Murder, She Uncovered

by Peg Cochran

  “Ask for Magda Farkas. Five o’clock,” she added before abruptly hanging up.

  Elizabeth had just managed to jot down the address the woman had given her. She stared at the telephone receiver in her hand for a moment, then finally hung up.

  * * *

  —

  When Kaminsky asked Elizabeth if she’d reached anyone at the number on that piece of paper they’d found, Elizabeth had said no. She felt guilty keeping it from Kaminsky, but she had the feeling that it would be better if she met this woman alone. She still had no idea who she was or whether she had anything to do with Duff Lambert.

  Elizabeth slipped out of the newsroom early, saying she had a headache. Kaminsky shooed her out the door urging her to go home and get some rest.

  But instead of going home, she headed toward the Lexington Avenue subway. She took the train to the Seventh-Seventh Street stop then walked east to Second Avenue.

  As she got closer to the avenue, she noticed a gradual change in the shops and restaurants. Now there were numerous green, red and white awnings and signs in the windows that read Palascintas, Goulash, Gesztenyepüré and Sweet Hungarian Paprika.

  She found the address she was looking for—a modest brownstone with slightly crumbling front steps—near the corner of Second Avenue and Eighty-Second Street.

  She pushed open the front door and stepped inside. The vestibule was clean with a small mat for wiping one’s feet. Elizabeth felt her hand trembling slightly as she pushed the buzzer for apartment 2A. She took a deep breath to steady herself and waited for the buzzer.

  Elizabeth jumped when a young man pulled open the inner door and motioned for her to follow him up the stairs.

  He was wearing a white shirt with slightly billowy sleeves and a black vest over it.

  “Please,” he said, motioning for her to go through the open door of apartment 2A.

  He had an accent similar to that of the woman Elizabeth had spoken to on the telephone.

  He ushered her into a parlor where the curtains were drawn tightly over the windows, blocking out any light, and there were deep shadows in the corners of the room. The furniture was dark in color and so was the rug on the floor. A beaded curtain that separated that room from another was the only note of color. Elizabeth thought it gave the room a sinister aspect.

  Her palms began to sweat and she was sorry she hadn’t brought Kaminsky with her.

  The curtain rattled and a woman stepped through. She was middle-aged with gray hair scooped into a barrette and pinned to the top of her head. Her hands were large and manly. Elizabeth found herself staring at them.

  She was wearing a dark skirt with a white blouse that had elaborate and colorful embroidery down the front and on the cuffs.

  “Magda Farkas?” Elizabeth said.

  Farkas nodded. She stood in the middle of the room with her stocky legs slightly apart and stared at Elizabeth. Elizabeth felt as if she was being minutely examined from her head to her toes.

  Farkas waved a hand toward Elizabeth. “How far along are you?” she said in a gruff voice.

  Elizabeth was startled. What on earth did the woman mean?

  “Excuse me?” Elizabeth said.

  “How far along are you?” Farkas repeated. “I won’t touch anyone after eighteen weeks.”

  Elizabeth felt a chill run through her. It couldn’t be. She was horrified.

  “Not that far, no,” Elizabeth said, hoping Farkas wouldn’t notice the quaver in her voice. Or would she put it down to nerves?

  “Who sent you here?” Farkas barked at Elizabeth again.

  Elizabeth froze. What should she say?

  “Duff Lambert,” she said finally. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  Farkas nodded, seemingly satisfied. She clapped her hands together.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Lambert. You are the girlfriend, no? He said you would come. Payment has been taken care of.” She clapped her hands again. “Now let us get a look at you.”

  “Actually I’m not—I’m not here for that,” Elizabeth stammered.

  Farkas drew her head back like a turtle retreating into its shell and stiffened her shoulders.

  “Are you from the police?” she said, looking around her, her head swiveling furiously, as if she expected a squadron of officers to materialize out of thin air.

  The young man had come back into the room and upon hearing Farkas’s tone, advanced toward Elizabeth, his fists clenched and a menacing expression on his face. Elizabeth jumped to her feet.

  “No, no. Not the police at all. I wondered if you could tell me when Mr. Lambert was here?” Elizabeth opened her purse, pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes pretending to cry. “He was supposed to meet me under our tree in Central Park.” She choked back a fake sob. “We carved our initials in it when we were only sixteen.” She buried her face in the handkerchief to give herself time to think.

  “He never showed up,” Elizabeth continued, not daring to raise her face, which should have been wet with tears but was perfectly dry. “I waited until the sun went down. I was so cold—I’d forgotten my jacket in my rush to meet him. It was horrible.” Elizabeth broke into racking sobs.

  She prayed she was fooling Magda Farkas. She wasn’t much of an actress. When the freshman class put on Antigone at Wellesley, she’d tried out for numerous parts and had failed to secure a single one. She’d been relegated to the Costume and Makeup Committee and had never even made it onto the stage.

  “Are you not the girlfriend he arranged things for?” the woman said.

  Elizabeth shook her head violently enough that her dark curls swished back and forth across her face.

