Time Off for Murder (24 page)

  "I won't tell you anything," Mary said. "But I'll ask you another question. Did you ever surmise that you had a rival for Phyllis' affections?''

  He answered promptly: "Certainly. The collar man. Has
he
seen the Inspector yet?"

  Mary said: "I don't mean him. I mean a tall, handsome policeman." She watched his face. It turned from polite surprise to amusement.

  "Not really!" he exclaimed. "You're not jesting?"

  "Merely asking."

  "That woman's private life was certainly full of surprises. I'd give a lot to know what you're thinking of."

  She said: "You never heard her mention the name of Lieutenant MacKinoy?"

  "MacKinoy? Who's he? The name is familiar…. It was in the papers this weekend, wasn't it? He shot himself or something, didn't he? What makes you think he had anything to do with Phyllis?"

  She answered: "Call it a hunch and let it go at that."

  He said: "Oh no. You're too clever. You're concealing something definite. Please tell me."

  Irked by his persistence, she said crossly: "Then it must stay hidden. Unless the Inspector tells you."

  He took his hand off the steering wheel, put it over hers, pressed her fingers. "Please, my dear," he said gently. "Don't treat me this way. Can't you see I'm most anxious to know all the facts? Don't you realize I have a right to know?"

  She drew her hand out from under his. She said: "Here we are…. I think we're late. I believe the services have started. Just look at that crowd!"

  Saxon Rorke pulled up before the mellow pink portal of the old Church of St. Marks in the Bouwerie.

  He said: "I'll let you out here. I'll find parking space down the block."

  In the wall of serene St. Marks, the bones of Peter Stuyvesant lie crumbling, eternally joined to his beloved Bouwerie. The visage of old Peg-Leg looks over the final resting places of the Lorillards, the Beekmans, the Suydams, the Winthrops, Van Burens, Goelets, of Phillip Hone, diarist mayor of New York, of Freddy Gebhardt who loved the Jersey Lily. Here death is a leveler. There is no high station, no low, no costly monuments, only the flat marble slabs, each above its flight of steps, leading down into a family tomb.

  The famous dead, the honored dead, sleep softly in a green field, within a rusting iron fence. The city roars beside them - New York at its most raucous, the New York that is Babel and seething cauldron. Second Avenue where alien races huddle in the first confusion of the melting pot. Second Avenue of the Yiddish Theatre and the Russian Cabaret, of the Ukrainian church and the German beer hall. Second Avenue, the Broadway and Rue de la Paix of the immigrant Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Hebrews.

  From the penthouse of a modern skyscraper, the newest generation of Americans looks down upon the first, on the crowded, peaceful triangle where time has stood still in restless Manhattan.

  A burial at St. Marks is an event. Only rarely is a marble slab raised and the mortal remains of a scion of one of New York's first families lowered into a brick lined crypt to mingle his dust with his ancestors'. But the funeral of a woman, feloniously done to death and widely publicized, is something to stop the traffic.

  From all side streets and alleys, a tremendous crowd had gathered on this April Monday, to watch in wonder, as the bones of Phyllis Knight were lowered into the family vault.

  Against the iron fence, a shawled and shapeless pretzel vendor, with a face like a dried radish and little prunes of eyes, rested her basket. A white bearded patriarch craned his withered neck around the chaste monument to Eliza Van Buren. Old women with shawls and young, dark wigs over shaven heads; blackhaired, black-eyed youths in leather wind-breakers; big-bellied young women in housedresses; overalled workmen, out for lunch; mingled with a throng of morbid casuals from uptown and down.

  Plainclothesmen moved among them, a look of listening on their faces.

  And near the rear wall, an old man in a dark cape strained in the arms of a tall, grim woman, over a yawning rectangle in the soft turf and moaned: "Marianna, are you there?…Marianna, listen to me. She was a bad daughter…. She was very wicked, Marianna."

  Terry Cayle linked her arm in Mary Carner's. "Where'd you get to?"

  "I drove over with Saxon Rorke. We took our time."

