Manhunt. Volume 13, Number 5, September 1965

Beneficiary by Natalie Jenkins Bond

Inspector Guy was no fool. He wasn’t about to be taken in by a three time beneficiary... even if she was an attractive widow like Mary McCall.

There is a certain tenement building on Second Avenue near 51st Street that should be torn down. And salt poured on the ground where it stood so no greedy landlord could ever again raise such a structure to house suffering humanity.

Inside is a long, dark narrow hallway that runs the length of the budding. Near the front door is a steep staircase that rises from the first floor to the third in a diagonal line. At the second floor there is a break in the banister where a tiny landing allows the tenants of the floor to get off... or those on the third floor to catch their breath before they resume the tortuous ascent.

The apartments are laid out two to a floor; a front and a back. They are exactly alike; each boasting three rooms... a kitchen, a bedroom and a “parlor.”

The kitchen is long and skinny with a single window opening onto an airshaft. There is a wooden icebox and two sanitary washtubs which are mere camouflage. When the tin top is lifted they are one tub, large enough for an adult to climb into and take a bath. Next to the tub is an early model, rusty gas range. And beyond that a sink, with a single gooseneck brass faucet from which only cold water has ever spouted.

A closet in the hall on each floor encloses a community toilet.

It is hard to believe that love could flourish in such surroundings. But the testimony of the neighbors was unanimous that attractive Mary McCall had loved Michael; so dearly, in fact, that when Michael fell down the stairway and broke his neck, the shock of losing him had caused her baby to be born prematurely. It became a puny child with none of the healthy beauty of her two older children.

It was strange that after the tragedy Mary remained in the squalid flat. Perhaps it was apathy. She rented the “parlor” to Eric Swenson, who had been Michael’s friend. Eric, a seaman in the Merchant Marine, was away a good part of the time. So Mary had the use of the parlor and the rent of it as well.

Eric was in port on Thanksgiving Day. And it was he who provided the plump capon for the feast, as well as a bottle of sherry. Mary gravely poured the sherry into wineglasses for herself and Eric and mixed some with water for the children.

The wine brought a glow to Mary’s face. Her large, sad eyes lost their usual look and shone brightly. Also she became more talkative.

“This is the first celebration I’ve had since Michael’s death,” she told Eric. As she spoke Michael’s name, her voice faltered.

Eric had carefully avoided this subject. Now he ventured timidly: “It’s queer about him falling down those stairs... but he did take a drop too much, now and then.”

“He was as sober as could be, though he had been drinking a bit the night before,” Mary said. “Michael was not one to start the day with drink, and it was seven o’clock in the morning, when he fell.”

“There ought to be a law against stairs like those,” said Eric. “It’s a wonder it hasn’t happened before.”

“He called them ‘the stairway to Paradise.’” Her lovely eyes became filmed with tears and her voice thickened as she added: “It left me nothing to live for... except the baby. That’s what kept me alive... that little bit of Michael... like a gift from the grave.”

Eric was suddenly conscious of Diedre, Mary’s ten-year-old daughter, whose face had paled. And whose large blue eyes, so like her mother’s, were wide open with a strange, lost look.

“You had me Mummie,” she whispered.

“Yes, dear,” her mother said, “of course.”

Mary’s other child, Sean, said nothing. He sat with his heavy dark brows drawn together and his eyes lowered to his plate.

Mary glanced at the clock. “It’s past baby’s feeding time. I’m surprised she hasn’t begun to cry.” Mary was silent for a moment. “But she didn’t sleep well last night, so I expect she’s making up for it now.”

Mary took a bottle filled with the baby’s formula from the ice-box and placed it in a pan of water on the stove. She tested the warmth of the milk on the back of her wrist and left the room.

Suddenly a scream brought Eric and the two children at the table to their feet.

Each looked at the others blankly for a moment. Then they hurried through the hall to the bedroom where Mary had gone. They found her kneeling on the floor beside the baby, whose face was blue and whose hands, like tiny fans, were spread wide open.

Eric looked around the room, noting the bed with its tall head-board and the crib beside it, with the side down and the baby blankets and sheets tumbled into a mound.

