It was fortunate for Howard McNally that Lieutenant Giddeon believed the first and most important stage in the investigation of the Julio murder—once he had assigned a certain number of technical assistants to routine work at the spot where the body was found—would be a visit to the Nielsens. As a result, Sergeant Finnerty was delegated to stop by the McNallys’, theoretically the last known persons to see the dead girl alive. Finnerty was a good cop, but in this type of work, he was a little over his depth; until a week before the tragic death of the Julio girl, he had specialized on larceny and burglary cases.
Finnerty had observed both of the McNallys on the Kitteridge lawn, but had paid them little heed. By the time he got around to paying them a visit, they had already returned home and McNally had had a chance to shave and shower and drink several cups of black coffee. Myrtle McNally, realizing the police would soon be around, substituted a double Bromo Seltzer for the coffee, but was presentable in fresh make-up and a newly pressed house dress. She had a raging headache, but it was almost of secondary consideration to the extreme emotional fatigue she was suffering when Finnerty arrived.
Finnerty established his identity and authority by exposing his gold badge and was at once invited into the living room. He sat, a little uncomfortably, in a low butterfly chair and the two McNallys were several feet across the room, side by side on the imitation leather couch. Finnerty sensed at once that Mrs. McNally was boss in the family and he addressed most of his questions to her. One look at the pudgy figure of Howard had failed to impress the detective and he felt a vague sort of sorrow for Myrtle McNally, fine figure of a woman that she was, being yoked in wedlock to so insignificant a man.
It was Finnerty’s mild enchantment with Myrtle which probably, more than anything else, blunted the sharpness of his mentality as he talked to the two of them. In no time at all he learned the Julio girl had arrived at their home in the early hours of the previous evening and that the McNallys had left shortly afterward to attend the party across the street at the Swansons.
Finnerty questioned them carefully as to whether the girl had been expecting anyone to drop in on her and received a negative reply.
“Perhaps your youngster might know if she had a visitor,” Finnerty said.
Myrtle forced a smile.
“The youngster is six months old,” she said.
Finnerty nodded sagely.
“Would it be that one of your friends, perhaps, may have dropped by?”
Both the McNallys spoke up to deny any such possibility.
“Well, these baby sitters,” Finnerty said, “you know how they are. Sometimes a boy friend you know...” He rubbed a lean, bony finger down the side of his long nose. “Don’t suppose you noticed if there were any dirty dishes or empty soda bottles or anything when you returned?”
Myrtle shook her head.
“And what time did you return?”
McNally opened his mouth to speak, but Myrtle quickly cut in.
“We came back, oh, let’s see.” She frowned for a moment, concentrating and out of the comer of her eye saw that Howard was again about to say something.
“After midnight,” she said quickly. “Maybe around two o'clock or maybe even a little later."
“And the girl seemed all right then—nothing unusual or anything?”
“The girl was fine. Everything was quiet and we paid her and she left to go home.”
“How much does she get an hour?” Finnerty asked.
Without hesitancy, Myrtle replied.
“A dollar and a quarter—an outrageous price. But around here, it s almost impossible to get anyone on a Saturday night. These kids—they all seem to want nothing but to go out with their boy friends and...”
Finnerty interrupted quickly. “Well,” he said, and there was the note of pride in his voice at his own astuteness, “in that case we can determine exactly when the girl left. You say she came just before eight and you know how much you paid, so if it was a dollar and a quarter an hour, then...”
He looked brightly at Myrtle McNally, probably expecting to see some appreciation of his acute reasoning reflected on her face. What he saw was a sudden half-frightened, half-bewildered look. Unfortunately, Finnerty at the time was so busy doing mental problems involving multiplying one and one quarter by various digits, that he failed to interpret the significance of her expression.
“I didn't have change,” Howard interrupted. “She was coming back today and we were going to straighten it out.”
Finnerty looked over at him, disappointment heavy on his face. Myrtle eyed her husband at the same time with an expression almost approaching admiration.
“You didn’t drive the girl home?” Finnerty asked, now turning his attention to Howard.
“Well you see, I was a little under the weather—tight you know,” Howard said. “Quite a party across the street!” He laughed a little hollowly.
“Then she...”
Myrtle cut in quickly.
“I offered to take her home,” she said. “But she lives only a few minutes away and she told us she was perfectly willing to go home by herself. After all, Louisa’s abig girl...” Myrtle’s voice, which had contained a defensive inflection as she had started to speak, seemed to fade into nothingness at the mention of the dead girl’s name.
Finnerty went on to ask a number of routine questions—how often the girl had sat for them, how well they knew her, did they know of any boy friends and so forth. He obtained no information of value. They had never used the girl before the fatal night and Myrtle explained they’d gotten her name from another girl they had once employed. Finnerty was on the verge of asking more questions about the party across the street. He knew that it might be important to know who had been there and what time each person had left, but he hesitated a moment and then decided to pass it up. He knew Giddeon would have that angle checked and right now Mrs. McNally was asking him if he wouldn’t like a cup of coffee.
"Come on into the kitchen,’’she was saying, “andl’llpour. It’s all made and hot.”
