by Ron Hansen
Albert Snyder’s cadaver was sheeted, carried downstairs, and laid onto a gurney that was rolled out to a hearse belonging to the Harry A. Robbins Morgue on 161st Street in Jamaica. Hundreds of Queens residents were out there, watching the Robbins men haul Mr. Snyder away.
A photographer had climbed high up the front yard’s elm tree with a Kodak box camera and was taking pictures of Ruth answering over and over again the same questions. And a journalist roved among the horde in the yard collecting anecdotes about the Snyders. He found a twelve-year-old boy heading to church who remembered hitting a baseball that crashed through the Snyders’ kitchen window, and Mr. Snyder had run out of the house after him, crazy with rage, chasing him inside his house and spanking the boy with his big hands in front of the boy’s frightened father. And George Colyer told the journalist that all the neighbors liked Ruth because of her great love of fun and laughter. “But she’s a cut below Snyder. He was a fine fellow. You just couldn’t help but admire him.” Colyer hesitated before he judged it tolerable to state, “I would have to say they were mismatched.”
Mrs. Josephine Brown, Ruth’s mother, was a practical nurse who had worked Saturday night and Sunday morning in Kew Gardens, caring for an invalid in his apartment at Kew Hall. She was a tall, sour, regal widow in nurse’s whites, a brown woolen cloak, and owlish spectacles. She seemed genuinely upset by Albert Snyder’s death, and once she’d gotten over the sorrow and tears she spoke frankly if formally in the metronomic cadence of a Swedish immigrant. She gave her maiden name as Josephine Anderson and said she also had a son, Andrew, who lived in the Bronx and was two years older than May.
“Who’s May?” McLaughlin asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry; Ruth. We named her Mamie Ruth when she was born, but she decided she was May when she was grown some. We all of us got so used to that we never gave it up when she changed again to Ruth. And now I hear the men calling her Tommy.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, I guess she’s one of the boys, like they say.”
The police commissioner asked Mrs. Brown to go with him upstairs to the middle bedroom she slept in, just above the front porch vestibule and just south of Albert and Ruth’s room. She was asked if she noticed anything different. She saw an empty quart bottle of Tom Dawson Whisky on the floor between the white Swedish chiffonier and her pink velour reading chair and she said she had no idea how it got there. And Albert’s electrician’s pliers seemed to have been shoed underneath the twin bed.
“Would your son-in-law have been working with pliers up here?”
“Oh heavens no. Albert respected my privacy. Even looked away when he walked down the hallway.”
“Could you give me an idea of what kind of man he was?”
Seeking to say nothing ill of the dead, she told McLaughlin only good things about her son-in-law: that he was smart and artistic, fond of classical music, strong and handy and industrious, a good provider and avid sportsman with lots of hobbies and with a hearty, infectious laugh. But he was hotheaded and older than his age in his habits and customs, and Ruth was, after all, still vital and young.
“Was there marital discord?” McLaughlin asked.
Ruth’s mother frowned. “My English ain’t so good sometimes.”
“Your daughter and Albert. Were they unhappy?”
“Oh, just like most folks.”
McLaughlin felt confident she had nothing to do with the murder so he just called the invalid she cared for in Kew Gardens, heard Mr. William F. Code confirm that the nurse had been there the whole night, then walked Mrs. Brown across to the Mulhausers’ to be with the granddaughter. But before leaving the neighbor’s home, McLaughlin guided Lorraine into a parlor. Sitting left of her on a davenport sofa, he went over her memories of the card party Saturday night and the chaos on Sunday. Because there were no other children at the party, she said she’d just read Motion Picture magazines alone or with her mother while the grown-ups played cards. There was yelling at the party, but Daddy always got that way when there was drinking. She fell asleep in the car going home and couldn’t recall getting into bed, it was so late and she was so tired. And then she found her mother on the hallway floor and all tied up that morning.
“Was your bedroom door often locked at night?”
She shook her head.
