We stood in the cold and chatted sotto voce, just briefly. I told him about the gangland roadhouse Dixon had shown me and he found that of great interest.
“You know Pat O’Rourke, from Chicago, don’t you, Heller?” Wilson asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Damn good man.”
“He’s working with me in New York, now,” Wilson said. “I’m going to assign him to infiltrate that spiritualist church in Harlem. We’ll find out why these ‘spirits’ know so much about this damn kidnapping.”
“O’Rourke’s an excellent choice,” I said.
O’Rourke had gone undercover for three months in the Capone organization when Eliot, Irey and Wilson were putting their case together. He was a good bet to pick up on any Capone connection between Marinelli and his congregation.
“How’s the search for Bob Conroy coming?” I asked.
“That son of a bitch has dropped off the face of the earth,” Wilson said glumly.
“Start dragging the lakes,” I said.
He nodded, sighed, said, “Heller-whatever differences we may have had, let me say this: I appreciate what you’re doing. That is, keeping me informed, when otherwise I’d be frozen out.”
“Swell. How about angling me a break on my taxes this year?”
“Screw you,” Wilson said, good-naturedly, and got in his black Ford and headed back to New York.
Schwarzkopf approached me, as I stood watching Wilson’s dust.
He said, “There’s an interrogation you should sit in on.”
“Really,” I said. “I’m beginning to enjoy this new spirit of cooperation.”
Several snazzy troopers and rumpled, potbellied Inspector Welch were standing in the servants’ sitting room. Seated in a chair that had been dragged out into the middle of the braided-rug-covered floor was a pretty, pleasantly plump girl in her twenties, wearing her maid’s black uniform with white lace apron. Her hair was short and brownish blonde, her eyes brown and flitting, her face round, her front teeth protruding slightly, chipmunk-cute. She had her hands in her lap, playing with a white hanky.
Seated just behind her was a male police stenographer, plainclothes, fingers poised over keys.
“Miss Sharpe,” Schwarzkopf said, “we need to take a statement from you.”
“I’ve given you a statement,” she said, imperiously. Or maybe it was just her English accent.
“We’d just like to clear up a few details.”
She pursed her lips, raised her chin and replied in a snippy schoolgirl fashion. “Why are you so interested in my personal life? Why don’t you mind your own business and get on with the job of finding these kidnappers?”
Her manner was cold and defiant, but it seemed at least partly a mask: her eyes and her hands moved ceaselessly. She was as nervous as a wife with one lover in the closet, another under the bed and hubby in the hall.
Inspector Welch took over. “Look, sister. We’re just doing our job. Don’t make it tough on yourself. Surely a cute kid like you don’t have anything to hide?”
Welch was trying to be nice, but it came off like a threat.
“Don’t you bully me,” she said.
Welch rolled his eyes at Schwarzkopf, who said, “All of the other servants at the Morrow home have been cooperative. Why are you so difficult, Miss Sharpe?”
“I resent being questioned, and I am cooperating-but only because I have no choice!”
Her defiance was an amazing thing to see; but I wasn’t fooled. Behind the strength was weakness, and fear.
Schwarzkopf, almost pleading, said, “Don’t you want to help Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh get their baby back?”
She lowered her head and nodded. Sighed. “Go ahead, then. Ask your questions.”
Welch nodded to the stenographer to start, then said, “State your name and age, please, and place of birth.”
“My name is Violet Sharpe. I was born in England in 1904 in Berkshire. About two and a half years ago, I went from England to Canada. I stayed there about nine months and moved to New York.”
“And went to work for the Morrows?”
“Well, I registered at Hutchinson’s Employment Agency on Madison Avenue, and was interviewed there for Mrs. Morrow, and received a position as maid, which I still occupy.”
“Have you made any friends, male or female, in New York, or New Jersey?”
“No. None.”
She was too good-looking a girl for that to ring true.
Exasperation distorted the inspector’s voice. “Since the time that you arrived in New York from Canada, you’ve been out in company of
“No. I have nobody here other than my sister, Emily.”
“Where does she reside?”
“In Englewood. A friend of the Morrows employs her.”
Welch moved to the other side of her. He tried again. “Have you at any time since your arrival in this country been to
She paused.
Then she said, “Yes.”
Welch, with studied sarcasm, said, “Why don’t you tell us about it, then, Miss Sharpe?”
“My sister and I were walking through the village of Englewood on a Sunday afternoon…”
“What Sunday afternoon?”
“February twenty-eighth.”
“Of this year?”
“Of this year. We were walking along when a man passed us on Lydecker Street in an automobile and waved his hand at us. I mistook him for one of the employees at the Morrows’, and waved back. He stopped his car and I went over to him, but realized my error-explained that I had taken him for someone else.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘That’s all right, where are you going?’ And I said, ‘Just to the village.’ He invited my sister and myself to ride there in his car, which we did. During the ride we had a friendly conversation and the gentleman said he’d like to take me to the movies some night, if I would like to go.”
“What did you say?”
“I said okay.”
She was a pretty easy pickup for a girl who’d been here for years without making a single male or female friend.
“And what did he say?”
“He asked for my phone number and I gave it to him.”
“The phone number of the Morrow house, you mean?”
“Yes. He wanted to know who he should ask for when he called, and I told him to ask for Violet.”
“Did he call?”
She nodded. “At about ten minutes of eight on the evening of March first.”
The day of the kidnapping.
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I would care to go out with him that evening. I said I would, but that I wouldn’t be ready for a while, as I hadn’t yet finished with serving dinner. Before long, he came to the back door of the pantry of the Morrow house.”
“What did you do?”
“I got my hat and coat and went out. He had another couple with him, who I’d never seen before. The four of us went to a movie house in Englewood and after the show, he drove me back to the Morrow home. It was then, I think, eleven P.M.”
“Have you seen your date since?”
“No. I made a second date with him, for March sixth, but I couldn’t get away from the house. I haven’t
