Carol O’Connell - Winter House

Her own hands remained folded in her lap.

Martin Pinwitty was beside himself with happiness. Two genuine homicide detectives were visitors in his humble home – underscore the word humble. There was only one room, unless one counted the closet that housed a toilet, and Mallory did not. The bathtub, concealed by a broad wooden board, did double duty as a table, and the hide-a-bed sofa had been hastily folded away, one more sign of an impoverished make-do life.

Mallory could guess how much of this man’s meager income was daily sacrificed for stamps. Correspondence was piled on every surface that was not cluttered with page-marked books. The postmarks on his mail were wide-ranging, and a few envelopes had the return addresses of police departments in other states.

On the way to his apartment, Pinwitty had insisted on stopping at a bodega so that he might treat them to doughnuts on this special occasion, believing, as all civilians did, that this was a staple of every cop’s diet. And now both detectives, stuffed with Charles Butler’s croissants and crepes, ate their sugar doughnuts, while feigning gratitude and swilling tea that was unspeakably bad.

Riker shoveled more sugar into his cup. „So the reporter who died in the Village – that was the last ice-pick job?“

„For a professional assassin? Yes, I believe it was,“ said the author. „I have sources everywhere. If there’s an old unsolved murder with an ice pick, I hear about it. The pick was going out of vogue years before that man was murdered.“

After scanning one of Pinwitty’s files, a lengthy list of muggings and murders, Mallory set it aside, agreeing with Riker that this was an amateur investigation. „What about the freak who killed the Winter family? You think he retired after the massacre?“

„Oh, definitely,“ said Pinwitty. „That or he died. You know, once, I actually thought Red Winter had killed him. A man was stabbed with an ice pick in the state of Maine.“ He stood up and walked to a bookshelf crammed with texts, papers and manila envelopes. „I have a separate file for that one. Nothing ever came of it.“ He pulled out a folder and smiled. „I even went up to Maine for a few days to check it out.“

This piqued Mallory’s interest, for that little junket would’ve represented a lot of money for this impoverished little man.

Pinwitty settled into a chair and opened the folder on his lap. „I’ll tell you what made this incident so interesting. The victim of the stabbing was a man named Humboldt.“

Riker’s teacup was suspended in midair, all attention suddenly riveted to the author, and Mallory had to wonder what that was about.

Pinwitty continued. „Humboldt once shared a cell with a murder suspect in New Orleans. The cellmate was charged with the ice-pick murder of a politician.“

Riker’s cup clattered back to its saucer.

„Now this suspect – “ The author paused to bring the page a bit closer to his nearsighted eyes. „Oh, I don’t have a name for this one, but I know it began with an H. Well, no matter. Turned out the man was innocent. There’d been another murder while he was in custody. However, it occurred to me that Red Winter didn’t know that, and she might have mistaken Humboldt for the suspected ice-pick killer. Maybe she heard a confused report of the New Orleans murder. You see, the first time I heard this story – more like a rumor, actually – Humboldt was killed by a girl with red hair. I postulated that Red Winter might’ve hunted down the wrong man and killed the cellmate by mistake, believing that Humboldt was the one who murdered her parents.“

Mallory smiled. Ah, the penalties of bad scholarship – death. „And this happened when?“

„Two years after the massacre. I was originally led to believe that it happened much later than that. In any case, it wasn’t Red Winter who killed Humboldt. She would’ve been a fourteen-year-old child at that time. When I went up to Maine, I discovered that he was killed by a full-grown local woman.“

At the time of this ice-pick homicide, Red Winter would have been tall enough to pass for someone older. Mallory glanced at Riker, who nodded to say that this was also his thought.

Unmindful of their silent conversation, Pinwitty continued his thought, saying, „The stabbing wasn’t premeditated either. So that was another indication that my theory wouldn’t work. The police put it down to self-defense. It seems that the man broke into this woman’s bedroom and attacked her. However, I should mention that I got this information many years after the fact. Originally, I only had one source for the story, a very old man who later died in a nursing home. There was no police report on file.“

Mallory and Riker were both paying edge-of-the-chair attention.

„Oh, I know what you’re thinking,“ said the author. „I also thought it was odd. But this was a small town, more like a truck stop. And I couldn’t interview the residents because there weren’t any. A new highway project wiped out all the houses and public buildings. The records of births, deaths and taxes were relocated, but police records simply didn’t exist. You see, the town had a police force of one. That was Chief Walter McReedy. I thought he might have taken the records with him when he retired. So I hunted down his daughter, Susan. She was rather young at the time of this incident. Barely remembers it. Now the woman who stabbed Humboldt was a redhead, and Chief McReedy’s daughter agreed with that much, but after she had a minute or two to think it over, she couldn’t swear that red was the woman’s natural hair color. In fact, a minute later, she thought otherwise. She did recall that the woman was a local, but couldn’t remember her name. Susan McReedy thought the redhead might’ve been middle-aged, but then everyone seems old to a child of seven. At any rate, it was a wasted trip for me.“

Mallory held up her copy of The Winter House Massacre. „So there’s nothing in your book about Humboldt?“

„Well, no. What would be the point? He was only the cellmate of a man wrongly accused of an ice-pick murder. That doesn’t confer even a peripheral significance.“

But the author had failed to see the significance of Humboldt’s death by ice pick; he had tripped over this large messy fact and not seen it. Mallory was undecided: either Martin Pinwitty was more inclined to believe in coincidence than the average cop – or he had not told them everything. There was something not right about this little man. And she could say the same for her own partner.

After warding off more stale doughnuts and bad tea, the detectives escaped from the author’s apartment with the borrowed file on the incident in Maine. Riker paused on the stoop outside the building, as if unable to go on.

„Nedda killed Stick Man,“ said Mallory.

He hanged himself with a slow nod. Riker was definitely holding out on her, just as the daughter of the cop from Maine had held out on Martin Pinwitty.

On the drive back to SoHo, she waited for her partner to save himself, to explain how he had recognized Humboldt’s name, a name he had never read in any book.

And he said nothing.

Cleo appeared in the dining room with a coffee cup in hand, nodding in Nedda’s general direction as she sat down on Lionel’s side of the dining room table. The line of demarcation was always drawn this way – two united against one.

„Did you sleep well, Nedda?“

Her sister’s tone of voice might better fit the question Why aren’t you dead yet? After all, Nedda had unwittingly reneged on the prognosis, the virtual promise, of an early demise.

Cleo’s eyes narrowed. „Bitty’s not joining us this morning?“

„She had an early breakfast,“ said Nedda.