Murder Unrenovated

by P. M. Carlson

  “Well, sir, the sooner we get it cleared up, the sooner it’ll blow over.”

  “Maybe so.” Artie started reluctantly up the steps.

  “Now, when was the last time you were here, sir?” Cleary was holding the door for him.

  “Maybe three weeks ago. Top-floor tenants moved out, we came over to straighten up after them.”

  They disappeared inside. Julia turned from the window to find Maggie beside her. Nick had returned, but Pauline was gone. Probably talking to Brugioni.

  “Well. What did the lieutenant want to know?” asked Julia.

  “All the same stuff we talked about,” said Maggie. “He’s curious about the weapon, which seems to have disappeared.”

  “I wondered if that was what they were driving at,” said Lennie.

  “What kind of weapon?” asked Julia.

  “Well, we’re not really supposed to talk about what they asked,” said Lennie uneasily.

  Maggie nodded. “Except it’s obvious that it has to be something to strangle with. They weren’t asking about guns or blunt instruments even with that Chianti bottle right there.”

  “Why not bare hands?” asked Julia.

  Maggie shrugged. “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “I will.” She looked out the window again. “There he goes, poor thing.” They were carrying him down the steps on a stretcher, a sheet over his still form. “So young.”

  “Young people die too,” said Maggie, eyes dark with her own memories.

  “Yes. Dorothy Parker thought she’d die young. ‘You will be frail and musty, with peering, furtive head, whilst I am young and lusty among the roaring dead.’”

  “Maybe so. I’d rather give frail and musty a chance, myself.” Maggie’s eyes were on the scene outside. Several pedestrians had spotted the police van from Eighth Avenue and had drifted closer to see what was happening. Four of Wilma Riggins’s grandchildren were practically in the van themselves. The officer at the door moved to the curb to shoo them away in kindly fashion, then helped the others slide their burden inside. The van drove away. A moment later Artie came out the door, looking defeated, but before he crossed the street he glared balefully at Julia’s window.

  “Mr. Lund likes you as much as you like him,” Maggie observed quietly.

  Julia jerked around to face her. She said, “Cornelius Sweeney’s son Mikey was a precocious child. He told the mayor his fly was unbuttoned, pointed out to the butcher that his thumb was on the scale, things like that. Everyone laughed and told him what a clever boy he was. One day a nice young couple came to town, and Mikey spoke up as usual. Mentioned that they seemed to be taking Mr. Jensen’s money away from him. The nice young couple shot Mikey’s leg off.”

  “Lucky for me that you and Mr. Lund aren’t a nice young couple,” said Maggie cheerfully. Young Lennie looked shocked at the exchange, though Nick’s eyes were smiling.

  There was a knock at the door and Brugioni entered, followed by a very solemn Pauline. “Oh, you’re still here?” Brugioni said to Lennie. “I should have told you it’s okay to go. Here are your keys.” He dropped them on the bookcase next to the door. “Mr. Lund gave us his extra set. But we’ll seal the upstairs for the time being, until the lab gives us the okay. So don’t take any more customers through.”

  “Okay.” Lennie began buttoning his trench coat as he started for the door.

  “The rest of you can go too. Thank you all, you’ve been very helpful. Oh, Mr. Trager, you might tell Mrs. Banks that I’ll stop by her office later today to get information on who’s been through this building recently. Tell her about four o’clock, all right?”

  “Yes, she was planning on being in the office later this afternoon.” Young Lennie was dutifully noting the information in his little notebook.

  “Thanks. Mrs. Northrup, may I speak to you now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Okay,” he said to the others. “We’ll be in touch if any more questions come up.”

  They left. Brugioni refused a cup of coffee but consented to sit next to her on the sofa. Julia studied him covertly as he arranged his notebook. A cop. A man’s man, using that deep voice to good advantage, no nonsense. But he’d have a tough Italian grandmother somewhere urging him to be a good boy. And somewhere too he’d had a teacher like Julia; it showed in that touch of deference as he addressed her. He took her carefully over the same ground he had covered earlier with Maggie, making notes. Who had been around? When? What kind of noises had she heard? About halfway through the questions, there was another knock at the door. Cleary entered. “We’ve finished the rest of the house, Frank.”