“Was it your mother who locked it?”
“I guess so,” Lorraine said. “She was the one who took care of me.”
“And not your father?”
She shrugged. “Daddy’s always busy with things.”
McLaughlin noticed she used the present tense. She’d not been told. “Are they happy with each other, your mommy and daddy?”
“I don’t know. They’re always arguing.”
“Will you tell me again what your mother said when she was found?”
She told him.
“Would you hazard a guess as to why your mother wouldn’t want you untying her hands and feet? And why she had you get Mrs. Mulhauser first?”
Lorraine gave it some thought and said, “She wanted a grownup to see how she was.”
“And why would that be?”
“Because it was important.”
“Important to whom?”
“You. The police.”
“Clever girl,” McLaughlin said, and gently patted her left knee as he got up.
On the first floor of the Snyder home, burglary detectives found Chambly silverware, a Lalique vase, and some Baccarat crystal of value, but winter coats had been yanked pointlessly from their closet hangers and the floral chintz sofa cushions seemed tossed. Even a seascape oil painting signed by Albert Snyder had been lifted from its hook and sailed across the room.
A crime reporter asked, “What could these guys have been looking for?” And another answered, “My wife finds pocket change under the sofa cushions every time she vacuums.”
On the kitchen table, Scotch whisky filled a water glass that was so gummy with fingerprints it hardly needed graphite dusting. And a dollar bill was beside it like a bartender’s tip. The shoes of reporters kept whanging into the pots and pans and cutlery that were strewn on the kitchen’s linoleum floor. The southern door out to the garage was not jimmied and the front door and storm windows had been locked, so it seemed the assailants had been let in. And in a pinkish seashell ashtray there were half-finished Sweet Caporal cigarettes. A detective said, “Weren’t exactly covering their tracks, were they?”
The first and second floors of the house were feminine in their interior decoration, with little sign of a male presence, but upstairs in the attic there were old furniture pieces, boxes of Christmas ornaments and odds and ends organized and labeled in Albert’s block printing, and also an overstuffed chair and a chrome pedestal cigar ashtray situated in front of the dormer storm windows, the right one still wedged out so his cigar smoke could escape. On the floor was the book Deep Sea Fishing and Fishing Boats by Edmund W. H. Holdsworth, 1874.
Albert’s other domain was the basement, where Detective Frank Heyner found a highly organized workshop with a homemade liquor still, a rack of fishing rods and reels, a sanded row-boat that seemed intended for priming and painting, a Johnson outboard motor, and a laundry chute that would let clothing from upstairs fall into a hamper. There Heyner found a bloodstained pillowcase. The overheating in the house indicated the furnace had been stoked with coal an hour or two before sunrise. Looking inside the furnace, he found only the French cuff of what he guessed had been a fine shirt but was now just ashes. And finally, in a box of tools, the detective found a brand-new five-pound sash weight that eased the lift in frame windows. Coal ash had been sprinkled on it, but blood could still be detected. Heyner collected the evidence.
Upstairs that afternoon, Police Commissioner George McLaughlin was called to the telephone in the foyer. An investigator visiting the home of Milton C. Fidgeon told him that Ruth’s story checked out. Milton’s hand had gone to his forehead and he had to sit down when he heard the news of the ho
micide. The party giver had said Albert could be cantankerous, “a complex guy,” but he was also fun-loving and good company. The Snyder family had arrived so early on Saturday that Fidgeon had joked, “Have you come for dinner?” Cecil Hough was Fidgeon’s brother-in-law, as was, of course, George Hough, Cecil’s kid brother. Also at the card party were Mr. and Mrs. Howard Eldridge, neighbors from down the street. Fidgeon recalled the incident three weeks earlier in which Albert claimed that George Hough stole his wallet and seventy-five dollars, and he’d thought, “It is pretty small business to accuse a party of friends of such a thing.” But last night’s scene was not as nasty, just a flare-up between two hot-tempered men.
