Tina Barr’s assailant had dressed in a fireman’s uniform but lost his mask at the crime scene. Was he enough of a chameleon to change his disguise less than twenty-four hours later?
“Tell me about Miss Zeigler,” I said. “Have you ever taken packages for her before?”
“Heavens, yes. It’s hard for someone like me, without a computer, to understand how she does it, but the girl buys everything online-her books, her clothes, and sometimes even her food. She works for a travel magazine so she’s on the road often, and I’m used to accepting deliveries for her.”
“Had she asked you to take anything in this week?”
Jane Eliot bit her lip. “It’s not that I like to look foolish, Alex. But she doesn’t always remember to ask me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with what you did, Miss Eliot. What happened isn’t your fault. I don’t blame you for opening the door,” I said. “Would you tell us what happened when you did?”
She inhaled deeply and continued speaking. “The fellow pushed his way in, and that’s when I lost my balance. I didn’t fall, thank the Lord, but I grabbed for the bench behind me and sat down on it. That’s when he dropped the parcel-a small box-and I thought maybe he had stumbled on something.
“Then he bent over, not to get the box, but to get me,” she said, becoming a bit emotional. “He covered my mouth with a cloth, with some kind of fabric that he’d soaked in something dreadful. I thought I was going to die, young lady. I-I couldn’t breathe. I got so dizzy. I remember the room spinning, and that’s all.”
“A few more things, if you don’t mind,” I said, letting her recover from reliving those frightening moments. “Can you tell us anything about the man who did this?”
“Nothing that Sergeant Pridgen found very helpful.”
“Now, Miss Eliot,” Pridgen said. “You’ve been terrific.”
“You called him a young man, Miss Eliot. And I understand you have cataracts, but do you have any idea how old he was?”
“Look at me, Alex. I call everyone young.”
My turn to bite my lip.
“He was white, I know that for sure. He was an adult, not a teenager. But I couldn’t see his features, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No marks on his face, when he got up close to you?”
“Clean shaven is all I can say. Usually I can make out facial hair if a man’s got it. Didn’t see any of that.”
“Did his uniform have any markings on it? Could you see?”
“You mean like the name of the company? I’m sorry. I just couldn’t tell you that.”
“We’ve checked those services, Alex. These days, they’ve got their scanners current to the second. They can account for all their drivers in the area,” Pridgen said. “He wasn’t legit.”
“Was the box still there when you came to?” Mercer asked.
“I never saw it again.”
“What’s the next thing you remember?” I asked.
“My goodness, it was hours later. Almost five o’clock. There I was, right on the very same bench. Like I was Sleeping Beauty, gone for a long nap and never been missed.”
“Were you injured?”
“I-I didn’t know. There’s no cushion on that old bench, so I was stiff as a board. And awfully dizzy still, with a terrible headache. Must have been that stuff he had on the cloth. The doctors think it was chloroform.”
“But nothing broken?”
“How many times have they had me to X-ray, Mr. Pridgen? MRIs and all these other fancy tests.”
“I’m going to ask you something very personal, Miss Eliot. Sergeant Pridgen has explained what my job is, why Mercer and I work together,” I said. “We need to know whether this man touched any part of your body before you lost consciousness.”
Jane Eliot sat up straighter and talked more seriously. “Now, why would anybody want to do that?” she asked. “I’m an old, old lady. Of course he didn’t touch me.”
It was the specifics I had to establish, whether she wanted to hear them or not.
“What had you been wearing, Miss Eliot? Can you tell us that?”
“Pridgen knows. A housecoat, like this one, but light green. They button up the front so it’s easier for my arthritic shoulders than lifting over my head.”
“And was your clothing disturbed?”
“Hard to disturb a wrinkled housecoat, isn’t it?”
“Do you have any sense that this man might have touched your breasts?”
She put one arm to her chest and chuckled. “They were right where I left them, Alex. He didn’t have anything to do with them.”
“And your undergarments? Did you have any type of underwear on?”
“These young men probably don’t remember the word ‘girdle.’ I wear a firm girdle, and support hose for the circulation in my legs. Might take a construction crew to get through all of that.”
“I’m glad to know that you weren’t molested,” I said, “and that nothing was broken. Do you have any idea why someone would want to break in to your home?”
“I’ve been sitting here going on four days. Plenty of time to think about it,” Jane Eliot said. “He was either just a fool, or he broke in to the wrong apartment.”
“Do you have any valuables there?” I asked. “Has anyone had a chance to see what was missing?”
“I taught elementary school till they put me out to pasture at sixty-five. Fourth grade mathematics. Multiplication tables and time tests-everything that became obsolete with the new math. I’m at an age at which I give my possessions away, Alex. Never had the money for fine things, and don’t like the clutter. Had a sweet set of porcelain dolls people brought me from all over the world, but I gave them to my niece years ago.”
“No cash that you kept in the house? No jewelry?”
