Murder Unrenovated

by P. M. Carlson

  “Do you like the place?” Len prompted.

  She turned back to them slowly, and Nick, suddenly concerned, took a step toward her. But it was Len she answered.

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s a great place. There’s only one problem. There’s a corpse in it.”

  2

  Julia Northrup sat alertly on the edge of her cluttered sofa, waiting, straining to hear their footsteps over that idiot preacher. They were audible only when old Reverend Goon paused for effect—first overhead, then on the stairs again, then, faint and far away, on the upper floors. It shouldn’t be long now.

  She had bagged the garbage and opened the kitchen window because the stench was so awful. Sometimes she was ashamed to think that she’d come to this. But she had learned long ago not to worry about what people thought of her. Except Vic. What would Vic think of this mess? He’d be horrified at first, curious, then amused. Furious at Artie Lund. But then he’d hug her, his hard arms gentle around her. Dear Vic. Would he be her lover still? Maybe. But face it, Julia, at sixty-eight you are supposed to be a neuter. Time kept gnawing away, working its evil transformations. Bright eyes into bleary. Cheeks into droopy jowls. Tits into dugs. Desire into—blast it, no, desire didn’t change. It remained hot and rowdy inside the sagging skin, lingering on pointlessly after the mate was dead, after the breasts drooped and the uterus, she’d read, shrank to the size of a walnut. It remained long after one had become that most intensely nonsexual of objects, an old woman. And it made Julia Northrup, retired schoolmarm, sit here full of silly nostalgia for Vic, when she should be concentrating on her real problems.

  Dorothy Parker’s old lady said: Contrition is hollow and wraithful, and regret is no part of my plan; and I think (if my memory’s faithful) there was nothing more fun than a man! True, Parker, true.

  Sublimate, Freud said. Rechannel that id. But that too was easier before you retired. Then there was less money and more time, and all that sublimating had to be done on pennies a month. Artie Lund didn’t help much with his stupid attempts to drive her out. At least it was a distraction, that could be said for him.

  Actually she rather liked this afternoon’s couple, though of course they wouldn’t do. An interesting pair, the lanky energetic young woman with merriment in her eyes, and the pleasant balding man with his oddly familiar smile. Nick O’Connor, that was his name. A burly Irishman, as big as Vic had been and built even broader, all muscle. And gentle. He’d been concerned about her, not put off by her grumbling. And he was obviously in tune with young what’s-her-name, his nice brown eyes constantly checking her reactions, talking without talk. A good man. Probably good in bed. She hoped young what’s-her-name appreciated him while she could. But young women so seldom knew what they had. They looked in their mirrors and instead of smooth skin and thick hair and nice round lovable fannies, they saw fat legs and flat chests, and even the best of men had trouble convincing them of their own glory. It had certainly been that way with her. Too hippy, she had always thought, sliding quickly under the covers so Vic couldn’t get a close look and be repulsed. Poor Vic loved a close look, she had learned at last. But they’d had some fine rollicking times despite her blushes.

  Young what’s-her-name, though, was tall and slim. Probably thought of herself as bony and thin. Scrawny. Bag of bones. Those were good words. Remember them. They would hurt.

  Was that a step on the stairs? No. Julia pushed an annoying string of gray hair from her eyes, and waited.

  On the phone Joyce Banks had said this couple was interested in moving into the place themselves. They’d want to glamorize it, no doubt, like that couple that had driven Pauline McGuire out of her Carroll Street apartment into the dinky rear basement around the corner, or the two men next door who’d brought in yards of lush velvet and caused old Wilma Riggins to roll her eyes and warn her grandsons to stay clear. The two men were polite enough, always said good morning to Julia, but they’d paid too much for the place and given Artie Lund big ideas. Now Artie, the snake, figured he’d get rich quick. All he had to do was throw out the poor folks and the rich would beat a path to his door. Well, Artie, it hadn’t been that easy, had it? Julia smiled a tight-lipped smile. The funniest thing was how frightened Artie was of Vic Jr. As if a lawyer would automatically do what his mother asked. Artie didn’t know that Vic Jr. too wanted her to move out. Vic Jr. had his eye on a hopelessly dull apartment complex in Jersey for her. Ugh.