  Brugioni cleared his throat. “Mrs. Northrup, the murder weapon is missing from the room upstairs. We’re searching the premises. Would you mind if we looked around here?”

  “Go right ahead, Lieutenant. But I think I would have noticed if someone left it here. What is it? What are you looking for?”

  “We don’t know, exactly. You saw the body.”

  “Looked strangled to me,” said Julia bluntly.

  “Yes, the medical examiner will probably agree with you, although of course we can’t be sure until he’s run his tests. The young man was knocked on the head first, I’d say, but basically we’re looking for something thin and flexible.”

  “It wasn’t done just with bare hands?”

  “No.”

  “A garotte.”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “Well, I haven’t noticed anything like that. But it could be a lot of things, couldn’t it? Belts, neckties, necklaces, clotheslines? I own some of those things.”

  “Yes, we all do. We have to check, of course, Mrs. Northrup, but we have no reason to believe it was any of your things.”

  “Well, of course it wasn’t. But look all you want. I want you to catch whoever it is. I don’t like him getting into this house so easily.” She tried a flutter of eyelashes: brave but fearful little woman. It worked. Brugioni became solicitous.

  “We’ll do our best, Mrs. Northrup,” he rumbled kindly. “Don’t worry. Of course I would advise you to keep all your doors and windows locked.”

  “Yes, indeed.” She stood by in silence as Brugioni’s men sifted through her things, looking behind her books, in her handbag, in her drawers, unmaking and remaking the bed, checking behind the pictures, in bottles and boxes, in canisters, in the garbage, in the stove and refrigerator, in the boxes of ratty clothes and old newspapers she had just packed away. Watching one detective politely inspect the baseboard, Julia said, “Lieutenant Brugioni, it looks as though you think I did it.”

  “No, no, this is just a routine check, Mrs. Northrup. We have to be sure the weapon wasn’t left here.”

  “You mean the killer nipped in here, pried off the baseboard to hide the weapon, and then slipped away again without me noticing? Come, Lieutenant Brugioni, you can’t believe that!”

  A tiny smile tweaked his thin lips. “No, Mrs. Northrup. But you did explain that you’d been out of the house several times in the last couple of days. We can’t overlook any possibilities.”

  “Oh, I understand. You’re hunting for something, and if you find it, it either means that a murderer got into my apartment without my knowledge or else it means I’m the murderer.”

  Brugioni glanced away from her steady gaze and cleared his throat like a grotesquely deep-voiced fifth-grader. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sure we won’t find it here. But we have to look.”

  In the end, the technicians solemnly signed out her toaster and iron with their scuffed cords, a dress with a fabric sash, a worn scarf, and three stockings, promising to return them all as soon as they could. The searchers had moved into the backyard and were checking the trash. She was impressed by their thoroughness. She would never have thought of some of the places they looked, and she had learned a lot from forty years of teaching fifth grade. She thought of fat little Bobby Cody, who had tried to hide his pocket money from the sixth-grade bullies by poking it up
his own rear end. He’d been wriggly and miserable all morning, until Julia had pulled him aside privately and got the sordid little story from him. Well, so far the police had limited themselves to checking the premises, but she had no doubts that if the occasion arose they’d be equally ingenious at searching her person. After all, they dealt regularly with the full-grown Bobby Codys of the world, to say nothing of the full-grown bullies that the Bobby Codys feared.

  She was glad now that Maggie had called her bluff and got her out of her wino costume. It was much better to meet the police as neat, grandmotherly Julia Northrup, one of the little old ladies who inspired every Boy Scout and rookie policeman to paroxysms of male protectiveness. Men were such romantics. The repulsive bag-lady Julia Northrup would not have fit those idealistic notions, would not have received such polite treatment.

