Jim glanced over at the drinks again.
”Maybe the drinks were spiked, and when he fell under the influence, maybe that’s when the killer took his chance grabbin’ the golf stick and whalin’ on the poor bastard from behind. He was stunned, too stunned to cry out, and his bein’ sedated, the killer let loose with a furious barrage that quickly disabled him before he could even make a sound. We need to have this glass checked for somethin’ that might have been added. A sedative of some sort.”
“There’s no sign of the missing golf stick anywhere,” added Cusak. “Maybe the killer took it away. We need to search the grounds outside.”
“Well, these wounds might have been inflicted with a golf iron, Pat, a nine iron maybe, but not a hefty putter. The indentations in his skull are too narrow and too deep into the bone. A putter would make a much wider impact wound, befitting its large girth.”
“Okay,” exhaled the stymied Chief. “How about we go ask the old lady a few questions?”
Cusak led his detectives out of the room, leaving medical examiner Howland to continue with his work.
The grandmother was in the parlor, huddled on the couch with her three granddaughters.
“Mrs. Hull, we have some questions,” said Cusak, catching her eye, then nodding toward the children. Mrs. Hull took the hint and asked the girls to go up to their room. She rang for the cook. “Keep an eye on the girls, Maggie.”
Detective Cusak asked Mrs. Hull where Mrs. Burdick was.
“My daughter is in Atlantic City,” curtly responded the dead man’s mother-in-law.
“Atlantic City? How long has she been there?”
“Oh, since a few weeks before Christmas.”
“We’re at the end of February presently, Mrs. Hull. These girls have not seen their mother in all that time?”
“No,” she answered without emotion or concern.
“She didn’t spend Christmas with her own children?”
“No.”
“Were Mr. and Mrs. Burdick having marital problems, Mrs. Hull?”
“Yes. Edwin ordered my daughter to leave the house.”
“And yet you still live here?”
“Yes, of course. Someone has to raise these girls.”
“So you have a good relationship with your son-in-law despite the fact he ordered your own daughter out of the house?”
“Yes. In fact, Mr. Burdick called me mother,” she noted.
“How do you account for that?”
She formed an inscrutable smile. “I don’t know if I have to account for that, now do I, officer?”
The servants had discovered the double-hung kitchen window open that morning. Police would later note that the snowdrift that lay piled on the outside sill had not been at all disturbed or imprinted. The window thus appeared to have been opened from the inside, perhaps a ruse employed by the killer to mislead police into thinking that the house had been broken into.
Sullivan took a closer look.
“How do we know that this snow didn’t fall here after someone had already come through this window?” postulated the Detective. “This is a big house. Someone could have climbed through the window much earlier in the evening and hidden themselves, down in the basement, or in a closet, waiting for their opportunity.”
The cook, Maggie Murray, was questioned at length next. She was told to start her story from the beginning. She stated that once she’d discovered that his bed had not been slept in, she searched the house looking for Mr. Burdick, but could not find him anywhere. When she slid open the door to the den she discovered it to be in such disarray that she was immediately frightened. Mrs. Murray said she saw what appeared to possibly be a human form under the rug and pillows, lying prostate on the couch. She did not endeavor to approach it.
Instead, Mrs. Hull was summoned.
Hull stated she went to the den and called out loudly, “Ed! Ed!” but after receiving no response she said, “Maggie, I fear something’s happened. I do not dare go in there. We’ve got to call Dr. Marcy! Go!
Dr. Marcy was the family physician.
Despite the presence of Mr. Burdick’s clothing in the den where his body was found, Detective Cusak nevertheless gave a contrary statement later that afternoon to the newsmen that had gathered:
“From what investigations I have made I would conclude that Mr. Burdick was called down stairs by a ring or a knock at the door after he was ready for bed, for he was clad only in his underclothing. He had evidently admitted someone he knew well and took the visitor into the den for a talk and to partake of the luncheon found there.”
...
Arthur Reed Pennell was up and about quite early on the morning following the murder.