The mother was rocking on her knees, muttering over and over in a high thin voice: “My little baby... my little baby!”

Eric knelt beside her to get a better view of the infant, whose head hung like a flower broken on its stalk. He could see the child was dead. As Mary stretched her hand toward the little body, he caught and held it.

“Don’t touch the baby, dear, wait until the coroner comes.”

At the word “coroner”, Mary became inconsolable. Eric covered the tiny form with a blanket. He took Mary to the “parlor” and seated her in a rocking chair. Her hysteria had given place to a trance-like state, so she offered no resistance.

“I’ll have to go to the police station,” he told the children, who had followed him into the room. “You stay with your mother, and don’t leave her, even for a moment until I get back. I won’t be long. It’s just around the corner.”

At police headquarters downtown, Chief inspector Arthur Guy leaned back in his chair and belched. He had eaten too much Thanksgiving dinner. Much too much. He felt heavy and sleepy. It had been a slow day, so far. He hoped it would continue that way.

At that moment the phone rang...

When the inspector put the telephone back in its cradle, he sighed deeply and scratched his head. He loosened the belt around his huge girth a notch and leaned back. Next, he opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a small box of stomach pills. He popped two in his mouth and chewed them thoughtfully. Then he reached for his hat...

Inside the hall of the tenement house, he looked up the steep stairway and groaned. “It ought to be an escalator,” he said to Morris, the patrolman who accompanied him. “It’s as long as the one at 53rd and Lexington. And that,” he said, staring fiercely at the man, “is the second longest stairway in the world.”

Inspector Guy labored up the stairs, pausing at intervals to groan. When he reached the top, however he became briskly efficient.

The photographers and fingerprint men had come and gone. The coroner was just snapping his bag shut when Guy accosted him:

“What did you find?”

“Murder.” Answered the coroner. “Neck broken.”

“Couldn’t have rolled out and broken its neck?” Asked Guy who was looking from the open sided crib to the tiny body on the floor.

“Could have, but didn’t,” answered the coroner. “Look at the sides of its neck.”

Guy leaned close to the body and saw the thin purple streaks at either side of the small neck and nodded slowly.

“How long?”

“It’s hard to tell. Maybe three hours. My men will come for the body shortly. I’m on my way.”

After the coroner left Guy went into the “parlor” where Mary sat in the rocker, slowly clasping and unclasping her hands. Diedre stood beside her patting her arm. The boy and Eric Swenson sat silently on the daybed.

“I’d like to talk to Mrs. McCall alone.” Said the inspector.

“I’ll take the children for a walk.” Suggested Eric. Then to the bereaved mother, “We’ll be back in half an hour, Mary. Tell the inspector everything you know about this. He wants to help you.”

When they reached the corner, Eric stepped into a small shop for his three ounces of shag, which he put into his tobacco pouch.

“Would you like some candy?” He asked the children, who were patiently standing in the doorway.

“I’d like some bubble gum.” Said Diedre.

“Why does a pretty little girl like you, chew that awful stuff? Oh, well!” Eric bought the gum and gave it to her. The boy could not decide what he wanted, so Eric gave him a quarter, which after a moment of polite hesitation, the lad pocketed.

When they returned later to the parlor, Inspector Guy was still there. He was looking down at Mary. “Was your husband insured?” he asked.

Mary nodded. Her hand was over her mouth so that her words were mumbled: “He belonged to the Longshoremen’s Union. He was insured with them for $5,000.”

“Did he carry any other insurance?”

“Two thousand dollars.” She looked up at him, “I collected double that because he died of an accident.”

The policeman’s eyes narrowed. “What about the baby... was it insured?”

“Yes,” answered the woman, and as though an explanation was necessary: “It’s cheaper to insure children at birth. All the children are insured.”

He waived the insurance on the other children. “How much did you carry on the baby?”

“Five hundred dollars... it only costs twenty five cents a week.”

“The baby’s insurance can’t be collected if the child is under six months old. Isn’t that true?”

She nodded. “But you see, the baby was six months old a week ago.”

“That means your take in insurance pay-offs for this year will be $9,500.” He announced harshly.

