Discovery on the Stairs

A New York winter, 1947.

One day a woman named Eunice Pike, who was apt to be absent minded in the mornings, walked down one floor too many in her apartment building and found a body. She didn’t know it was a body at the time, she thought he was asleep. While she admitted the validity of that old saw “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” this certainly looked like someone who was used to sleeping in other people’s basements. A quick scan revealed laceless boots, crusty trousers, long greasy grey hair, an empty liquor bottle and a big dirty coat. In addition to that, a powerful atmosphere had grown up around him.

That evening, when she returned from work at the department store, she ran into her neighbor Evelyn in the foyer.

“Be sure to shut the door, dear,” she warned. “This morning I saw a bum on the stairs.”

Evelyn put a gloved hand on her ample bosom and looked concerned.

“You don’t say,” she breathed. “Well, I don’t know what this neighborhood is coming to, that’s all. I’ll be sure to shut it, yes I will. Mind you,” she added hastily, “I always do anyway. You can’t be too careful.”

Eunice watched her leave anyway, satisfying herself that it closed with finality. Then she walked to the elevator and looked down the dark stairwell. A niggling thought suggested that he might still be there.

“I’ll just take a peek, to make sure,” she murmured, and started down the stairs carefully holding onto the handrail, though it was hardly clean. She was only ten stairs down when she could lean around the corner and get a view of the bottom landing. Sure enough, there was a boot.

She marched back up the stairs straight away and knocked on the super’s door. His name was Hank Little. He appeared at the door in his powder-blue dressing gown, which was loosely tied in the middle so that you could see a whole chest full of luxuriant black hair.

“Eunice,” he said without enthusiasm, his eyelids deliberately heavy. He’d had trouble from this one before.

“Mr. Little there’s a bum on the stairs! What do you propose to do about it?”

He scratched the back of his neck.

“How big is he?” He said eventually.

“What has that got to do with it? What a foolish question. He’s bum-sized.”

Hank frowned.

“It’s just, if he was a little one I might be able to carry him out of there.”

Eunice was temporarily speechless. After gathering her wits for a few seconds, she recovered with a vengeance, giving him a trenchant precis of his failings as a super, as a man, and as a citizen of these United States.

“You are a mean old woman,” he said, chin quivering, and shut the door in her face.

“Well, and if I am, I’m twice the fellow you are,” she retorted, striding back to the stairs. She stabbed the elevator button but then had second thoughts.

If the so-called authorities weren’t going to rise to the occasion, she might as well handle the matter herself. She took a deep breath, straightened her jacket, smoothed her skirt and set off back down the stairs.

Yes, there he was, a pile of regrettable humanity. The atmosphere had become even thicker. If possible, he looked even dirtier than before. From what she could see of his face, his color was unhealthy. It reminded her of eel. What’s more, it seemed he slept with his eyes open.

“Excuse me!” she said. There was no answer. She tried again.

“Here! You man!” Nothing.

She prodded him with the toe of her shoe. A dreadful suspicion dawned. She looked at his face again. That eye was glassy. For the first time, she noticed that there was a pool of something dark underneath him, and a neat little hole in the back of the dirty old jacket, just behind the heart.

“Oh,” said Eunice, her mouth a perfect ‘O’ of dismay.

***

“It’s the darndest thing,” said Dick Von Dorn chewing on a toothpick. “As a rule, a character like that is seen now and then about the neighborhood. Sometimes he has friends on the street. Or enemies. More often he’ll have people who notice him if even to avoid him. But in this case, no one will admit to seeing him before.”

Pete shrugged.

“Could be he’s out of state.”

“Could be,” Dick conceded. He chewed some more. “But get this, too: the coroner said he hadn’t been drinking.”

Pete blinked.

“Now that’s muzzy. You saw the bottle. Why…it was empty! He must have been mistaken.”

“Ol’ Doc Dread? Not on your life! He insists the guy was abstinent as an Amish schoolgirl. Not just today either. His liver was as pink as a rose.”

“Well…maybe he was with a friend who was drinking, and this friend splashed some around.”

“Just before shooting our fellow for fun? I don’t like it.” He pulled out the toothpick and snapped it in half.

“Aw now wait a minute,” Pete protested. “You’ve got that look in your eye again.”

“What look?”

“The look like a dumb mutt that just smelled a skunk. The look that leads to unpaid overtime, cold dinners, paperwork coming out of my ears, and the Superintendent cursing me in one ear while my wife curses in the other.”

“Oh, that look,” Dick nodded, then slapped Pete on the shoulder. “Relax, Champ. I’m just thinking things through.”

“Dick, before you think things through any longer, why don’t you picture this, OK? There’s a vagrant in a stairwell. He crawled in to get out of the cold, see? A bad character follows him with a gun, thinking the vagrant has liquor or cigarettes. He shoots the vagrant, who dies. It’s sad. It’s an indictment on humanity et cetera. Unidentified male. A couple of pages of notes, max. What do you say?”

“I say it won’t wash. It’s not how things happen and it’s not how this happened either.”

Pete groaned.

Dick shook his head regretfully.

“Sorry Pete. There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”

“What?” Pete narrowed his eyes. “You been holding out on me just for kicks?”

Dick produced an envelope. Right away you could tell it was a woman’s envelope: it was small, pale yellow and it smelled of lilacs.

“Guy had a letter in his pocket. From a lady friend. Name of Valerie Swift.”

“Like hell. The socialite? Why, she’s a millionaire isn’t she?”

“Among other things.”

“What was she writing to this guy for?”

“That’s where things get interesting. Have a read.” Dick thrust the letter into his hands, then crossed his arms across his chest. His eyes were bright and his nostrils were filled with the scent of skunk.