The Good Friday Murder

by Lee Harris

  “Mrs. Zygowsky?”

  “Yes?”

  “Magda Zygowsky?”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name is Christine Bennett, Mrs. Zygowsky. A few days ago I met James Talley.”

  “Omigod,” the voice said faintly. Then, “You saw James? How is he? How is Robert? Oh, my poor boys.”

  “James is fine, Mrs. Zygowsky. I haven’t seen Robert. I’d like to speak to you if I could. I’m looking into the murder of Mrs. Talley. I’m hoping to prove the twins didn’t do it.”

  “Oh, God bless you. This afternoon? Can you come today?”

  “How’s two o’clock?”

  “Yes, two. Let me see, the bakery is open.”

  More tea and cookies, I thought, wondering how many pounds the Talley murder would put on me. “You don’t have to feed me, Mrs. Zygowsky,” I said. “I just want to—”

  “Yes, yes, just come. Take the Long Island Expressway.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  —

  If you’ve never tried to find your way around Queens, you still have a challenging experience ahead of you. Roads, drives, avenues, and courts all have the same name, and to make matters worse, the names are numbers. Just because you’ve come to Sixty-ninth Drive, don’t be deluded into thinking that Seventieth Drive is at the next intersection. You may not reach it for hours, or so it seemed to me. But I found the Zygowskys’ two-family house with time to spare.

  I managed to cross from Brooklyn into Queens without requiring a bridge or a tunnel or even the Long Island Expressway, and then I worked my way toward the area on the map that was labeled Maspeth. I had never heard of it, but it was near Forest Hills, which I had heard of. Then I drove through streets and roads and avenues until I reached the Zygowskys’ address. Parking, as usual, was a near impossible feat, but I just kept circling the area till someone piled his family into a car and pulled out for a Saturday afternoon excursion.

  Magda Zygowsky came down from the second-floor apartment calling, “Hello,” as she descended.

  “Mrs. Zygowsky?” I said as the door opened.

  She smiled, her face bright and open. “Please come in.”

  “Hi. Glad to meet you. I’m Christine Bennett.”

  We went up the stairs into a comfortable living room where the wood gleamed and I was sure I smelled furniture polish.

  “Make yourself comfortable. The tea is almost ready. You drink tea?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  She still spoke with that slight Slavic flavor that indicated her origin. “Tell me,” she said, leaning forward eagerly. “Tell me about the boys.”

  She had fair skin and light hair and eyes. The hair was graying the way it does sometimes with blondes; it just seems to creep over from gold to gray by degrees so that you’re never sure when it has crossed the line. She had it cut short, and of course, she was a woman in her late fifties, but she was clearly Magda.

  “James is in a group home now,” I began. I went on to tell her what little I knew of his past. “He’s very quiet now,” I said at the end. “He asks for his brother.”

  “And the brother? Where is Robert?”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “They kept them apart.” I felt sure she wanted to add, “the bastards,” but she couldn’t. “They only had each other, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “And you think they didn’t do it?”

  “I don’t know, but I hope so. I’m trying to find as many people as I can to question. Infant of Prague in Brooklyn found you for me. On Monday I’m going to talk to a psychiatrist at the institution where they kept James until recently.”

  “Wait. I bring you the tea.”

  The tea was accompanied by a tray of rich pastries. I waited till the tea had been poured and Magda had encouraged me to select and dig into something from the tray. Then I went on.

  “Mrs. Zygowsky, you were the one who found Mrs. Talley. Can you go over it with me, tell me exactly what happened? You still remember it, don’t you?”

  “Like it happened this morning, I remember it.” Her face clouded. Then she leaned forward again and put her hand over mine. “You call me Magda, okay? I am Magda, you are Christine.”

  “Thank you, Magda.” I was glad she had suggested it since it was the way I thought of her.

  She sat back in her chair and went through it all again, starting with the morning of Good Friday, skipping Saturday, and then, after a deep breath, how she pushed the doorbell and let herself in. She remembered everything in wonderful detail, the color of the living room rug, where the furniture was placed—she got up and showed me in her own living room: “The sofa was just so against the wall, and here, by the window, she had one of those big plants you find in the desert.” I felt myself walking through the apartment with her in her fear of finding Mrs. Talley fallen in the bathroom or sick in her bedroom. My stomach did funny things as we came, finally, to the kitchen.

  She stopped, pulled a tissue from her dress pocket, and held it in her hand, as though afraid she would cry. “It was terrible. It was the most terrible thing you ever see.”

  “I can imagine. I read the accounts in the paper, and it sounded to me that you were really very brave, considering how young you were.”

  “I had no choice, Christine,” she said. “Somebody had to take care of those boys, you know?”

  “Weren’t you afraid, even a little, that they had done it?”

  “Later maybe, later when the police said it couldn’t have been anyone else, I thought maybe. But at that moment I thought, someone has come in and murdered this wonderful woman.”

  “Why did you think she was wonderful?”

  “She was good to me. She was a good person. She lived without a husband and she took care of the boys. She was always patient with them. I don’t think it was so easy.”