Was it possible that George Hough could have been angry enough after Saturday night to kill Albert?
Completely and utterly impossible, Fidgeon told the detective.
The policemen who’d been upstairs in the Snyders’ master bedroom found McLaughlin and handed him their inventory. Recorded on the list were the front page of the Italian newspaper L’Arena, a gold Bulova man’s wristwatch in plain view on the floor, the gold Cross mechanical pencil used to twist the picture wire tight, a fine muskrat coat wrapped in paper and hidden deep in the closet, other unremarkable clothing, and a jewelry box that seemed to have been emptied. But to be thorough, the police had tipped up Mrs. Snyder’s mattress and found some rings, earrings, and necklaces tucked underneath it. And on the floor near Albert’s mattress was discovered an ascot or necktie stickpin bearing the initials “J. G.”
Albert Snyder’s former fiancée was named Jessie Guischard. She’d died of pneumonia before they could marry and his mourning never ended. The stickpin had been a gift to Albert from Jessie but the investigators, significantly, didn’t find that out until later and instead guessed the initialed stickpin flew free from the intruder’s necktie as Albert was being murdered. J. G., they thought, was their first solid clue concerning the killer’s identity.
Seeking the names of friends and associates, a man from the Fourteenth Detective Bureau in Jamaica slid open the middle drawer of a Windsor desk in the sitting room and found Ruth’s Moroccan leather address book. Written in it were the names, addresses, and phone numbers of fifty-six people, but the detective was interested in only the twenty-eight men. He happened to know two of them, Police Patrolman Edward Pierson, of the 23rd Precinct in the Bronx, and Peter Trumfeller, a friend from the Jamaica precinct.
Handing the address book to Deputy Inspector Arthur Carey, head of the homicide squad, the detective said, “We can clear one name at least. There’s no way Trumfeller could commit a crime this half-assed.”
Because of the heat in the house, Carey had taken off his jacket and was rolling up his sleeves. “We are looking at real amateurs, aren’t we?”
Another burglary detective had already delivered to Carey a cardboard container of canceled checks. When he thumbed through them, he discovered weekly twenty-dollar checks made out to the Prudential Life Insurance Company. “That must be a lot of life insurance,” Carey said.
“They probably got special riders on the policy,” the burglary detective said.
“Like what?”
The detective shrugged. “Airplane crashes. Railway accidents. Double-indemnity stuff.”
The deputy inspector flicked through some more canceled checks and found one for two hundred dollars that was cashed by H. Judd Gray. Judd Gray’s name was also in the address book. Arthur Carey went up to Lorraine’s room to wake and interrogate the widow.
Waiting for a minute at the doorway, Carey saw the pretty woman was lying on her side but only trying to sleep, for he noticed she was squinting cautiously in his direction from the slightly opened corners of her eyes.
Entering the room, he asked, “How are you feeling, madam?”
She seemed to pretend to moan. “I feel cried out,” she said. Watching him seat himself in a chair, she sat up in Lorraine’s bed and crossed her forearms over her too evident breasts.
“I’m trying hard to understand why burglars would ransack your house,” Deputy Inspector Carey said.
Ruth seemed strangely puzzled, as if she’d done something wrong. “What do you mean?”
“Just that it doesn’t look right.”
“How can you tell?” She seemed not to recognize she was giving much away.
“We see lots of burglaries,” Carey said. “They aren’t done this way.”
She glanced at Lorraine’s night table and found a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum. She unwrapped a stick and gauged the inspector’s expression as she slowly and seductively pushed the gum between her pouting lips and into her pretty mouth. His glum face had not changed. She chewed.
“Are you aware of what happened to your husband?”
She seemed to shrink a little. She held a hand over her eyes as if crying. “He’s dead.”
“Well, I’ve been asking around and nobody told you that, and you never even questioned the medical examiner. Was he shot, was he injured, was he okay? Wouldn’t a wife want to know for sure if he was murdered or not?”