As Finnerty was hesitating, Howard spoke up.
"Go right ahead,” he said. “I'll just skip it myself; want to look in on the baby for a moment.”
Finnerty decided to have the coffee and to all intents and purposes that terminated his interview with the McNallys. He was still wondering what a fine figure of a woman like Myrtle McNally could see in that sad excuse for a husband as he followed her well-curved figure down the hallway to the kitchen.
Lieutenant Giddeon wasted little time at the Kitteridges’. A word or so with Mrs. Kitteridge assured him that she was beyond guile and he quickly assigned a man to take down her statement. He learned of Mr. Kitteridges whereabouts and dispatched a car to pick him up. There were a few other routine matters he handled and then he left. He was anxious to talk with the Neilsens.
Allie, her eyes red and swollen, answered the doorbell’s first ring. Young Billy stood directly behind his mother and peered around her at the visitor with wide-eyed curiosity.
“Mrs. Neilsen?”
Allie nodded.
“I’d like to see your husband.”
“My daddy’s gone to the police station,” Billy said, proudly.
Allie turned and said, “Hush.”
“Mr. Neilsen’s not here just now,” she said, looking back at Giddeon.
The lieutenant concealed his quick surprise.
“Well, may I come in a moment? You see, I’m an officer”—he showed her his shield—’’and I’d like to ask you a question or two.”
Allie nodded wordlessly and stepped to one side. Giddeon walked past her and into the neat living room. He waited until Allie came in and sat down and then he too found a seat, leaning forward and with his soft felt hat in his hands.
“Billy,” Allie said, “you go into your room and play.”
Billy started to protest, but then, detecting a note of unexpected sternness in his mother’s voice, he turned and silently left the room.
“Just where is your husband, Mrs. Neilsen?”
Allie looked over at him and she found it hard to keep her chin from quivering. She wanted to cry.
“As Billy said,” shestarted at last, “hewent...”
Giddeon interrupted her.
“I know,” he said. “He went to the police station. As a matter of fact, he came to see me. But that was some time ago. He left my office more than an hour ago and told me he was coming directly home. Do you know why he came to see me?”
Allie nodded.
“It was about the murder.”
“About what murder, Mrs. Neilsen?”
Allie stared at him for a moment and in spite of herself she blushed.
"Not that poor girl down the street;” she said. “No, it wasn’t about that. Len didn’tknow anything about that. Itwas...”
“Your husband told me that you knew all about the thing he had to tell me about,” Giddeon interrupted. “He said that he told you about it last night, or rather early this morning. Now Mrs. Neilsen, I want you to tell me exactly what your husband did tell you.”
“But if he has told you already...”
“I still want you to tell me in your own words. ”
Allie hesitated a moment, and then she started talking in a low, almost motionless voice. Even as she spoke the words she realized how insane they must sound; how silly and ridiculous the whole story was. Only it hadn’t sounded at all silly, or ridiculous, when Len had told it to her in the early hours of the morning. But of course that was before this other thing—this terrible thing which had happened almost next door to their very house.
God knows, she’d been affected enough when Len had told her the story about the dead man; it had seemed terribly frightening and tragic. But somehow or other this other thing, this actually seeing for herself the dead body of a ruthlessly and brutally murdered young girl—seemed to make Len’s tale fade into insignificance. It made it appear too utterly absurd to have ever happened at all.
As Allie talked she cursed herself for ever having convinced Len that he should go to the police in the first place. She began to wonder if perhaps he hadn’t dreamed up the entire thing; that it was all a part of some mental fantasy brought on as a result of his unaccustomed drinking. She was mouthing the words, repeating what Len had told her, almost automatically. And as she talked she was thinking more and more of Len. She finished speaking in a rush.
“And I don’t understand it—I don’t understand it at all,” she ended. Suddenly, quite beyond her control, the tears welled up in her eyes and then she was crying openly.
Lieutenant Giddeon felt very sorry for her. But he was smart enough to just sit there and say nothing. After a few minutes, Allie looked up at him and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, faltered, “I’m sorry, really. It’s just that...”
“I understand, Mrs. Neilsen.”
"And I don’t know where Len is. I can’t understand it; I thought he’d be home now for sure. I just can’t seem to understand anything. I...”
“You haven’t any idea where he might have stopped off?”
Allie shook her head.
“Well, I wouldn’t worry,” Giddeon said, “he'll be along soon, I should imagine. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go and sort of dry those tears now
and maybe freshen up. I’ll want to ask a few more questions. Just routine things. While you’re doing it, I’d like to use your phone if you don’t mind.”
Allie stood up and looked at him gratefully for a moment.
“The telephone’s in the hallway there,” she said. “I’ll just look in on Billy and I’ll be back in a few moments.”
She left the room and Giddeon watched her go with a curious expression on his face. He felt sorry for her; he believed that she had been telling him the truth. He believed that Len Neilsen had told her exactly the story she had repeated to him and which he himself had heard from the man’s own lips less than a couple of hours back. But he didn’t necessarily believe that the story itself was the truth.
