars falls in love with you, remind me how much you enjoy being a secretary.”

  We entered our building, rejoiced that our landlady’s son, Wally, wasn’t lurking about, and hurried up the two flights of stairs to the apartment. The chorus of “Be My Little Baby Bumblebee” performed by five saxophones accompanied us.

  “Still?” Callie hissed as we passed their door.

  It was late. The Bleecker Blowers were lucky that Mrs. Grimes, the landlady, was stone deaf.

  “I’m surprised Ethel hasn’t lodged a complaint already,” Callie said.

  The apartment door was unlocked and a light was on inside, but the stillness around us made it clear that Ethel had already gone to bed.

  Peeved, Callie muttered, “Miss Waste-Not-Want-Not wasting the electricity,” as she unpinned her hat and hung it on the wobbly coat rack by the door.

  I busied myself putting away the leftovers and breathed a sigh of relief when “Be My Little Baby Bumblebee” ended and wasn’t followed by an encore. Maybe we’d have a peaceful night after all.

  A piercing scream from the next room shattered that hope.

  I raced to where Callie was standing in the doorway of what had been her room, the one Ethel had taken over.

  “I just pushed the door open,” she whispered, her voice a flutter of panic. “Just to check.”

  It was gaping open now. Inside, Callie’s little bedside lamp was on, its green and yellow beaded shade casting a jaundiced glow over a grisly scene. In the center of the bed lay Ethel, facedown, a butcher’s knife plunged into her back. A dark stain spread across her nightdress and the bedspread. One of her shoes—one of Callie’s shoes, actually—dangled off her foot. On the rag rug lay a pair of once-white gloves now crimson with blood.

  Callie’s long-nailed fingers clawed my arm. “Send for a doctor.”

  I shook my head. I kept staring, taking in the gruesome scene, unable to look away. I’d encountered death only under the sedate, controlled conditions of the funerals and last viewings of distant relations, but this was different. The tableau before me was a horror that almost wrenched me from my mental moorings. Even so, there was no mistaking the ruthless stillness of death.

  “We need to send for the police,” I said.

  CHAPTER 2

  I wasn’t the only one who’d been alarmed by Callie’s scream. When I returned from running downstairs to shout for help, Wally, who lived on the first floor, charged up the stairs after me, followed by two of the saxophonists from the second floor. I didn’t know any of the musicians very well—membership in the Bleecker Blowers seemed to rotate monthly—but that didn’t stop them from barging right in. Moments later, Lucia from upstairs elbowed her way through in full-throated irritation at all the racket.

  “All this noise, what is?” She added something in Italian that was beyond my feeble power in that language, garnered solely from listening to those aforementioned Caruso records. “Finally I put the bambini to sleep, and now—”

  Her gaze fell on the bloodstained bed, and her skin went almost as pale as Ethel’s. Fearing a faint, I took her arm, piloted her out to the nearest chair with no view of that bedroom, and then hurried to the kitchen and dampened a cloth to make a compress. What was taking the police so long? Mr. Weiss, a man next door who gave voice lessons, had promised to find an officer or a telephone to call the precinct. I’d last seen him running toward Seventh Avenue booming, “Police! Help!” in his stirring baritone.

  While I was occupied with Lucia, Wally sidled up to Callie and put a hand on her shoulder. “Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked, practically drooling.

  Her gaze could have frozen hot coals. “You can keep your mitts to yourself.”

  Wally retracted his hand, but I was almost grateful to him for snapping Callie out of the funk she’d fallen into since discovering Ethel. If anyone could do it, it was Wally. He was stout and humpbacked, with skin that had a persistent sheen of sweat. If his personality weren’t so repugnant I might have pitied him, but his manner alternated between bossy and obsequious. His habit of lurking in his partially opened doorway and squinting up our skirts as we ascended the stairs made Callie dub him The Troll.

  Rebuffed, the man appointed himself interim constable. “Nobody leaves the apartment,” he announced.

  “It would be better if Callie and I could be alone,” I said.

  He puffed up. “This is a crime scene.”

  “La povera!” Lucia cried. “And to think, all the while I upstairs, putting my little ones to sleep, she down here and then this.” Her fist arced like a knife being wielded by a killer.

  The gruesome pantomime sent a shudder through the room.

  “How do you know this happened while you were tucking your children into bed?” I asked Lucia.

  “I hear the shouting,” she said.

  Callie froze. “You heard Ethel being killed?”

  “What did you hear?” I asked.

  “I hear the lady. Even with the noise, I hear.” She shook a fist angrily at the men from the second floor, who lingered. “Sassofoni maledetti!”

  There followed what I gathered was a spew of curses against saxophones and inconsiderate men making noise while hardworking people with little children were trying to sleep.

  Much as I sympathized, I had to interrupt. “What exactly did you hear, Lucia?”

  “ ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band,’ ” she said.

