No. 278 would be on the south side of the street. It was, in mid-block. It was made the easier to find because there was a police cruise car parked in front of it. It was a wide brick house, expansive by comparison with the houses which abutted it on either side. It had a wide double door under a pointed arch. Both doors had leaded panes. Three white steps led up to the doors. When Shapiro went up them, one of the doors opened and a thin man in a dark suit, and with a hat on, said, “Looking for somebody, mister?”
“Homicide,” Shapiro said and gave his name. He didn’t hesitate over the “Lieutenant” part of it. He merely lowered his voice a little.
“Don’t know what you’ll find, sir,” the precinct detective said. “We’re looking for the knife this kid used.”
“Find it?”
They hadn’t found it yet. They’d only been at it half an hour or so. Had to be around somewhere, because the kid hadn’t had it on him when he was picked up and hadn’t had much chance to throw it away outside. Been in sight from the time he ran out of the house, and the cop who picked him up was pretty sure he hadn’t thrown anything away.
Shapiro went into a narrow room with a polished floor and a wide staircase mounting from the end of it. The staircase had rails as polished as the shining floor. At either side of the narrow room there were archways, giving access to high-ceilinged rooms. In one of the rooms, that on the right as Shapiro stood facing the staircase, two men were turning over cushions of chairs, removing books from low shelves and putting them back again.
The second floor, the reports had said. Shapiro went up the stairs, which had been built for the comfort of those who used them—built with wide treads, short risers. There was room in this old house for an easy, elegant staircase. When the house was built—Shapiro could not guess how long ago—there had been no need to pinch space in.
At the top of the stairs there was a wide hallway. On either side of the main staircase, lesser staircases led to higher floors. Across the corridor, opposite the head of the main staircase, there were two closed oak doors.
“One on the left isn’t locked,” the precinct man said up the stairs. “Happened in the bedroom.”
Shapiro went in—went into a carpeted room with windows which reached from ceiling to floor and opened, although now they were not open, onto a narrow balcony with a wrought-iron railing.
There was a fireplace of marble in the room, and a sofa faced it—a low sofa, upholstered in yellow brocade. There were two other, smaller, sofas in the big room and one was white and the other yellow, but a deeper yellow than the big sofa in front of the fireplace. A white silk fan, flecked with gold, spread in the fireplace opening.
There was a small white desk, delicately designed, in a corner of the room. There was serenity in the room which had, evidently, been Jennifer Singleton’s upstairs sitting room, although probably she had called it something else. Drawing room? Shapiro didn’t know. He walked across the room to one of the windows, through which morning sun slanted.
He looked down into a garden, and the garden was bright with flowers. Shapiro did not know what flowers they were. (When there were flowers blooming in Prospect Park they had names assigned to them; names on cards atop metal spikes stuck into the ground.)
The garden he looked down into, on the south side of this expanded house, had flagstone paths running through it, and at the far end—where the garden ended in a board fence with flowers (bright, sprawling flowers) painted on it—there was a fountain with a white statue of a naked boy shining in it.
The garden, to Shapiro’s entirely inexperienced eyes, looked immaculate. The soil between the plants looked—he searched his mind for a word. Looked granulated … “cultivated.” That was the word for gardens. The flags which formed paths had obviously been swept. Moss was green between the stones.
The garden stretched the width of the house, which was, he guessed, sixty feet or more. The kid had kept the garden neat.
Shapiro left the window and found the hallway which led from this room to the next. Off the hallway was a bathroom, and it was a great deal of bathroom. It had a sunken tub big enough to swim in. There was a dressing table built into one wall; there were enough fresh yellow towels on racks to dry a multitude. Shapiro went on into Jennifer Singleton’s bedroom, which was the room she had died in.
It was not as large as the first room he had gone into, and this, he realized, was because one end of it was a wall of sliding doors. He slid one of them open and looked in at clothes—gay clothes impertinent on hangers. He had never seen so many clothes. He had, as he looked around the room, seldom seen so wide and low a bed. It jutted from the inner wall, toward the windows—windows not as deep as in the other room. At the foot of the bed was a radio-television combination. Under the windows was a dressing table with a long mirror over it. There were light tubes along both sides, and along the top of the mirror.