She gazed at him in a pitying way. “You have how many detectives in this house?”
“Sixty or so.”
She sneered. “Call it female intuition.”
“Fair enough,” Carey said. “Let me begin with the first thing this morning. You wake up from a faint and find yourself gagged with a man’s handkerchief, your wrists and ankles tied with clothesline.”
She tentatively said, “Yes.”
“And you slithered along the hallway from in front of your room to your daughter’s, here, opposite the bathroom?”
She gave him a look like What’s the big deal?
“Why not get help from your husband?”
“Lorraine’s room was just down to the right.”
“But your own bedroom door wasn’t three feet away.”
“A mother’s first worry is for her child.”
“Was it you who locked her door in the night?”
“I forget.”
“Because that was a good idea, wasn’t it? That’s why the giant Italians couldn’t get to your daughter.”
She just stared at him.
Arthur Carey could see she was clamming up and would give him little more about the morning, so he changed the tone and topic. “What was your husband’s salary at Motor Boating magazine?”
“One hundred fifteen dollars a week.”
“And what was your household budget?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“How much did he give you for groceries, gas and electric, incidentals?”
“Eighty dollars.”
“Each week?”
She nodded. She seemed proud, even chipper, to be on such familiar terrain.
“And you carry accident insurance on your husband’s life, yes?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars,” she said.
“But what is that, just two and a half months’ salary? Was that enough?”
“Well, it was just a thousand. I forgot that we changed that.” She ultimately said there were in fact three policies, that the first was for one thousand dollars and that Albert had added another for five thousand and yet another for forty-five thousand dollars. All in November 1925.
“With which company?”
“Prudential.”
“I’m just curious. I haven’t bought much insurance myself. Were there any special provisions to the policies?”
“Like what?”
“I heard of this term ‘double indemnity.’ Have you heard of that? I hear it means an accidental death, even a homicide like this, pays double the amount on the face of the policy.”
“We had that.”
“All of the policies?”
“On just the last.”
“The forty-five-thousand-dollar policy?”
She agreed.
“Wow,” Arthur Carey said. “I’m doing the arithmetic in
my head. You’ve got the one policy for a thousand and the one for five, and you get double the forty-five, so that’s ninety-six thousand dollars?”
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Your husband would’ve had to work fifteen years for that kind of money!”
“But isn’t that the point of insurance? To give your family years of security if something horrible and awful and unexpected happens?”
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” the deputy inspector said. “Albert must have cared a lot for you and Lorraine.”
“Albert was the ideal husband and father,” she said.
Police Commissioner George McLaughlin strolled in and slouched against a wall, just watching Ruth, his hands in his suit pants pockets.
“We have your address book here,” Arthur Carey said, “and I’d like to read off some men’s names.”
“Why?”
“Humor me,” he said, and began with a florist named Abrams. He’d gotten through five more names, including Milton Fidgeon and then Harry Folsom, a hosiery salesman, when he hesitated a little and said, “Judd Gray.” Both Carey and McLaughlin saw Ruth flinch.
“And who’s he?” Carey asked.
“Sells corselettes,” she said. “Have you heard of the Bien Jolie brand?”
“I’m not up on those things,” Carey said.
“Well, go on,” Ruth said.
“You know Judd Gray pretty well?”
“No, not really.”
Reminding Carey, George McLaughlin quietly said, “J. G.”
“Wait a minute,” Arthur Carey said, and he opened the cardboard container of canceled checks. “I’m fairly certain I saw that name Judd Gray before. Oh yeah, here it is.” The deputy inspector lifted up a canceled check with a masculine signature on the back. “To H. Judd Gray, for two hundred dollars. Isn’t that your handwriting, Mrs. Snyder?”
She examined the check. She nodded. “Mr. Gray is a traveling salesman for Bien Jolie. He has a lot of food and hotel expenses and his company, Benjamin and Johnes, was late in repaying him, so I helped out with a temporary loan.”
“And did he repay you?”
“Certainly.”