“Lizzie,” the esteemed attorney said to his servant, “I do not want you speaking to anyone about me or Mrs. Pennell.”
To anyone else this might seem an abrupt directive, but Lizzie Romance was quite used to it. The Pennells had an odd relationship and conflicting statements and requests made by her employers over the years had inured Lizzie to their unique ways. She simply did as she was told. Even if there was no good reason for it, it no longer interested her to wonder why. It was easier to just to do.
A knock came at the door. Lizzie looked to Mr. Pennell. “I’ll answer that, Lizzie. You attend to your work.”
Mr. Pennell opened the door and found the furnace man, Mr. Porter, making his usual Friday morning call to perform his duties.
“Oh, Mr. Porter. I do apologize. I already attended to the furnace earlier. Your services won’t be needed this week.”
That was the first time in the two years since the furnace man had been attending to the Pennell’s convenience that Mr. Pennell had gone and cleaned out the ashes himself. Ashes which might have contained remains of the burning of bloody clothing.
Pennell got himself dressed and ate breakfast. Afterward he changed into a suit and went out to the garage, climbed into his runabout, and exited down the narrow driveway silently in his green Baker Electric. He nearly clipped a woman walking down the sidewalk, her arms laden with packages. He didn’t bother to sound his horn, nor did he touch the brake. Mr. Pennell was decidedly of the type who expected the world to make way for him.
He drove downtown to the Iroquois Hotel barber shop for a trim and a shave. Afterward he walked down Main Street a short way to Walbridge’s to buy a gun. It was noon.
E. W. Fox was in charge of the firearms department in Walbridge’s store. Two other clerks, named Edmunds and Boehler, were also present as Pennell entered their department. Pennell walked hurriedly past them up to the east end of the store where the revolver case was located and said to Mr. Fox, who was behind the counter, “Give me a cheap revolver.”
His manner was nervous, abrupt and strange. He did not exchange the usual greetings with those present, whom he knew quite well. Pennell merely glanced at a weapon that caught his eye and not even asking to examine it said “That one will answer. How much is it?”
Mr. Fox told him that the price was $5. Pennell pulled some bills out of his pocket and paid for it. While waiting for the revolver to be wrapped up, Pennell paced up and down in a highly nervous fashion wringing his hands. When the revolver was delivered to him he took it and hurried out the store without saying another word. After he left, Mr. Fox said to Boehler and Edmunds, “Did you notice how queer Mr. Pennell was acting? He seemed to be in a remarkable hurry, didn’t he? And he didn’t purchase any bullets. Odd, that.”
Pennell walked back to his automobile. From there he drove down Kensington Ave. toward the city line, considering his situation as he went. The huge pit that was the Hannah Gehres Stone Quarry caught his eye for a moment. Before too long he arrived at the automobile factory. He explained a problem he was having with the Baker to the agent, who directed a mechanic to take the car. Mr. Burdick was led into the waiting area after asking to use the telephone.
“Might you have today’s newspapers for me to read?” he asked.
“So
rry sir, no. All we have are those issues of Colliers that you see there on the table.”
Carrie Pennell had mentioned to her husband that she was anxious to see the ice scenery at Niagara Falls before the approaching spring caused it to disappear, and asked him the previous week if they might go together. The repairs on the Baker would take the entire day, so Pennell conceived the idea of taking the urban railway car to Niagara Falls and have Carrie meet him there.
When she came to the phone he said, “Darling, why don’t you take the express car to Niagara Falls and I will meet you there, and we can see the ice scenery together?”
Carrie was elated. Any time Arthur might spend with her rather than at his office, or with Alice Burdick, gave her renewed hope for holding on to her troubled marriage.
She stopped and bought all the newspapers detailing the murder of their friend Edwin Burdick the previous night, then boarded the car.