Between radio-television combination and dressing-table bench there was an oval, fluffy rug. It had been pale yellow. It was not any longer. Blood had soaked into it.
Shapiro opened the door beside the head of the bed and went into the outside hallway. He stood in the doorway and looked into the bedroom.
He could see the stained yellow rug. If there had been the body of a woman lying on it he could have seen the body. As Roy Baker said he had seen it. Which wasn’t, of course, much of anything to go on. The kid had worked in the house. He knew the lay of it.
He hadn’t, Shapiro thought, going down the shallow staircase, learned very much. Jennifer Singleton had lived graciously, in the elegance of this landmark mansion—this big house which, since it had been so designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, could not be externally altered. (There had been plenty of alterations inside, obviously; whoever had built it, whenever that had been, had certainly not built so much closet space into it or installed a small swimming pool for a bathtub. And probably, then, houses had not abutted the big house. Probably there had been open lawns around it.)
Jennifer Singleton had lived gracefully. A boy named Roy Baker had kept her garden immaculate. There had been nothing either graceful or immaculate about the manner of her death. Her body could have been seen from a doorway if a door, not latched shut, opened when a boy knocked on it.
But precinct knew all that. The room had been photographed; the room had been measured and a plan of it had been sketched. Nathan Shapiro had learned nothing new, which was as he had expected. He went down the wide, shallow stairway, which, he supposed, very elegant ladies had descended a hundred years ago.
“Find anything we didn’t find, Lieutenant?” the man from the precinct squad asked him, a little too politely. Shapiro said he hadn’t. He said, “Find the knife yet?”
They had not found a switchblade knife. The kitchen knives looked clean, but there were three or four of a size to match the wound. Those would go to the lab. A murderer in a hurry cannot be sure he has washed a knife clean of blood. The lab could make sure.
Shapiro went out of the big house and down the three immaculately white steps. He went, he hoped, toward Greenwich Avenue and the Clayton High School. He only got lost twice, neither time hopelessly.
The high school was new and very modern. There was a great deal of glass in windows which could not be opened. There was a playground adjacent to the school and lines were painted on the cement surface, marking off courts for various games. The lines crossed one another, to Shapiro bewilderingly. But probably the kids weren’t bewildered. There were no kids in sight. Shapiro went into the school, which was pleasantly air-conditioned but still smelled a little like a school. There was a counter with a young woman behind it.
“Mrs. Shapiro, if she’s free,” Mrs. Shapiro’s husband said.
The young woman didn’t know. Who wished to see Mrs. Shapiro?
“Tell her the police,” Shapiro said and was looked at with astonishment. “Represented,” Shapiro said, “by a lieutenant from Homicide South.”
The young wom
an used a telephone. She said, “Your wife’s free, Lieutenant Shapiro. Down that way.”
He went that way. He went past a door marked: “Principal.” He came to a door marked: “Assistant Principal” and knocked on it, and Rose said, “Come in, Nathan.”
The office was small, but the desk Rose sat behind was not. She was trim in a dark blue dress with white collar and cuffs. She looked as if she belonged behind the big desk. It is odd, Shapiro thought, how many aspects there can be to one small woman with large dark eyes. She never used much lipstick but now he was not sure she was wearing any. Not that it mattered with her mouth.
“Nathan,” Rose Shapiro said. “You did talk to Bill Weigand, then?”
“As instructed,” Nathan said, gravely. “And, yes, my dear, he told me to poke around. Because you have a hunch.”
He felt slightly that the “my dear” had been a mistake. Perhaps “Madam Principal”?
“You told him that?”
“I had to tell him something. Everybody is satisfied with what they’ve got. What do you know about Jennifer Singleton, Rose?”
“What everybody knows. A—oh, a great lady of the American stage, to use a bromide. With a theater named after her. And that as soon as she agrees to star—agreed to star—in a play it became a vehicle. You didn’t come here to ask me that, Nathan.”