Waiting until he heard the door of the bedroom close, he stood up and walked over to the telephone which sat on a small table in the hallway just off the living room. He dialed headquarters and spoke for several moments in a low, barely audible voice.
“And get it on the teletype at once,” he ended. “I want him picked up and picked up quick. He can’t be too far away.”
He was back in the living room, again sitting in the chair and with his hat in his hands, when Allie Neilsen returned.
“Mrs. Neilsen, ” Lieutenant Giddeon said, “I wonder if I might ask a slight favor of you?”
Allie looked at him with faint surprise.
“Why certainly.”
“I have a splitting headache and it’s been a rough morning. You couldn’t let me have a small drink of whiskey, perhaps?”
Allie started to speak and then blushed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “really sorry. I could give you a glass of sherry. You see neither Len nor I drink much and we don't bother to keep...”
“The sherry will be fine,” Giddeon said.
While Allie was getting the wine, Giddeon looked around the room. He’d been right about Neilsen, he reflected. The man wasn’t a drinker and he’d probably been telling the truth when he’d said his overindulging of the previous night was highly unusual. It didn't really prove anything, of course, but at least he’d been telling the truth.
The detective shook his head. He was doing what he had so often done in the past, making the same old mistake. He was forming opinions about people based on his personal liking or disliking of them. Mrs. Neilsen seemed to be a fine young woman and completely honest and aboveboard. Her husband had also seemed a likable enough chap. They weren’t at all the sort of...
His eyes took on a colder expression. The hell, he thought, with whether they were likable or not. It was entirely beside the point. Hell s bells, hadn t
Lipski, the arsonist, been likable? Didn’t Watson, the notorious procurer, have I one of the most charming personalities he’d ever encountered? And even
Blackmere, the rapist...
But the hell with that. Giddeon was a detective and he was investigating a murder. It didn’t matter about the personal characteristics or qualities of the people involved. He was out to find the truth and to trace down a killer.
At this point, Lieutenant Giddeon was no longer considering the possibility that he might be investigating two murders. There was only one crime in his mind—the brutal slaying of a fifteen-year-old child whose body was even now being removed to the police morgue where an autopsy would be performed.
The Nassau County Police Department is probably as efficient an organization as most similar groups in the country. Certainly, when it is considered that the department works in close cooperation with the New York City Police, the State Police and local town and village officers within the county, it can be said to lack nothing in either physical and technical equipment, or in manpower. The intelligence quota of that manpower is probably even a bit above the average of the country in general.
However, in the case of Len Neilsen, something somewhere must have fouled up.
Len Neilsen was in no sense a crook and he had none of the cunning or knowledge of a criminal who was on the lam. As a matter of fact, Len didn’t even realize, on that particular Saturday, that he was on the lam. Or at least, on the lam in the minds of the thousand or so police officers who were frantically searching for him. If he had been, it is highly doubtful that even with his total lack of criminal experience, he would be sitting drinking beer in a public tavern on what was probably one of the most traveled roads in the county and a tavern not more than a mile and a half away from the very police headquarters from which orders had been dispatched for his immediate arrest.
The fact that he was in a tavern and drinking beer on a Saturday morning, and especially this particular Saturday morning, was in itself completely contrary to Len’s usual habits and character. Why he had suddenly decided to stop, while driving past the place, was very easy to understand. He had reached for a cigarette and discovered he was carrying an empty pack. Although far from a slave to the habit, Len felt an urgent need for a smoke. The talk with Lieutenant Giddeon had not been easy and his already frayed nerves were jumpy. No sooner had he discovered his lack of cigarettes than he noticed the tavern sign. Without a second thought, he pulled the car off the highway and parked in front of the place.
The beer was like the cigarette. It wasn't alcohol so much that he craved—
he merely had the usual hangover thirst and sighting the seductive beer sign hanging over the bar—it was one of those fantastic electrical contraptions which showed a foamy stream of amber liquid being perpetually poured into a slender goblet from a never-ending mechanical tap, he had suddenly decided it was just what he needed.
He plunged the button on the cigarette machine and retrieved the pack of cigarettes from the hidden compartment beneath the device and as he tore the cellophane wrapper to get at its contents, he walked to the deserted bar and climbed on a stool. The place was warm and pleasant and for a moment he relaxed. When the bartender approached, he ordered a beer.
It was really amazing. That one beer seemed at once to clear away the cobwebs from his head, alleviate the pain from behind his eyes and completely relax him. He ordered a second beer. It would only take a few additional minutes and he wanted a chance to think.
To begin with, he was beginning to wonder if he hadn't really made an ass out of himself. That detective had certainly seemed friendly enough and had even pretended to beEeve his story. But now, in thinking the entire thing over, it seemed to Len that the story itself was utterly fantastic. Fantastic even to him, Len Neilsen, who had, so to speak, been the victim of its circumstances. Not of course—and Len smiled at himself in the mirror behind the bar—quite the victim that the dead man had been. But certainly a victim, if only in a minor capacity. Len started reliving the previous evening.
He ordered a third glass of beer.