  But what she had won with the police, she had lost with Maggie, she reflected uneasily. Maggie had seemed amused, even delighted, with Julia’s charade. Liked games herself, she’d said. There hadn’t been any of the shock and revulsion that Julia usually inspired within seconds of meeting prospective buyers. Well, she’d just have to probe a little harder at the weak points. And there were weak points—the husband, the skinniness. Maybe others. But it would be tough.

  Brugioni and Cleary left at last, urging her to call them if she thought of anything else, or if she heard any suspicious noises. She smiled and thanked them and said she would. Then she went to her kitchen, closed and bolted the window again, and got her handbag and coat and grocery list. In the mirror by the door, she looked herself over. Neat, frisky little old woman. Winsome, he had said. She smiled at her image. By golly, he was right. Humming, she locked the doors behind her and walked to Seventh Avenue. She needed bananas, orange juice, yogurt, bread. And one other thing.

  “How’re you doing, Mrs. Northrup?” Benny Bugliari, an ex-student, was now the proud owner of this shop, and of a few other enterprises that Julia preferred not to ask about.

  “Fine, Benny. How’s Carla?”

  “Growing like a weed. A flower. A gorgeous kid.”

  “I meant, how’s she doing in school,” said Julia tartly.

  “Okay. She’s not much for math, though.”

  “Gets that from you. I thought you’d never figure out fractions. Look, Benny, send her over to me if she seems to be in trouble with it.”

  “Sure. Thanks, Mrs. Northrup. You’re looking good today.”

  “It’s the excitement, Benny.”

  “What excitement?”

  “It’ll be in the papers. They found a body in one of the empty rooms.”

  “In your house?” Benny’s tone suggested that it had been found in Supreme Court chambers.

  “Yes. In Mr. Arthur Lund’s house.”

  “Really? A dead body? Who was it?”

  “Nobody knows. A blond fellow. He might have died there, or he might have been brought in from outside. Benny, you tell me if you hear who it is.”

  “I don’t want no trouble with the police.”

  “Any trouble. Don’t bang those bananas down.”

  “Any trouble.” Benny eased the fruit into the bag. “I really don’t, Mrs. Northrup.”

  “There won’t be any trouble for you, Benny. But listen to people. See if you can find anything out for me. Okay?”

  “Okay. Can I come see?”

  “They took him away already.”

  “I mean, can I see where it happened?”

  “I don’t have keys to that part of the house. Best I can do is show you the window of the room from the street, and give you a cup of coffee.”

  “Hey, maybe after work tonight.”

  “Bring Carla and I’ll quiz her on math.”

  “Okay. Hey, take care of yourself, Mrs. Northrup!”

  “See you, Benny.”

  Julia picked up her bag of groceries and the tape from the register and went back out into the cool sunny afternoon. She paused for a moment by the wire trash basket that Benny kept out front. It was nearly full; collection day was tomorrow. She dropped her register tape into the basket, spotted the wadded McDonald’s bag two-thirds of the way down, and deftly pulled it out through the side of the basket. She dropped it into her grocery bag and went on down the street, skirting around a couple whose shoulder-length hair and neon headbands added brilliant color to the day. Vic Jr. claimed she’d end up a bag lady if she stayed in Brooklyn. Well, when the day came, she’d have the necessary skills. Mrs. Northrup, the interviewer would say, we are all impressed by your ability. Did you have to train long? Well, Sonny, she’d croak in reply, it helps to have a natural bent, but nothing beats long practice.

  At home, she put away her groceries, then emptied the sugar canister into a bowl. Carefully, she placed the little McDonald’s bag in the bottom of the canister, then refilled it with sugar to its old level and threw the surplus away. Finally, she replaced the canister next to the others. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but things here should be just as they were before. The police had been very competent and thorough, and they’d be back, to return her things if nothing else.

  Probably not today, though. Julia took her screwdriver from her tool drawer and crossed the kitchen to the built-in cabinet. She unbolted and unlatched the door and took out the mops and buckets.

  The idea had crystallized a couple of months ago. She’d been sitting with Jack and Ann and they’d told her they were thinking of leaving.

  “Don’t give in!” she’d urged them.

  “Look, Teach,” Jack had explained, his black face earnest. “Ann told you about our redecorated hall?”

