Gentle Murderer Read online

  At half-past twelve she knocked at 4-B, leaned back to select the key in the light, and then slid it into the door and let herself in. The blinds in the apartment were still drawn, and she clucked her disapproval as she switched on the light in the foyer. Having used almost every moment and motion of her life to advantage, Mrs. Flaherty humped the towels on the table, took the damp rag from her bucket while she lifted it over the threshold, and without wasting a step, wiped the smudge marks from the brass doorknob and its fittings, inside and out, and then from the panel at the light switch. She was meticulous in her work and proud of her shortcuts. She gathered the bucket, two towels, and went directly into the bathroom, which lay between the living room and the bedroom with an entrance off the foyer as well as the one off the bedroom.

  She sang tunelessly that she might not take Miss Gebhardt unawares. The door between bath and bedroom was almost closed, but not quite. The slippered feet of Miss Gebhardt were visible to Mrs. Flaherty just off the bed.

  There was nothing gentle in the way she closed the door between them. She had no use for women who fell across their beds at night unable to take their shoes off, and in her weeks of cleaning she had formed a very low opinion of Miss Gebhardt and the rowdy company she found evidences of. Nor did she like people who had no regard for those working for them—“no more than they were dogs.” The bathroom was a mess, an empty soap powder packet on the floor and part of the powder spilled, wet towels lying in the tub, rusty-looking at that. An altogether distasteful job lay ahead of her. She clattered about it noisily, and thought of the things she would say to Miss Gebhardt if “that one” were to come to and complain of the racket.

  The devil himself could not waken Miss Gebhardt apparently, and Mrs. Flaherty finished the bathroom and moved into the foyer once more. She had wrung out the towels and carted them now to the laundry chute. She caught one of the porters rolling the refuse barrels to the elevator and dumped the waste into it.

  When she returned to the apartment and got as far as the kitchen the telephone rang. She wished that she were done now, that she might slip out without meeting Miss Gebhardt. It occurred to her that if she hurried she might make it. Having an extension phone by her bed, “that one” would lie there a half-hour talking into it. But the phone continued to ring.

  Mrs. Flaherty grabbed her rag from the bucket and wiped the dust from the window sill and the door. She gave the fixtures a quick polish. If the one in there could stand the phone ringing, she could. She wasn’t going to touch the sink, she decided, seeing the array of bottles and glasses. Nobody said she had to do their dirty dishes after them. The phone persisted. The gorge rose in her, as she often said of irritations, and she stomped out of the kitchen and down the three steps into the living room. She caught the phone as though she would choke it.

  “Hello?”

  “Dolly?” The man’s voice was impatient.

  And well it might be, she thought. “This is not Dolly. It’s the maid.”

  “Then be so kind, please, as to ask Miss Gebhardt to take the phone.”

  “If she isn’t taking it after all this time, I don’t think she wants it.”

  “Will you ask her, please?”

  “I’ll ask her,” Mrs. Flaherty said after an instant. I’ll ask her all right, she thought. She was becoming curious about Miss. Gebhardt. She wanted to see how anyone could lie next to a wailing telephone and do nothing about it. She was up the steps when she thought of something and went down them again. “Who do you want me to tell her is calling?”

  She received no answer. “Hello there?” And after a moment: “Are you still not there?”

  “I still am here and expect to be until four o’clock. What do you want, Mrs. Flaherty?”

  “Is it the desk? There was a man on here asking for Miss Gebhardt.”

  “I know. He must have hung up. He said she’s a heavy sleeper.” The clerk giggled.

  “I’m hanging up,” Mrs. Flaherty said and did so, resolving never again to pick up a telephone where she was working.

  She drew the blinds in the living room, thinking about the incident. The clerk was on to Miss Gebhardt. She probably slipped him a dollar now and then. She was generous. That much you had to say for her. By the clerk’s tone, he recognized the caller. She had excuse enough to go in and rouse the sleeper, she reasoned, or to pretend to that intention. The clerk could tell who it was that called, she might say, and it sounded terribly important.

  With that resolve she went to the bedroom door and knocked, softly at first, and then with deliberation. Slowly, from things she had read in the papers, she began to think of sleeping powders. Panic rose as she pounded on the door.

  She flung it open then and saw again the slippered feet, glittering in the half-light as though there were more life in the shoes than in the feet which still lay stiffly as she had first seen them from the bathroom door. There was a sickening odor to the room, partly perfume and partly an acrid dankness. Mrs. Flaherty tiptoed a few steps toward the bed. It seemed at first that Miss Gebhardt’s auburn hair was flung all over the pillow and that she was lying face down. But her toes were pointing upward.

  Mrs. Flaherty’s knees betrayed her in the instant she realized that she had seen all there was left of Miss Gebhardt’s face. She crawled from the room, moaning hoarsely. It was not until she reached the foyer that she found her legs and her voice. Then she ran screaming into the hall.