  The song was one of the Bleecker Blowers’ favorites, but that wasn’t what I meant.

  “What did you hear Ethel shouting?” I asked.

  Lucia nodded, understanding. “The lady shout, ‘Stop! Stop!’ I thinked she hate the music, too.” She buried her face in her hands. “La povera donna! Only the devil could do such a thing.”

  “Then I saw the devil,” Wally said excitedly, as if suddenly remembering. “I saw him!”

  I turned to him. His skin shone with an extra sheen of excitement. “You saw someone in our apartment?”

  “No, but I saw a man lurking in the stairwell. When he saw me, he ran out.”

  Maybe his trollish ways would prove useful for once. “When was this?” I asked.

  “Earlier tonight. Half an hour, forty-five minutes ago. I remember looking out because I’d seen Miss G
ail come in not too long before.”

  “You saw Ethel?” Callie frowned. “Coming in from where?”

  He lifted his heavy arms. “How should I know? I’m not a snoop.”

  No, just a creepy staircase voyeur. “Did Ethel say anything to you about where she’d been?” I asked.

  “Nah, she just scooted up the stairs. She’s shy with men, I guess.” He swallowed, remembering. “Was shy. Anyways, I saw her go up, so when I heard someone coming down not too long after, I says to Ma, ‘Gee, I wonder if something’s wrong with Miss Gail. She’s not usually out at this hour.’ That’s when I looked out and saw the killer.”

  Callie glanced at me, then back to Wally, a new fear dawning in her eyes. “What did the man look like?”

  “An average-sized kind of fellow.” Wally wiped his brow with a yellowed handkerchief. “Wore pretty fine clothes. Blue suit, dark hat. But he was fair, with blue eyes.”

  Every word out of his mouth caused Callie’s eyes to widen a fraction more. The description, general as it was, fit Sawyer Attinger. And Sawyer had even said he’d been here. I recalled those feverish eyes and his agitation. But why would he have waited to speak to us at the corner if he’d just killed someone in our apartment?

  “Lucia,” a deep voice behind us said. “We should go back upstairs.”

  I hadn’t noticed our neighbor Max come in, which just showed how distracted I was. Lucia’s husband’s six-foot-four frame was impossible to miss, especially in our cramped rooms.

  Wally threw his bulk into the doorway. “You can’t leave. The police will want to speak to us all. Maybe you saw the killer, too.”

  “I didn’t.” Max, towering over him, looked as if he might squish Wally under his boot if he didn’t move. “If the police want to talk to me or my wife, you know where to tell them to go.”

  The double-barrelled statement left Wally’s doughy face contorted in confusion, and maybe a hint of fear. Wisely, he stepped aside. Max, a painter, had never caused any trouble in the building, but his imposing bearing and the angry red scar on his cheek bespoke a man who’d survived a brawl or two.

  A policeman did arrive shortly thereafter, and Wally tackled him at once. “I saw the man who did it.”

  The officer hadn’t as yet viewed the murder scene, and upon entering the apartment he seemed skeptical that the account of murder that he’d been given so far was actually true. His demeanor changed as he approached the bedroom and took in the scene in all its horror. “My saints,” the man mumbled under his breath. “Aw, the poor lady.”

  I forced myself to stand beside him and look again. Once more, my gaze was arrested by the sight of that knife, and it dawned on me that it was the ten-inch butcher’s boning blade from our own kitchen. I’d seen Uncle Dolph use one like it to hack twenty-pound turkeys clear in half, as easily as going through meringue. A set of knives had been his farewell gift to me when I left Altoona. He’d sharpened the edges to razor points, but I wasn’t a cook and the ten-inch blade had never been used. Until tonight.

  Poor Ethel. Tears welled in my eyes. What must she have gone through? I hadn’t liked her much, but I’d never wished any harm on her.

  “You knew this lady very well, I take it, miss,” the constable said to me in a kindly tone. “She lived here?”

  When I tried to respond, my throat constricted like a snake around a mouse. Callie saw, and answered for me. “Ethel was my cousin.” She went on to tell him about Ethel’s arrival and her prolonged stay. What little there was to tell.

  As she spoke, my mind focused on other particulars. Something about the room was different from the first time I’d looked in, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. Something missing? The most striking detail was what Ethel was wearing: an ivory satin nightdress. The bloodstained garment belonged to Callie, and it was beyond strange that Ethel would have died in it, or had put it on at all. The matching shoes were also Callie’s. And Ethel had blond hair, almost the same shade as Callie’s. A chilling realization struck me: Facedown in that flowing gown, she might have been Callie herself.

  I glanced over at my friend, and from the confusion in her eyes and the edge to her voice, I guessed she had also noted the resemblance and wondered what it meant.