“I was wearing the only piece of gold I own. Couldn’t have missed it if he was looking for something pricey to steal. It’s bright and shiny, and practically the size of an alarm clock,” Jane Eliot said. “Show her, Pridgen.”
He walked to the bedside table and picked up the watch, noting its heft before passing it to me. “I’ll tell you what, Miss Eliot. If you had cracked the bum over the head with this, he’d have been a goner.”
“Wish I’d thought of it then,” she said. “It’s a man’s watch, Alex. It was given to my father after fifty years at his job. The big size-and the large numbers-suit me well. I’ve worn it ever since he’s been gone.”
“Fifty years,” Pridgen said to Mercer. “Today most guys would be lucky to get a bologna sandwich and a pat on the back after working someplace half a century.”
I examined the striking face of the old timepiece. The famous French maker’s name written on the dial added value to the watch, which appeared to be made of solid gold.
“He obviously missed the opportunity to take this-it’s such a beautiful keepsake. I’m sure that would have been a terrible loss to you. Were there any other things like this that you had hidden away? Any reason for him to ransack your rooms?”
“Not a blessed thing for him to find, I promise you.”
I turned the watch over in my hand and read the inscription on the back of it. To Joseph Peter Eliot with gratitude for fifty years of devoted service. September 1, 1958. Trustees of the New York Public Library.
I had begun to think the connection to Tina Barr was a coincidence. But now my adrenaline surged.
“Miss Eliot,” I said, “your father worked for the library?”
“Started there right out of high school, Alex, as assistant to the chief engineer.”
“And you, did you have any direct association with the place yourself?”
“My dear, I was born in the New York Public Library during a snowstorm in 1928.”
“Not literally?”
“Yes, quite literally, young lady. There was an entire apartment within the library where the chief engineer and his family lived, till they threw us out. Needed the room after the Second World War. Unt
il I went off to college, Alex, the public library was my home.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“Have I tired you, Miss Eliot?” I asked. “I think you’ve triggered some information that can help us figure out why you were attacked.”
“I’m just getting warmed up for you. Do go on. I’d like to be helpful.”
“A girl was murdered this week. A conservator who used to work at the library but was involved with private collectors most recently.”
“I heard something about it on the radio this morning. Terribly sad.”
“Mercer and I have been all through the library. No one said anything about an actual apartment within it. Is that what you mean?”
“In 1908, even before the library opened, a man named John Fedeler was named chief engineer. There was a seven-room apartment built for him to live in with his family, and when it came time for him to retire eighteen years later, that’s when my father got the job and we moved in.”
“What was it like then?” I asked.
“Quite a spectacular space, really, especially coming from a tenement in Hell’s Kitchen, where my parents had lived. It was an enormous duplex, with an entrance on the mezzanine floor, facing the central courtyard of the building. All paneled in the finest walnut. Big fireplaces and leather armchairs that my mother used to sit in at night, reading to us.”
Jane Eliot seemed to delight in her reminiscences. “It’s where I was raised, Alex. We were the envy of all the children at school.”
“What’s become of that apartment, do you know?” I asked, as Mercer drew his chair in as close to her as mine.
“I get invited back every few years, a bit like a dog and pony show, to some of those luncheons. The president occasionally puts me on display as the only baby ever born inside the place,” Eliot said. “But the whole apartment is broken up now.”
“What’s it used for?”
“The top floor, where we children lived, that’s all become administrative offices. There was a wonderful spiral staircase, so we could go up and down without entering the library hallway. I suppose that’s still in place. Our kitchen is the reproduction center-Xeroxing and that kind of thing. And the family living chambers are where some of the special collections are sorted out.”
“You’re saying the apartment was self-contained, is that right?” Mercer asked. “But were you allowed into the library itself?”
“That was the great fun of it, of course. I mean, we always had to wait until all the offices were closed for the evening, but gradually, as time went by, Father let us have the run of the place. After dark, mostly, when it was quite spooky, full of great shadows that came from the streetlights outside, and an eerie quiet that settled over the enormous hallways.”
“The books, Miss Eliot,” I asked. “Did you have access to the books?”
“Mercy, yes. We thought the whole place was just a playground for the three of us. Roller-skating down those hallways in the evening, playing hide-and-seek in that great reading room.
“Christmas Day, once, George and our cousins decided to play stickball in the corridor on the third floor,” she went on, rubbing her hands together as she pulled up images from her youth. “He just went into one of the collections-things weren’t all locked up back then-and grabbed the biggest books he could find to be the bases. Turned out they were all important double folios. Rare volumes of prints and such, worth a fortune. George got the whipping of a lifetime for that.”
“George?” Mercer said, trying to keep up with her.
“My older brother was George Eliot,” she said. “Mind you, my mother didn’t even have a high school education. When my father got the job there, she decided to name all her children after writers. She didn’t know George Eliot was a woman until she began to educate herself with all the wonderful treasures under our roof.”
“For whom were you named?” I asked.
“Jane Austen. I’m Jane Austen Eliot. I had a big sister, too. Edith Wharton Eliot. Both my siblings are gone now, but my niece and nephews are very good to me.”