  6

  WAITING UNTIL HER MOTHER left for church, Katerina Galli went upstairs to change her dress. It was late morning and Tim had not come down yet. But with her ear tuned to every sound from his room she was aware that he had been up for some time. The other boarders were unwilling to miss a meal even on Sunday. At nine o’clock they sat down to bacon and eggs, and now, nearly two hours later, the smell of the bacon had seeped through the whole house. There was not enough air stirring to carry it outdoors.

  Before dressing, Katie made her own bed and then her mother’s in the front room. For an instant there, folding the spread over the huge bed, she remembered the times she had climbed into it beside her father when she was a little girl. She could even remember the smell of sleep about him, although she could no longer remember his face except as it smiled at her from the picture on the dresser. He had died when she was eight years old. Looking on the smooth bed now and seeing the two hollows in it, one much deeper than the other, she wondered what her mother thought about as she lay there night after night. What was remembering like when you could remember a lifetime? What was it like sleeping alone in the bed, waking up at night and putting your hand to the empty place?

  A sound from the end of the hall hastened her from the room. Outside it, she slackened her, pace so as not to be caught in her haste to see him. He was half-way down the stairs when she reached the railing.

  “Good morning, Tim,” she called.

  He turned and smiled up at her. “Hello, Katie.”

  “There’s coffee all made on the stove if you want me to warm it up.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do it.”

  She wanted very much to do it for him, to be invited to have a cup with him, but she was too proud to admit it. He had waited until everyone was gone from the house except her. He might have waited a few minutes longer and she would have been gone too. It was enough for her that he was content in that. She dressed, listening on her way between her room and the bathroom to know if he was still in the kitchen. In spite of her pride she timed herself to go downstairs as he was coming from the kitchen.

  “Going to church?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Me too.”

  “Then we can go together,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She had forgotten her missal and beads, but she would pray on her fingers rather than go back for them now. She lifted her head and walked down the street beside him in proud self-consciousness. Throughout the service she was aware only of being beside him. She could hear his breathing and smell his shaving soap. He
r head bowed, her lips forming prayers without thought, she contemplated his hands folded before him, clean, gentle hands that she had never touched except when he had brushed her cheek the night before. She listened to his voice only in response to the prayers at the end, and for an instant, concentrated on her own prayer, offering it for some vague communion between them. Preceding him out of the church, she sensed an electric pleasure when touching fingers with him at the holy water font.

  He removed his coat when they were on the street and folded it over his arm. He looked at her, seeming to see her for the first time that day. He did not look her up and down. It was just that he was aware of her although his eyes were not on hers. And she was not embarrassed.

  “Do you have to go right home, Katie?”

  “I don’t think so.” She was grateful then that they had not met her mother. No matter where she went she always got the warning from her mother to come right home. It was no more than habit with her mother, the warning. As often, she would chide her for staying around the house too much.

  “Then what do you say to a bus ride?” Tim asked.

  “I’d like that, thank you.”

  They walked to Fourteenth Street, where without seeming to deliberate their course, he selected a crosstown bus. Riding it to the end of the line, they got out and walked along the East River. From there they could see the United Nations building, a glistening shield in the sun.

  “The parliament of the world,” Tim said, pointing to it. “The last great hope of man … if that were only so.”

  “If what were so, Tim?”

  “If they really hoped in it.”

  “I think they do.”

  “What makes you think so?” His tolerance was in his voice.

  She thought a moment. “If they didn’t believe it, they wouldn’t be there at all.”

  “You’re very wise, Katie. But then when I was seventeen, I was that wise, too.”

  “You make yourself sound as old as Santa Claus. How old are you, Tim?”

  “As old as Santa Claus.”

  “Really how old are you?”

  “Thirty-four, I think. Now, doesn’t that sound very old to you?”

  “No,” she lied. She didn’t care how old he was. Lots of women married men twice their age. Then she thought of how old he was when she was born. Seventeen. That was different, somehow. “What were you like when you were seventeen, Tim?”

  “When I was seventeen,” he repeated thoughtfully as though that were an answer in itself.

  “Did you still want to be a priest?”

  He stopped walking and looked at her. “How did you know I wanted to be a priest?”

  “Mother told me. You must have told her once.”

  “Maybe I did.””

  “Did you still want to?”

  “Why do you harp on that, Katie?”

  She sensed his sudden irritation. “I don’t know. I suppose because I wanted to be a nun once. I was fifteen then.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know. Growing up, I guess.” But the color in her face betrayed her. “You could still be a priest, you know,” she added to cover her embarrassment.

  “Couldn’t you be a nun? Is there any reason why you couldn’t be a nun?”

  “I guess I could if I still wanted to.” She was further confused at the sound of accusation in his voice. “It’s just, that now I feel different about it. I’d like to get married … some time.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” he said.

  “Is there something wrong with me wanting to get married?” she persisted.

  “Will you stop it, Katie, or else go home? How do I know what’s wrong with it?”

  “I’ll go home if you want me to.”

  He touched her arm, leading her forward. “No, of course not. I don’t want you to go home. I’m sorry I said that, Katie. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.”

  She moved along with him in silence.

