by Lee Harris
“Let me set some facts out before you as I see them,” I said, trying to make some sense out of the bits and pieces that seemed to have no structure. “On the morning of Good Friday, Magda, the girl who came to the house three mornings a week, took the twins out for a walk, and they performed one of their marvelous mental feats for her. They recalled the day she was born eighteen years earlier, when they were only eleven. She found it very remarkable, and she told the police about it when they questioned her on Easter Sunday.
“But on Easter Sunday they had lost their gift. The police questioned them for hours, first at the apartment and then later at the police station. I’m sure the police threatened them. There was no Miranda warning forty years ago, and they didn’t get a lawyer right away. But even with all that pressure, they didn’t say anything. They could have blamed each other, but they didn’t. They could have broken down and confessed. They could have blamed some other person. None of that happened. Can you account for that in any way, Doctor?”
“Not in any way that will satisfy you. All I can say is the obvious, that between the morning of Good Friday and the morning of Easter Sunday, something very profound happened to change those two young men. In a very real sense, the twins that performed for Magda on Good Friday were not the same people who were arrested on Easter Sunday.”
“Do you think, if James knows who did the killing, that he has the mental competence to keep it a secret?”
“That’s the most puzzling aspect of the whole case, Miss Bennett. Keeping a secret requires rather sophisticated thinking. I don’t think he has it. Dr. Weintraub didn’t think he had it. Still, forty years have passed and he’s said nothing.”
“Maybe he was locked in a bedroom while it happened.”
“Possibly. But he would know who locked him up, wouldn’t he?” He smiled. “It’s a tough one.”
“Who arranged for James to go to Greenwillow?” I asked.
“The court did, with my recommendation.”
The surprise must have shown on my face. “You,” I said.
“As I told you earlier, I don’t think James is capable of murder. I’m also less than wholehearted about punitive detention. And he’s been incarcerated longer than most people convicted in the state of New York—without having ever been convicted. In my small way, I’m something of a civil libertarian.” He looked at his watch. “Shall we have a bite to eat in the village? It’s past twelve.”
“I’d like that.”
We ate in a coffee shop with good home cooking and spent an hour or more talking. I told him I had recently left St. Stephen’s and he seemed very interested in that, in why I had entered and why I had left. He was a kind man with a great capacity for empathy. When he told me about his family, I felt honored, as though perhaps he felt that I, too, had some of the qualities needed to listen and respond. In the short time I knew him, I altered some of my feelings about the profession and especially about its practitioners.
When we returned to New Hope, it was nearly two. Dr. Sanderson picked up the address of Robert Talley’s group home and promised to have his secretary send me copies of all the relevant articles he had mentioned as soon as they could be unearthed.
Then we shook hands and I drove away.
—
It was a beautiful day and I drove south at a leisurely speed. When I approached the turnoff for St. Stephen’s, I began to feel a compelling tug. I wanted to see it again, to see the people I had left behind. Something in me craved a look at the grounds, which were surely the most beautiful I would ever see, the somewhat dank scent of the chapel, the sight of nuns hurrying along the paths. I had not left in anger as many nuns do nowadays, or because a relationship with a man had caused me to turn against my vows. I had left because I had decided over a long period of time that it would be better for me and therefore ultimately better for the convent. I had departed with a lot of goodwill, leaving behind friends. Today I wanted to see them.
“Too soon, Kix,” I said aloud, and hearing my voice, I knew it was true. I needed to establish myself in my new community and do this job that I had promised to do before I went back to say hello.
I drove past the turnoff and kept driving south, finally, some time later, stopping in Poughkeepsie. I had never seen Vassar, and here was the perfect day to do it.
—
After my visit, I had dinner in town and set out for home. It was after eight when I entered Oakwood and slowed down to drive through the familiar streets, looking out for young baseball players and skateboarders as I neared Pine Brook Road.
Although my life has had its share of drama, I usually look with suspicion at breathlessly described dramatic moments so beloved by writers. But what happened that evening as I returned from New Hope surely had all the elements of high drama.
It was dusk as I turned in to my driveway. The automatic timers Aunt Meg had set before her final illness had turned on three lights in the house, giving it a comfortable, lived-in look. I drove into the garage, pulled the door down, and walked to the back door. The garage is detached from the house, something Aunt Meg always considered a plus. (“It doesn’t look like one of those boxes the builders throw up all over town.”) As I turned the key, I heard the phone ringing.
For the first three weeks that I lived in the house, the phone rang so infrequently that it startled me when I heard it. The last few days, of course, had brought a change, and there were so many people who might be calling me with information I could scarcely wait to hear that I pushed the door open, leaving my key in the lock, dropped my bag as I ran to the kitchen, and answered with a breathless “Hello?” on what must have been the fifth or sixth ring.
“Hello? Christine? It’s you?” the somewhat high-pitched voice with its still audible relic of Eastern Europe said in my ear.
“Magda? Yes, it’s me. What is it?”
“Christine, I am so glad to reach you. How are you?”