She did not answer.

“You are doing pretty well, aren’t you, Mrs. McCall?”

She looked up at him through a veil of tears but she made no reply. For a moment his face softened, but as he turned to the children, who were standing in the doorway with Eric, the grim lines returned to his mouth. His eyes ran over the boy, who stood there in his neat dark blue suit.

“Tell me what you did today from breakfast on, Sean.” His voice softened. The inspector had two boys at home; freckled faced youngsters who played in the Long Island sunshine, and whose well run home was a far cry from this dark tenement flat with its twilight hallways.

Sean schuffed the toe of his shoe against the floor and let his long lashes fall as he answered: “I read the funnies and went to church.”

“Wait a minute, son... what time did you leave for church?”

“I left at 10:30... I sing in the choir... at least I did until today.” He turned to his mother, “I didn’t get a chance to tell you, Mom.”

His mother was looking at him but she gave no sign that she heard him.

The inspector encouraged: “What time was church over?”

The boy looked up sullenly. “At 12:30... but I had to change my clothes again. When I got in the vestry, Father Ryan, the choir master, said he wanted to talk to me. I hung around for some time. He told me he would have to drop me from the choir because my voice is changing. When I got home dinner was ready.”

“Did you go into the bedroom after you came home from church?”

“No. I knew the baby was having her nap.”

“Do you mean you waited over two hours on the father?”

“I waited a long time. He saw several people ahead of me.”

“I can check with Father Ryan. Did you see anyone at all, stranger or otherwise, in the halls or on the stair case today?”

The boy slowly shook his head.

The inspector turned to Diedre: “Tell me what you did today.”

She looked up at him with her clear blue, black lashed eyes, her face so charming framed in its nimbus of pinkish gold curls with the sheen of spun candy, that he added “Honey.”

“After early mass I had breakfast. Then I took a tray of breakfast into Eric.” She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded.

“Then I read the funnies and went to church. I came home ahead of Sean. I walked with Mary Costello. We played hop-scotch.”

She paused to examine the adult faces around her, as though expecting a rebuke. Getting none, she excused herself anyway:

“It isn’t right to play on Sunday. But it isn’t a mortal sin.” Again she looked at the faces about her and seemed crestfallen when no one commented. “Then I came home. Mummie was cooking dinner and I was in the way, so I went out in the hall and played jacks until dinner was ready.”

“Did you see any strange person in the halls or on the stairs?”

She thought this over. Then shook her head.

The inspector started to pick up his hat, but found that it was stuck to the table. He pulled it loose. On the inside of the brim was a chewed piece of bubble gum. At the sight of the gum Mary came to life. “I’ve told you to stop leaving that nasty stuff everywhere!” She approached Diedre and slapped her on the cheek.

The inspector, whose sympathy for Mary was now non-existent, turned and started for the door, pausing as he passed to pat Diedre’s shoulder. “How about walking a ways with me?” He asked Eric.

The Flying Dutchman Tavern stands near 2nd Ave and 51st Street. In spite of its name it’s as Irish as a shellelagh.

“Come in and have a beer,” suggested Eric. “There are a lot of things you will want to ask me and a few I’d like to ask you.”

They went in and sat at the end of the dim, empty bar.

“How long have you known the McCall woman?” Enquired the inspector.

“A little over two years. I met her the night Michael met her.”

Inspector Guy glared at him, his eyes as cold as peeled grapes. “Do you mean to tell me that Michael McCall wasn’t the children’s father?”

“Only the baby’s.”

“Then why didn’t she say so?”

Eric took a long pull on his pipe. “Why didn’t you ask her?”

Guy countered this question with another: “What happened to her first husband? I hope he didn’t fall down the stairs, too.”

“He was drowned in the Mediterranean. He was in the United States Navy... a gunner on a tanker.”

“Don’t tell me... let me guess... he left some insurance!”

“Just what any American widow gets when her husband is killed in action... ten thousand dollars.”

“She’s made this insurance business quite a career, hasn’t she? $19,500 in the past ten years.” He started off on a new tack: “What do you know of the first husband?”