“To find out what I can about this kid,” Shapiro said. “Find out what makes him tick, if anybody knows what makes him tick. His teachers might, I thought.”
Momentarily, a vertical thought line appeared between Rose Shapiro’s dark eyebrows. She said, “Umm.” She said, “Most of our classes are very large, Nathan. Much too large. It’s hard for even a good teacher—and most of ours are pretty dedicated people or they wouldn’t work for the salaries they get—hard for even a good teacher to get to know the pupils as individuals. Really to know them.”
“Last night,” Shapiro said, “you mentioned one teacher who thinks young Baker is a brilliant boy. That was the word you used, I think. A man named—what was it? Perkins?”
“Pierson,” Rose said. “Has Roy in an English class. ‘Creative writing,’ it’s called. And, yes, Nathan, it’s a small class, as our classes go. A lot of our kids don’t get, or want to get, much above creative spelling. You want to talk to Mr. Pierson?”
“A place to start,” Shapiro said. “Yes, I’d like to.”
She used the telephone on her desk. She said, “Oh, Molly. Send a monitor to Mr. Pierson’s classroom, please. Have the monitor say I’d like to see him in my office.” She listened for a moment. “I know,” she said. “Tell him it probably won’t be for long. His pupils can write creatively in his absence.” She put the receiver back in its cradle. “If ever,” she added.
The telephone rang. She said “Mrs. Shapiro” into it and then, “Of course, Mr. Cunningham. In—will five minutes be all right?” A man’s voice shuffled out of the receiver, as voices shuffle out of telephones. “In five minutes, then,” Rose said.
Almost at once somebody knocked on the office door. Rose said, “Come in,” and a thin small man came in. He was a little stooped and his fair hair was more than a little thin. He said, “You wanted to see me, Mrs. Shapiro? I hope there’s nothing—”
“It’s about Roy Baker, Mr. Pierson,” Rose said. “This is Lieutenant Shapiro of the police.”
Pierson looked at her and then looked at Nathan Shapiro. He looked away from each of them quickly. A tentative little man, Shapiro thought, with sympathy.
“Yes,” Rose said, “we’re related, Mr. Pierson. By marriage.”
She got up from behind her desk. She said, “Mr. Cunningham wants to see me. If that doesn’t take too long, I’ll go along to your class, Mr. Pierson, and keep them out of mischief.”
When she had gone, Shapiro went to sit behind her desk. He felt slightly like a usurper. He said, “Sit down, Professor Pierson.”
“Mister,” Pierson said, and sat down.
“You’ve heard about young Baker?” Shapiro asked.
“I find it hard to believe,” Pierson said. He had a light voice. “He has always seemed a fine young man. A most promising boy.”
“Brilliant, my wife says you think him, Mr. Pierson.”
“Potentially,” Pierson said. “Potentially, Lieutenant.”
“My wife,” Shapiro said, “probably doesn’t know him as well as you do. But she is quite sure that he isn’t the kind of boy who would do what he appears to have done. What the evidence indicates he has done. You agree?”
“Entirely,” Pierson said. “He’s always seemed a fine young man. Outstanding. That he would harm anyone—let alone Jennifer—well, I find it almost impossible to believe. Of course—”
His light voice trailed off. Shapiro waited. Then he said, “Of course what, Mr. Pierson?”
“One doesn’t know, does one?” Pierson said. “I mean, what others are capable of? It is easy to be wrong about people, I’m afraid.”
“It often is,” Shapiro said. “You feel now you may have been wrong about Roy Baker? That he isn’t a fine young man who wouldn’t harm anyone?”
“No,” Pierson said. “Oh, no. Only that one can never be entirely certain. You do say the evidence points to him?”
“At the moment,” Shapiro said. “He’s being questioned. He denies killing Mrs. Singleton, of course. Says she was dead, or dying, when he found her. Is he a truthful boy, Mr. Pierson? Not that we’d expect him to admit he killed the woman. But, in general, truthful?”
