The Interpretation Of Murder (23 page)

    No one sought to obstruct Littlemore
this time as he climbed the stairs at 782 Eighth Avenue. It was four o'clock -
dinner preparation hour at the restaurant, from which came shrieks of
Cantonese, punctuated by the sizzling hiss of chicken parts plunged into
burning oil. Littlemore, who hadn't eaten since morning, wouldn't have minded some
pork chop suey himself. He felt eyes upon him at every landing but saw no one.
He heard someone running in a hallway above and a whispering of voices. At
Apartment 4C, his knock yielded the same result it had before: nothing but the
sound of hurried footfalls retreating down the back stairs.

    Littlemore looked at his watch. He
lit a cigarette to combat the odors wafting through the corridor, hoping he
would get to Betty's in time to ask her to dinner. A few minutes later, Officer
John Reardon came trooping up the stairs with a submissive, frightened Chinese
man in tow. 'Just like you said, Detective,' said Officer Reardon. 'Barreled
out the back door like his pants were on fire.'

    Littlemore surveyed the miserable Chong
Sing. 'Don't want to talk to me, Mr Chong, do you?' he asked. 'Suppose we have
a look around your place. Open up.'

    Chong Sing was much shorter than
Littlemore or Reardon. He was of stocky build, with a flat, broad nose and
rutted skin. He gestured helplessly, trying to indicate that he spoke no
English.

    'Open it,' Littlemore commanded,
banging on the locked door.

    The Chinaman produced a key and
opened the door. His one-room apartment was a model of order and cleanliness.
There was not a mote of dust or a teacup out of place. Two low cots, with seedy
coverings, apparently did triple duty as beds, sofas, and tables. The walls
were bare. Several sets of incense sticks burned in one corner, giving an acrid
tang to the hot, motionless air.

    'All cleaned up for us,' said
Littlemore, taking it in. 'Thoughtful. Missed a spot, though.' With an uptick
of his chin, Littlemore signaled overhead. Both Chong Sing and Officer Reardon
looked up. On the low ceiling was a thick blackish smudge, almost three feet in
length, over each of the two cots.

    'What's that?' asked the policeman.

    'Smoke stain,' answered Littlemore.
'Opium. Jack, you notice anything funny about that window?'

    Reardon glanced at the room's one
small casement window, which was closed. 'No. What about it?' he asked.

    'It's closed,' answered Littlemore.
'A hundred degrees, and the window's closed. See what's outside.'

    Reardon opened the window and leaned
out into a narrow airshaft. He returned with an armful of items he found on a
ledge underneath: a glass-covered oil lamp, half a dozen long pipes, bowls, and
a needle. Chong Sing appeared to be in complete confusion, shaking his head,

    looking from the detective to the
police officer and back to the detective.

    'You run an opium joint here, don't
you, Mr Chong?' said the detective. 'You ever go up to. Miss Riverford's
apartment at the Balmoral?'

    'Hah?' said Chong Sing, shrugging
helplessly.

    'How'd you get red clay on your
shoes?' the detective persevered.

    'Hah?'

    'Jack,' said Littlemore, 'take Mr
Chong to the lock-up at Forty-seventh. Tell Captain Post he's an opium dealer.'

    When Officer Reardon seized him by
the arm, Chong spoke at last. 'Wait. I tell you. I only live in apartment in
daytime. I don't know opium. I never see opium before.'

    'Sure,' said Littlemore. 'Get him out
of here, Jack.'

    'Hokay, hokay,' said Chong. 'I tell
you who sells opium. Hokay?'

    'Get him out of here,' said the
detective.

    At the sight of Reardon's handcuffs,
Chong cried out, 'Wait! I tell you something else. I show you something. You
follow me hallway. I show you what you looking for.'

    Chong's voice had changed. He sounded
genuinely afraid now. Littlemore signaled Reardon to let Chong precede them
into the dark, narrow corridor. From two flights below, the clattering of the
restaurant could still be heard, and as they followed the Chinaman down the
hall, past the stairwell, Littlemore began to hear the twanging, dissonant
chords of Chinese string music. The smell of meat grew stronger. Every door was
slivered open to allow the residents within to observe the goings-on - every
door but one. The lone closed door belonged to the room at the farthest end of
the corridor. Here Chong stopped. 'Inside,' he said. 'Inside.'

    'Who lives here?' asked the
detective.

    'My cousin,' said Chong. 'Leon. He
live here before. Now no one.'

    The door was locked. There was no
response to Littlemore s knock, but the moment the detective got close enough
to rap his knuckles, he knew the overpowering meat odor was not coming from the
restaurant after all. He drew from his pocket two thin metal picks. Littlemore
was adept with locked doors. He had this one open in short order.

    The room, though identical in size,
contrasted in every other way with Chong Sing's. Gaudy red ornaments adorned
every surface. A dozen vases, large and small, were scattered about, most of
them carved in the form of dragons and demons. On the windowsill was a
lacquered rouge box, with a round face mirror perched behind it; on a dresser,
a painted statuette of the Virgin and Child. Nearly every square inch of wall
was covered with framed photographs, all depicting a Chinese man who himself
offered a stark contrast to Chong Sing. The man in the photographs was tall and
arrestingly handsome, with an aquiline nose and a smooth, unblemished
complexion. He wore an American jacket, shirt, and tie. Nearly all the pictures
showed this man with young women - different young women.