  Julia had nodded. That had been crude even for Artie: red spray paint forming a gigantic KKK outside their door. Jack had hit the ceiling—accosted Artie in his office, shouting threats that had been overheard by a lot of people. Artie, in fact, had appeared later that day and painted over the obscenity. But Ann feared that Jack’s outburst had given their hated landlord additional weapons to use against them. Julia couldn’t blame Jack—she remembered her own father’s accounts of “No Irish need apply,” the look of rage and impotence that tightened his kindly face when he spoke of it—and she knew that his emotional recollections of abuse were minor compared to what Jack and Ann’s people had suffered, still suffered. “I can’t tell you to turn the other cheek,” she admitted.

  “I know you don’t want to give up,” Jack said. “But med school takes all my time. And Ann is working two shifts to put me through. We can’t take this hassle.”

  “Besides, the relocation money would pay the difference in rent for a year,” Ann had added.

  “And after that?” Julia had asked. But arguing was fruitless, she had known. They were young, with incomes going up rather than down. Why should they want to fight this particular battle? She’d stared at the wall and wondered if the thin panel was all that shielded the dumbwaiter shaft on this floor. She knew the other floors were sealed off with studs and wallboard. So when Jack came to the end of his earnest explanation, she said, “Oh, Jack, you’re right. I just hate to give Artie the satisfaction. But let’s change the subject. Have you people ever been up to the attic?”

  “No, and I’ve always wanted to!” Ann enthused.

  “You guys are crazy,” announced Jack.

  “Come on, Jack, where’s our flashlight?” insisted Ann.

  Julia and Ann had climbed up the ladder to the cramped little space under the eaves. The flashlight had gleamed on cobwebs, dirty insulation, and old machinery: the big wheel, the ancient frayed ropes. That week, without telling anyone, Julia had gone up again to oil the wheel, check the brake, replace the ropes and dust them with resin. The machinery was filthy, but still sturdy. Down in her own apartment, she had unscrewed the car from the walls and tested it. Piles of dust had come puffing down from the attic, making her sneeze, but the little car had creaked its way up and down once more. When Jack and Ann had left at last, she had adjusted both the counterweights, climbed into the car herself, pull
ed herself to the third floor, and tapped out the panel. It hadn’t been hard for an ex-fifth-grade teacher to install hinges, a handle, and bolts on the inner side of the panel to hold it in place. Presto! A secret door. A priest-hole. A good toy for an old lady’s second childhood. And most important, a way to keep an eye on Artie in case he decided to use those empty floors to plot against her.

  Now she again removed the six sturdy screws that held the car in position in her kitchen, climbed into the compartment, tugged on the brake release, and began to haul herself up slowly with the hand rope.

  The police were good and clever searchers, and with their photographs and fingerprints they might find something. But after seventeen years Julia knew this old house better than they did, and she wanted to make sure that they hadn’t missed anything. Old eyes might not sparkle as much as young eyes, but they were a lot wiser.

  She locked the brake, unbolted her secret door, and stepped out into Jack and Ann’s low-ceilinged rooms to begin her search.

  4

  “My God, Len. You look ready to faint.”

  “I’m okay. But it was a shock.”

  Joyce didn’t look exactly calm herself. No sign of her dimpled smile. She kept wiping nervously at a stray curl that had once been elegantly draped across her forehead. “The clients,” she said. “Are they all right?”

  “I think so. Acted very calm and sensible.” Len didn’t tell her that he’d thrown up, that Nick had gotten him into the bathroom just in time while Maggie took the keys to go down and call the police. Len added, “But we can’t really expect them to come back after this.”

  “Oh, I suppose not. But I’m an optimist. I just hoped they weren’t too horrified.”

  “Well, dammit, it was horrifying!”

  “All right, all right. They reacted pretty well, all things considered?”

  “Yes. If you want to worry about someone, worry about Lund. He was very upset.”

  “I know. After you called I decided we really should tell Arthur, so I called him. He rang back after he’d been there, and screamed a few minutes but ended up telling us to carry on. He accused us of being careless with the key. I said of course not.”