  As another policeman arrived, and then another, Wally regaled them with his account of the man on the staircase, who grew more sinister with each retelling. His third recitation added a new detail. “He was carrying something under his arm. Looked like one of those envelopes. You know—to hold papers. About so big.” His two index fingers air-sketched a rectangle the size of the envelopes I handled all day long dealing with manuscripts at Van Hooten and McChesney. They were the preferred packaging of writers who didn’t still wrap their manuscripts in butcher paper and string.

  A blond man of medium build, wearing a dark suit, carrying an envelope to our apartment. I’d given Ford Fitzsimmons my address, and he’d left Aunt Irene’s party at least an hour before I did. Could he have made it downtown in that short time, put a manuscript in an envelope, sought out my apartment, and . . .

  I gave myself a shake. Why would Ford want to kill Ethel, of all people? Why would he kill anyone? The disgust on his face as he’d looked across the room at Callie came back to me. Women are the devil, he’d said. But disgust wasn’t a motive for murder, was it?

  Besides, I would have known if I’d been feeding egg-salad sandwiches to a maniac.

  The policemen, after listening to Wally, turned back to Callie and me. “Does his description fit anybody either of you know?” one asked.

  “Sounds like half the men in Manhattan,” Callie said.

  The first constable on the scene, a man of about forty, asked in an almost paternal air, “Many gentlemen callers here in the evenings?”

  Callie raised her chin and declared, “I should say not,” sounding almost as prim as Ethel.

  “It’s not that kind of house,” Wally said. His offended tone might have been more believable if he hadn’t been standing in his sweaty undershirt, looking as if he was used to making himself at home in our apartment.

  The constable nodded. “No offense, girls. But you can see . . .” The tilt of his head toward the bedroom door brought it all back. The beaded lamp. Callie’s pink tulle curtain rustling in the breeze. The blood-soaked satin nightgown. Blood pooling on the bedclothes. Yes. It looked sordid.

  Poor Ethel. She would have been mortified, if she hadn’t been dead already.

  Soon, coroner’s men were in the apartment, too, taking pictures, measurements, sketches. A new menace appeared in the shape of reporters, who were chased out but kept swarming back. How had they heard about the murder so quickly? Apparently newspaper men camped out in police stations waiting for grisly news they could leap on like vultures with notepads. And they weren’t the only spectators. Once, I looked out the front window and saw a small crowd milling below. For some, murder was tragedy, for others, entertainment.

  Two detectives in street clothes, Muldoon and Robinson, arrived and were set upon by Wally. The detectives dispatched several of their uniformed brethren to other apartments and adjacent buildings to make inquiries. Callie and I hung back, saying little to each other and even less to anyone else. While Muldoon and Robinson heard Wally’s tale of the man on the stairs, I studied them. One was an older gentleman whose long face and downturned mouth reminded me of my sweet uncle Luddie, the fishmonger. When I was a little girl, Uncle Luddie used to hold up a fish head to his face and, turning down his own full lips, ask, “Which one’s your uncle?” No matter how I answered, he’d burst out laughing. The old detective only bore a slight resemblance to a tuna head, but his face was kind. The other man, Muldoon, was younger, and peered at the world through fierce brown eyes. He wasn’t as tall as his partner, but he exuded strength, like a boxer. Like a boxer, he had a crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken a few times.

  Of the two men, I preferred Robinson. But when they sat Callie and me down, it was Muldoon who kep
t drawing my gaze. He eyed us with the fixed concentration of a mind reader, and the longer he looked, the more I squirmed. You’d think I’d killed Ethel.

  The questioning began easily enough. They just needed to confirm details, Robinson said gently, and to find out more about Miss Gail, the victim. He asked if anything had been stolen.

  “Not that I know of . . .” Callie’s voice fractured into uncertainty. Neither of us had thought to check.

  “The money,” I blurted out.

  Callie’s startled gaze met mine. “Is it there?”

  “What money?” Muldoon asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said to Callie. I turned and hurried into the bedroom. Coroner’s men were going over every inch of the room. I made a beeline for the wardrobe, keeping my eyes trained away from the bed, where Ethel lay. Both pairs of Ethel’s button boots—the dull brown leather pair and her slightly fancier black ones with patent toes—stood next to the wardrobe.

  “The money’s in the black ones,” said Callie, just behind me.

  I picked them up and stuck my hand inside the right one, then the left. No money.

  “Let’s try the others,” she said.

  But the money wasn’t in there, either.

  “How much money are we talking about?” Robinson asked as Callie and I pivoted around the room, seeking other hiding places Ethel might have used.

  “I’m not sure,” Callie said. “I only ran across it once by chance, when I kicked the boot over. As I bent over to right it, I saw the wad of bills inside the boot. I didn’t stop to count it—but it was over a hundred dollars, I’m almost certain. That was two weeks ago.”

  Robinson dug his hands in his pockets. “She might’ve spent it.”

  “On what?” I asked. “She’s barely left the apartment in weeks. She certainly hasn’t been on a shopping spree.”

  Muldoon jerked his chin toward the bed. “What she’s wearing right now looks expensive.”