Pierson had “always found him so.”
“Not unruly in any way? Tough? Some of the kids are nowadays. Not that some of them weren’t always.”
Not that Pierson knew of. Certainly never in class. But he added to that. “Of course,” he said, “I’ve known him only during the past two semesters, Lieutenant. The creative writing class is for seniors. So are the other advanced English classes I teach. What he was like his first three years here I don’t really know.”
“Since you have had him in your classes, a good student? And, I take it, a well-behaved one?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And a boy with talent. Happen to know anything about his background, Mr. Pierson?”
Pierson didn’t really. He understood the boy’s mother was dead and that his father was a clerk somewhere—at, he thought, some store in the Village.
He wasn’t getting much of anywhere, Shapiro thought. Except that Pierson was hedging a bit; wasn’t going out on a limb for the boy. Which was probably Pierson’s tentative way in many things.
“By the way,” Shapiro said. “When you spoke of the late Mrs. Singleton you called her Jennifer. As if you knew her.”
“People do that,” Pierson said. “About theater people. Tallulah. Ethel. Not to their faces, of course.” He paused for a moment. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I did know Mrs. Singleton slightly. That is, I’d met her.”
Shapiro did not show the slight surprise he felt. He would have expected the gap between Jennifer Singleton and this small, tentative schoolteacher to be wide indeed.
“We’re trying, of course,” Shapiro said, “to find out everything we can about Mrs. Singleton. Talk to as many people as we can who knew her at all.”
“I can’t,” Pierson said, “really say I knew her. I met her—oh, a couple of times. At parties. Was introduced to her, anyway. Probably if she were alive and you asked her if she’d ever met a man named Clarke Pierson she’d just look blank. People like me remember meeting people like her. Not the other way around.”
Which seemed likely to Nathan Shapiro. But if you see the most insignificant of loose threads you pull at it. He pulled at this one. He said, “These parties. Theatrical parties? I mean parties at which there were people from the theater.”
“You wonder how I’d go to a party like that, don’t you, Lieutenant? Doesn’t seem probable to you, does it?”
“Doesn’t seem any special way,” Shapiro said.
“There’s no secret a
bout it,” Clarke Pierson said. “And nothing that would be useful in your investigation. Four years ago I wrote a play. An unwary producer put it on. On Broadway. It opened on a Tuesday evening and closed the next Saturday. I ran into theater people while we were getting it ready to flop. All pleasant and hopeful until it did.”
“And went to parties with them.”
“As I said, once or twice. All right—one of the guys I ran into was a playwright named Agee. Lester Agee. A very nice sort of person. Even dropped in at one of our previews. Made pleasant noises, although I suppose he knew better. His plays don’t flop.”
“Agee,” Shapiro said. “Didn’t he write the play Mrs. Singleton has been appearing in?”
“Yes,” Pierson said. “Big hit. Chiefly because she was starred in it. It’s—oh, it’s a rather obvious play. Good enough theater with Jennifer in it. Nothing without her—nothing much, anyway. Written for her, at a guess. Close without her, pretty certainly.”
“Written for her?”
“With her in mind. He’d written others for her, you know. At least one before they were married. Vehicle sort of thing, but she was good in it. Ran a couple of years, actually. And another while they were still married. Comedy, although Jennifer wasn’t really very good at comedy. Ran a season, all the same.”
Get him on the theater and he talks, Shapiro thought. Not, probably, to my purpose.
“You still writing plays, Mr. Pierson?”
“No. A lesson learned, Lieutenant. Now I teach the young how to be creative. Another way of wasting time, I sometimes think, but there’s a salary goes with it. Speaking of the not-so-creative young—”
He looked across the desk at Shapiro and raised pale eyebrows. He put his hands on the arms of the chair.
“Realize I’m taking up your time,” Shapiro said. “We have to bother a lot of people in a thing like this. Appreciate what you’ve told me about young Baker.”
Pierson stood up.
“Getting back to him,” Shapiro said. “Any idea how he got this job with Mrs. Singleton?”
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