It was the Ellerbees’ custom to stay in their East 84th Street townhouse weekdays—and, on rare occasions, on Saturday. They usually left for Brewster on Friday evening and returned to Manhattan on Sunday night. Both spent the entire month of August at their country home.
The Ellerbees owned three cars. Dr. Simon drove a new bottle-green Jaguar XJ6 sedan, Dr. Diane a 1971 silver and black Mercedes-Benz SEL 3.5. Both these cars were customarily garaged in Manhattan. The third vehicle, a Jeep station wagon, was kept at their Brewster home.
On the Friday Dr. Simon Ellerbee was murdered, he told his wife—according to her statement to the police—that he had scheduled an evening patient. He suggested she drive back to Brewster as soon as she was free, and he would follow later. He said he planned to leave by 9:00 P.M. at the latest.
Dr. Diane said she left Manhattan at approximately 6:30 P.M. She described the drive north as “ferocious” because of the 40 mph wind and heavy rain. She arrived at their country home about 8:00 P.M. Because of the storm, she guessed her husband would be delayed, but expected him by 10:30 or 11:00.
By 11:30, she stated she was concerned by his absence and called his office. There was no reply. She called two more times with the same result. Around midnight, she called the Brewster police station, asking if they had any report of a car accident involving a Jaguar XJ6 sedan. They had not.
Becoming increasingly worried, she phoned the Manhattan garage where the Ellerbees kept their cars. After a wait of several minutes, the night attendant reported that Dr. Simon Ellerbee’s Jaguar had not been taken out; it was still in its slot.
“I was getting frantic,” she later told detectives. “I thought he might have been mugged walking to the garage. It happened once before.”
So, at approximately 1:15 A.M., Dr. Diane Called Dr. Julius K. Samuelson. He was also a psychiatrist, a widower, and close friend and frequent houseguest of the Ellerbees. Dr. Samuelson was also president of the Greater New York Psychiatric Association. He lived in a cooperative apartment at 79th Street and Madison Avenue.
Samuelson was not awakened by Diane Ellerbee’s phone call, having recently returned from a concert by the Stuttgart String Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. When Dr. Diane explained the situation, he immediately agreed to taxi to the Ellerbees’ house and try to find Dr. Simon or see if anything was amiss.
Samuelson stated he arrived at the East 84th Street townhouse at about 1:45 A.M. He asked the cabdriver to wait. It was still raining heavily. He stepped from the cab into a streaming gutter, then hurried across the sidewalk and up the three steps to the front entrance. He found the door ajar.
“Not wide open,” he told detectives. “Maybe two or three inches.”
Samuelson was fifty-six, a short, slender man, but not lacking in physical courage. He tramped determinedly up the dimly lighted, carpeted staircase to the offices of Dr. Simon on the third floor. He found the office door wide open. Within, he found the battered body.
He checked first to make certain that Ellerbee was indeed dead. Then, using the phone on the receptionist’s desk, he dialed 911. The call was logged in at 1:54 A.M.
All the above facts were included in New York City newspaper reports and on local TV newscasts following the murder.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1981 by Lawrence Sanders
cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4532-9838-1
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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