In the neighborhood where Malone had grown up, the fortunate and looked-up-to families were those who had back yards. Those yards were usually about twenty by thirty, hemmed in by high board fences. Sometimes they showed a pathetically unsuccessful attempt at gardening. Far more often they were decorated mainly with vacant tin cans, ancient rubbish, and tired cats, but at least they were places in which to keep the younger children of the family off the streets. Malone himself had learned to walk in just such a yard which belonged to a kindhearted neighbor. Usually, however, there was no yard at all, only a tiny cement-paved areaway.
In this neighborhood, he knew, land itself was worth fabulous sums per foot. When a bit of it was sold for a luxurious apartment hotel to be constructed, the transaction was important financial news. Thus the fact that the Fairfaxxes and other families in the neighborhood hung on to big, walled-in spaces around their homes for the sole purpose of raising grass, trees and rose bushes struck him as not only unpardonable arrogance, but unforgivable waste.
Elizabeth Fairfaxx seemed to sense what he was thinking. “Uncle Rodney wanted to sell this place a few months ago,” she said. “He loves it, he’s always loved it, but he said it was a nuisance to keep up and entirely too extravagant in this day and age. Not that he can’t afford it. He’s very rich, you know, but he said that in the modern world, waste space was a sin and a shame.”
Malone looked a trifle startled. The statement didn’t seem quite to fit Rodney Fairfaxx, the gentle little man who collected stamps, made no protest at being taken to jail, and still waited for a letter from a long-dead sweetheart. “Why didn’t he sell then?” the little lawyer asked.
“Abby Lacy wouldn’t let him.” Elizabeth Fairfaxx kicked savagely at a stone and sent it hurtling down the walk. “When Uncle Rodney and Mr. Lacy built these houses, they signed an agreement that neither one of them, nor their heirs, would sell unless the other agreed.” She scowled. “And if something should happen to Mrs. Lacy, Gay is just mean enough that she wouldn’t let Uncle Rodney sell.” Her manner changed abruptly. She smiled and said, “Sorry to bore you with all this. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
The Fairfaxx house was set in the center of its walled-in garden. Malone walked all the way around it, not only because he wanted to show proper appreciation to his guide, but because he also wanted to discover every possible way someone from outside could enter or leave the grounds. On the side away from the alley were the now desolate rose garden, some uncomfortable-looking concrete benches, and a tiny circular pool filled with mud, dirty water, and half-melted ice and snow. A pleasant enough spot in the summer, no doubt, Malone reflected, but right now—well, he’d seen a lot of far more cheerful graveyards. Beyond it was a house dimly seen through the trees. Malone pointed to it and said, “Who lives there?”
“Nobody,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said, in a curiously tight voice. “It’s been empty for years.” She walked on abruptly, too abruptly. Malone followed, his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. The ivied wall, he could see, extended clear through to the street on the other side without a break.
Between the Fairfaxx house and the Lacy house was a large open space with more concrete benches, landscaped flower beds, and a tiny fountain in the exact center. Malone looked at the naked cherub holding an enormous fish in the fountain, shivered and remarked that it was unusually cold for November.
“The other half,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said, waving a hand toward the Lacy house, “is very much like this.”
Malone peered around the corner of the house and saw another high iron grillwork fence. “I presume Mrs. Lacy always keeps her front gate locked,” he ventured.
“She certainly does,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said.
“And the Fairfaxx gate?”
“Always locked.” She frowned. “Are you suggesting that someone-—some outsider—”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Malone said. “I’m just asking foolish questions.” He smiled at her. “And getting sensible answers.”
The garage building, opening off the alley, was shared by the Lacy household and the Fairfaxxes. It was a two-story structure, with apartments above.
“I imagine the garage doors are also always kept locked,” Malone said.
Elizabeth Fairfaxx nodded. For a moment their eyes met and hers were suddenly dark with misery.
“No,” Malone said very gently, “I’m sorry, but there really isn’t any way. Not if all the doors and gates were locked, and they must have been. Or unless someone climbed over the wall from the alley. That’s physically possible, but why would an outsider go to all that trouble when he’d have to hide and then get out again, and when it would be just as easy to wait for the victim somewhere in the alley itself.”
He knew there would be tears in her eyes and he looked away. In fact, he deliberately turned his back on her and walked along the wall that shut out the unpleasant alley with its tin cans, overflowing trash bins, and a homeless mutt. By pulling himself to the top of the wall by his elbows, he was able to get a clear view of the full length of the alley, and mark, in relation to the garden, the spot where the postmen had been standing when they fell. The homeless mutt came darting out from behind a garbage can and whined ingratiatingly. “I’ll see you later,” Malone promised as he let himself down.
Right there, just this side of the high boxwood hedge, and partly sheltered by it, just beyond where the flagstone path which came from the side door of the house, curved away into the little formal garden. That was where the killer must have waited.
Malone didn’t want to lift himself to the top of the wall again. It was too much effort, and besides, he didn’t want to engage in too detailed a conversation with the homeless mutt. He closed his eyes, remembering the police-drawn chalk lines showing how the body had fallen and exactly where it must have been before it so unexpectedly became a body. Malone knelt down and examined the ground. No footprints. That was not unexpected, considering the thickness of the grass. He ran his fingers carefully over the turf. No indentations, either, such as would have been made by even a fairly light weight man standing on something that would enable him to see, and reach, over the top of the wall.
He rose to his feet and faced Elizabeth Fairfaxx. The marks of tears were still in her eyes.
“But don’t worry, my dear,” he said, “your Uncle Rodney didn’t kill three postmen.”
He felt, rather than saw, the way her long, athletic body stiffened and then relaxed. He did see a fresh flood of tears threaten to come to her eyes and then go back where it came from. Her smile, when it came, was a little tremulous, but still a smile.
“What were you looking for, there on your hands and knees?” she demanded. “We don’t have rabbits, and we keep our mice in the cellar.”
“I was looking for a ladder,” Malone said, very solemnly. He took her arm and strolled toward the front of the house. “Did you ever hear about the man who fell off a boat in mid-ocean with only a tube of shaving cream in his hand?”
Her hazel eyes widened with wonder. She said, “No! What did he do?”
Malone adopted a deliberately phony Irish brogue and said, “Shure and he made himself a ladder and climbed up the side of the boat! And it’s cold out here, and let’s go in and get a drink!”
There was a slight commotion at the front door as they approached it. A girl was arguing noisily, vehemently, and a trifle drunkenly, with the worried Bridie. Helene, her furs thrown carelessly over her shoulders, was doing her best to help. Elizabeth Fairfaxx took in the scene in one glance, loped across the remaining few feet of lawn and said, “Gilda! What are you doing here?”
“Read the papers,” the girl said. “Came here right away. I love him and my place is by his side.”
Helene,