I’ve never been very good on the telephone. I have used it almost exclusively to get information and conduct business. People who start conversations with polite, meaningless exchanges tend to drive me crazy, but I’ve learned to play the game.
“Fine,” I said conversationally, not asking how she was in return.
“I’ve tried you all evening, but you weren’t home.”
“I’ve been out all day. I just got in.”
“Well, that’s good. I thought maybe I wrote down the number wrong.”
Please, I thought, please tell me. “It was the right number. Did you think of something to tell me?”
“Something small but maybe important, you know?”
“What is it?” I struggled not to sound impatient.
“I thought of it after you left, and I didn’t know if I should bother to call.”
“Of course you should call. What was it, Magda?”
“When the police were ready to take the boys away that night, I couldn’t find Robert’s coat.”
“It was missing?”
“It wasn’t in the closet. James’s coat was there, and both raincoats. Each boy had a nice, warm dark winter coat and a raincoat. Mrs. Talley had her fur coat there, a Persian lamb, a beautiful coat, you know? And her wool coat and her spring coat. That was about all. But when it was time for the boys to be taken away, Robert’s coat wasn’t in the closet.”
“Did you look for it, Magda?”
“Oh yes. I was there the whole day. I didn’t have carfare and I was afraid to ask. And since the boys knew me, I would sit with one and then the other while the police questioned them, to keep them calm and quiet, you know?”
“Yes, I understand. And when it came time to leave?”
“I went to the closet and looked for their coats.”
“And one coat wasn’t there,” I prompted.
“Robert’s coat. They had the same coats, and Mrs. Talley had put a piece of tape in the coats with their name in big letters. Robert knew to read his name, and James knew to read his.”
&
nbsp; “Is there anywhere else the coats could have been?”
“Nowhere. Mrs. Talley put everything in its place. When I came home with the boys on Good Friday, I hung the coats in the closet.”
“And if Mrs. Talley died on Friday, probably they hadn’t been out since.”
“That is what I think. There is one more thing.”
The news had gotten me very excited. “Yes,” I said.
“When I opened the closet, there was a big hole in between the coats.”
“A hole?”
“Like maybe someone went push, push, push till he found what he was looking for. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. As if he was looking for a man’s coat to put on.”
“Yes, to cover up the blood on his shirt.”
“And when he found it, he left the ‘hole’ between the coats.”
“Yes!” Magda sounded pleased that I was following her story.
“Magda, did you tell anyone about the missing coat?”
“When I couldn’t find Robert’s coat, I told that policeman—I forget his name now.”
“O’Connor?” I suggested hesitantly.
“Yes! O’Connor! That was the name. A good-looking young man, he was, with blue eyes. I said, ‘Robert’s coat is not in the closet,’ and he said, ‘Find something else. It’s seven o’clock and it’s Easter Sunday. I must get home.’ ”
I could hear the young, handsome detective saying it in his own words: “Look, it’s seven o’clock on Easter Sunday and I gotta get home. Just find something for him to put on, will ya?”
“What did you do, Magda?” I asked.
“I gave Robert his raincoat. Christine, I have my scrapbook in front of me. I have the picture from the newspaper of the boys coming out of the apartment house. Even in the dark, you can see one has a dark coat and one has a light one.”
“You can see it in the picture?”
“I am looking at it now.”
“Magda, this is really very exciting news,” I said. Then something struck me. “But how is it that you didn’t mention the missing coat to the reporters when you were interviewed for the newspapers?”
She made a little mmm sound and then said nothing. “I think…” she said hesitantly, but didn’t go on. “Oh yes, now I remember. In the afternoon, when the policemen were finished asking me questions, I went outside the apartment for a little while. It really smelled awful in there, you know? And in the hall there were some newspaper people. I remember one man had a smelly cigar that made me cough. That’s when I gave the interviews. Later, when we were ready to go, is when I found the coat missing.”
It sounded right to me. The reporters needed that story for the Monday morning papers. “I have one more question. Did you let it go that way or did you ever report it to the police?”
“Well, when I got home, I forgot all about it. I had so much to tell my parents. But the next day, I remembered and I told my mother. I told her maybe it meant that a man had killed Mrs. Talley and stolen Robert’s coat.”
“Yes,” I said, encouraging her.
“And my mother, God rest her soul, she said, ‘Call that policeman and tell him.’ ”
“And did you?”
“I called the police station and asked for Detective O’Connor. But he wasn’t there. So I left a message. I said one coat was missing from the apartment and maybe someone had taken it.”
“Did Detective O’Connor call you back?”
“Never.” It sounded very final.
“I don’t suppose you remember who you told.” I threw it out, knowing there was no chance.
“No.” She sounded thoughtful. “I talked to one, then another. It’s so long…It was a funny name, you know?”
She remembered something. I almost crossed my fingers. “Yes,” I said, encouraging her again.
“Like a fruit.”
“A fruit?” I echoed. “You mean like apple or pear or plum?”