  “No. He has someone else.” She finished on a wail. “I found your telephone number in his pocket along with a note.” She looked up finally, her face still half-hidden in her handkerchief. “I suspected there was someone else, but I didn’t know for sure.”

  “So you are not in need of my services?” Magda said.

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No. I wanted to know who that telephone number belonged to. I thought maybe it was…hers.” She gave what she hoped was another convincing sob. “When did Mr. Lambert come to you? I want to know everything.”

  Magda looked at her suspiciously, and Elizabeth quickly buried her face in her handkerchief again.

  “It was a Sunday,” Magda said finally. The weekend before we had that terrible storm and all that rain.” She clapped her hands together again. “And that is all I can tell you. It is time for you to leave.”

  Elizabeth nodded and gathered up her purse.

  Magda said nothing as Elizabeth walked toward the door, but before the door closed, Elizabeth heard her whisper something to the young man.

  Elizabeth stood on the sidewalk for a moment and took a deep breath. It looked as if Lambert had been arranging an abortion for someone and while Elizabeth wasn’t much of a gambler, she figured the odds were good that it wasn’t Nancy Vance.

  And if it wasn’t Nancy Vance then the odds were very good that it was Noeleen Donovan.

  But if Lambert was in Manhattan meeting with Magda Farkas on that Sunday, then he couldn’t have also been on Long Island when Noeleen was killed.

  So while she may have solved one mystery—the father of Noeleen’s baby—she wasn’t any closer to discovering who Noeleen’s killer was.

  Elizabeth’s family’s apartment wasn’t far so she decided to walk. The sidewalks were crowded with people returning home from work or dashing to the store for a missing ingredient needed to make dinner. The atmosphere at the end of the day was convivial—festive almost.

  She headed west then turned onto Madison Avenue and headed south. A darling pair of fur-trimmed winter boots caught her eye in a shop window, and Elizabeth stopped to admire them. She was about to start walking again when she noticed someone out of the corner
of her eye. A young man was staring into the window of a millinary shop next door. It was the young man who had let Elizabeth into Magda Farkas’s apartment.

  Was he following her?

  Elizabeth began walking again. She walked for a block then stopped and looked in another shop window, pretending to admire the Miriam Haskell tan, coral and chartreuse dress clips on display. She glanced behind her. The young man had disappeared.

  Had he merely been sending her a warning? The very thought made her go cold all over.

  * * *

  —

  Helen pounced on Elizabeth before she’d even taken off her hat and coat.

  “I have to talk to you,” Helen said, playing with the strand of jet beads around her neck.

  Elizabeth sighed. She was tired and had been hoping to put her feet up and read until dinnertime. Besides, she suspected she knew what her mother wanted to talk to her about. News traveled fast in society circles and Elizabeth had no doubt that the particular morsel her mother was referring to had sped from one ear to another with the speed of light.

  They went into the sitting room and Elizabeth took a seat by the fire that was burning in the grate. She held her hands to the crackling flames. She hadn’t bothered to stop to put on her gloves and her fingers were cold.

  Helen sat opposite Elizabeth, her legs together and tucked demurely to the side. She smoothed the skirt of her plum-colored dress over her knees and cleared her throat.

  “What’s this I hear about you and Phillips?” she said finally.

  Elizabeth raised one eyebrow. She had the feeling Helen had intended to broach the subject in a more subtle way, but had been unable to contain her anxiety long enough to beat about the bush.

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “What exactly did you hear?”

  Helen wet her lips. “Vivian Hicks told me that she heard from her daughter that Phillips had proposed to you but that you turned him down.”

  Elizabeth crossed her legs and Helen frowned at her.

  “That particular tidbit is true at least,” Elizabeth said. She was relieved that the nasty rumor Phillips was spreading about her hadn’t reached Helen’s ears.

  “Won’t you reconsider?” Helen said, fingering the beads around her neck again.

  “Why ever should I? I’m not in love with Phillips. I’ve told you that.”

  Helen pursed her lips. “I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with that unsavory character who called for you the other evening.”

  Elizabeth laughed. She couldn’t help it.

  “Sal Marino is a detective with the New York City Police Department. I would hardly call that unsavory, would you?”

  “But, darling, you know what I mean. Surely you can see he’s simply not our class? I understand you might feel a certain…attraction toward the man. He has the looks of one of those matinee idols—an Errol Flynn or a William Powell.” A small sigh escaped Helen’s lips. “But that sort of attraction doesn’t last. What does last is a union with someone from your own set. Someone who understands what’s important.”

  Money? Elizabeth thought to herself. Status?

  At the same time, she knew Helen meant well. Besides, she had no intention of marrying Sal Marino. They’d shared a meal a few times—that was all. And that was all it would ever be.

  Chapter 17

  Elizabeth blinked and drew back in her chair. Kaminsky was shaking his finger at her. He’d been fussing at her for several minutes already.

  “You could have been killed,” Kaminsky said, his face getting redder by the second. “You had no idea what you might have been walking into. Who knows what that Lambert fellow could have been up to.”

  “Well I wasn’t killed,” Elizabeth said. “As you can see I’m sitting right here safe and sound.”

  Kaminsky grunted, but the angry red coloring in his face began to fade.