“I can appreciate that-mine are, too,” I said. “Tell us more about the books, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ve always loved books, of course, and that may be because I grew up surrounded by them. They were the center of the universe in our family.”
“Did you have books of your own?”
“Our father made it very clear to us that everything in the library was very special, that none of it belonged to us. But for every holiday the trustees would present us with books. I remember our birthdays in particular. After we returned from school, if it was a birthday, we’d get called to the president’s office, all dressed up in our best, and one of the board members would give us a gift, explaining the importance of the particular book and its author.”
“Sounds like a fine little ceremony.”
“Oh, it really was. I got my first Pride and Prejudice that way. They were always heavy on Austen for me, of course. I’ve had a lifetime of pleasure because of those gifts, Alex. It made the loss of my vision even more painful.”
“The books that were presented to you, Miss Eliot, were they ordinary things you could buy in a store?”
“There’s no such thing as an ordinary book, is there? But these were always particularly unusual. Beautifully bound in Moroccan leather, or fixed up in those-what do you call them?-clamshell boxes, I think. I can still remember how it felt to hold and smell them for the first time.”
“Did you know the trustees?”
“Most of them knew my father well, of course. He was responsible for making sure that their treasures were safe and protected, at least according to the methods available back then. He made sure their great institution ran like a smoothly sailing ship. And my mother catered some of their smaller meetings-everything homemade, right in our kitchen. She was really a saint.”
“These gifts you received,” Mercer asked, “were they new books?”
“Some were, some weren’t, as I recall it.” Jane Eliot put her elbow on the arm of the chair and closed her eyes to think. “Later, as I learned more about these things, I’d have to assume that we got some of the castoffs, either second or third editions of books that were of no value to the great collectors, or copies that had been damaged by tears or discolorations. Still, Alex, they opened the world to me. All the classics, all the great literature you could imagine. The three of us were grateful to have them.”
I could hardly contain my excitement. The perp must have staged this burglary to get at something Jane Eliot owned, something she didn’t even realize was of value.
“The books that you were presented with, Miss Eliot, are they still in your apartment?”
She stretched her right leg and groaned, bending to tug at her hose. “I gave them away ten years ago, maybe more. What’s the use, I thought? I’d read and reread them, when I had my sight. Time to let the next generation enjoy.”
“But you know where they are?” Mercer asked.
“Gone to my great-nieces and-nephews.”
“How lucky they are to have them,” I said. “Is your family here, in the city?”
“Gosh, no. Some of them are upstate in Buffalo, and others are out in Santa Fe. Must be several hundred books, all split up between the relatives.”
I sat back in my chair, as deflated as the burglar must have been to come up empty after ransacking Eliot’s apartment.
“Not a single one that you kept for yourself?” Mercer asked.
“Help me up, Pridgen, will you?” Jane Eliot said. “My joints get all locked tight if I sit too long.”
The sergeant helped her get to her feet.
“Walk with me, please,” she said, linking arms with Mercer and with me as we stood up. She moved toward the door of the room. “There was only one that I kept. Had to keep, actually. Edith’s daughter would have nothing to do with it.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
She winced as she put her weight on her left leg. “M
y sister, Edith, had a very special book presented to her on her twelfth birthday. I remember so well because I was terribly envious when she brought it back to the apartment.”
“What was it?”
“You may be able to make more sense of what happened than I ever did,” Eliot said. “Because of your job, I mean. Nobody talked about things like that back then. It was a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Quite a dazzling one.”
Mercer and I exchanged glances over Jane Eliot’s head.
“Dazzling?” he asked. “How so? Was it old?”
“Indeed it was-old and wonderfully illustrated with those drawings by John Tenniel that became so famous. The date in it was 1866.”
I thought of the call slip that had been found in Tina Barr’s clothing.
“Did it ever belong to the library?” I asked.
“Not this one, I don’t believe. Most of our gifts were donations from one trustee or another. From time to time, books were quietly deaccessioned from the collections of course, especially if some more desirable copy came along. But we could tell if that were the case. There were markings inside the jackets with the name of the library branch, and those were crossed through to show that the book had been discarded, so we knew we wouldn’t get in any trouble.”
“Edith’s gift sounds very special.”
“Oh, yes. That was obvious. It was bound in the most glorious red leather, with gold lettering on the spine and gilt designs all over the cover. And then there was its size-we’d never had books of our own quite that big.”
Jane Eliot let go of my arm and drew an outline in the air. “You know, sort of double folio, if you’re familiar with that.”
“I’ve seen other copies of the early editions, though, and I never knew any to be oversize,” I said.
“Well, you’re right. The manuscript was of average size, for an illustrated work of that period, I’m sure. But this particular edition had been mounted on larger parchment pages and bound into this folio because it also included a rare set of prints of the photographs that Charles Dodgson-Lewis Carroll, you know-took of young Alice.”
Lethal Legacy Page 27