Corpus Christmas

Bernie Peters returned with some names he’d dug out of public records. Now that his infant son was finally sleeping through the nights, he seemed to have more energy for work again.

“That block was mostly Polish and Ukrainian in the thirties,” he said. “Still is, to some extent.”

By cross-referencing real estate and tax records, he’d learned that the house was sold in 1934 to a Gregor Jurczyk, who’d converted it to an eight-unit tenement. Old telephone directories turned up a single telephone listed in Jurczyk’s name, at that address, until he died in 1963 and left the house to his sisters, Angelika Jurczyk and Barbara Jurczyk Zajdowicz. Even after his death, the telephone continued to be listed in his name until 1971, which would lead one to believe at least one of his sisters was still in residence there until the property was sold to a developer who went bankrupt in 1972, at which time the house was taken over by a bank.

“And after that I didn’t bother,” said Peters. “I called a friend of mine in Vital Records. Angelika Jurczyk died in 1970, age sixty-seven. No death record for Barbara Zajdowicz.”

Sigrid jotted the figures down on her pad. “That would have made her forty-four in 1947 when the last infant was put in that trunk. Any idea of the age of her sister?”

Before Peters could answer, they were abruptly interrupted. A patrol officer in Sussex Square had requested the assistance of investigators at the Erich Breul House where a dead male had been discovered.

“Where?” Sigrid asked, startled.

“ Sussex Square,” Elaine Albee repeated. “Wasn’t that where you were last night?”

Patrol cars had driven up onto the bricked walk around Sussex Square and eight or ten uniformed officers clogged the doorway when Sigrid arrived with her team.

“Too many u

Detective Third Grade Michael Cluett was an old-timer from Brooklyn who’d been wished on her by Captain McKi

Dr. Benjamin Peake was speaking to a uniformed officer at the rear of the hall and his handsome face grew bewildered at the sight of Sigrid.

“Miss Harald!” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid we’re closed-”

“Lieutenant Harald,” she said, pointing to her badge. She was almost as surprised to see him. They’d been told only that a man had been found dead under suspicious circumstances at the Breul House, not who the man was, and for no good reason she’d halfway expected it to be Peake. “Who-?” she asked him.

“Dr. Shambley. A dreadful accident. Dreadful. Fell down the attic stairs. I’ll show you, ” Peake said.

“That won’t be necessary,” Sigrid told him.

Elaine Albee was beside her as she started up the wide marble staircase. “This is one of the places I keep meaning to come see,” said the younger woman. She noticed the rich details of the dress worn by the female dummy on the landing. “How did Breul make his money? Railroads? Oil?”

“Canal barges, I think,” Sigrid said, threading her way past the uniformed officers who loitered in the second-floor hallway frankly sight-seeing at the moment. She could only hope they’d had the sense to keep their feet out the actual crime scene.

“That’s nice stained glass,” Albee said, pausing beneath the oval Tiffany window where spring flowers blossomed on this December day.

Tiffany glass seldom appealed to Sigrid and she didn’t break her stride as she continued up the last flight of steps to the third floor.

“Through there, Lieutenant,” said a patrol officer, who was posted to limit access to the rear half of the third floor.

They passed through the frosted glass doors which were blocked open and at the end of the hall found Officer Paula Guidry already photographing the body, which lay sprawled on the bare floor at the base of some steep wooden steps. A frosted glass window high in the rear wall flooded the area with cold north light.

Across the wide landing, a ma

Sigrid was glad to see that the end of the hall was roped off and that everyone seemed to be respecting the integrity of the crime scene. “Who was responding officer?” she asked.

A uniformed patrolman in his late twenties stepped forward. “Officer Dan Monte, ma’am.”

Without being asked, he flipped open his notebook and described how he’d been dispatched to number 7 Sussex Square in response to a call placed by a Miss Hope Ruffton, the secretary here.

“This place opens at ten a.m. and a Mrs. Eloise Beardsley- I think she’s a volunteer-came upstairs at approximately ten forty-five and discovered the body lying face down just as you see it. She said she tried to find a pulse, then realized the individual was dead.”

Officer Monte had arrived at 10:57, observed certain inconsistencies, and immediately requested investigators.

“What inconsistencies?” asked Jim Lowry.

“Not enough blood,” the patrol officer replied succinctly. “You can see from here-the back of his head’s pretty messed up and blood’s clotted in his hair, but it didn’t run down his face and there’s none on the floor beside his head. The stairs are bare wood and I guess he could have hit his head on one of the sharp edges coming down, but again, no blood.”

Sigrid watched as Guidry indicated she’d taken enough pictures of the body and its immediate surroundings. While the photographer waited for someone from the medical examiner’s office to turn it over, the crime scene unit began processing the area around the body.

“Who was in the house when you arrived?” Sigrid asked.

“Just the secretary, the Beardsley woman, the live-in janitor, and the director,” answered Monte. “They’re all downstairs. The ambulance crew got here at eleven oh-two and confirmed death.”

For a moment, Sigrid almost forgot and looked around for Tillie, the officer on whom she most relied, the one who usually acted as her recorder and could be trusted to note every minute detail.

Unfortunately, Detective Tildon was still recovering from the bomb blast that had nearly killed him in October. He was home from the hospital now and healing nicely, but was not expected back at work till next month. Mick Cluett was certainly no substitute and Albee was already catching her share on other cases. Sigrid told Lowry he’d won recorder’s job and the younger man gave a mock groan as he continued to measure distances for sketching the scene.

Bernie Peters, directing the application of fingerprint powder on the stair rail, gri

Cohen arrived from the medical examiner’s office and greeted her sardonically. “We gotta quit meeting like this, Lieutenant.”

A few minutes later, he’d agreed with Officer Monte’s suspicions. “Lividity’s not much help if he was moved within a half-hour of death, but that wound bled like hell and there ought to be a puddle under his head. He didn’t die face down though. And see this?”

Cohen pulled back the collar of Shambley’s shirt and Sigrid saw that a thin trickle of blood had run down inside to his back.

She nodded thoughtfully. “So he was upright when he received the wound?”

Cohen shrugged. “He did most of his bleeding while lying supine; but yeah, I’d guess the blow came while he was sitting or standing.”

“He didn’t hurt himself in a fall?”

“Maybe. But I can’t see him standing up again after getting this wound, so how’d blood run straight down his neck?”