Pennell met his wife at their Niagara destination at about 3 o’clock, whereupon they set out for Prospect Point. He was preoccupied but pleasant. She knew his moods and patiently waited for this one to pass. They always did, eventually. They walked past the Prospect House, the handsome couple enjoying the admiring glances of the sightseers whose attention was momentarily stolen away from the frozen spectacle by their fine appearance. The Pennells decided before eating that they would first appraise the falls.
Carrie and Arthur made their way along Prospect Point in tiny steps, for the walkway was smooth as glass with a solid paving laid down by the freezing of the ceaseless mists that descended upon everything. The danger of slipping and falling was imminent. The rails at the edge of the precipice were encased in a thick armor of transparent ice many inches thick. Months of below-freezing temperatures had transformed the relentless spray of Niagara, thickly enveloping the trees, buildings, railings and walkways, turning the area into a fairyland of wonder. Bizarre sculptures created by Mother Nature dotted the landscape where telegraph poles, fences, hydrants and other man-made objects normally stood, their likenesses transfigured by a formidable encasement of ice.
Carrie wanted to take the footbridge out to Goat Island mid-river, but the pathway was too hazardous, her husband thought, and the distance too far to cover before dark, so Arthur convinced her instead to return to the warmth of the Prospect House and a pleasant window table by the flaming hearth. The waiter brought the menu. Arthur studied the cover, an illustration of a naked woman suspended in midair supporting herself within the arc of a rainbow created by the Falls’ mists.
They enjoyed a lovely dinner together in the octagonal dining room beneath the dome. Carrie had the Restigouche Salmon Hollandaise with a wax bean salad and banana pudding for dessert. Arthur ordered the fried and breaded Lamb in Tomato Sauce, green peas, and fried eggplant, and no dessert. They decided on a quart of Claret but didn’t finish it. Afterwards Arthur carefully studied each newspaper’s account of the previous night’s murderous activity on Ashland Avenue for any clues as to what the police might have discovered, if any.
His initial assessment from his perspective as an attorney was that already at this early stage the Buffalo police were proving themselves, as always, reliably incompetent.
That was a relief.
The papers stated that the police suspected the murderer was a lone woman. A police officer had spotted a lone woman out walking at one o’clock in the morning, just a block from the Burdick home. At the time, even though the officer recognized how unusual and risky it was for a female by herself to be walking the icy streets at that hour, he did not approach to stop or speak to her, but was nonetheless absolutely certain now, despite the sight distance and the darkness and the fact she was heavily bundled against the freezing cold, that he could absolutely identify her if he ever saw her again.
Pennell scoffed as he read that the police had already targeted this poor woman as their killer and were now hell bent on finding her.
“Typical of those amateurs!” he sniffed.
Home Invasion
March 1, 1903
As thousands of spectators milled past the murder house all day long on Ashland Avenue, a modest funeral service took place inside on the last day of February. It was presided over by Rev. L.H. Powers, pastor of the First Universalist Church where the late Mr. Burdick had a pew.
Late that evening, once the Ashland crowds had thinned, Burdick’s body was removed to Koch & Drullard’s undertaking rooms. Unnerved by the throngs of people milling outside her home, Mrs. Alice Burdick arranged for her late husband’s body to be obscurely transported from the undertaker to the New York Central Station the following morning and placed on a car headed for Syracuse, shielded from the eyes of the curious.
The following morning, Sunday March 1st, after a sleepless night, Alice Burdick, her mother Mrs. Hull, the three Burdick daughters Marion, Carol and Alice, and the two servants, Katy and Maggie, arose before daylight on that saddest of days. They left their grieving home for the depot to take the 7 o’clock train.
They boarded a car to accompany Mr. Burdick’s remains to Canastota N. Y. for burial in the family plot. They were met at their destination at the Canastota depot by Edwin Burdick’s mother, Harriet Lewis Burdick. It had always been the custom of Ed Burdick to give much to the wants of his mother. Harriet Burdick was certainly going to miss that. Ed Burdick’s father Henry, a wealthy farmer, had predeceased him some years earlier. Also present at the depot were his sister Mrs. A.J. Willet and various neighbors.