  "And who can blame you? I'm absolutely fascinated by all this. I've never been here before. Feel I'm standing smack in the middle of history. Which one's A. T. Stewart's grave, where the body was snatched?"* (*Terry Cayle refers to one of the most sensational mysteries of the nineteenth century, which began on the night of November 7, 1878, when the remains of Alexander Turney Stewart, merchant prince, were stolen from the quiet churchyard of St. Marks where they had been interred in April, 1876, with pomp befitting New York's richest man. The casket, lavishly decorated in gold and silver, was of itself temptation to enterprising ghouls, but these audacious grave robbers were after bigger return. They demanded a $200,000 ransom for the two year old cadaver. In August of 1879, after extensive bargaining, a sealed casket was delivered over the Canadian border to Mrs. Stewart, who was reported to have thriftily whittled the ransom down to $20,000. No accurate identification of the remains was ever made nor were the ghouls apprehended, and for more than a decade, rumors persisted that the authentic body had not been returned.)

  Mary said: "In the middle. I think Henrietta's standing over it."

  Terry Cayle laughed. "Very apt. She's a grave robber. I hear she's ready to make a play for the fiancé-relict. Where is he?"

  "Parking a car," said Mary. She slipped out of Terry Cayle's arm. "I'll see you later. Someone I want to talk to now."

  On a granite bench at the feet of Peter Stuyvesant, Sophie Duda sat quietly sobbing. Mary slid into the seat beside her. The girl looked up, startled. Her eyes were red-rimmed, stricken.

  Mary touched the girl's coat sleeve. "She was your good friend, wasn't she?"

  Sophie gulped.

  "She was my good friend, too," Mary went on.

  "She was more than a friend to me." The girl's voice seemed strangled with tears. "She give me back my life. She was like my mother to me."

  "You saw her the day she went away, didn't you?"

  Fear crept back into Sophie's eyes. "Who told you?"

  "It doesn't matter who told me. Sophie, you don't need to be afraid of me. I was Phyllis' friend. I won't hurt you. Look, Sophie, they're all leaving the cemetery. I haven't had any breakfast. And it's lunchtime….

Won't you have a sandwich and a cup of coffee with me? Come on. Do." She put her arm through the girl's, propelled her gently down the path.

  "Where are you taking me?"

  "I'm not taking you anywhere. We're going to lunch together. You choose the restaurant."

  Sophie chose a dairy lunch on Second Avenue. It was a spacious place, redolent of onion rolls and raucous with the clatter of crockery on marble topped tables.

  A waiter placed a basket of rolls and sliced rye bread on the table and pats of sweet butter. He handed them menus. Sophie stared hungrily at the printed sheet. She looked up at Mary Carner with furtive anxiety.

  Mary caught the glance. "This looks awfully good," she said. "I'm starved. Let's not have just a sandwich. Let's shoot the works. Come ahead, Sophie. I'm treating."

  The waiter said: "How's about some borsch to start off? With sour cream and boiled potatoes?"

  "Is it all right if I have some borsch?" Sophie asked.

  "Of course. Two, waiter. Then we'll see what else we want."

  Anticipation wiped the look of terror from Sophie Duda's face. She buttered a large slice of bread, bent it double, plunged it into her mouth.

  Mary watched her covertly. The girl was shabby, her fingernails were grimy and broken; her clothing looked as though it had been through all the winter's rains and snows; her cheap patent leather purse was cracked and flat.

  Sophie wolfed a second piece of bread, emptied her water glass.

  "Have you been working, Sophie?" Mary asked. "Have you had a job since you left that place in Flatbush?"

  Sophie choked on a wad of bread. "How'd you know I was working in Flatbush?"

  Mary smiled. "I know that Miss Knight got you that job. I know she looked out for you. She's gone now, Sophie. You must let me look out for you. You must let me be your friend."

  Two tears trembled like glass marbles on the girl's eye-lids. She groped for her handkerchief. Mary said: "Take mine. Have you powder? Powder your nose, before the waiter sees you crying."

  Sophie found her compact, dabbed her shining nose. The waiter set down two bowls of pale red fluid, with hillocks of cream floating on the surface. For two minutes there was no sound save Sophie slupping her soup. At last she put her spoon in the dish, sighed contentedly.

  "It's good, isn't it?" Mary asked.

  The girl grinned happily. The smile changed her plain, broad-boned face. It made her almost attractive.