  “O God our help in ages past,” bellowed a young man on the radio. Idiot station. Toadying, in singsong, to a crabbed god. Parker must have known this station.

  These blasted slippers were too tight, like cords around her instep. Itchy, too, where the terry cloth was crusted. Actually they were Pauline McGuire’s old slippers, a size too small to begin with. She wondered suddenly if Fred-Law had had itchy feet. Sore feet. Feet were such an important part of one’s sense of well-being. What sort of shoes had he worn? Wellingtons? And as a little boy in the Hartford woods, probably those lace-up jobs. Bluchers. His dad had been rich enough to afford shoes. But little Fred-Law, out exploring, had probably been barefoot as often as not. Julia wished she were barefoot, right now.

  “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away,” sang the young man on the radio.

  Listen! Here it came. She heard the steps, far away, hurrying on the stairs. Unlocking the door to the basement stairs, clattering down just outside. Heels. It was young what’s-her-name, then. The knock was quick, urgent.

  “Who’s that?” snarled Julia.

  “Maggie Ryan, Mrs. Northrup.”

  Maggie Ryan, right, that was the name. Irish to match O’Connor. Julia shuffled toward the door. “I thought you said you wouldn’t bother me anymore,” she said tartly.

  “There’s an emergency, Mrs. Northrup. A death. I have to call the police.”

  Julia slowly undid the chain and bolts. “You’d better not be kidding,” she grumbled. But the young woman didn’t pause, just bounded across the room straight for the telephone. She must have noticed it before. Observant young creature. Julia hesitated, then went into the kitchen and switched off the radio.

  When she returned, Maggie was saying, “Yes, a murder ... In a vacant apartment, top floor, on Garfield Place, number ...”

  She raised her eyebrows at Julia, who said, “Two hundred sixty-eight.”

  “Number two-sixty-eight ... that’s right ... No, I don’t know who he is ... Margaret Ryan ... Yes, I’ll wait here.”

  She hung up and dialed again without asking Julia’s permission. “Merle? Is Dan back? ... Hell. Okay, tell him I’m held up by the police, and if he’ll cover for me at the Columbia meeting I’ll fix him some crêpes suzette ... Merle, I don’t know myself what it’s all about. But a guy is dead and I’m a witness, sort of. I’ll get back as soon as I can. Thanks!”

  She hung up, raked her fingers back through her black curls, and turned back to Julia. They looked at each other warily. Then Julia said, “I want to see.”

  “It isn’t pretty. He was strangled, Mrs. Northrup.”

  “This is where I live.”

  Maggie nodded and together they climbed the three long flights of stairs. The two men were standing in the hall, young Lennie looking a bit ashen as Maggie handed him the keys, Nick sad but composed. Julia asked, “Where is he?”

  “This way,” said Maggie. “Better not touch anything.”

  Julia shuffled to the door she indicated. Golden glass in the fancy little window warmed the thin sunlight, and she could see everything clearly. One year ago, Jack and Ann had painted the little room a warm buff and put in an old mattress with a dashiki print spread and pillows. Our African room, they’d told her. Come on up, Teach, and sit on the pillows and eat something Ethiopian. Heartburn afterwards, her old body grumbled at changes these days, but a nice evening. Soon afterwards, when the plumbing had gone, Jack and Ann had decided it wasn’t worth it and moved out. But the old striped mattress, stained and missing its bright cover now, had be
en left behind.

  Lying on it today was a man, young, with bright curly blond hair, his face and protruding tongue dark in bloated death.

  “Do you recognize him?” asked Maggie, at her side, gently.

  “That face?”

  “I mean from the hair or clothes or anything.”

  Julia shook her head. “A million people dress like that.” Jeans, a navy crew-neck sweater. She noted a bottle of Chianti lying in the corner, a dark red stain on the floor around it.

  “The hair is distinctive.”

  “I don’t know him.” Of course he didn’t really look like that. Maybe if they found a photo it might ring a bell. There would have to be some connection with this house or neighborhood, wouldn’t there? She turned away from the little glowing ghastly room. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away. “I want to go home.”