  “Marriage was spoiled for me. Everything was spoiled for me. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’ve spoiled everything.”

  She knew better than to ask him what he meant although the sudden thought that he might have been married hurt terribly. He walked along, looking at the ground. Suddenly he caught her wrist. He held it so tightly that it hurt.

  “But the world’s not going to be spoiled for you, Katie. And don’t let it spoil you. It’s going to try. But don’t let it.”

  She rubbed her wrist where he had released it.

  “Let’s get on another bus, and try starting over,” he said.

  She wanted that very much. Something had happened between them that had never happened before. But then she had never been farther from the house with him Ulan the church at the end of the block.

  “Let’s,” she said. “I do love starting over.”

  “So do I.” He drew a dollar bill and some change from his pocket and counted it. “Do you know what we’ll do? We’ll take the Madison bus and get off where we can walk to the park.”

  “What park?”

  “Central Park, foolish girl. Haven’t you been there?”

  “A couple of times. We went to the zoo when I was in grade school.”

  He looked at her. “When you were in grade school—you’re a child.”

  “I’m not. You said something like that to me last night.”

  They were in the bus before he spoke again. “What else did I say last night, Katie?”

  “Don’t you remember? You weren’t drinking or anything.”

  “If I remembered I wouldn’t ask you,” he said, rubbing his fingers over his eyes and forehead. “It seems like years ago … when I was seventeen maybe, and I already knew too much of the world and myself to be a priest.”

  “Priests know much about the world. They have to.”

  “They learn it out of books,” he said curtly.

  She looked out of the bus window, pondering his words. They stung less in their curtness than in what they told her of him. They implied that his knowledge had come from experience. In her mind she linked that with marriage having been spoiled for him. How quickly her prayer had been denied, she thought bitterly. But he had not actually said that he was married. If he had been, her mother would have found it out. She found things like that out in no time at all. More cheerful herself, Katie tried to think of something to say that would please him.

  “Are you working, Tim?”

  “An odd job here and there. Why?”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant writing.”

  “No. But I think I’m going to be able to start again soon. Maybe today even.”

  “Did something happen? Did you get some money?”

  “Yes and no,” he said. “And in that order.”

  “Will you tell me about it in the park?”

  He smiled. “No.”

  “Will you let me read some of it when it’s written, then?”

  “Possibly.”

  She smiled and settled back in her seat, spreading the creases from her dress.

  “You didn’t tell me what I said last night,” he reminded her.

  “You didn’t say anything much. You just sat there grinning like a cat. You made Johnny play every Irish song he knew. And some he didn’t know, you hummed the tunes for him till he picked them up. And everyone, you’d say, ‘My mother liked that’ or ‘That was one of my mother’s favorites.’”

  “My mother was Irish,” he said, as though in explanation.

  “Your mother’s dead?” the girl asked.

  “Yes. Many times.” He glanced out of the window to see where they were.

  They heard then the gradual rise of police sirens behind them. The bus slowed down and pulled to a stop as two police cars and a police technical truck roared past them. The cortege turned left a few blocks ahead and the sirens stopped.

  “And once she died in bed,” he added, getting up. “Let’s walk from here.”

  7
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  “NOW, MRS. FLAHERTY, TRY and compose yourself. You’d be surprised at the number of violent deaths that occur in New York every day.”

  “But the terrible things I was thinking about the poor woman, and her lying in there dead all the time.”

  Lieutenant Holden leaned forward. “What kind of things?”

  Mrs. Flaherty looked into his eyes and also leaned forward. She whispered confidentially, “I thought she was drunk.”

  Detective Sergeant Goldsmith, examining the contents of a table drawer behind them, stopped to listen.

  Holden straightened up. “Had you ever seen Miss Gebhardt drunk, Mrs. Flaherty?”

  “No. But I cleaned up the kitchen often enough. The number of bottles there you’d of thought it was the Union League Club. My nephew’s a bartender there.”

  Holden nodded. Only the phone call had prevented her from cleaning up the kitchen thoroughly before the body was discovered. Goldsmith turned from where he was working.

  “You’re sure you didn’t touch anything in this room, lady?”

  “I am. Only the telephone. I never do a lick without raising the blinds to see what I’m doing, and I didn’t touch them till I was off the phone. Then I went in to her.”

  Goldsmith went back to work without comment.

  “Mrs. Flaherty, you’ve worked for Miss Gebhardt six months?” Holden continued.

  “I’ve worked for the management six months, since my husband, Billy, went on the night shift. I work where they send me.”

  “But you’ve attended this apartment for six months?”

  “I have.”

  “Did you see Miss Gebhardt often?”

  “Often enough. She was always saying to come back later, the way you’d think I had nothing better to do than pop in here when she felt like having me.”

  “Did you have any idea why she didn’t want you to come in at your convenience?”

  “I had the notion she was entertaining company.”

  “Only the notion?”

  “Well, I never seen her with all her clothes on, if you know what I mean, your honor, and that’s no way to be receiving company, I thought, so I’d argue with myself over the notion.”