Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (24 page)

“That Thursday, was there anything unusual about her behavior?”

“No, it was about like any other Thursday. I was busy, so she took care of the children’s lunch, but she left right after. Usually she would go out before.”

“But it was not unusual for her to leave when she did?”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“Well thank you, Mrs. Serafino, you have been very kind.”

She went to the door with him and watched him walk down the path. Then she called after him, “Rabbi Small – there’s Celia now if you want to talk to her, the girt with the two children.” She watched him hasten down the street and accost the girl.

Rabbi Small spoke to Celia for a few minutes and then walked to the corner of the street and glanced at the mailbox. He got into his car and drove to Salem, where he spent some time before driving back home.

Mr. Serafino got up shortly after noon. He washed, rubbed his hand against his blue-black beard stubble and decided not to shave until evening, and went down to the kitchen. Outside in the backyard he saw his wife playing with the children and he waved. She came in to serve him his breakfast and he sat at the kitchen table reading the comics in the morning newspaper while she puttered at the stove.

Not until he finished breakfast did a word pass between them. Then she said, “I’ll bet you’ll never guess who was here this morning.”

He made no reply.

“It was that Rabbi Small from the Jewish temple,” she went on. “You know, the one whose car they found the bag in.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wanted to ask me about the girl.”

“He’s got a nerve. You didn’t say anything?”

“I talked to him. Why not?”

He looked at her in astonishment. “Because he’s a party to the case and what you know is evidence, that’s why not.”

“But he seemed like such a nice sort of young man, not like what you’d expect a rabbi to be. I mean, he didn’t have a beard or anything.”

“None of them do these days. Don’t you remember the Golds’ wedding we went to last year. That rabbi didn’t have a beard either.”

“He wasn’t even like that, you know, dignified. He was just an ordinary young fellow, like he might be an insurance salesman or a car salesman, but not a fast-talker, just nice and polite. He wanted to see the girl’s room.”

“And you showed it to him?”

“Sure I did.”

“The police told you to keep the door shut. How do you know he wasn’t planning to take something or rub out a fingerprint or even leave something behind?”

“Because I was with him all the time. He only stayed a couple of seconds altogether.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to call the police and report it.” He rose.

“But why?”

“Because this is a murder case, and what’s in that room is evidence, and he’s a party to the case, and he might have been tampering with the evidence. And hereafter, don’t you go talking about this case to anybody, you understand?”

“All right.”

“Anybody, get it?”

“All right.”

“I don’t want you should say one single, solitary word, you understand.”

“All right, all right. What are you so excited for? You’re all red in the face.”

“A guy has a right to have some peace and quiet in his own house,” he raged.

She smiled at him. “You’re just edgy, Joe. C’mon, sit down, baby, and let me get you another cup of coffee.”

He sat down and ducked behind his newspaper. She got a fresh cup and saucer and poured his coffee. She was puzzled and uncertain and worried.

The rabbi was not altogether surprised when Hugh Lanigan dropped in that evening.

“I understand you went calling on the Serafinos this morning,” he said.

The young man reddened and nodded.

“You were sleuthing, weren’t you, rabbi?” Lanigan’s lips twitched in an effort to be stem, although he obviously thought the situation amusing. “Don’t do it, rabbi. You could muddy the trail, and Lord knows it’s obscure enough as it is. I might also mention that it could excite suspicion. Mr. Serafino, who called to tell us about it, thought you might have come there to remove something, presumably something incriminating, from the girl’s room.”

“I had no idea,” he said contritely. “I’m sorry.” He hesitated, and then went on timidly, “I had an idea I wanted to check.”

Lanigan shot him a quick glance. “Yes?”

The rabbi nodded and went on hurriedly, “In any sequence of events there’s a beginning and a middle and an end. The last time we discussed this case, I’m afraid we started at the end, with the handbag. I suggest you would get further if you started at the beginning.”

“And what do you call the beginning? The girl’s getting pregnant?”

“That could be the beginning, but we have no real certainty that was connected with the girl’s death.”