  I agreed with her on that. “Did anyone ever come to the apartment while you were there?” I asked.

  She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think nobody. Maybe the super. Maybe something from the drugstore. No, I am wrong. Once the doctor came, just as I was leaving.”

  “The doctor? Was someone sick?”

  “For the boys. You know, the psychiatrist.” She stumbled a bit over the word. The Zygowskys had lived without benefit of shrinks. “He studied them, you know? He asked them questions. They could remember anything, those boys.”

  “I heard about it. You wouldn’t remember his name, would you?”

  Magda smiled and shook her head. “It’s so long, so long. He was an older man, a little gray. He carried a leather briefcase and he wore those leather patches here.” She placed a hand on her opposite elbow.

  “He only came once?” I asked.

  “Only once when I was there. But I know he came other times. The boys told me. He would ask them, what happened this time, what happened that time? He played the radio for them sometimes, and the boys could tell him back every word.” She laughed. “Like a record. They were so clever.”

  “Magda, the police said nothing was stolen from the apartment. What do you think?”

  “How could I know? I cleaned Mrs. Talley’s bedroom, but I never opened her drawer. If something was gone, how would I know? The apartment looked the same to me. There was blood, but that was because the boys touched their mama and got blood on their hands. But I think everything was there. Did they find her pocketbook?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s in the police file. If it had been missing, they would certainly have looked for a thief.”

  “Sure. You’re right. Sure it was there.” She sipped her tea. “You know, I trusted her so much, I came from my home with only one subway fare. I knew she would give me for coming on Easter. I had to ask the policeman for my fare. They drove me home.”

  “They were kind to you, weren’t they?”

  “Very kind. Very good people.”

  “It said in the papers that you took one of the twins and put him in Mrs. Ta
lley’s bedroom. Why did you do that?”

  “Just to keep them quiet so I could think. Sometimes they would talk, talk, talk when they were together, like the radio. And that day they were crying, ‘Mama, Mama.’ Such a terrible thing. You should never live through anything like it.”

  “Magda, who do you think killed Mrs. Talley?”

  “Somebody. A stranger.”

  “A neighbor who didn’t like her?”

  “I don’t think so. Today maybe, not then. Then we were more friends. Today we are more enemies.”

  “Did she have any problems with the neighbors?” I asked, not very hopeful of receiving a useful reply.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Magda said quickly. “Well, maybe just the one downstairs.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Some lady who banged on the ceiling when anybody walked on the floor. Mrs. Talley would laugh at it, but sometimes it gave her a headache. We didn’t make noise, Christine. But some people have those carpets that go everywhere, and they think the rest of us should do that, too.”

  I decided to check, wondering how angry a woman might become from hearing footsteps overhead. Angry enough to kill? But then, that was New York, and New Yorkers were known to be strange people.

  I glanced at my notes. There was probably nothing new here, except for the description of the Talley apartment, but I was still hopeful. “Did you ever see the twins again?” I asked.

  She shook her head and looked sorrowful. Finally she said, “I asked the police where they were and I sent them Christmas cards. Once or twice I called the hospital and asked about them. I always said, ‘Tell him Magda called,’ but you never know, do you? Not like today, everybody calls all over the country and it costs nothing. But I never saw them.”

  “James is very gray,” I said. “He sits by himself most of the time. But he’s in a good place now, a real home. It’s not a criminal institution.”

  “That’s good. And where is Robert?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to find out.”

  “Maybe I go and say hello one day.”

  “That would be very nice of you, Magda.”

  “You think they did it, Christine?”

  “I still don’t know.”

  “Listen to me, they didn’t. They were good boys, you know? They loved their Mama. They were crying when I came in. But who did it?” she asked rhetorically, and shook her head. “I donno, I donno.”

  I got up to leave and remembered something else. “Did anyone ever telephone while you were there?” I asked, feeling rather foolish, asking someone to remember if a phone had rung forty years ago.

  But Magda took it seriously, as she had all my questions. “There was a phone, yes. I called her, she called me. Sometimes she talked to a friend. Maybe it rang when I was there.”

  I thanked her for her time, her information, her hospitality. Then I wrote my name and phone number on one of my sheets and tore it out. “If you think of anything, please call. Call collect,” I said, to encourage her.

  She said she would and she smiled, almost for the first time. I had brought back a lot of unhappy memories.

  As I drove home, sorting my way through the streets of Queens, I felt sorry that I had ever thought that she was a suspect.

  11

  The Monday appointment with Dr. Sanderson was for eleven in the morning. I left home at nine to give myself plenty of time, and let the car drive itself toward St. Stephen’s. As Virginia McAlpin had suggested, I crossed Westchester County on Route 287 and then turned north on Route 9, which stayed on the east side of the Hudson River up to Albany. Across the Hudson the Thruway zipped along, but I always preferred the older, somewhat slower, more picturesque road I had chosen. After Poughkeepsie, I felt familiar stirrings. St. Stephen’s was not far. In the past, I had gotten off Route 9 south of the convent and worked my way up and over on local roads. This was my first time driving north of it, and I wondered if I would see a spire as I passed. Maybe, I thought, smiling at the possibility, that was the vantage point that gave you the legendary view of the Hudson.