  “Did you learn anything?” he said in a begrudging tone.

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” Elizabeth said, toying with a pencil on her desk.

  She paused, hoping to tease Kaminsky a bit.

  “Well what did you learn?”

  Elizabeth tapped her pencil against the desk. “Lambert was arranging an abortion for someone. That seems to be this Magda Farkas’s stock in trade.”

  Kaminsky stroked his chin. “Interesting. Surely Miss Vance—”

  “Oh, I don’t think he was arranging it for Miss Vance,” Elizabeth said. “She’s much too sophisticated to let herself be caught like that. I think he was arranging it for Noeleen Donovan.”

  “So Lambert is the father of Noeleen’s baby then.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “I think that’s a good bet.”

  “So maybe Lambert is the one who killed her.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No. He was in Manhattan the day she was killed.”

  Kaminsky snapped his fingers. “That’s a dead end I guess.”

  The phone on Kaminsky’s desk rang. “Hang on,” he said to Elizabeth as he walked over to answer it.

  Elizabeth watched as Kaminsky listened to the person on the other end of the call. He frowned, then suddenly he began to smile. He returned the receiver to the cradle and walked back over to Elizabeth’s desk.

  “Detective Marino’s called a press conference at the precinct. It’s about that Tyler case.” He jerked a thumb toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  By the time Elizabeth and Kaminsky arrived at the Nineteenth Precinct house on East Sixty-Seventh Street, an Italian-style building of red brick with bluestone copings and terra-cotta trimmings, a small crowd had already gathered outside.

  Elizabeth was pleased to note she recognized some of the faces now—Ted Munson from The New York Times and Bobby Markowitz from the New York Herald Tribune were there along with a man she thought was with the New York Daily News.

  A patrol officer came out the front door, held it open and motioned the crowd to go inside. A couple of the other reporters and photographers shot Elizabeth a strange look, but she barely noticed anymore. Sooner or later, they’d get used to having her around.

  They were ushered into a cramped room with microphones at the very head, their wires twining together like a length of knitting. Elizabeth managed to jostle her way to the front of the crowd and held her camera at the ready. Someone’s elbow caught her on the arm and she nearly dropped her Speed Graphic.

  The room quickly became stuffy, and Elizabeth opened her coat and fanned her face with her hand. The radiator in the corner continued to belch out clouds of hot air making the atmosphere even closer. One of the reporters pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow.

  A murmur went through the crowd as Marino walked out of a side door and stood in front of the microphones. He tapped one and a screech reverberated through the room. Elizabeth winced.

  Marino looked out at the assembled reporters and photographers and when his gaze landed on Elizabeth, he smiled.

  Kaminsky, along with the other reporters, had their notebooks and pencils out, ready to jot down whatever important information was about to be revealed.

  Elizabeth got what she hoped were some good shots of Marino standing in front of the microphones from NBC and CBS. She already had photographs of the Tylers’ apartment building that they could run along with the story.

  Marino cleared his throat and rattled the papers he held in his hand. He glanced at them briefly.

  “We’ve made an arrest in the Tyler case,” he began. “The death of Mary Tyler has been ruled a homicide, and her husband, Gordon Tyler, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.”

  “What about the suicide note?” a reporter from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle called out.

  “We do not believe the suicide note was written by Mary Tyler.”

  “So her
husband pushed her out the window?” another reporter yelled.

  “That appears to be the case,” Marino answered.

  “How did he manage to push her out?” Kaminsky called out. “Were there signs of a struggle?”

  Marino shook his head. “No, but the medical examiner found traces of barbiturates in Mrs. Tyler’s blood.”

  “What’s that?” someone yelled.

  “It’s a type of sedative,” Marino answered.

  “So Mr. Tyler drugged his wife with a sedative and when she got sleepy enough, dragged her to the window and pushed her out?” Munson said.

  “That is what we believe happened, yes.”

  “What about the Noeleen Donovan case? Any news on that?” Kaminsky yelled out.

  Marino hesitated momentarily. “As a matter of fact…yes, there is.”

  A murmur went through the crowd and the reporters stood with their pencils held over their notebooks, expectant looks on their faces. The room became very quiet as they waited for Marino to speak.

  Marino cleared his throat. “We’re fairly sure now that the death of Father McGrath, a priest from St. Vincent Ferrer and Noeleen Donovan’s confessor, is related to the Donovan case.”

  The reporters began shouting questions, and Marino held up his hand.

  “It originally appeared that Father McGrath’s death was a suicide, but the autopsy has revealed that he was rendered unconscious before being killed.”

  “How?” Munson called out.

  “It appears that the killer used ether to subdue Father McGrath.”

  “And then they rigged it up to look like a suicide?” another reporter said.

  “That’s what we suspect.”

  Elizabeth and Kaminsky looked at each other.

  “Is an arrest imminent?” Kaminsky yelled.

  Marino’s answer was frustratingly cryptic. “Possibly.”

  “Want to tell us who you’re arresting?” Munson said.

  Marino smiled. “You’ll find out soon enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, that’s all I have for now. Thank you for coming.”