“Then where would you start?”

“If I were conducting the investigation,” said the rabbi, “I would first want to know why she left the house after Bronstein brought her home.”

Lanigan considered the suggestion and then shrugged his shoulders. “She could have left for any number of reasons, to mail a letter perhaps.”

“Then why take off her dress?”

“It was raining at the time,” Lanigan observed. “Maybe she didn’t want to get the dress wet.”

“Then she would simply have slipped on a coat or raincoat – as she did. Besides, mail is not collected until nine-thirty the next morning. I looked at the box.”

“All right, then she didn’t go out to mail a letter. Maybe she just wanted to take a short walk, to get some air.”

“In the rain? After she had been out all afternoon and evening? Besides, the same objection holds – why would she take off her dress? That’s really the basic question: why did she take off her dress?”

“All right, why did she?”

“Why, to go to bed,” announced the rabbi.

Lanigan stared at the triumphant look on his face. Finally he said, “I don’t get it. What are you driving at?”

The rabbi could not help showing some impatience. “The girl comes home from a night out. It’s late and she has to get up early the next morning. So she starts to prepare for bed. She takes off her dress and hangs it up carefully in the closet. Normally she would have gone on to take off the rest of the things, but something interrupted her in the process. I suggest it could only have been a message of some sort.”

“You mean she got a telephone call?”

Rabbi Small shook his head. “She couldn’t have because there is an extension upstairs and Mrs. Serafino would have heard the phone ring.”

“Then how?”

“The radio. According to Mrs. Serafino she had it on all the time. With girls of that age, turning on the radio is a conditioned reflex. As automatic as breathing. I suggest she turned it on as soon as she came in.”

“All right, so she turned on the radio. What sort of message could she have received?”

“There’s a news round-up from WSAM, the Salem station, at 12:35. The last few minutes are devoted to local news.”

“And you think she heard a bit of local news that sent her scurrying out into the rain? Why?”

“Because she had to meet someone.”

“At that hour? How could she know where to meet this someone. I know that program – it doesn’t run personals. And if she was meeting someone, why didn’t she put on a dress first? Really, rabbi –”

“She didn’t have time to put on a dress because she had to get there by one o’clock,” said the rabbi quietly “And she knew he would be there because that was the time he was supposed to ring in at the police box.”

Lanigan stared at him. “You mean – Bill Norman?”

The rabbi nodded.

“But that’s impossible. He just became engaged to Bud Ramsay’s girl. I went to the engagement party. It was that very night. I was one of the guests of honor.”

“Yes, I know. That was the announcement over the radio. I called the station today and checked. Think about it for a minute, and keep in mind the fact that the girl was pregnant. According to all those who knew her, the only time she was ever in the company of men – socially, that is – was her one excursion to Old Town, the Policemen’s Ball. I suggest she met Norman there.”

“You’re not suggesting the keel for her little ship was laid at the Policemen’s Ball?”

“Hardly. That was back in February. But that’s where she first made Norman’s acquaintance. I’m not sure how it was renewed, but I can imagine. Like most laymen, I know that the patrolman on his beat is required to call in at regular intervals. I had always assumed that like a night watchman in a factory, the time between calls depended on the length of time it took him to walk from one box to the next.”

“Well, not exactly,” Lanigan began. “He’s given a certain leeway.”

“So I discovered some weeks ago when I was called on to settle a dispute between two members of our congregation. One of them had to get into a house late at night without a key, and the cab driver rounded up the patrolman on duty who made it a practice to stop off nearby for an unofficial coffee break.”

“It’s an eight-hour tour of duty. You can’t expect a man to be on his feet all that time without a rest,” said Lanigan defensively. “And in the winter a man has to warm up every now and then.”