Yes, by God it had all been true. Even if that fellow Giddeon thought he was out-and-out crazy, it had all been exactly as he remembered it and exactly as he had explained it. But still, he’d probably been wrong about going to the police. What was there to be gained, after all?
Now, in the cold light of day, things seemed vastly different than they had the night before. Now that he was cold sober—he was ordering his fourth glass of beer as this idea crossed his mind—now that he was cold sober and no longer under the strain of a terrible hangover and shock, well, how, could he actually expect anyone to believe the story? Anyone of course with the exception of Allie. Allie knew him; Allie knew he didn’t imagine things or have strange and unreal illusions. Allie knew anything he said had happened, actually and in all truth, had happened.
But the police? The police were another matter. What he had done, he suddenly realized, was to put himself into a stupid and completely untenable position. Just suppose it all was true? Suppose they—the police—did actually discover that a murder had taken place? Then he, Len, was going to be right in the middle. Not of course in the middle of the murder, but in the middle of some damned unpleasant publicity. And it would come at the worst possible time.
Oh, it would be great all right! They'd have him up to testify and his name would be in all the papers. He, Len Neilsen. The guy who got so drunk he couldn’t even find his own house. Real nice. Randolph would like that! Sure, Randolph drank himself; had even helped Len get drunk. But Randolph knew how to hold his liquor and he would expect as much from his assistants. Particularly from a man he’d just promoted into a really important job.
Len sighed with disgust. He’d been a fool. A first-class, grade A, goddamned fool.
He ordered another beer.
Had Len Neilsen a little more experience with hangovers, he would have understood the insidious influence of a few beers following on the heels of a siege of heavy drinking. He would have realized that it only took four or five of them to blend in with the alcohol still in his blood stream and get him drunk all over again. But this was the sort of knowledge that Len did not have. The two or three times in his life when he had taken too much to drink had been signal and unusual occasions and they had been followed by week ends of remorse and headache—and solemn vows never to do it again.
By the time Len had finished his fifth beer he was beyond realizing his condition—he merely felt pretty good. In fact he felt fine. The only thing which bothered him was a slight tendency toward double vision and this he laid to the fact that he was not wearing his glasses. He had even forgotten when and how he had misplaced them.
The tavern began to fill with customers and Len had to knock on the side of his glass with a coin to attract the attention of the suddenly busy bartender. The man drew a beer without waiting for the order and put it in front of him.
Shortly after one-thirty, Len left the bar. He noticed a nursery next door and saw that there were vases of cut flowers in the window. Pleased with himself, he staggered over and entered. He purchased a dozen roses. Allie deserved something after all the trouble he had put her to.
Being without glasses, Len drove very carefully. He found the entrance to Fairlawn without difficulty and turned in. Once on Crescent Drive, he became aware of the hundreds of people still gathered in front of the Kitteridge home. The crowd was so great, in fact, that a few stragglers were even standing in groups and talking on his own front lawn.
Len had to honk his horn several times in order to get through. He left the car in the drive and started for his front door. Knowing that something unusual was going on, he stopped for a moment to ask a man whom he’d never seen before, what all the confusion was about. For a moment the man stared at him, then spoke.
“My Cod man, where’ve you been? Don’t you know there’s been a murder a couple of doors down the street? Why they just now got through taking the body away. ’ ’
“A murder?”
"Yep, a bloody goddamn murder.”
Len rushed up the front steps of his house. He threw the door open and the first person he saw was Allie. She stood in the center of the living room staring at him as he entered.
“Baby,” he said. “Gees, baby! So I was right. See, I was right all along. They’ve found the body!”
Len failed to notice the glassy look in Allie’s eyes as he moved toward her.
“I brought you some roses,” he said.
Lieutenant Giddeon, who had been standing at one side of the living room entrance, reached Allie Neilsen just before she slumped to the floor in a dead faint. He reached her in time to keep her head from crashing into the side of a mahogany end table as she fell.
Ten minutes later Allie lay on the couch, her feet high on piled-up pillows and a wet towel on her forehead. Young Billy, looking frightened, stood a few feet off watching his mother. Detective Lieutenant G iddeon stood beside Len Neilsen near the door leading into the hall. He was watching Allie as he spoke.
"Now you’re sure you will be all right?” he asked. “You’re sure you don’t want me to call somebody and ask them to stay with you?”
Allie’s voice was weak, but clear and collected when she answered.
“No,” she said. “No. I’ll be all right. Only, well, only I don’t know why you have to take Len back to the police station with you. Haven’t you asked him enough questions already? Haven't you...”
“I’m not taking him back to ask him questions,” Lieutenant Giddeon said. “I’m taking him to book on charges of suspicion of murder.”
This time Allie didn’t faint. She didn’t even gasp. She just lay there and stared at the two of them.
For a moment Len stood stock-still and then he swung quickly to the detective. He no longer felt woozy, no longer had that vague, pleasant sensation which had suffused him when he’d entered the room.
“My God man,” he said, “are you nuts? So I found a dead man; I came to the police station and told you about it. You think if I'd killed some guy I'd come and tell you? Why.
“I’m not interested in adead man,” Lieutenant Giddeon said. His eyes were on the scratches on Len’s face as he spoke and his voice was a dull monotone.