  But I could see nothing identifiable, and finally I knew I had passed the last point at which I might have been able to see it.

  —

  I arrived at New Hope long before my appointment, and I spent some time walking through the nearby town. When I turned in to the parking lot and saw the dismal prisonlike building with its barred windows, I felt a surge of pity for the quiet, sad man who had spent forty years of what passed for life here.

  Dr. Sanderson took me on time, shook my hand, and sat, not behind his desk, but in a chair matching the one he had offered me. He was probably in his early forties, again far too young to have known James very long.

  “Virginia McAlpin has explained your interest in James Talley. I’ve reviewed his records this morning, and I can tell you that I knew him personally in the years I’ve been here. What would you like to ask me?”

  “The big question is whether you think he may have been innocent of the murder of his mother.”

  Dr. Sanderson smiled in a way that made me feel I had asked a naive question. I don’t relate well to psychiatrists. They make me uncomfortable. “It’s very possible that James is innocent,” he said. “It’s also possible that he’s guilty. I would like to be able to tell you that I succeeded where all my predecessors failed, that is, in getting inside him. No one seems to have done that in all the years that he was here, and an amazing number of professionals seem to have tried. There’s a great fascination with savants.”

  “I’m sure there is.”

  “But the record shows a slow but constant deterioration in his abilities. When he entered New Hope he was able to dress himself, tie his shoelaces, hang up his clothes, select his food, participate in certain activities. None of that is true anymore. He needs a great deal of attention.”

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “that’s due to a kind of lethargy.”

  “I couldn’t discount that.”

  “And depression,” I added. “He still asks for his brother.”

  “That is also possible. It wouldn’t be the first time that has occurred.”

  “Can you tell me why he was separated from his brother when they were all the family each one had?”

  “A recommendation was made to the court in 1950,” Dr. Sanderson said. “By a psychiatrist, most likely, or perhaps also by a social worker or psychologist. The judge usually follows those recommendations. It was actually done, whether you find this credible or not, to help the brothers develop independently.”

  “Do you know whether his brother has developed better than James?”

  “In fact, I do. His behavior has pretty much mirrored James’s, with the exception of a few small points. A study was done just a few years ago of the twins and published in a journal.”

  “I’d like to read that.”

  “I’ll have a copy made for you.”

  “Thank you. I understand that before the murder, the twins were the subject of a great deal of study. A psychiatrist came to the apartment sometimes to conduct experiments.”

  “That would be Dr. Weintraub. I believe he died in the early eighties. I have his published papers, too, if you’re interested.”

  “Very much.”

  “They’re quite fascinating. Dr. Weintraub recounts one visit where one of the twins started delivering a speech of remarkable scope and sophistication. It turned out to be a speech President Truman had given and which Mrs. Talley had listened to on the radio. There were many other feats they performed, determining in a couple of seconds how many straws Mrs. Talley had dropped on the floor, recalling what happened on days they had lived through, putting a day on any date you gave them using the current calendar.”

  I had heard much of this from Mrs. McAlpin, but hearing it again simply added to the wonder. “Do you have an opinion on why they lost those abilities?”

  Dr. Sanderson smiled. “I have lots of opinions,” he said, and I started to like
him. “The shock of realizing what they had done after they killed their mother or, alternatively, the shock of seeing someone murder her. You can take your choice. The police and the courts seemed convinced of the former. Are you convinced of the alternative?”

  “I’m not,” I admitted. “And it could be I’m grasping at straws. I think what I’m looking for is some small indication that they might not have done it. This Dr. Weintraub, did he have an opinion?”

  “He had a very strong one. He believed they could not have done it.”

  I felt a small flutter of elation. “Did he say it publicly or publish it anywhere?”

  “It was published in a letter somewhere. I’ll have to dig it up. Quite a famous letter, as I recall.”

  “But the courts chose to ignore him?”

  “He wasn’t called to testify. The prosecutor called his own psychiatrist.”

  “And the defense? The twins must have been represented by counsel.”

  “I believe they were, but I don’t know the details.”

  “Do you know where Robert is now, Dr. Sanderson?”

  “He was also permitted to leave a high-security institution when his brother did. He’s in a group home, similar to Greenwillow, near Buffalo. I’ve been in touch with the director, and his behavior seems to be quite similar to James’s, as it has been since the murder.”

  “Do you think the decision to separate them was correct?”

  “It was correct for several reasons. Besides affording the opportunity for the twins to develop independently, there’s a strong possibility that together they might be capable of murder while separately they might not. It may have taken a certain courage, a certain companionship if you will, to commit the act, which neither twin possessed alone. If you want my opinion on whether James Talley is capable of murder today, I will answer unhesitatingly no. If they’re together, I can’t give you an opinion.”

  “You think they may be dangerous together?”

  “Frankly, I don’t, but I don’t discount the possibility.”

  “Would you have any objections to getting them together?”

  The doctor pursed his lips, then said, “At this point, I can’t say I would. It might be interesting to see whether they remember each other.”