Sergeant Sperling was down on his knees, scooping pieces of a broken milk bottle onto a cardboard. Beside him stood the big valise that contained the police kit — all the scientific equipment the Marvin Center force possessed. Sperling was a bright, rosy-cheeked young man who had attended the New York City Police Academy and read voluminously on the latest methods of detection.
“Watch those footprints, Chief,” he warned again, looking over his shoulder. “The murderer must have come and gone this way.”
“How can we tell which prints are his?” Herrick muttered. He brooded over the thick curves of broken glass Sperling had gathered on the cardboard. “It was very cold last night. Chances are the murderer was wearing gloves. The only fingerprints you’ll probably find are those of the people in the house who had a right to handle the milk bottle.”
“All the same, you want me to be thorough, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
Vivian Lahey’s body lay within three or four feet of the back door. The snow had not been shoveled from the stoop or the walk, but, since the snowfall, feet had beaten out an icy path. On either side of the path there were occasional indentations in the snow where a foot had strayed. And in a small area around the body drops and streaks of frozen blood were scattered on the white snow.
Careful not to tread on any of the blood, Herrick went to the body and lifted the towel. Half the girl’s face was buried in the snow; the visible half was as lovely as that of a wax figure. A black fascinator was still over her hair, and blood had seeped through the material and had frozen.
Herrick replaced the towel and straightened up. “Coroner Ames will be here soon. I called him before I came.”
“I wonder if anybody heard anything,” Sperling mused, “though my idea is that the blow killed her, or at least knocked her out, before she could make a sound. It had to be a terrific blow to break a milk bottle.” He pointed a finger. “She didn’t stagger or anything or the snow would be messed up. She just keeled over, scattering blood on the way.”
The Chief raised his eyes to the back stoop. Two empty milk bottles stood on the top step. Three must have been put out last night. He shivered in his overcoat. He had never before realized what a deadly weapon a prosaic milk bottle could be.
“Concentrate on this area,” he told Sperling, and returned to the street.
The two remaining members of the Marvin Center force, Patrolmen Irving Byron and Joseph O’Connell, had arrived. Herrick dispatched them to question the immediate neighbors.
Will Hitch, the milkman, stepped forward. He had telephoned his company, and another man had been sent to continue his route. His story was brief. At around six-twenty he had walked up the driveway to leave the usual order of two quarts of milk and one bottle of cream at the back door. His flashlight had picked out the furry shape in the snow.
“When I bent over her, I saw all that blood,” Hitch said, “but even then I wasn’t sure she was dead. I took off my glove and touched her cheek, and her skin was as cold as ice. Then I went up to the door and rang the bell. Mr. Engleberry stuck his head out of the window and I told him. He came outside and so did his wife, both of them hardly dressed, though it was freezing cold. Engleberry took one look and shoved his wife back into the house. I went in with them and phoned Police Headquarters. Guess that’s all I can tell you. Want me any more?”
“You can go,” Herrick said, and went up the porch steps to the house.
Engleberry must have been watching from the window, for he opened the door before the Chief could ring the bell. He wore a faded bathrobe over his pajamas and slippers on his feet. He was a tall, thin man in his early thirties, with a narrow face and deep-set, brooding eyes.
“I’m Vivian Lahey’s brother-in-law, George Engleberry,” he introduced himself. “My wife is upstairs in the bedroom. Naturally she is terribly upset over the death of her sister. Is it necessary to — ah — bother her now?”
“I’m afraid so,” Herrick said. “But first I’d like some information from you.”
In response to the Chiefs questions, Engleberry revealed that he had come to Marvin Center six years before to take a job as linotype operator with the Marvin Center Press on South and Division streets. A year later he had married Rose Lahey, and had rented this house. Rose’s sister, Vivian, had moved in with them and shared expenses. He and his wife had no children.
“Was Vivian Lahey ever married?” Herrick asked.
“No.”
“I suppose a good-looking girl like she was had quite a few men friends?”
The brother-in-law shrugged. “I guess she did. But she spent most of her time in New York, especially when she was working. She’d stay at a hotel and not come home for days at a time. I guess her dates were mostly New York men and she’d meet them there to go out with them.”
“No man in particular?”
Engleberry glowered. “Vivian liked to run around. I thought I was sort of responsible for her, she being a single girl and living with us, but she never paid any attention to me.”
“What about local men?” the Chief persisted.
“Well, she didn’t bring any to the house.” Engleberry hesitated, then added, “All I know is that she did have a date last night. At least I imagine she did because she left the house at around nine-thirty last night, and wasn’t home when I went to bed.”
“Any idea who she was with?”
“No. She received another phone call before she went out, but she didn’t tell us who called.”
“May I see your wife now?” Herrick asked.
Reluctantly Engleberry led the Chief into a bedroom. Rose Engleberry was lying on one of the twin beds. Like her husband, she wore a robe over her night clothes. At the sight of Herrick, she sat up. She was a plump woman in her early thirties. Her eyes were red with weeping and her hair straggled down her face.
She told Herrick that she didn’t know whom her sister had been out with the previous night. Vivian was rather secretive about her men friends. One thing, however, was certain: The date had been made at the very last minute, when somebody had phoned her after nine, because at seven o’clock Dwight Braun had phoned Vivian and she had told him she was going to spend the evening at home.
“Who’s Dwight Braun?” Herrick asked.
“He was Vivian’s agent,” Mrs. Engleberry said. “George and I didn’t approve of him. Vivian had plenty of talent, but except for a few spots now and then on one of the big networks, the only singing jobs she could get were small stations with bands nobody ever heard of.”
“Then she couldn’t have been making much money?”
Engleberry answered that one. “Very little left after expenses and agent fees and all that. That’s the chief reason she stayed on in Marvin Center with us instead of moving near the studios in New York. It always seemed to me that she could have done better if she hadn’t been tied up with this agent, Dwight Braun. His agency is very small; he hasn’t even got a real office. I told her what she needed was a big-shot agent.
“Well, last week she decided to break off with Braun. Last night at seven he called up and asked if he could come out and see her. I guess he wanted to talk her into staying with him. Vivian said she’d be home, but at about nine-thirty she got that second phone call. She put on her coat and said she’d be right back, and that’s the last we saw of her.”
“Did Braun show up?”
“At around ten, I guess,” Engleberry said. “He waited around for a whole hour and got sore and left. I don’t blame him for being sore. Here he had come all the way from New York and Vivian hadn’t even waited for him.”
“Did you hear her come home? A car pull up or her walking up the driveway or anything like that?”