“I don’t know anything about any dead man. I’m talking about the murder of a young girl with dark eyes and blond hair. You must have got the sex wrong, mister. The time, and I guess the place, were right. But you got the sex wrong.”
The tragic and brutal murder of Louisa Mary Julio was to have a vital effect on the lives of a good many widely different people, many of whom had never ever heard of her, or in fact, had as much as heard of Fairlawn Acres.
Martin Saunders, correspondent for the Long Island edition of a New York tabloid, did such an excellent job in covering the story that he was at once taken on the staff as a full-time newspaperman. He immediately married the girl he had been engaged to for some six years, thus condemning her to a lifetime of poverty as the wife of a working reporter. On the other hand, a man named Peters, who was supposed to be covering the story for a metropolitan morning newspaper, got drunk at a bar across from the police station while he was waiting for a news break. He was fired. Later he became an electrical appliance salesman and ended up as the millionaire owner of a chain of cut-rate stores.
A Mrs. Chiofski, one of the newer residents of the development, who had been for weeks seeking an excuse to open a conversation and perhaps develop a friendship with Mrs. Cathwright, her next-door neighbor, discovered a suitable subject in the widely discussed local crime and the two became intimate companions, a relationship which beyond question of doubt led to the forming of a business partnership between their husbands some time later.
Possibly the person most affected by the murder, with the exception of Allie and Len Neilsen—and of course the victim herself—was young Peter Doyle. Peter was the only son of Patrick and Ann Doyle and he was twelve years old at the time the murder took place. He had a fine Irish imagination and a more or less poetic turn of mind, so much so that he was rapidly developing into a chronic dreamer and storyteller. Peter’s mother found nothing charming in this particular facet of his character and was more inclined to think of her child as a dedicated liar.
One result of the murder on Peter was that soon after Louisa Julio’s sudden death, he never again told a lie as long as he lived. In a way, it was unfortunate that this metamorphosis didn’t take place in Peter’s character just before the murder rather than shortly after it. Peter’s final flight of fancy—or lie, as his mother would have had it—was directly responsible for the crystallizing of an opinion in the mind of Detective Lieutenant Clifford Giddeon. It was a lie which did much to propel Len Neilsen in the direction of that narrow, green hallway leading to the electrically wired chair in a small, square room on that dismal island in the Hudson River.
In a great many ways, Peter Doyle was an unusual child. Long after other
children of his age had been disillusioned by the legend of Santa Claus he continued to address annual letters to the North Pole. Later on he learned about leprechauns and fairies and elfs and he believed in them completely. He was a lonely boy and he didn’t play much with the other children in the neighborhood, preferring to spend his idle hours poring over books.
From fairy tales he graduated to comic magazines and from them to detective stories. Peter was always the hero, always the keen-eyed cop who solved the terrible crimes and came up with the brilliant solutions which so shocked and amazed his fellow sleuths at Scotland Yard or the Surete, as the case might be.
Immediately following his breakfast on the morning of the murder, Peter had retired to his bedroom and at once became deeply involved in the construction of a stage-set. He was planning the production of a play and was busily cutting out cardboard figures when his mother rudely interrupted him. She ordered him out of the room and out of the house. She felt that he needed fresh air and exercise and didn’t believe that sitting around in his bedroom on a Saturday morning was a healthy activity for a boy of his age.
Reluctantly Peter had pulled on his leather jacket and left the house. He picked up a long stick as he passed by the garage and then started down the street. Instead of walking on the sidewalk, he at once stepped into the gutter and as he strolled along, his mind still on the play which he was planning to produce in his bedroom theater, he idly swung the stick.
He was not satisfied with his cardboard set and about the time he turned into Crescent Drive, he suddenly changed his mind about the entire plan. Peter decided that he would enlist the aid of several other children in the neighborhood and stage a real live show. They could have it in the garage in back of his house and he would manage the entire thing himself. He could rummage up in the attic and find some discarded clothes and...
At this point in his meditations, Peter passed in front of number 98 Crescent Drive. He stopped for a moment to concentrate on his thoughts. His stick was still swinging carelessly and he suddenly became aware that one end had encountered an obstruction. Peter looked down at the ground with a frown and suddenly his eyes focused and he saw the felt hat. Instinctively reaching to retrieve it, he observed the pair of glasses with one broken lens lying next to the hat. Without thinking, he picked up both objects and stuffed them into the wide pocket of bis jacket. The hat made a tight fit, but he managed by rolling it up. The two finds would make excellent props for his newly planned Play.
Less than an hour later, Peter had completely forgotten about his play. Peter, like a hundred other children who lived in Fairlawn, had something much more fabulous, and much more tangible, on his mind. Peter was a member of that large and curious crowd which had gathered around the Kitteridge house while police officials removed the body of Louisa Julio.
Among that curiously morbid crowd were many who were honestly horrified by the murder; there were others who merely absorbed a vicarious thrill by being in proximity to what would without doubt develop into a sensational news story. A few were revolted and frightened and decided to assume sudden and strict control over the destiny of their own children to insure their future safety.