  “I’ll go down with you.”

  Julia started to object but suddenly found that she wouldn’t mind company. That ghastly dead young face tugged at her thoughts. Downstairs, she asked, “Coffee?” as she unlocked the door.

  “Love some.” Maggie didn’t sound dubious at all. Frowning, Julia shuffled to the kitchen and found a couple of cracked cups. When she got back with the hot coffee the young woman had turned on the lights and was gliding around the jumbled room like a falcon after prey, as bold and as full of curiosity as she was herself. A tough adversary. Julia switched off the lights and pushed aside some newspapers to set Maggie’s cup on the coffee table. Her own she took to the mantel. Beautiful carved wood, from the days when this was the Sweeney dining room.

  “When Cornelius Sweeney’s daughter Caroline was small,” she said, eyeing the inquisitive Maggie, “she heard her dad bumping around in the kitchen one night. That very kitchen, right in there. She crept down to peek, but all she could see was that he was bent over doing something in the sink cabinet. He straightened up and she raced back up the back stairs to bed so he wouldn’t catch her. But very early the next morning, before even the servants were awake, she stole down to look. And she opened the cabinet door and reached in and pow! Her fingers were caught in the mousetrap he’d been setting.”

  Maggie transferred a stack of debris from the sofa to the floor and sat down with a bland smile. “Cornelius Sweeney’s daughter would understand me very well. Tell me, Mrs. Northrup, can you think when that poor fellow might have died? Did you hear anything?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Artie Lund’s noisy plumbers were here Monday and Tuesday, mostly down in the cellar whacking at the pipes. What’s it to you anyway?”

  “I don’t think he’s been dead that long.”

  “You some kind of expert?”

  Maggie fished out the fragment of orange peel that Julia had dropped in her coffee and placed it carefully on an October issue of U.S. News nearby. Unperturbed, she took a sip before she said, “Didn’t smell very bad, did he? I mean, Monday was four days ago.”

  Yes, a dangerous young woman. Julia snapped, “You’ve got a good nose for a slut.”

  “Why, thank you.” The blue eyes met hers, amused. “Has anyone else been in? Besides those plumbers?”

  “There are millions of people in this city. Some of them go past this door. Some make noise. Some come up the steps, even. Mostly Artie Lund and his noisy henchmen.”

  “Real-estate people too?”

  “Not this week. Anyway, they count as his henchmen too. So do you, chippy.”

  Maggie grinned. “If we buy this house, he won’t think so. We’ll drive a hard bargain.”

  “You might buy it?” Julia found herself standing very stiffly, gripping the handle of her cup on the mantel, staring at this frightening young woman.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Even with that thing up there?”

  “Are you moving out because of it?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, then, why should it discourage us?”

  “What’s here to attract you?”

  Maggie stood and moved thoughtfully to the other end of the mantel. She stroked a finger along an ancient gash in the carved corner. “A good friend told me an Indian saying: You can’t erase time. Seems true to me.” She glanced around the wainscoted room. “I like the way this house sits here affirming the past and looking forward to the future. It’s seen it all and it wants more. A hearty house.”

  Julia was silent, shaken to hear her own affinity for this house of lusty age articulated. Maggie smiled at her tentatively and added, “Mrs. Northrup, if we buy it we won’t need this floor. You’ll stay on, I hope.”

  That’s what they’d told Pauline too, and within months, changed their minds. Julia shrugged skeptically and Maggie went on, “Okay. Plumbers Monday and Tuesday. What about yesterday?”

  “I wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t know anything like this would happen.”

  “I know, Mrs. Northrup. Try.”

  She ought to throw her out. But Maggie was curious, persistent, not easily deflected. Against her better judgment, Julia was tempted to confide. But, Mrs. Northrup, the interviewer would ask, why did you cooperate with that brazen young woman? Well, Sonny, she’d reply from her pallet in the shelter for the homeless, it seemed important to clear up the murder too. She’s brazen, yes, but maybe bright enough to help with that. Aloud, Julia said crisply, “Tuesday afternoon, Pauline McGuire came over to celebrate the water being turned back on. The plumbers were still here, carousing in the parlor-floor kitchen upstairs, so we went up to tell them to hush. We saw them out. Four-thirty or so. Then Wednesday morning a dark-haired fellow arrived, probably another plumber. I saw him walk right up the stoop and into the door. I didn’t know what he did because I had to go get groceries. Can’t make a full-time job of listening for murders to happen.”

