They shook their heads.
Mrs. Engleberry put her handkerchief up to her eyes and muttered, “Mr. Braun was angry when he left. Vivian might have been coming home just as he left the house and they met outside.”
“Rose!” her husband exclaimed. “Do you realize you’re accusing a man of murder when you know nothing about it?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why, I said no such thing, George.”
“Another thing,” Herrick injected quietly. “What was Miss Lahey doing around the back of the house? Had she driven a car into the garage?”
“Vivian couldn’t drive,” Engleberry replied. “She came around to the back door because she’d lost her key to the front door. I was planning to have another one made, but I didn’t get around to it.”
The Chief recalled the bit of town gossip his wife had told him. “What about John Shanken?”
There was a brief silence. Engleberry and his wife looked at each other. Then the husband said, “You mean the Shanken who has the men’s store? What about him?”
“George, there’s no sense trying to protect anybody,” Mrs. Engleberry said.
“Vivian’s dead!” he objected angrily. “Why let her name be dragged in the mud?”
“Don’t you want her murderer caught?” Herrick asked softly.
Mrs. Engleberry blew her nose noisily and started to sob. Her husband raged. “Vivian was as fine and decent a girl as you could find. I don’t know who killed her. It could have been a thief or a madman. Did you think of that?”
Herrick excused himself and descended the stairs. Sergeant Sperling was in the hall.
“I think I’ve got something, Chief. Come on outside.”
They left through the back door. Near the corner of the house, beyond the girl’s body and a little to the right of the path, Herrick saw an inverted cardboard box resting in the snow. Tenderly Sperling lifted the box and revealed a footprint in the snow.
“Look at this,” he said excitedly.
Herrick squatted. A foot had crushed through the top layer of ice and pressed down the snow beneath. At the heel of the print there was a ragged smear of blood and another at the instep.
“Somebody made this after Miss Lahey was murdered,” Sperling explained, “after her blood had been spilled on the snow. See how the blood is everywhere else. It lies on top of the ice in globules and it froze that way. But the shoe came down here and spread and pressed the blood. The toe points to the driveway. Here’s part of another print — see this rubber heel? — and then he turned around the corner of the house and walked down the driveway along one of the car ruts. I looked, but I haven’t found another print of a rubber-heeled shoe.”
Herrick nodded. “It’s that rubber heel that interests me more than the blood. With all the snow and ice these last few days, nobody would leave the house without something over his shoes.” He glanced at the dead girl’s feet. “She’s wearing galoshes. So am I. You’re wearing rubber and the milkman wore boots. I’d say that this footprint was made by somebody who went out in a car and didn’t expect to do much walking. Or somebody who came from New York where the snow has been cleared from the streets. Well, it’s a lead.”
Sperling beamed happily. “It’s more than a lead, Chief. It can be evidence. I can make a plaster cast of this footprint. All I need is some talcum powder to shake over it and some fine shellac to spray with a Flit gun. I repeat that a couple of times and then I get some very fine plaster of Paris from a dentist and make a cast. If we can find the shoe, we can take it and the cast to the police laboratory in Brooklyn and have them matched up. It’s as good as a fingerprint.”
“If we find the shoe,” Herrick observed dryly.
A black cloth handbag lay near one of the dead girl’s gloved hands. Herrick looked through it. He found a wallet containing eighteen dollars. Obviously the motive for her murder hadn’t been robbery.
Patrolman Byron came up the driveway with the information that the woman next door, in Number 39, had heard two people fighting outside during the night. Herrick felt his shoulders lighten a little. Here, at last, was a witness. He hurried to the house next door.
Mrs. Tracy M. Anderson, a fading middle-aged blonde, wearing a cloth coat over her house dress, was watching the crowd that was gathering by the minute in front of Number 37.
“Well, I’m not sure it was exactly a fight,” she said. “But the voices sounded like a quarrel.”
“Did you recognize the voices?” Herrick asked.
“Well, one was Vivian Lahey’s, I suppose, but all I can be sure of is that it was a woman’s voice. You see, I was in bed, more than half asleep, when those voices woke me up. The bedroom is on that side of the house, right next to the Engleberry driveway. I heard a kind of muttering at first, then the voices rose but I can’t tell you who the man was, even if I’d ever heard his voice before.”
“Did you hear what was said?”
“No. Just voices. Then I fell asleep. I told that other policeman who was here that I didn’t hear anything else — no cry or anything like that. I just fell asleep in the middle, I guess. And I can’t tell you what time it was. All I know is it was night.”
“What time did you go to bed?”
“A little before twelve,” Mrs. Anderson replied. “Me and my husband both. The children were in bed since ten. But Tracy — that’s my husband — he didn’t hear a thing. He sleeps like a log.”
“Where’s your husband now?”
“He left for work a little while ago. But he didn’t hear anything. We talked about it when we heard poor Vivian Lahey was murdered. That was when I remembered hearing those voices. I said to Tracy—”
Mrs. Anderson went on talking, but she had no more to contribute. Herrick was satisfied that she had given him vital information. Vivian Lahey had quarreled with the man who had murdered her, which meant that she had known him well. And likely the murder hadn’t been planned, but had resulted from the quarrel. A milk bottle was the sort of weapon one would snatch up in a fit of overpowering rage.
John Shanken scowled when the Chief entered his haberdashery store.
The clerk stepped up to Herrick, “What can I do for you, sir?” But before the Chief could reply, Shanken waved the clerk aside and beckoned Herrick into the back room of the store.
Shanken was an athletic-looking man in his late thirties. He dressed like a fashion-plate, as befitted a man who sold men’s wear, and sported a sleek mustache. Herrick recalled that Shanken, in spite of a wife and three children, was considered quite a lady killer.
The Chief asked casually, “Have you heard what happened to Vivian Lahey?”
“The news is all over town.” Shanken had trouble finding a place to rest his gaze. He shuddered. “Terrible tragedy! She was such a fine girl.”
“A friend of yours, I hear.”
The haberdasher shrugged. “Oh, well, I knew Miss Lahey as a good customer. She bought all her Christmas and birthday presents for male relatives and friends in my store.”
Through narrowed eyes, the Chief studied the man. There was no doubt that he was badly frightened. He hazarded a guess. “Where did you go with Miss Lahey last night?”
It worked. Shanken’s head jerked up; the fear in his eyes was plain. “I didn’t kill her! I swear—”
“Where did you go with her last night?” Herrick repeated.
Shanken dropped limply into a chair. “I was going to tell you. I’d just heard of the murder and I was about to go to the police station when you came in.”
“Were you?” Herrick grunted skeptically. “All right, tell me now.”
“She... I... well, we’ve been seeing each other. Secretly. Look, Herrick, there’s nothing to be gained by letting my wife know.”