The children present were thrilled beyond measure. Peter's reaction was exceptional in that almost at once he seemed to feel himself a vital part of the drama which was taking place. He immediately examined the men who were busily occupied in and about the place, deciding which were detectives and which were police laboratory experts. He looked around at his neighbors almost ghoulishly, trying to decide in his own mind if any of them looked guilty and if one could be the killer.
This was really something; not a storybook crime, but the real honest-to-God legitimate thing.
When Sergeant Finnerty left the Kitteridges’ and went to the McNallys’ house to seek information, Peter at once spotted him as a detective. It really wasn’t too difficult. Finnerty looked like a detective. Peter, fascinated, followed in Finnerty’s footsteps. While Finnerty was in the McNally residence, questioning Howard and Myrtle McNally, Peter was half hidden in the bushes beside the living room window and straining his ears to overhear what was going on. His face was alive with excitement and his nervous hands kept scratching in and out of the pockets of his leather jacket. It was when his right hand suddenly came into contact with the broken glasses that Peter got his great inspiration.
Finnerty almost missed the boat. He was halfway down the pathway from the McNally’s front door to the sidewalk, when he felt the tug at the sleeve of his blue serge suit. Not changing his stride, he looked down into the freckled face of a boy whose large blue eyes were wide with excitement. The boy’s wild red hair was crew cut and uncovered. He held a soft felt hat in his free hand.
‘‘Go away, sonny,” Finnerty said. “Can’t you see that I’m busy?”
“You’re a detective,” Peter Doyle said. He made it a statement and not a question.
“I haven’t any time now to...”
“Listen, Mister, you are a detective, aren’t you?”
As the youngster apparently had no intention of detaching himself from his sleeve, and as Finnerty observed that several people were watching him, he felt disinclined to rudely jerk his arm away. He hesitated for a moment.
“I said I’m busy, lad,” he said. “Now goon—run along and...”
“Listen, Mister,” Peter said, and in spite of his excitement, he managed to keep his high-pitched voice barely audible. “Listen, you are working on the murder, aren’t you? You...”
“I’m a detective and I’m working on the murder,” Finnerty said. “Now go on with you and don ’ t bother me. I got things to do. ”
“Well if you’re working on the murder,” Peter said, “You’d better talk to me.”
“Oh yeah? So I better talk to you had I? Well, listen here, sonny,” and Finnerty carefully detached Peter’s clutching fingers from the sleeve of his coat. “You don’t want to be turned over my knee and get a paddling, you better...”
"Listen to me,” Peter said. “Listen. I gotaclue. I got something right here that will lead you right to the killer!”
“So you got a clue, have you?” Finnerty permitted himself an indulgent smile.
“Yes, I got a clue,” Peter said. He suddenly thrust the hat and the glasses in front of Finnerty's eyes.
For a moment the detective looked at the objects blankly. When he spoke, his voice was kindly, but a little patronizing. It was the tone of Finnerty's voice, rather than the actual words he spoke, which caused the damage. The quality of Finnerty’s voice was indirectly responsible for Peter Doyle’s greatest lie and his last lie.
“A hat and glasses,” Finnerty said. “So what son—so what?”
Up until that very second, Peter had merely meant to tell the detective he had only that morning found the objects in the street near the scene of the crime. Even up until the very second he opened his mouth to speak, he still intended to explain the event just as it had happened. But there was something about the smug, arrogant manner of Dan Finnerty’s voice as he said that “So what...”
“Listen,” Peter said, “I found these over there this morning. In the yard where the dead body was. Right next to the bush. I was playing and I found them right there beside...”
“Well for Christ sake!”
Ten minutes later, Peter Doyle, twelve-year-old sleuth who baffled the finest brains of Scotland Yard and the French Surete with his amazing criminal deductive powers, was being ushered into the information room at the sub-police station from which Len Neilsen had departed an hour or so previously.
It was the most thrilling moment of his life; it made those silly plays of his seem like nothing, nothing at all. Peter was a central figure in a real, true-to-life murder investigation.
By this time, Peter had completely convinced himself that he really had found the hat and the glasses next to the juniper bush in Martha Kitteridge’s side yard.
A couple of hours later, Lieutenant Giddeon, looking down on the table where that hat lay next to the glasses—the hat containing the initials L.N.— reached two conclusions. The first was that perhaps Sergeant Finnerty was not as big an idiot as he had first thought him to be; the second was that hed never again let his sense of logic be influenced by his liking or disliking of a criminal suspect. He was probably wrong in both conclusions.
If Peter Doyle can be said to have served fate as the carpenter who sawed the pine boards for what was certainly planned to be Len Neilsen’s coffin, Tom Swanson was, in his own way, no mean assistant. Swanson, however, was forced to resort to a lie, not because of an unusually vivid imagination, but as an instinct toward self-protection.
The first of the several times that the Swansons were questioned was around three o'clock on Saturday afternoon. The questioning was done by a young, ambitious traffic patrolman, who during the manpower shortage at the precinct station, was temporarily serving as a substitute detective. His name was Farraday, Fred Farraday, and he was assigned to question the Swansons because, in the first stages of the investigation, they were not considered key witnesses.