  Mary said: "It's wonderful what food does for one. I was nearly famished myself. Let's have some fish now, shall we?"

  By the time they had reached the crumbs of their apple strudel, Sophie Duda had confided to her new friend that she had been working as a dishwasher since she left her nursemaid's job, but the chef had gotten fresh and she had quit two weeks before, that she had given up her furnished room last week, had slept for three days in subway stations and had not eaten since breakfast Sunday, and the nickel that had taken her to Washington Square had been her last.

  "I dunno why I'm telling you so much," she said. "Only I gotta tell somebody…. A person is like in prison when he can't tell nobody what's worrying him. I used to come all the time to Miss Knight's office. I tell her everything. She helps me out all the time. Not only with money. With all kinds of help. A person don't need only money. My God, if I know somebody like Miss Knight when I come to New York I wouldna gotten in no trouble like I did." She reddened, lapsed into silence, as if stricken dumb by remembrance.

  "I know about your trouble," Mary said. "And I know the judge didn't think you deserved to be punished for it."

  A shudder racked the girl. "I was so scared. You can't know how scared I was. I was crazy. I didn't know what I was doing. Believe me, it was the truth, I didn't know what I was doing. I wouldn't hurt anybody in the world. I wouldn't hurt a fly…. Nobody…. Never a little baby if I know what I'm doing." The girl's voice had risen hysterically. At nearby tables, heads turned to look and listen.

  Fearful lest chiding might dam the flow of confidence, Mary said, in a quiet tone that hoped for imitation: "Let's lower our voices. People are listening."

  "Oh my God…Ain't there some place we can go? Some place we can talk by ourselves?''

  "Why, surely." Mary moved back her chair. "Won't you come up to my apartment? I'm not very far away. Over on Nineteenth Street. We can talk comfortably."

  On Mary Carner's sofa, her hair combed, her makeup repaired, Sophie said: "I don't know why I come with you. I'd ought to known better than to go with strangers. But you're like her. Like Miss Knight. Say, you got a nice place here. Do you work? Or are you rich?"

  "I'm out of a job right now. I used to work at Blankfort's department store. Quit my job Saturday."

  "What's the matter? Boss get fresh?"

  "In a way." Mary laughed. "No, I wanted to take it easy for a while. Do some things I 'specially wanted to do…. Have a cigarette?"

  Sophie grabbed the cigarette. She inhaled deeply and gratefully. "I ain't had one since I quit my job. I guess you think it's funny to see me smoke. My pa'd lick the pants off of me if he saw it."

  "Your parents living?"

  The girl nodded. "Both of them…. Out in Pennsylvania. It's a dump. Nothin' but the breaker and the culm pile and the shacks and the church. That's where I was raised." The girl was talking easily now. "My pa and ma, they had a dozen kids. My ma was havin' a new one every year…. It was all right as long as the mines was workin' steady, but when depression come, things was awful tough. We was living off relief when I see an ad in the paper a lady's lookin' for a girl for general housework in New York. I writ to the lady, and she come driving out for me with a big car and a man she says is her brother. And she promises me forty dollars a month and says she's glad to get a nice, healthy Polish girl. And my pa and ma was glad I'm getting such a swell job. She brings me to New York. Up to a big house. And all I see is lots of other girls. I can't tell you the terrible things they done to me in that place."

  Mary said quietly: "Don't try. It's best forgotten."

  "No," Sophie said positively. "It's better girls should know. Miss Knight says it's better girls should know the kind of things goes on in the world, then they could take care of themselves…."

  It was ironic - this echo of the long stilled voice of Phyllis Knight.

  "When I holler, they laugh at me," the girl went on. "The other girls tell me: 'Don't be a damn fool. This is easy dough. You're in luck. You're working for Rockey. For the big shot.' One man, he comes in and he hits me. And he says: 'Now don't you try no funny stuff.' Another man, he comes and he laughs at me. And I hear them laughing and talking about me and I think what can I do? I am so ashamed. I feel terrible. Then comes one night, they take me in an automobile, some place in a big car and the car is stopped for the red light and I see I got a chance. And I open the door and I beat it. I have no money. I have no place to go. I sleep in the Park…. I sleep in the subway. I sleep in the hallways."