A covered porch stretched along the front of the rambling house, and wicker chairs, some of them rocking chairs, were tilted back against the house, waiting disconsolately for summer. Shapiro went up onto the porch, and his wet shoes left wet prints on the flooring. He looked for a doorbell and did not find one and knocked on the door. He had to knock several times before a sturdy middle-aged woman in a severe black dress opened it. She looked at him searchingly and with what appeared to be distrust.
“Police officer,” Shapiro said. “From the city. This is a—one of the retreats of the Mission of Redemption?”
“What it says on the sign,” the woman said. “I can’t imagine what a policeman wants here.”
“A couple of questions,” Shapiro said. “About one of the people who stayed here late last month.”
“The people who come here are God-fearing people,” the woman said. “Nobody the police would want to ask questions about. They come here for peace.” She paused for a moment. “And to pray,” she said. “And you’re letting cold air in. Hard enough to keep the place warm this time of year.”
“If I come in,” Shapiro said, “we can close the door.”
She said, “Well,” with doubt in her voice, but stepped aside, and Shapiro went into a large, bare hall. She closed the door after him. It was a little warmer inside, but not much. The retreat did not pamper its guests. He followed the sturdy woman into a room off the hall. It was a little warmer there. There were hard-looking chairs in the room and even a sofa. It looked as resolute as the chairs and as uninviting. The woman walked—marched—to the sofa and sat on it. Shapiro had seen police matrons who were more yielding. The woman said, “Well?”
“Mind telling me your name?” Shapiro said.
“Brown, Mrs. Brown. Well?”
“About Mrs. Jonathan Prentis,” Shapiro said. “You know her husband’s dead? Was killed?”
“We’ve been told,” she said and Shapiro waited for the inevitable. “He was a man of God,” Mrs. Brown said. “But the forces of evil will not triumph. What about Mrs. Prentis? She is a saintly woman.”
“We hear she was here for a time last month,” Shapiro said. “That right?”
Mrs. Brown failed to see how it could concern the police. “People come to us to withdraw from the world,” she said. “To contemplate and pray. It is a private matter. We do not discuss our guests.”
“Mrs. Brown,” Shapiro said, “Mrs. Prentis told me she came here. Late last month. She made no secret of it.”
“Then why are you asking me?” the sturdy woman said. “If you know already. What’s your name, by the way?”
Shapiro told her what his name was. She said, “Oh,” with a certain inflection. She said, “From the New York City police?”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “Mr. Prentis was killed in New York. I’m one of those trying to find out who killed him. We have to check out on a lot of things. Ask a lot of questions which probably aren’t important. Mrs. Prentis was here?”
“She came on the twenty-third,” Mrs. Brown said. “She had come before when the Voice came to redeem the city. To prepare herself to be by his side in his great work. His vital work.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “How long did she stay this time?”
“From Monday to Saturday. Then she left here, refreshed, to rejoin her husband.”
Shapiro briefly wondered whether it was here that Hope Prentis had caught her cold. He thought he probably would be catching one himself, with wet feet and everything.
“Left when?”
“The last of the month—the twenty-eighth.”
“And went where?”
“I did not ask her. I assume to the city.”
“Mrs. Brown, can you tell me how this place operates? How many come here? That sort of thing? I’m not familiar with—retreats of this kind.”
Mrs. Brown said she assumed as much. She said it tartly.
“It is supported by the Mission of Redemption,” Shapiro said, and made his sad voice patient. “That’s right, isn’t it? Are the, er, guests”—he realized he had almost said “Inmates”—“charged for their rooms? And, I assume, their food? And you are the—” he paused. “Wardress” seemed appropriate, but probably was not.
“Housekeeper,” Mrs. Brown said. “No, there is no charge. It is a refuge for those who have spent their lives in the service of our Lord. And for others, like Mrs. Prentis herself, who come briefly to strengthen themselves by communion with their Maker.”
Shapiro said he understood; that she had made it very clear. He said, “The guests here? Do they have visitors? Friends? Relatives?”