The Swansons had finished their delayed breakfast without further conversation. Each was busy with his thoughts and the tragedy which had been enacted across the street meant little to them. After all, it was none of their concern and they had plenty enough to worry about without borrowing trouble. It didn't even occur to Tom or Grace Swanson that they could have the remotest connection with the crime; that is up until the time when Tom turned the radio on late that forenoon and they heard a report of the case over the air. That’s when they learned that the victim was the young girl who had been baby-sitting with the infant daughter of one of their guests of the previous evening.
It just happened that both Grace and Tom heard the news at the same moment and that each of them was, at that very minute, thinking of the McNallys. Grace was remembering how Myrtle McNally had disappeared sometime late during the previous evening. She was remembering that soon after realizing her neighbor from across the street was no longer at the party, she’d started looking for Tom. And Tom was nowhere to be found.
Grace Swanson didn't need a blueprint; there had been other parties and there had been other big blond girls who drank too much. Grace remembered only too well that time a couple of years ago when she’d found Tom and that horrible Schwartz woman sitting out in the front seat of the car in the garage It was funny, but Myrtle McNally even looked like Helen Schwartz. And Helen, like Myrtle, had been married to a little, fat, bald man whom she had loathed in pretty much the same way that Myrtle seemed to loathe her husband.
The Swanson party had gotten a little out of hand as the evening wore on and Grace was having a little trouble remembering the exact sequence of events. Myrtle had disappeared and then shed noticed Tom was nowhere around. Grace had been too proud to go outside and start looking for him. But she had been aware of Myrtle’s return; Myrtle looking disheveled and a little hysterical.
That must have been well past midnight as near as she could time it. By then, Tom was already back in the house, preparing a final batch of drinks for the guests who were getting ready to leave.
Grace had not intended to say anything about it. She probably never would have, either, if it hadn’t been for this new development.
Tom himself was thinking of Myrtle McNally. It wasn’t exactly that she'd flirted with him, but there had been something about her manner. Some little gesture or other which he had detected and which told him that she was the sort—well, that she probably wouldn’t object too much if he were to make a pass at her.
Tom had seen Myrtle leave the house. And he had, as Grace suspected, left himself a minute or two later. Tom had stood in his own front yard as he watched Myrtle McNally cross the street. He had it all figured out. She was going over to check up on the baby and then she’d return. Tom planned to intercept her on her way back. He’d lighted a cigarette and just stood there waiting. Some ten or fifteen minutes passed and he was getting restless. And then he had heard the door slam across the street and a moment later someone had run from the house. It could have been Myrtle; Tom was not sure. What he was sure of, however, was that a moment later, a second figure had left the McNallys’ place.
Tom ducked back out of sight. He'd overheard Myrtle's low tense voice as the two of them passed within a few feet of him.
“You fool! You stupid, fat, gross fool,” Myrtle was saying. “What did you do—scare the girl out of her wits? It would serve you right if... ” The words were lost as the two of them circled to the rear of the house to re-enter the back door.
Tom had shrugged and flipped his cigarette onto the lawn.
Grace herself had been in the kitchen when Myrtle and Howard returned. It was obvious to her that the two had been fighting.
Grace strongly suspected that McNally had found his wife outside with
Tom, but she said nothing. Grace didn’t like scenes.
By the time Farraday questioned them, later that Saturday about the party, Grace and Tom each had his story ready.
When the detective asked if they had noticed anyone leaving the party during the evening, Tom was the first one to answer.
“No,” he said. “Everyone was here until the party broke up.” Tom wasn’t going to admit in front of Grace that he had followed Myrtle out of the house. He wasn’t going to give her a chance to start anything, and anyway, he didn’t really consider it important.
Grace looked at her husband for a moment, barely concealing the surprise on her face. She was on the verge of saying something when Farraday again spoke.
“Thought maybe,” he said, “someone might have left early; maybe seen something which would be helpful.”
Grace suddenly realized that it would be foolish to mention the temporary disappearance of the McNallys. It would only lead to further questions and further involvement. And there was no reason they should be mixed up in the thing. She realized full well that Tom was lying and she believed she understood why. He didn't want to admit in front of her that he had gone out after the McNally woman. It really didn’t mean anything anyway, as far as the crime itself was concerned.
Certainly Tom, if he had seen anything of significance, would speak up. At that moment, Tom did speak up.
“The fact is, officer,” he said, “although I don’t remember anyone leaving the party, I did, myself, happen to step out for a minute or so sometime after midnight. I wanted to get a breath of air.”
Both Grace and Farraday looked at him with surprise.
“Yes,” Tom said, “I went out the front door for a cigarette and I did see something which might be important. There was a man and a woman across the street and they seemed to be having an argument of some sort.”
Tom figured it was a pretty smart touch. Now, if the McNallys did admit leaving the house, and if by any chance they happened to have seen him watching them, he’d be covered.
“An argument, you say? And was it anyone you knew or...”
“Too dark to really see them,” Tom said. “All I can say is that it looked like a man and a woman and they were in front of the McNally place. But it wasn’t anyone from this house, I’m sure of that.”
