Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

As he waited for Mrs. O'Rourke, the cleaning woman, to arrive. Schroeder wandered about Hendryx's apartment, trying to get the feel of the place and the man who had occupied it.

A rental agent would have listed it as a three-room apartment although a prospective tenant would have countered that the kitchen was tiny and that one of the rooms was little more than a closet, the smaller room evidently had been the professor's workroom, because it contained his desk, chair, and a bookcase, the other room was of decent size and served as both bedroom and living room, with a large studio couch, bureau. TV, rocker, and an oversize easy chair of simulated leather with a matching hassock. Beside the chair stood a large mahogany smoking stand, the large glass ashtray contained a pipe and the half-dozen burned kitchen matches used to light it, a book, open, rested face down on one of the broad arms of the chair. On a side table were several books between bronze bookends, a large brass bowl, and a pipe rack with five pipes lined up in the half-dozen slots. Schroeder went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It contained a carton of milk, a package of bacon, a box of eggs, and some processed cheese. Obviously the professor took breakfast at home and relied on restaurants or the faculty cafeteria for the rest of his meals.

He stepped out of the apartment and walked down a short, dimly lit corridor to the rear door leading to the alley outside, the door was not locked, the key found in Hendryx's coat pocket opened not only the apartment but the front door to the building as well. It never failed to amaze him how people could be so careful about security at one point and downright careless at another, like installing special locks on a door and then using a cheap latch that could be easily forced on street-level windows.

He returned to the apartment and began to go over it more systematically, apparently Hendryx had been neat and methodical. His clothes hung neatly in his closet, the bureau containing his linen was tidy. In a shallow top drawer he kept handkerchiefs and a tray of the usual men's appurtenances— cufflinks, tie clips, a couple of discarded cigarette lighters, a billfold evidently no longer used, a wristwatch and a pocket watch, and a little glass dish with less than a dollar's worth of change, the next drawer contained his shirts, the next his underwear, shirts, shorts, and socks, each separated from each other by thin wooden dividers, then a drawer for his pajamas, the bottom drawer was empty, he decided that Hendryx was a man who didn't like to bend over unless he had to.

The desk was equally well organized with drawers full of notes and manuscripts, the latter in folders with the subject matter carefully inked on the tabs

.A police car delivered Mrs. O'Rourke, a thin, hardworking woman, close to sixty, although the day was quite warm, she wore a heavy imitation fur coat and a shapeless hat of crocheted purple wool.

"Just a few questions," he said. "You were working here Friday?"

"Yes, sir."

"What time did you arrive?"

"Around ten I got here, a few minutes before or a few after. I'm not sure. I plan to come at ten, but it depends on the bus."

"And when did you depart?"

"A little before three, sir, maybe as early as a quarter of."

"Are you sure? Now I want you to think carefully. It's important,” he said, with this type you had to be stern to insure exactness.

"Yes, sir. I plan to make the three o'clock bus at the comer, so I always try to leave a few minutes before, or else I have to wait sometimes as much as half an hour. Isn't it terrible the way the buses run?"

"Yes, yes, and you made the three o'clock bus?"

"Yes, sir. I made it in time."

"All right. What did you do here in the apartment?"

She looked at him in mild surprise. "Why, I clean the place up. I dust and vacuum. I polish the furniture. I make the bed. I wash the tub. I clean the whole place up."

"You straighten out the things in the bureau?"

"I do not, sir," she said indignantly. "I don't open the drawers, and no one can say I did. Professor Hendryx told me not to touch anything in the bureau or his desk and I don't, just the things on top like his comb and brushes, so I can dust and polish."

"All right. Mrs. O'Rourke. I was just asking. So you left the place exactly as it is now."

"Oh no," she protested. "I wouldn't leave the ashes and burned matches in the ashtray, and if there's a book open like that. I'd put it back. But I didn't because there was no book there." She looked about. "And the hassock. I always put it in front of the TV there because the way it is now it would get in my way."

"Just a minute, are you saying that someone was in here after you left?"

"Oh no, just Professor Hendryx, he was always dodging back and forth between here and the school." She sighed. "If he'd only staved here, he would have been alive today, the poor gentleman. Isn't it terrible the way the students behave these days?"