  Maggie went to the window, pulled back the drape to check the view of the stoop, and nodded. “I see.”

  Julia said, “When Mary Sweeney was in college, a body was found on campus once, under a hedge. The police questioned all of the students. But it turned out that the fellow had been in a drunken brawl in the next town, and his friends had brought him all that way before they noticed he had died. They panicked and threw him out of the car under the hedge. Nothing to do with Mary or her friends.”

  “You think this body was brought from somewhere else? Up three flights of stairs?”

  “Two people could have done it.”

  “You didn’t see two. Well, the police will ask the neighbors. Two guys hauling a corpse around are conspicuous, even if the corpse is hidden in a box or something.”

  Julia shrugged and ran her finger around the chipped rim of her cup. In her mind the dead blond youngster stared at her. She shrugged and said, controlled, “Maybe. But he looked like a strapping young fellow. If someone started to choke him here, he would have made a ruckus. I’d have heard.”

  “Through the gospel music?”

  Drat. Julia said, “I turn it off sometimes. I’d have heard.”

  Maggie nodded. “Unless it happened Wednesday morning while you were out. Or unless they cut off his breath before he realized it was an attack. Or bashed him on the head first with that Chianti bottle.”

  “Anything’s possible,” said Julia primly. Her coffee was unpotable.

  “You don’t like the idea of murder happening in this house. Neither do I. But we have to keep straight exactly what we know, and what we’re guessing.”

  Julia said, “Let’s let the police do the guessing. We’re not overgrown Nancy Drews.”

  “We’re not helpless damsels in distress either.”

  Okay, true enough. Julia repressed the stirring of comradely feeling for this brash, cool-headed young woman. She wondered if Nick could manage her, and decided he probably could hold his own. She gulped the last of her coffee and snapped, “Speak for yourself.”

  “Oh? Are you a damsel in distress, then?”

  The probing annoyed Julia. She slapped her cup onto the mantel. “Look, who are
you to come slamming in here, using my phone, pestering me with questions? Just who are you?”

  “At last count, a slut, a chippy, and an overgrown Nancy Drew living in sin.”

  Julia snorted, pleased that her shots had registered after all. “You won’t make a living for long that way. You’re a bag of bones.”

  Maggie said, too evenly, “Right. Positively scrawny.”

  Bingo. Bag of bones was right on target. Julia asked, “So why the fancy gray suit? What kind of job do you have, Bonesy?”

  “I’m with Goldman and Morrow. Statistical consultants.”

  “Sounds dull.”

  “Oh, feel free to embroider. Could be a front for a bordello, don’t you think?”

  Julia could smell victory now. She followed up. “And your bald friend? Your so-called husband with a different name? Surely he’s not hoping for a family from a skinny tramp like you.”

  Maggie stood suddenly, stepped to the desk, and tipped her coffee cup over it, just short of spilling. Her eyes were opaque. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Northrup. What did you ask?”

  Julia stared at the poised cup. Could she know? No, of course not. But it made her uneasy. She backed off, saying, “I was wondering about your husband. What does he do?”

  The coffee cup straightened. “He’s an actor.”

  “Unemployed, probably. Wait!” The connection suddenly surfaced in Julia’s mind. She added eagerly, “Merchant’s Bank?” That was where she’d seen Nick O’Connor’s oddly familiar smile: on that fellow in the commercial, the one whose Aunt Mabel was supposed to have left him the shoe box of money.

  Maggie took a sip of coffee. “Yes, that was one of his jobs. What do you do, Mrs. Northrup?”

  “You mean what did I do.”

  “Is that what I mean?”

  “I’m retired. I was a schoolteacher. Fifth grade. Little beasts.”

  “I bet you were good. Full of stories about the interesting Sweeneys. You taught history?”

  Somehow Julia had lost the initiative. Voice gruff, she asked, “Who’ve you been talking to, Bonesy?”