    What most commanded attention,
however, was a single massive object planted squarely in the center of the
room: a large closed trunk. It was the kind of trunk that well- to-do travelers
use, with leather sides and brass hinges. Its dimensions were these: two feet
in height, two in depth, three in length. Coils of stiff awning rope bound it
shut.

    The air was fetid. Littlemore could
hardly breathe. The Chinese music was coming from the room directly above them;
the detective found it difficult to think. The trunk seemed, impossibly, to be
rippling in the thick atmosphere. Littlemore opened his pocket knife. Officer
Reardon had one too. Together, wordlessly, they approached the chest and began
to saw at the heavy ropes. A crowd of Chinese, many with handkerchiefs pressed
against their mouths, gathered at the doorway to watch.

    'Put your knife away, Jack,' said
Littlemore to Officer Reardon. 'Just keep your eye on Chong.'

    The detective worked at the ropes.
When he severed the last coil, the lid of the trunk burst open. Reardon staggered
back, either from surprise or from the explosion of rank gas that escaped from
the trunk's interior. Littlemore covered his mouth with his sleeve but remained
where he was. Inside the chest were three things: a ladies' hat crowned with a
stuffed bird; a thick stack of letters and envelopes tied together with string;
and the crumpled body of a young woman, viciously decomposed, clad only in
under- things, a silver pendant on her chest and a white silk tie tightly wound
around her neck.

    Officer Reardon was no longer keeping
an eye on Chong Sing. Instead he was close to passing out. Seeing this, Chong
slipped back into the crowd of murmuring Chinese and out the open door.

    We trudged silently up the four
flights of stairs to Brill's apartment, each of us wondering, I assume, how to
respond to the difficulties in Worcester. We had several hours to spend before
a dinner party to which Smith Jelliffe, Brill's publisher, had invited us. At
the fifth-floor landing, Ferenczi commented on a peculiar smell of burning
leaves or paper. 'Someone is maybe cremating a dead person in their kitchen?'
he suggested helpfully.

    Brill opened his door. What we saw
inside was unexpected.

    It was snowing inside Brill's
apartment - or seemed to be. A fine white dust drifted about the room, swirling
in the air currents created by our opening the door; the floor was covered with
the stuff. All of Brill's books, together with the tables, windowsills, and
chairs, were coated. The smell of fire was everywhere. Rose Brill stood in the
middle of the room with broom and dustpan, covered head to foot in a white
rime, sweeping up as much as she could.

    'I just got here,' she cried. 'Shut
the door, for heaven's sake. What is it?'

    I gathered some in my hands. 'It's
ash,' I said.

    'You left something cooking?'
Ferenczi asked her.

    'Nothing,' she answered, brushing the
white grains from her eyes.

    'Someone put it here,' said Brill. He
wandered about the room in a trance, his hands outstretched before him,
alternately grabbing at the ash and waving it away. Suddenly he turned to Rose.
'Look at her. Look at her.'

    'What is it?' asked Freud.

    'She's a pillar of salt.'

    When Captain Post arrived with
reinforcements from the West Forty-seventh Street station, he ordered - over
Detective Littlemore's objections - the arrest of a half dozen Chinese men at
782 Eighth Avenue, including the manager of the restaurant and two patrons who
had the misfortune to come upstairs to see what the commotion was. The body was
carted off to the morgue and a double manhunt begun.

    Littlemore's first thought was that
he had found Elizabeth Riverford's missing corpse, but there was too much
decomposition. He was no pathologist, but he doubted Miss Riverford, murdered
on Sunday night, could have putrefied so thoroughly by Wednesday. Mr Hugel,
thought Littlemore, would know for sure.

    Meanwhile, the detective went through
the letters he had found inside the trunk. They were love letters, more than
thirty of them. All began
Dearest Leon;
all were signed
Elsie.
Neighbors differed on the name of the room's inhabitant. Some called him Leon
Ling; others said he went by William Leon. He managed a Chinatown restaurant,
but no one had seen him for a month. He spoke excellent English and wore only
American suits.

    Littlemore examined the photographs
hanging on the walls. The building's occupants confirmed that the man in the
pictures was Leon, but they did not know or would not say who the women were.
Littlemore noticed that every single woman was white. Then he noticed something
else.

    The detective took down one of the
photographs. It showed Leon standing, smiling, between two very attractive
young women. At first the detective thought he must be mistaken. When he was
convinced he was not, he put the picture into his vest pocket, made an
arrangement to meet Captain Post the next day, and left the building.

    The late afternoon air was still
uncomfortably hot and muggy, but it was like a heavenly garden compared to the
chamber from which Littlemore emerged. It was just past five when he got to
Betty's apartment. She wasn't home. Her mother tried frantically to make the
detective understand where 'Benedetta' was, but as the woman was speaking
Italian, and rapidly at that, he could make neither heads nor tails of it. At
last, one of Betty's little brothers came to the door and translated: Betty was
in jail.

    All Mrs Longobardi knew - because a
nice Jewish girl had come to tell her - was that there had been trouble at the
factory where Betty started work today. Some of the girls had been taken away,
including Betty. 'Taken away?' asked Littlemore. 'Where?'

    The mother didn't know.

    Littlemore ran to the Fifty-ninth
Street subway station. He stood all the way downtown, too worked up to take a
seat. At police headquarters, he learned that strikers had hit one of the big
garment factories in Greenwich Village, picketers had started smashing windows,
and the police had arrested the worst couple dozen of them to clear the
streets. All the rowdies were now in jail. The men were being held in the
Tombs, the girls at the Jefferson Market.