“He was named Sean O’Keefe. He was what is known as a ‘red’ Irishman. That’s where Diedre got her pretty red hair. I’ve heard in this very bar that Mary walked around more than once with a black eye and a banged up face which she got from his fist when he was drunk on a Saturday night.”

“What about the second husband?”

“Michael? It was love at first sight with both of them. We were in New York one night with nothing to do and Michael took me to a dance given by the Catholic Club. That’s where they met.”

“Michael and me shipped out a few days later on the barque Marie Enfield bound for Rio. When we came into port again they were married by the parish priest. I was best man. After his marriage, Michael left the service and got a job as a longshoreman.”

“Where were you seven months ago when Michael fell downstairs?”

“I had shipped out on the freighter Southern Queen. It was a month after his death when I returned to port. That’s when I learned of it.

“I called to see Mary. I didn’t know how she was fixed, so I offered to rent the front room. I thought she might need the money... and it’s as much a home as I ever had.”

Guy eyed the tall blond Scandinavian over his beer. “How do you feel about Mary McCall?” He asked archly. “In love with her?”

Eric did not answer the question directly. “I feel that she never killed her man,” he said, “nor her baby.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to marry a pretty widow, would it?” He urged. “Especially one with a dot of $19,500. By the way, what did YOU do today?”

“I’d had more than a drop last night. Not too much but too long. I got home about three o’clock. Diedre woke me at nine with the breakfast tray. I ate the breakfast and cleaned the room. Sometimes on a Sunday Mary likes to sit in there, it being the parlor. I woke in time to shave and dress for dinner, which was at three.”

“You wouldn’t be above marrying for her money?” Asked Guy for the second time.

The Scandinavian took a well-worn wallet from his pocket from which he extracted an equally well-worn bank book. He held out the book to the inspector, who saw that the sum of $26,000 was deposited in the savings department of the Corn Exchange Bank to the credit of Eric Swenson.

“I’m going to make my will,” said Eric, “I’ve no near kin and I’d as soon leave it to Mary as not.”

“The more fool you,” said Guy, who finished his beer and returned to the tenement house, where he opened the lock of the third floor back apartment with a skeleton key.

Then Guy knew why no one had answered his knock. The kitchen showed evidence of a fire that had wrecked it so badly that he wondered why it hadn’t swept through the whole building. Probably, he thought sourly, the fates didn’t think the building worth burning.

An elderly Jewish couple lived on the second floor front. The type who keep to themselves.

“Poor woman,” said the old man when he heard the news, “it is hard.” But no, he had seen no one in the halls. It was so dark on the staircase and his eyes were not too good. Berta, his wife wrung her hands and asked the inspector to stop by on his way up for some good hot soup to take to Mary to “keep her strength up, poor thing.”

The second floor rear was occupied by a young woman of such easy virtue that she thought Guy had come to pick her up for her nightly activities. When she discovered that he was not interested in her personal life, she was anxious to help. But she had nothing to tell him beside the fact that the people on the first floor front were away for the day, spending the holiday with relatives in Newark.

She, herself, had spent the night in the Bronx with a girl friend and had only returned a few minutes earlier. Which was obviously true, for her hat and coat were still on a chair with wet galoshes beside it.

There remained only the first floor rear apartment which was occupied by a pair of unsavory young men. They had repainted the walls a brilliant shocking pink and furnished it in modern black furniture. These two assured the inspector that they had nothing at all to do with the inmates of the house.

It was not until the next day that Inspector Guy got around to St. Mary’s and All Angel’s Parochial School.

Sister Scholastica, whose countenance shone with that well scrubbed look that so many nuns have, said in answer to a question about Mary: “She’s a good woman, who has had a very sad life. Her first husband was not a good man. He drank and was abusive. And her second husband died of an accident. I sometimes think she neglects the older children for the baby. But it is true a small infant needs a lot of care.”

She looked at the inspector with the candid gaze of a child, as she continued: “She nearly went mad when the tragedy happened... and she saw him lying there... she tried to jump after him...”

“Tell me about the children.”

Her face brightened and a tender smile played about her mouth. “Sean is a fine boy. He is a good student and a good son.”