“Not often. They have withdrawn from worldly things. Are locked in contemplation and prayer.”
“But they can have visitors?”
“Of course. This is not a prison.”
“And can leave as they like? I mean for a few hours. A day or so, perhaps?”
“If they wish. Few of them do. They have come to—”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. He felt he was now clear enough on that. “Did Mrs. Prentis have visitors while she was here? Or did she leave—to go to the city, perhaps—and return?”
“The Reverend Mr. Higgs came to see her. Twice, I think. No, she did not leave during the time she stayed here. It would have been necessary for me to call a taxicab for her if she had wished to leave.”
“She couldn’t have called one for herself?”
“There is only one telephone. In my office.”
“And Mr. Higgs came twice to visit her?”
“The Reverend Mr. Higgs. Yes.”
“She seem nervous while she was here? Upset? Anything like that?”
“Not in the least. She found tranquillity here.”
“Not after Mr. Higgs visited her?”
“He is a man of God. Peace moves with him. Certainly not, Lieutenant Shapiro.”
Shapiro stood up and thanked her for her cooperation in the proper words and walked back down the hundred yards of mushy driveway. It hadn’t dried out any. And this time he was walking against the harsh wind. He shivered as he walked.
The taxi driver had kept his motor running and the cab was warm. He also had his radio on. It sounded to Shapiro like the kind of music they played at the Village Brawl. The next train to New York was in half an hour, but not from North White Plains. From White Plains itself. They could just about make it, but he’d have to charge extra.
They did make it. He did charge extra. Shapiro would get the money back after the expense accounts were audited. And, of course, if his was approved. He couldn’t see why it wouldn’t be. A lot of errands policemen have to go on prove fruitless in the end.
The train was warm. Actually, the car he was in was hot. The train left White Plains station on time. For twenty minutes it ran briskly. Then it stopped. It did not stop at a station: it did not seem to have stopped for any particular reason. After about twenty minutes, a trainman walked through the car toward the rear. He did not appear to be concerned. He was polite when the woman in the seat ahead of Shapiro’s asked what had happened.
“We’re all right,” the trainman said. “Nothing the matter with this train. One up ahead lost its shoes. Shouldn’t be long, only maybe we’ll have to push it in.”
It was long, and they did have to push ahead of them the train which had managed to lose its third-rail shoes. They got to Grand Central some two hours late and it was after lunch-time, and Shapiro’s stomach, which is usually cross, was furious. He got lunch in the Commodore Grill and had a drink before it. Not Sherry. Scotch on the rocks. He felt he had it coming, whatever his stomach might say about it.
He thought of Hope Prentis’s strange confession. Or was it a strange boast? A strange and righteous boast? He thought of the visits the Reverend Higgs had made to the bleak retreat outside North White Plains and wondered if Higgs had come to bring news to Mrs. Prentis of her husband and his “guide.” He thought that Mrs. Prentis had rather large hands, for a woman. Strong hands.
Attached, he thought, to a strong woman.
He went cross-town by shuttle and downtown on the Seventh Avenue to Twenty-third Street and walked the rest of the way. The wind hadn’t moderated or got warmer. In his office he took his shoes off and propped them against the radiator, which might dry them and would certainly stiffen them. He spread the papers from his In basket on the desk.
A carbon of Tony Cook’s report was one of the papers. Eight members of the mission’s choir had “tithed.” Which seemed to Shapiro an odd way of putting it. Farmington had picked up the envelopes with the money in them. To add them to the general collections? He would say that, of course. It would, obviously, be difficult to prove he hadn’t—to prove that “tithes” could be read as “kickbacks.”
Tony had gone to call on more choir singers.
A hundred and eighty or so at five dollars a performance. No—a “gospel meeting.” Came to nine hundred dollars a meeting, if there were a hundred and eighty each time and nobody said go take a flying. Three meetings a week. Twenty-seven hundred dollars a week. A reasonably substantial contribution to the conversion of the ungodly. Or, of course, to somebody. Back to the Hotel Wexley, of which Shapiro was thoroughly tired, for a talk with Ralph Farmington.