“Why do you think they were having an argument?”
Tomhesitated, andthensaid, ratherweakly, “Well, thatwas sort of the impression I had. Anyway, I didn’t think it was any of my business and while they were still there, I turned and came back into the house.”
“Can you tell me what they looked like, anything about them? Maybe...”
“Nothing. The only thing I could see was that it was a man and either a girl or a woman. And, oh yes, they were both bareheaded. That’s all I can remember.”
Grace waited until the detective was through asking questions and had left before she turned to her husband. “It was the McNallys you saw, wasn’t it?”
Tom stared at her for a moment before answering. When he spoke his voice was cold and sharp.
“Don't be a damned fool,” he said. “I don’t know who it was. All I know is that I saw two people. And for God’s sake, let’s not get ourselves involved in this thing. There’s going to be enough trouble, without our getting mixed up in it. Anyway, you yourself told the detective that none of our guests left the house, as far as we know. Let’s just stick to that.”
Grace looked at her husband for a long moment and then nodded.
"All right, I guess there's no point in getting mixed up in the thing. We'll stick to it.”
Late that Saturday afternoon, when questioned by Lieutenant Giddeon, both Myrtle and Howard McNally denied leaving the Swanson party until the time they had returned home together and dismissed the Julio girl. Howard lied to the detective for a very simple reason; he didn’t want to go to the electric chair and he knew that if the slightest hint of what went on in the kitchen of his home the previous evening should ever come out, they’d probably condemn him without so much as a trial.
Myrtle lied because, no matter how much she might hate her husband, she wasn’t going to have the father of her child tried as a murderer.
Even gentle little Mrs. Kitteridge, in her own quiet way, contributed to the picture which had rapidly crystallized in Lieutenant Giddeon’s mind of Len Neilsen as a killer. She did it in complete innocence and quite by accident. It was while she was talking to the lieutenant of her own activities shortly before the discovery of the body that she made her damaging statement and a statement which made a considerable impression upon the policeman.
At the time she made it, she hadn’t the slightest idea that Neilsen was a suspect in the case. She would, in fact, have been the last person in the world to do or say anything to hurt anyone.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Kitteridge said, in answer to a question by the lieutenant. “I know the Neilsens, although not well, ofcourse.WhyMr. Neilsen passed my housejust a few minutes before I called you. It was funny, too. He didn t even seem to hear me or see me when I spoke to him. He’s usually such a nice young man, too. I guess he must have had something on his mind.
“I guess he must have,” the lieutenant said dryly. “I think I know what it was, too.”
Dominic Spagan was perhaps the one person who might have come forward and told his story and by so doing have offset, in some small part, the damage being done to Len Neilsen by the testimony of those other witnesses. The fact that Dominic failed to come forward, was, ironically enough, the result of a desire on his part to help Len rather than to hurt him.
Dominic was the cab driver who had taken Len home early that Saturday morning. It had been his last fare of the night and he had returned from Long Island, put his cab up in the lot over on the West Side and at once taken a subway to his own small apartment in the Bronx. It wasn’t until late the next day, just before going back on duty, that he learned of the murder out at Fairlawn Acres. By that time the newspapers were carrying the story of Len’s arrest as a possible suspect. They also had a picture of him, as well as a very glamourized picture of Louisa Julio and several shots of the scene where her body had been discovered. Dominic read the story avidly.
He had recognized Len’s picture at once and he remembered the address from the previous night. His first inclination had been to immediately contact the police with the information which he had. And then he began to think it over.
The young guy, this Len Neilsen, had sure been drunk. So drunk he hadn’t even been able to open his own front door. For a moment, stopping and trying to remember the details of the previous evening, Dominic for the first time wondered if it had been his own front door. He remembered watching as Len staggered around to the side of the house and started to crawl into a window.
That was something the police would probably be pretty interested in. But because a man was so stinking drunk that he couldn’t find a keyhole—well it didn’t necessarily make him a murderer. But Dominic knew how the police worked—or at least he thought he did. Tell them the guy was drunk and probably breaking into a house and that would be just about all they’d need. They’d be sure he could be guilty of anything.
There was the other thing; they’d probably raise hell with him, Dominic, for not putting in a report on it. They might even pick up his medallion.
Yeah, Dominic knew how the cops worked all right. Let ’em get just the lit-tlest thing on a guy, and hell, they were ready to believe almost anything. Hadn’t it been less than two months ago they’d fined him, those cops down at the hack bureau? And for what? A simple little infraction of the traffic rules. It had cost him a week’s pay.
“The hell with the cops,” Dominic said, under his breath. Why should he help them? The poor guy is in enough trouble already. There was no point in stirring up more for him. Telling the cops that the guy had been blind drunk, hadn t hardly known where he lived... well it wouldn't help anything and it might get him into even worse trouble. The best thing to do was to stay away from the cops.
Thus, the one possible person who could have even begun to verify Lens story of the night before, remained silent in the mistaken belief that he was doing the kindest possible thing to a poor drunk who’d got himself jammed up with the law.