“And Diedre?”

“You’ve seen her? She is the nearest thing to an angel one can see on this earth. She gives me less trouble than any of the children... but she is lonely. She loves her mother very much...”

A visit to Father Ryan elicited the information that Sean had left the vestry about 2:30 the past Thanksgiving. The boy was truthful, Father Ryan said, but shy. He was quiet and not popular with the other boys.

A week later Eric called at downtown headquarters for permission to ship out on the Mohawk for Panama. Guy had no reason to detain him. Certainly no evidence that a grand jury would consider. So he told him to go.

Guy had nothing on anyone. The finger print tests had merely shown the prints of Mary, Sean and Diedre in the bedroom and they had every right to be there.

The baby’s death was still unsolved when Eric walked into Inspector Guy’s office two weeks later. “I hate to report this,” the Scandinavian said heavily, “but it’s for Mary’s sake as well as mine that we get it straightened out.”

“What are you driving at?” enquired Guy.

Eric hesitated, then cleared his throat and said: “I came into Port three days ago. Since then I have missed money twice.”

“Sure you didn’t lose it?”

Eric shook his head slowly. “Tuesday I put forty dollars in my bank book and put the book where I always put it... in a tin box in the dresser drawer. Wednesday the money was gone but the book was where I had left it. Last night I put a hundred and ten dollars in the book and put it, as before in the tin box in the drawer. I did not leave the room after I put the money there. This morning the money was missing again.”

That was on Friday, just three days before Christmas. The inspector sent two of his best detectives, who went over the flat with a fine tooth comb; but with no result. Mary, Sean and Diedre were questioned carefully. No one knew anything. They all agreed that they had seen no stranger in the halls.

Guy began to wonder if the money had really been stolen. There was only Eric’s word for it and Eric was by no means in the clear. The fact that he was in love with and wanted to marry Mary gave him the only motive besides the insurance motive that had come to light.

And if Eric planned to marry Mary, the insurance motive could be ascribed to him as well as Mary. It was true that he could not have killed Michael because he was thousands of miles away at the time; Guy had checked with the Maritime Office and his papers were in order. But there was nothing to show that Michael’s death was not an accident. Insurance companies do not pay out money if there is the slightest chance of foul play without first investigating carefully. And this policy had been paid.

In the baby’s case it was possible that Eric had not wanted to bring up another man’s child and had used murder as the means of avoiding it. Also, he may have thought that with the baby out of the way, Mary might turn to him, as indeed, it seemed she had.

Suppose Eric had murdered the baby... he might also want to get rid of the other children... and they too, were insured. It was the thought of Diedre that decided him to arrest Eric on suspicion of murder.

As the inspector rode uptown, gaily decorated Christmas trees shone through windows and occasionally snatches of Christmas carols could be heard.

There was a crowd in front of the tenement and a uniformed policeman was pushing it back from the doorway. Guy elbowed his way through the doorway into the hall. In the dim light he could see a man’s body, lying midway on the stairs, his foot caught in the banisters.

Mary McCall was bending over the figure wringing her hands.

For once, the inspector got up those stairs in record time. It was Eric who was lying there with his head at an impossible angle.

“Get upstairs,” he said harshly to Mary. “And stay in your apartment.”

He motioned to the policeman who was valiantly trying to get the crowd out of the doorway. “Arrest anyone who doesn’t go home quietly,” he said. “And go outside and telephone your report to headquarters.”

Guy cursed himself for not having arrested Eric sooner. At least he would now be alive.

When the coroner arrived the inspector went upstairs to the third floor. Mary stood in the kitchen doorway her hand over her heart.

Her pose disgusted him. “Congratulations,” he said. “You have now collected forty five thousand dollars. A banner year, I’d say.”

“I didn’t do it,” she whispered. “We were going to be married.”

He pushed his face forward like an angry bulldog. “I know, that’s how you got him to will you his savings.” He turned to one of the several policemen who were now in the upper hall. “Take this woman to headquarters for questioning.”

“What about the children?” She asked tremulously.

He snatched the camel’s hair coat that hung on a nail on the kitchen door and thrust it at her. She left with the police officer.