If a profitable kickback, had Prentis somehow got word of it? Had he threatened to fire Farmington? Or, conceivably, to turn him over to the police? Twenty-seven hundred a week. The engagement at the Garden had run three weeks. Shapiro needed pencil and paper. Eighty-one hundred. Make it eight thousand or thereabouts. Some of the singers might have been off sick from time to time. Or told Farmington to go roll his hoop.
He went on with the papers from the In basket. A good many of them had to do with other matters. There is never one case at a time at Homicide South. Some of the papers merely required initials, and got them. Some would need more, and those Shapiro laid aside. He made neat piles of papers. He came to a photograph.
It was of Janet Rushton, lying dead on her bed in her apartment. Except for the face, which did not look as it had looked, gay and smiling, on the glossies provided by her agent, the dead girl looked like a quietly sleeping girl. She lay on her back.
She wore a dress; what seemed to Nathan Shapiro a pretty dress. Not one of those with miniskirts. This dress came well below her knees, as she lay dead. It lay smooth over her knees, and her knees were close together, touching each other. It was almost, he thought, as if her clothes had been arranged to make a pretty picture.
But that was ridiculous. Police photographers do not seek pretty pictures. She had been lying so, so neatly, when she had been found. Or had the men who found her straightened her clothes? He thought back to Tony Cook’s report on that. No, according to Arthur Minor, who had come to take a girl to dinner and found her dead, she had been lying so—lying so peacefully, so neatly clothed—when he had first seen her dead.
But people do not die peacefully. With a pillow over a face, air gulped for, darkness fought against, people struggle. They writhe and fight to live, as all animals fight to live. They throw themselves around in attempt to escape the blackness. They tear at the hands which press the pillow down; tear at whatever hands can reach. They fight for life with hands and arms and legs. Clothing is, of course, deranged.
And this girl lay dead so neatly. So—the word came to Shapiro—so “properly.” So—modestly.
The telephone rang on Shapiro’s desk and he said, “Lieutenant Shapiro,” into it. It still was rather an effort to say “Lieutenant.”
“Cook; Nate. I’ve got seven more who chipped in. One who said he told Farmington to go to hell. But I doubt whether he really did. Shacking up with one of the girl singers, way it looks, and being big strong man. Want me to go on checking them out, or have we got enough?”
“Enough for now,” Shapiro said. “We’ll get Farmington to tell us about it tomorrow.”
“He’ll say they were voluntary contributions to carry on God’s work,” Tony Cook said. “Something like that.”
“Yes,” Shapiro said. “That’s what he’ll say. We’ll listen. Meanwhile, a couple of men I’d like you to see. The men who found Janet Rushton’s body. Minor, one of them was. And a man named—gone out of my mind. Owns the building she lived in.”
“Brady,” Cook told him. “Clifford Brady. Arthur Minor. Why?”
“I’ve been looking at a shot of her,” Shapiro said. “All very neat. Dress smoothed down. Want to be sure Minor and Brady didn’t smooth it down. Make her all decent. Because she wouldn’t have been, I’d think. Because she would have struggled.”
“She was slugged,” Tony said. “Probably unconscious.”
“I know. Knocked out, or pretty much out. And picked up and carried to her bed. And laid out neat and proper? And then smothered? I don’t buy it, Tony. She died of asphyxiation, not of the blow on her jaw. There’d have been a reaction when the pillow went over her face.”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “You’d think she’d have fought back. Flounced around anyway. I’ll check them out about it.”
“Do that,” Shapiro said. “And give me a ring at home. I went up to the country and got my feet wet. I’m probably coming down with a cold.”
“Take something for it,” Tony Cook said and hung up.
Shapiro sat for several moments waiting to sneeze. He didn’t sneeze. He would, he thought morosely. Any time now he’d begin to sneeze.
He looked up a number in the Manhattan directory and dialed it and got, “Talent, Incorporated, good afternoon. Can I help you?”
