Goodfellowe House

by Persia Walker

  Something or someone. Powell would’ve been part of a team, never the team leader.

  I rubbed my eyes and Sophie Carter gave me a sympathetic smile.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She soon laid out a warm pot and some scones. I gratefully accepted the tea, but didn’t touch the pastry. If I ate, I’d get distracted. The tea would fill me without waking up my stomach. I sagged back in the chair, sipping my tea, and studied the stack of Carter’s notes.

  Was I following another fascinating, but ultimately useless path? No, this had to be right. Too much violent crime had taken place around Katherine Goodfellowe for it all to be coincidental. Somewhere, somehow, an organizing intelligence was at work.

  And I had to find it.

  Setting aside my cup, I resumed my examination of the papers.

  Carter’s notes told how he’d repeatedly asked Katherine Goodfellowe for an interview, but been met with a stone wall of silence. There were no notes about the questions he’d planned to ask or from the interview he finally had with her.

  “I see here,” I said, “that he was highly interested in the morgue photos. Why? He didn’t strike me as the kind of man given to morbid curiosity. Did he want to use them in his book?”

  “Highly unlikely.” Sophie Carter shook her head. She refilled my cup. “Tillman was an intellectual, not a sensationalist. Such photos would be graphic, and any book that had them would be a very different product than the one his readers were used to.”

  A closer read showed that he’d pestered the cops for the pictures and when that didn’t work, he’d turned to the medical examiner himself. It wasn’t clear how far he’d gotten, if at all, in obtaining the photos, but he had turned up one interesting tidbit: Katherine had refused to go to the morgue and identify the corpse. She said she didn’t want to be forced to remember Powell that way, so the law had to find another way to formally identify the remains.

  Powell had a record in Chicago. NYPD sent for it. That record included information about Powell’s physical appearance, not only his height, but also such theoretically immutable details as the circumference of his head, size of his feet, length of his arms, his fingerprints, etc. A former cop working as a bounty hunter out of the Windy City acted as a courier and brought a copy of the file, which Carter said did not include fingerprints, to New York.

  “Must talk to B.H.,” Carter wrote. The initials probably referred to bounty hunter. And then I saw that Carter had made an appointment to see one “Denver Sutton (BH), at 1 pm on August 7, 1924.” Sutton … Sutton. Where had I heard that name before? With a frown, I remembered. Wasn’t that the name of Mrs. Goodfellowe’s security chief?

  It sure was.

  All roads lead to Goodfellowe House.

  “Just when did your husband go to Chicago, Mrs. Carter?”

  “It was in August, early August.”

  I looked back at Carter’s handwritten notes. Had he gone to Chicago instead of going to see Sutton, or right afterward?

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Carter. I hate to ask this, but on what date was your husband killed?”

  “Well, he was found August fifth.”

  So he died before he could talk to Sutton. What would he have asked him? I could think of one question right off the bat. Why hadn’t the record included fingerprints? Different police departments followed different standards and levels of inclusion when it came to deciding which information to keep for their records, but one would’ve thought that fingerprints would be one of the standards. There was still some resistance to using them, but every forward-thinking police department had instituted the maintenance of fingerprint files if not as part of a permanent program, then at least on a trial basis.

  The notation for Sutton listed a phone number, but no address. Not that it mattered. I knew where to find him.

  Carter had made one other appointment. It was with “J. Finnegan & Sons.” His notes didn’t indicate what line of business the company was in, but he must’ve thought it important. He’d underlined the August 1 appointment three times. There was neither an address nor a telephone number. However, that was nothing to worry about. It shouldn’t be difficult to track down a company with that name.

  “Mrs. Carter, could I use your telephone, please?”

  I had the operator put in a call to Sutton, but received no answer. I had better luck with the other number: The owner turned out to be a merchant of the dead.

  Chapter 46

  Heading across town, I thought of the war widow in the Times story. Unlike that woman, Sophie Carter knew what had happened to her husband, but she didn’t know the who or why of it. In that sense, she was like Katherine Goodfellowe. Despite Mrs. G’s outer coldness, no doubt she, too, grieved for her husband and wished deep in her heart for an explanation. Then there was Ruth Todd and Kathy Jones. Neither of them even knew what had happened to their loved ones, much less why. Sophie Carter, Ruth Todd, Katie Jones and even Katherine Goodfellowe: They formed a sisterhood of uncertainty. They were as different as any four people can be, except for that one unenviable tie.

  J. Finnegan & Sons turned out to be a funeral parlor on the corner of 66th Street and Park Avenue. It seems they did a fine business in laying away the carriage trade.

  Despite the grandiose title, the sole owner and proprietor turned out to be one Jules Finnegan, Jr. Apparently, Jules Finnegan, Sr. had already passed to the other side. Finnegan, Jr. was a short, stout man in a pinstripe suit. He had a bald pate, bushy gray eyebrows and incredibly small feet for a man of his girth.

  “Mr. Finnegan, thank you for seeing me at such short notice.”

  “Well, you said it was urgent.”

