“Impossible,” insisted Kern. “Or at least I can’t see how. As for the letter opener, until yesterday I assumed I’d accidentally knocked it off the table into the wastebasket and it’d been thrown out with the trash. And I figured the poor cat had darted past me out the door one morning when I left for work.”
Kern thought for a moment before continuing. “Let me describe my situation. I live in an old Brooklyn Heights brownstone which my family purchased as a rental property some years ago. Do you know the type, two apartments per floor, each running the length of the building from front to back, five or six floors a building?”
“Thirty-eight years ago, in graduate school, I shared a fourth-floor walk-up just like that,” said Wallis.
“Good,” said Kern. “Well, I kept the upper floor for my own use, meaning to turn one apartment into my office and workshop and the other my living quarters. But I’m a light sleeper and the street traffic is noisy even at night. So I decided to put my place of business in the front and the living quarters in the back. My study, which you see here, and my bedroom are side by side at the rear of the building where the kitchens of the two apartments had been located.”
He turned back to the miniature room. “I had the study done in the Rococo-Revival style popular just before the Civil War. The wallpaper is a Birge architectural pattern called ‘Victorian.’ The fireplace in the wall is open on both sides, cheering both the study and my bedroom. A clever touch, I thought.”
“I admire the brocade dressing gown,” said Polly.
“Thank you. Ironically enough, it’s from Tom Thumb’s Secret, a mail-order house specializing in doll apparel. I liked it so much I had my tailor copy it full-size.”
“Is that a portable television next to the overturned brandy glass?” asked Polly.
“I think that’s this,” said Kern, tapping the miniature room with his pen.
“It does get a bit confusing,” said Polly.
“And what about security?” asked Wallis.
“I was just getting to that,” said Kern, adding, “When a madman has a grudge against you, you can’t be too careful.” He began counting things off on his fingers. “The apartment’s exterior door is steel with an anti-jimmy plate and two locks, a vertical deadbolt lock with a pick-resistant cylinder and a mortise lock. The windows are gated with iron bars. And there’s a perimeter alarm, a circuit routed through foil tape on the window glass and a magnetic catch on the door. Break the circuit and an alarm sounds at my security company’s office.”
“Ah, life in the big city,” remembered Wallis.
“They recommended a space alarm, too,” said Kern, “a sonic device to detect an intruder. But my cat was a curious little creature. She would have set it off, poking her nose in everywhere.” When he paused Polly could see he missed the cat. “And, oh,” he said, returning to the matter at hand, “after the business with the police over Chapman’s letter I had a security expert come in and tap around for secret entrances.”
“Cat ladders,” said Polly quickly.
Kern blinked and turned red, as if he’d been accused of talking hog-wash or horsefeathers.
“Your cat’s missing and you’ve got a fireplace,” explained Polly. “It made me think of cat ladders. In New England, way back when, they’d lean a board with strips nailed across its width in the flue during the months when the fireplace wasn’t in use. If a cat got shut up inside a room it could escape up the chimney to the fireplace in the room above.”
“But I don’t have a chimney,” explained Kern. “My fireplace is gas. It doesn’t need venting.”
“No chimney, no cat ladders,” said Wallis.
“And no cat,” Polly had the small pleasure of reminding him. But it didn’t make up for cat ladders being a dead end.
“Who else has a key to your apartment?” asked Wallis.
“My cleaning lady, Mrs. Brill, who’s been with me for years. When her invalid husband was alive I helped with his medical expenses and her daughter’s college tuition. I have complete trust in Mrs. Brill’s loyalty. She comes Thursdays, spends the day cleaning, leaves my dinner in the refrigerator for me to heat up. On her way out she takes down the week’s garbage and leaves it with the super for the Friday pickup.”
Wallis had thrown his head back and was staring into the far corner. The old house was a vast archipelago of ceiling stains, certain of which Wallis stared at when in concentrated thought. Polly had decided the far corner one was shaped something like the island of Cyprus.
“While I think of it,” said Kern to Polly to fill the silence, “Chapman would never have included a human figure in one of his own rooms as he’s done here. No, Chapman’s signature was to leave something to indicate a recent human presence: top hat and gloves on the table by the door, a shawl thrown across a chair, a tiny newspaper with the headline ‘Fort Sumter Fired Upon’ and the door to the spring garden flung wide as if someone had just rushed off to join his regiment.”
“A freshly stabbed corpse sure indicates the murderer’s recent presence,” suggested Polly.
Here Wallis rejoined the conversation. “Mr. Kern, do you know your tenants?”
“Only those I meet on the elevator. I leave the leasing and rent collection to a firm of property managers.”
“Good,” said Wallis. “Now, you said your Mrs. Brill took the garbage down for the weekly pickup. In my day a buzzer rang in the kitchen and the super sent up the dumbwaiter from the basement. Putting in the garbage was always my job. One of my roommates was a philosopher and much above such things. The other slept all day, prowled the night, and claimed to be a poet.”
Polly was delighted. “You never told me about that. It’s just like La Bohéme only with garbage.”
Her husband asked, “Mr. Kern, when you remodeled and put your bedroom and study where the two kitchens had been, what happened to the dumbwaiter?”
“Oh, it’s still in operation. I just had them lower the machinery to the next floor, closed off the shaft, and installed my fireplace over it.”
Wallis spread his fingers and tapped their tips wisely together, a gesture Polly found particularly theatrical.
“Then I suggest Chapman has taken an apartment in your building,” said her husband solemnly. “In fact, I think it’s one of the two immediately under you. Any working day except Thursday he would then be able to come up the dumbwaiter shaft and cut a way into your apartment.”
“You mean stick a ladder up the shaft?” asked Kern.
“Your missing cat suggests he sloped up a plank with some kind of a platform angled onto it. Chapman’s a craftsman, after all, and he’d want a place to stand on when he’s working around the wheels and counterweights of the dumbwaiter machinery. On one of his visits he must have left the trapdoor open and...”
“And Mr. Kern’s cat decided to investigate and ended up down in Chapman’s apartment,” said Polly, happy that her “cat ladder” suggestion had contributed something, however indirectly.
Wallis nodded. “It wouldn’t have been difficult for Chapman to turn the new flooring under the fireplace into a trap door. By replacing a length of the copper gas pipe with a rubber hose he could raise up the hearth, fake logs and all, and enter your apartment at will. That’s how he did all his mischief. And it was no accident his letter came in the winter. After the stationery and typewriter business he knew you’d bring in a security expert to look for secret entrances. But the man wouldn’t waste much time tapping around a burning fireplace.
“So there you are, feeling you’re secure. Then one day before you come home from work Chapman will enter your apartment by the fireplace. He’ll hide and wait until you’re in the study with your nightcap. Then he’ll strike you down from behind. When he’s arranged everything as it is here in the miniature room, he’ll leave by the front door.”