As the family stood together at Mount Pleasant Cemetery it seemed a natural inclination that each member, compelled by circumstance, might be wont to contemplate her own demise. Alice Burdick imagined her three daughters sometime in the future, much older and with their own families, standing at her gravesite saying their last good-byes to their elderly mother. Little did she realize then that it would be she who would be standing at her daughter Marion’s grave at Forest Lawn Cemetery just eight years hence.
After the graveside service, the family turned right around again and returned to Buffalo the same afternoon.
That same day, Sunday, Chief Cusak led officers on a search of the homes of Attorney Arthur Reed Pennell, insistently named by Burdick’s business partner Mr. Parke as the illicit lover of the murdered man’s wife and probable murderer of Mr. Burdick.
As well, they conducted a search of Mrs. Seth Paine’s home, the outrage of her domicile based on nothing better than the police having seen a signed photo of Mrs. Paine in the murdered man’s den. The police spent far more time at Mrs. Paine’s home than they did the Pennells’, having convinced themselves of the simple logic that a female acquaintance who mingled with the Burdicks socially was more likely the murderer than the adulterous attorney who was fucking Burdick’s wife.
The lawmen virtually ransacked Mrs. Paine’s home from garret to basement, finding nothing of value to the case.
Late that night, after an arduously lengthy day of great strain without rest, prostrated in mind and body with saddened hearts, the Burdick family returned from the train depot to their lonely and shadowed fatherless home. The household quickly retired, the weak and suffering women and children seeking some respite from the shock and sorrow of the previous few days in the sleep of the exhausted.
A certain faction, led by Detective John Wright, he having eagerly adopted an early theory originally proposed by Detective Jim Sullivan, was of another mind. Wright was convinced that the killer of Edwin L. Burdick was one of those women residing in the Burdick home on Ashland Avenue. Rogue officer Wright devised a breathtaking plan to force the culprit’s hand.
That night at midnight as the bone-weary and depleted occupants deeply slept, and while Ashland neighbors still unnerved by recent events tossed and turned, a sizable army of Buffalo’s Finest, led by Detective Wright, quietly crept up to the Ashland Ave. house and completely surrounded it.
Upon Wright’s command, each man took his club and began pounding the side of the house full force in a deafeni
ng, terrifying staccato attack. Simultaneously the front doorbell was rung loudly without cessation and the front door was shaken and rammed violently as if trying to force an entrance to the house. Loud blows resounded through the grieving home from the beating of clubs at the side door and all along the home’s perimeter upon the clapboards.
Inside, the children awakened in absolute terror to the thunderous clatter of dozens of nightsticks slamming and violently shaking the house. They screamed and cried. Their elderly grandmother was horrified by the vibrations and the pandemonium, thinking it at first to be an earthquake. The servants scurried in sheer panic up the stairs to cower with the female family as Mrs. Alice Burdick cradled her girls in her arms against the bizarre onslaught. Only when Maggie the cook was ordered to look out the window was it discovered the attack was being conducted by uniformed officers normally charged with protecting a grieving and vulnerable family rather than terrorizing it.
Led by a detective better known for his troubled personal life and excessive drinking than his crime-fighting expertise, Wright had become convinced that the women in the house were hiding the truth of what had really happened, intentionally making fools out of his police department.
Alice Burdick ordered the traumatized maid Katie to go down to the front door and demand to know what this assault was all about. At the same time Alice ran to the telephone to call the police to demand emancipation from the renegade band.
The women waited together expecting to be rescued from the blue mob, expecting the good cops to race up Ashland Avenue at any moment to rout the bad cops and berate the thugs for doing such a horrible thing to an already shocked and stunned family, a family no longer having any man living in the house to protect them.
But no good Samaritans showed up.
When Katie opened the door a crack to commence her exchange with the terrorists, she was knocked to the floor by the human wave of the invading army, who forced the door and stepped on her as if she were no more than an obstruent dog.
Fingy Conners & The New Century Page 29