  Not only did Finnegan resemble a banker, his office looked as though it belonged to one. That made sense, I suppose. It was important to make the customer feel comfortable and right at home. Where would a rich customer feel more at ease than in a banker’s office?

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “Do you recall a Mr. Tillman Carter having phoned you and set up an appointment? It would’ve been for August 1, 1924.”

  He frowned. “That was more than two years ago.”

  “Yes, I understand, but is there a possibility that you kept records of appointments, maybe made a notation of what Mr. Carter wanted?”

  “Just what is this all about?”

  I explained about Esther and her family’s request that I write about her. “In retracing her footsteps, I came across Mr. Carter’s name.”

  “You’re not saying he was involved in her disappearance?”

  “No, but he may have dug up some information that would help solve it.” I explained about the research that Carter was doing. A light went on in Finnegan’s eyes.

  “The Powell’s case?” Finnegan raised a pudgy finger and wagged it thoughtfully. “Now, I remember. There was this fellow who said he was a writer. Wanted to know if I’d handled the embalming. He knew we had, of course. It was right there in the paper. We specialize in restorations, you see. If the deceased has suffered extensive damage—as sometimes happens in a motor vehicle accident—then we’re often called in to repair the body and make it ready for burial. We’re able to do extensive cosmetic repairs.”

  “So you did the work to restore Powell’s face?”

  “I had to rebuild it. It required delicacy, fine feeling. He’d been a beautiful young man. When I saw what they brought in, it was hard to believe it was even him.”

  “How so?”

  “The bullets had not only ripped away the soft tissue, but done extensive damage to the skull. It’s the skull that gives a face its distinctive shape, you know, the distance of the eyes to the nose, the height of the cheekbones, the breadth of the nose and so on. Well, the bullets fired into Mr. Powell’s face had fractured much of the frontal skull. It took hours to piece it together. We used putty to fill in the holes, then laid a new kind of skin over it.”

  “You can do that?” />
  His smile was smug. “We can do anything.”

  “Did Mr. Carter want to talk to you about the restorative work, or did he mention something else?”

  “He wanted pictures of the body. Before and after.”

  Of course. Carter had struck out in trying to get pictures from police sources. So he’d done the next best thing. But why were the photos so important to him? What did he hope, or expect, to see?

  “And you have such photos?”

  “Yes, but they’re not for the general public. They were made to provide guidance. Keep track of the work.”

  “Did you agree to let Mr. Carter see these photos?”

  “We were ... shall we say, still in the midst of a negotiation when ...”

  “I see. And what were the terms of this suspended negotiation?”

  He inclined his head, as if to say, “Why? Would they interest you?”

  I inclined mine with a partial smile, as if to say, “Try me.”

  He raised his hand, open palmed, in a little gesture that said, “Okay, I will.”

  He withdrew a notepad from his desk, took a pen and wrote a figure on it, then pushed the notepad across the desk to me. It was a four-digit sum. I could forget about getting the newspaper to pony up the money for that one.

  “What was Mr. Carter’s counter offer?”

  “There was none. We never heard from him again.”

  Of course, not. Because Tillman Carter was off in Chicago, being killed.

  “So there’s no way for me to see the photos without …” I gestured toward the sum on the notepad.

  “I’m afraid not.” He stood. “If that’s all, then—”

  “How do you suppose Mrs. Goodfellowe would take it if she were to learn that photos of her husband in his damaged state were on file somewhere, available for sale to the right price? How would others in her circle of friends feel if they were to learn that photos of their loved ones, might also be available for the right sum?”

  He sat down heavily and was silent for one very long minute. His expression was full of resentment, his eyes full of appraisal. Then he drew back the notepad and ripped the top page away. He tore the page into bits and dropped them into the wastepaper basket.

  “I could do the same to the photos,” he said.

  “Word about the pictures being for sale would do the same to your reputation.”

  He understood. Jaw set, he went to the next room. I heard him rifling through a file cabinet. A minute later he was back with a file. He sat down and opened the file on his desk. The photos were in a separate envelope. He took them out and slid them across the desk, one by one.

  I’ve seen some gruesome and battered remains in my time. Back when I was a crime reporter, I saw bodies ripped open by machine-gun fire, mangled by speeding trains, bloated and rotting after being pulled from the river. None of it was pretty. But none of it was as ugly as this.

  “The first bullet was not fatal,” Finnegan said. “It pierced his left cheek, bored a diagonal path and exited the back of his neck, on the right. The second bullet shattered his nose. He was still alive then.”

  “But debilitated by pain and shock, no doubt.”

  “It was most likely the third or fourth shot that killed him. The third penetrated his left eye socket. The fourth went through his temple, also on the left. The subsequent shots simply served to rip his face apart. There were ten shots in all.”

  The first three photos showed Powell after he’d been washed and autopsied. The bullet holes were evident. As Finnegan said, the gunshots had battered Powell’s face into a bloody pulp of soft tissue and fragmented bone. The only distinguishing features left untouched were his hairline, his ears and his chin. The dead man had a broad forehead and smooth hairline, softly rounded ears and dimpled chin.