“Mr. Westclock, please,” Shapiro said, and got, “One moment, please,” and then a male voice and “Westclock here,” with an intonation which sounded English.
“Lieutenant Shapiro. Police Department. Mr. Ralph Farmington a client of yours, Mr. Westclock?”
“Well,” Westclock said, and for seconds nothing further. Then he said, “Well,” again. Then he said, “Ralph been up to something?”
“Routine,” Shapiro told him. “In connection with the Prentis case.”
“Don’t figure Ralph’s the type to stick ice picks in people,” Westclock said. The British intonation had gone away. “However. Must cooperate with the police, what?” The intonation had returned. “Yes. Few weeks ago, he was collecting talent. For this choir he ran. But now he’s back in my stable.”
“Looking for an engagement?”
“Yes. But I don’t know. Didn’t tell him, of course, but he’s a little past it, I’m afraid. Still got an all-right voice. But I don’t know. No great demand for middle-aged baritones at the moment. I didn’t tell him that, and it could be I’m wrong. Hope I am.”
“But he is on your list. In your stable, as you put it. Looking for work?”
“As of yesterday. Because the revival racket’s folded up on him, or he figures it has.”
“Did you get him his job with the Mission of Redemption, Incorporated?”
“With the what?”
“What they call it,” Shapiro said. “The people he was running the choir for.”
“Oh,” Westclock said. “The revival racket. No. And my percentage of quite a wad down the drain. I don’t know how he latched onto that. Word around he went to one of these prayer meetings years back and got converted and talked them into letting him organize a choir. I wouldn’t know.”
“Got converted so he could get the job?”
“Now,” Westclock said, “I didn’t say that, Lieutenant. Be slander or something, wouldn’t it? Far’s I know Ralph’s an all-right guy and a pretty good singer and, as of now, he’s in my stable. See what I mean?”
Shapiro said yes, he saw what Mr. Westclock meant, and thanked Mr. Westclock for his help and put the receiver in its cradle. He looked at his watch. It was a little after four. In theory he was on the eight-to-four shift. He decided that, for once, fact and theory might conform and put his shoes on. They were still wet, but they had begun to stiffen up a little.
Nathan Shapiro got a subway train to Brooklyn, missing the
worst of the rush hour. As he walked the Brooklyn streets it was still cold and blustery. But he still hadn’t sneezed. Of course, colds take a while to incubate. Twenty-four hours or thereabouts, he thought it was.
He could have picked up Mrs. Jonathan Prentis’s cold, the more quickly because he had got his feet wet. On the other hand, Mrs. Prentis’s cold hadn’t seemed at all bad—not any longer in the infectious stage. And she had big hands for a woman. Probably strong hands. He wondered whether, when she was younger, she had played games. Tennis, perhaps. It didn’t seem likely. Probably religious people—very religious people; religious fanatics was what it came to—didn’t play games. Probably it was sinful to play games. The use of God-given bodies for bodily enjoyment.
He stopped at a newsstand, and the blind news dealer said, “Afternoon, Lieutenant. It’s sure getting colder,” and Shapiro picked up a copy of the Post. He didn’t have the exact change and handed a quarter to the news dealer. It didn’t matter; change was almost instant in his hand. Fingers learn what eyes can no longer see.
“Police Link Slayings.” As was to be expected. The police also anticipated an arrest. Which was only to be hoped for.
Shapiro climbed the one flight to his apartment and let himself in, and Rose was home already and all the lights were on, and the coils glowed in the fireplace. She wore a deep red housecoat, so she had been home for some time. She came to him and looked up at him and said, “Nathan,” in a certain way.
“All right,” he told her. “Perfectly all right. I had to go up to the country and I got my feet wet.”
“You’re going to take a long hot bath,” she told him. “Not just a shower. A long soak.”
“All right,” Nathan told his wife.
“And two Bufferin.”
“Yes, dear.”
“And really hot. And just lie in it.”
“Yes, darling.”
“Because it’s bad to get your feet wet when you’re tired.”
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