“Something else. I don’t know. It’s too long to remember such a little thing.”
“Magda, I’m going to check the file and see if it’s mentioned anywhere. This is really very important. Thank you so much for calling.”
“God bless you, Christine,” Magda said.
I said my good-byes and hung up, my heart beating as though I had been running. It was real and it was tangible. Someone had pushed the coats aside, looking for something he could put on to cover his bloody clothes. Someone else had killed Mrs. Talley. I had it now, the physical evidence—or lack of it—that I had been searching for. There had been a killer, and he had gotten away with it for forty years.
But today his luck had run out.
12
I awoke with the kind of exuberance one needs to get moving early. But that left me with five hours before ten o’clock, Jack Brooks’s starting time at work, the earliest I could call him. I ran, meeting Melanie and thanking her for Sunday dinner—she had called and invited me over, and I had gone and loved it—and then I came back, dressed, ate, and sat down at the dining room table to look over my notes.
I had to find out which apartment on the fifth floor the Talley’s had lived in and see who had lived beneath them, whether that woman might still be alive, whether she would have a different opinion of the Talleys from the fairly benign ones I had heard. Then I had to figure out what to do about locating Patrick Talley’s family. I had some ideas about that, and perhaps I would begin after talking to Jack Brooks.
At eight-thirty the phone rang.
“Hello?” I answered, wondering who would be calling so early.
“Hi, it’s Jack. I didn’t get you up, did I?”
“Been up since five, did my exercise and had my breakfast. What are you doing at work before nine?”
“I’m calling from home. I wanted to get you before you left. Tried you yesterday, but you were out.”
“I went up to New Hope and spent some time talking to the psychiatrist who got James Talley into the group home.”
“You’re really moving.” He sounded impressed, and that made me feel pretty good.
“Jack, I found out something very exciting last night. Magda called back.”
“You found her?”
“On Saturday. Infant of Prague paid off. She didn’t have much that was new when I saw her, but last night she did. When the police were ready to take the twins into custody, she went to the closet for their coats, and Robert’s coat was missing.”
“She look anywhere else?”
“She says Mrs. Talley was tidy and methodical. Also, Magda was probably the last person to bring the boys back to the apartment. They’d been out on Good Friday morning—and she hung up their coats herself when they got back.” I said it with emphasis. “The coats were there when she left the apartment.”
“You think someone put it on and walked out.”
“I do.”
“Because his clothes were bloody.”
“Yes.”
He made a little whistling sound. “You could be right.”
“There’s more. She told O’Connor, but he kind of waved it off. Said it was Easter Sunday and he was in a rush.”
“Hungry,” Jack Brooks said.
I laughed. “I know. Cops always think of their stomachs first. She called the precinct the next day and told someone about the missing coat.”
“Not O’Connor.”
“He wasn’t there.”
“So that’s lost.”
“Maybe not.” I was surprised at my own enthusiasm and optimism. “She remembers that she left the message with someone who had a name like a fruit.”
“A fruit?”
“That’s what she says.”
“I never heard of anyone named Joe Peach.”
“Well, maybe something will occur to one of us.”
“You know, there was a guy named Applebaum here a couple of years ago. I think his father was on the job. Let me look into it.”
“Applebaum,” I echoed. “I hadn’t
thought of anything like that.”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve been busy. I’ve got something for you, too. I found O’Connor.”
“You did!” I was ready to jump for joy.
“Retired and lives in Valley Stream, Long Island. I’ve got his number here.”
“Shoot.”
I wrote it down, glancing at my watch to see if I could decently call. I couldn’t. It wasn’t nine yet.
“I’ve talked to him myself so he’ll be expecting to hear from you. Sounds like a boring old guy who sits and watches TV all day. You know where Valley Stream is?”
“Roughly.”
“You can take the Throgs Neck Bridge and get on the Cross Island. Shouldn’t take you too long. He can probably give you directions if he can tear himself away from the screen.”
“I’ll call in a little while. When you get to work, could you look up the Talleys’ apartment number? Magda says there was a problem with the people downstairs.”
“Will do. But I don’t want you ringing doorbells.”
“I’ve already done it.”
“Chris, this is New York. It’s full of crazies.”
“I’ve just talked to a couple of people who remember the day of the murder. A little old lady in the apartment house and a man across the street, both in their eighties. The man remembers coming home from church and seeing all those blue-and-white police cars.”
“They weren’t blue and white.”
“What?”
“Not in 1950. They were green and white. Either he doesn’t remember or his memory’s gone.”
“He was so sure,” I said. “I wrote it down just the way he said it.” The whole side of the street was filled with blue-and-white police cars.
“Sorry.”
“I’d better go back,” I said.
“Call O’Connor first. But go easy. This was his case, and he knows he handled it right.”
“I’m all tact.”
“I’ll get back to you with the Talleys’ apartment number.”
—
Kevin O’Connor’s wife answered when I called. Her husband was out playing golf but should be back by ten or ten-thirty. He liked to play early, before it got too hot.