  The second set of photos, about four in number, showed Finnegan’s progress as he systematically put the dead man’s face back together. The last photo showed the finished results.

  “Here,” Finnegan said, handing me another picture. It was the same shot I’d seen at the public library.

  “Very handsome,” I murmured.

  “That’s what she wanted me to make him look like again.”

  “She, being Mrs. Goodfellowe?”

  He nodded. “I told her it would be a miracle, but I could do it.”

  I compared the last shot of the restored Powell to the studio portrait. “You do excellent work.”

  Finnegan beamed with pride.

  I laid aside Finnegan’s photo and concentrated on the photo of Powell alive. The room he was seated in: it bothered me. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Goodfellowe having such a horribly furnished room in her house. I brought the photo closer, studying it intently.

  “What is it?” Finnegan asked.

  “Probably nothing,” I said. But inside, I had my answer.

  No wonder they killed Carter.

  Chapter 47

  The guard booth outside Goodfellowe House was empty. Sutton must’ve taken off for the day. Before showing me in, Roland whispered an anxious question:

  “Did you get to see her?”

  “Yes,” I whispered back. “We can talk about it later.”

  He wanted to say more but we were at the open parlor door by then and Mrs. Goodfellowe could see us. Roland led me in, announced me, then left, closing the door behind him. Mrs. Goodfellowe sat, as before, in her wheelchair before a roaring fire. The room was suffocatingly hot, but she was wrapped tightly in a thick woolen shawl.

  “Well,” she said, “looking me up and down. To what do I owe the pleasure—again?”

  “I’m here about a Mr. Carter, Mr. Tillman Carter—”

  “Him!” She rolled her eyes. “But why in the world would you ask about him? I thought you were working on Esther’s case.”

  “I believe Mr. Carter uncovered information that might be relevant. —”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “Perhaps. But could you tell me what he wanted to see you about?”

  “I could. But I won’t. It seems to me you’re on a fishing expedition. Nosing about in affairs that don’t concern you.”

  “I know that Mr. Carter was very interested in your second husband, and that he wanted to see photos of his remains. Do you know why? Did he tell you?”

  “No, he didn’t. But it’s really no business of yours.”

  “Did Mr. Carter ask whether you’d met Bobby Kelly or seen him around your husband?”

  Her lips pressed together. “How dare you mention that name, that—”

  “Mr. Carter’s dead, by the way. Shot to death in your husband’s hometown.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but––“

  “Did you know that he told Kelly’s sister he thought Kelly was innocent?”

  “I know no such thing. It’s no—”

  “Don’t you want to know why Mr. Carter said that? Aren’t you curious as to why he wanted to see the postmortem photos?”

  “He was—his questions were unacceptable.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think he suspected—and what I now suspect, too: that the dead man wasn’t your husband. It was Kelly.”

  “You’re crazy,” she whispered.

  What little color she had drained from her cheeks. Her face looked like a death mask, hollowed and ill. I had to steel my heart against feeling sorry for her.

  “The killer obliterated his victim’s face. Why?”

  “Anger,” she said, her voice shaking. “Anger and jealousy. Eric once told me how Bobby envied him.”

  “The photos show that Powell had a smooth chin; Kelly had a dimpled one—”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Your husband killed his friend and switched identities. And he did it to create an alibi.”

  “A what? What for?”

  “To cover his part in the heist.”

  Her lips parted in shock. “No! Oh, no, you won’t. You are not going write that. I won’t let you.” She rang her little bell. �
�Roland! I won’t listen anymore. Get out.”

  She was the picture of aristocratic, blue-blooded stubbornness. Despite her fall from social grace, she had power and she knew how to use it.

  But power has its limits.

  “No matter who we are,” I said, “we can’t change reality by simply wishing it wasn’t so. We can deny the truth, even try to conceal it. But sooner or later, the truth wins out. So, think about it. Reflect on everything I’ve said. Because I’m not finished. With or without the paper’s approval, I will continue to dig.”

  I heard the door open behind me. Roland came in.

  “You’re worse than the others,” she said. “You say you want to help, but you just want to—”

  “Think about it. One has to wonder. About them. About you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I didn’t answer. Her eyes showed sudden understanding.

  “Oh, no,” she gasped. “You think that I …”

  Seeing her agitation, Roland touched my forearm. “I’m sorry, miss, but you’d better go.”

  “You’re wrong,” Mrs. Goodfellowe said in a horrified whisper. “Terribly, terribly wrong. How could you think that I’d––?”

  “Your husband dead, a faceless corpse; your protégé kidnapped and your home robbed––”

  “Esther? You think I hurt Esther.” She sounded hurt and bewildered. “Oh, no,” she said again.

  I waited, hoping she’d say more, but all she did was murmur words, phrases that were barely sensible.

  “You don’t understand. I’ve got to make you understand. You can’t go out there, thinking that ... I can’t let you … I—”

  Her gaze went to Elizabeth’s photograph and she stilled. An unutterable sadness touched her face.