“Of course,” the rabbi agreed, “and thinking it over, I realized that it was only common sense to allow him considerable leeway, if only because of the investigating he might have to do along the way. I spoke to Officer Johnson, who patrols this same beat during the day, and he explained that the night patrolman usually makes his own arrangements. On this route, for example, he stops with the night watchman for a while at the Gordon block. Then there is the milk plant, and when Stanley was staying overnight at the temple that was another stop. Now here is the Serafino house, and except for the children who are asleep upstairs Elspeth is all alone until two o’clock or later every morning. Along comes a dashing young policeman, a bachelor moreover, who has to ring in a box on the corner of Maple and Vine streets at one o’clock and whose beat then takes him down Vine Street right near the Serafino house. So on cold, bitter nights, what better arrangement than to drop in on the girl for a hot cup of coffee and a pleasant chat for half an hour before going out into the night again.”

“But how about Thursdays? Wouldn’t she expect him to take her out on her night off?”

“Why should he? She was seeing him every other night in the week. And he was on night duty, so he needed his sleep during the day. I imagine she loved him and presumed that he loved her. She probably expected to marry him. There is nothing to indicate she was a loose girl. On the contrary, that’s probably why she did not go put with other men and refused to double-date with Celia. She considered herself engaged.”

“It’s ingenious,” admitted Lanigan, “but it’s all conjectural.”

“Granted, but it all adds up. And it enables us to reconstruct the events of that fatal Thursday in the only way that makes sense. She suspects she’s pregnant, so she goes to an obstetrician on her day off. She gets dressed up nicely, not forgetting to wear a wedding ring. Was it her mother’s, or did she buy it in the fond hope that she would be wearing it legitimately shortly? At the doctor’s office, she gives her name as Mrs. Elizabeth Brown, not because of Bronstein whom she hadn’t met as yet but because it is a common name like Smith and because it is natural to retain the same initials. She is examined and the doctor tells her she is pregnant.

“Now Bronstein said that when he first saw her in the restaurant, she kept glancing at the clock as if she were waiting for someone. I imagine you have since verified with the waitresses that she didn’t order when she first came into the restaurant. My guess is that since they normally didn’t see each other on Thursdays, she had phoned her lover and made a special appointment with him.”

“The doctor’s secretary said she asked if there was a pay station in the building,” Lanigan remarked.

The rabbi nodded. “Norman must have agreed, or at least said he would try to make it, so she went to the Surfside to wait.”

“Yet she went out with Bronstein.”

“She probably felt hurt when he didn’t show up – hurt and perhaps apprehensive. Bronstein said that he went over only when he decided she had been, er – stood up, and then all he did was ask her to join him because he did not like to eat alone. He was a much older man and she probably saw no danger in it. After all, she was in a restaurant, a public place. During the course of the meal, she evidently concluded that he was a decent sort, so she consented to spend the evening with him. She probably wanted company badly – she must have been feeling pretty blue at the time. He brought her home and she got ready for bed. She had taken off her dress when she heard the announcement of Norman’s engagement.”

“So knowing that Norman was due to ring in at Maple and Vine at one o’clock and it was then, say, five of, she had to dash. She threw on her coat and because it was raining and she had several blocks to go, her raincoat over that, and went to meet him. Is that it, rabbi?”

“I would say so.”

“And then what do you think happened?”

“Well, it was raining, and quite hard. He had seen my car parked outside the temple and I suppose he suggested they get in and talk it over. They got in the back seat and he offered her a cigarette. They talked for a while. Perhaps they quarreled. Perhaps she threatened to go to his fiancée. So he seized the chain she was wearing and twisted. He could not leave the body in the car, of course, since I suppose he was expected to give at least a cursory inspection to any vehicle parked outside all night. If the body had been found in the car, he’d have had some explaining to do. So he carried it out to the grass plot and hid it behind the wall. The handbag had slid to the floor and he just didn’t notice it.”

“Of course you realize, rabbi, that we don’t have an iota of proof for any of this.”

The rabbi nodded.

“But it certainly does all hang together,” Lanigan went on reflectively. “If she had gone to the Ramsays with her story, that would have ended his engagement to Alice. I know the Ramsays. Decent people – but proud. I also thought I knew him.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow at the rabbi. “You had this all figured out and then went to the Serafinos’ to check your theory?”