When Diedre saw her mother go down the stairs with the policeman, she burst into tears. The inspector put his arm around her and patted her shoulder. “You mustn’t cry,” he said, “you must be a big girl.”

But the child beat her tiny fists against him and wept for her mother.

“Tell me where you and your mother were when Eric fell downstairs.”

“We were in the kitchen,” she sobbed. “Sean, Mummie and me. Eric went down to get some more wine.”

It was a darn shame about the children, thought the inspector. But they would be better off in a home than living with a woman like their mother.

He stood at the top of the stairs and stared at the long expanse of steps going down, down into the dimness. Then he spoke to Patrolman Morris, who stood beside him: “Get the longest electric light cord you can find and the strongest bulb. We are going to tear these stairs apart.”

When the length of cord with the bulb on one end and the socket on the other was screwed into the wall the stairs sprang into brilliant sharpness. The two men got down on their knees, examining banisters and steps, inch by inch.

Their examination showed nothing more than an occasional knothole in the worn wood of the treads. There was a large one on the third step from the top. Guy paused to run his hand over this knothole. It was flush with the wood but there was a small hole about a quarter of an inch in diameter at one end. He slipped his penknife in the hole and the entire knothole lifted easily.

As he lifted it up he saw the edge of currency at one side of the hole. He put his fingers in and pulled at the money. When he got it out he saw that it had been held in place by a wad of bubble gum.

He looked though the uprights of the banisters into the lovely eyes of Diedre. “Get your coat child,” he said heavily, “and come with me.”

As they drove downtown Diedre told him in her soft little confiding voice how much she loved her mother... and what fun they had had going to picnics and movies... of how she had told them stories after they went to bed... until she married Michael.

“Then she acted like Sean and I weren’t there at all. It was always: ‘run away and play’. Last spring I was going to have a birthday party with a cake and candles... and four girls in my class were coming to my party. But Michael wanted Mummie to go out with him... So Mummie gave me five dollars and told me to take the girls to the movies and buy them ice cream instead.”

Diedre looked at Guy gravely. “It wasn’t the same,” she sighed.

“That night Mummie told Michael that they were selfish and I should have had my party. But Michael said: ‘with that face she’ll have anything she wants in a few years.’

“It made me mad.”

When her mother made her run away and play, she had been in the habit of sitting on the stairs outside the apartment. One day while she was playing jacks, she had discovered the loose knothole.

“I could lift it out with my little finger.” She held up a tiny digit, so that the inspector saw that indeed, she.....could.

“The next morning when I came home from early mass, I was still mad with Michael.”

She had sat on the steps, thinking about her spoiled birthday and her finger had found the knothole. “I pulled it up and pushed it back sideways and thought: ‘He can just step around it. But he didn’t step around it.’” She looked up at Guy as though she had just said “Amen.”

“We were real happy for awhile,” she went on. “And then things were worse than ever after the baby came. Mummie didn’t pay any attention to Sean and me. She was always with the baby... such an ugly little baby!”

“On Thanksgiving Day, when Mummie was cooking dinner, she told me to run out and play. I sat on the steps for awhile... and then went into Eric’s room. But he was asleep. So I went into the bedroom. The baby was asleep. I stood and looked at her... such an ugly little baby! I squeezed the baby’s neck because I was mad because Mummie loved her more than me. I guess I squeezed harder than I meant to because the baby’s head fell back real queer and I became frightened. I put her on the floor so that people would think that she fell out of her crib...”

The charming little face, framed in its aura of pinkish gold looked at the inspector pathetically:

“But it didn’t do any good... Eric was always there... So she didn’t have time for Sean and me. Then he went away, but he came back again. I tried to make him angry by taking his money. I knew where he kept it because I watched. When he slept, he snored. So I went in while he was snoring and took the money out of the book in the box in his dresser drawer. I hid the money under the step, because I could not spend stolen money. That,” she said primly, “would be a mortal sin.

“I thought then he might go away. But last night, he told Sean and me that he was going to marry Mummie...”

She put her soft little hand in Guy’s.

“Where are you taking me?” She asked trustingly.

But he was too appalled to answer.