A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

“Had, I told you I was going to Albany to meet a lady.”

“Oh yeah,” Haddon said. “That sweet morsel Momsie.”

“Right. But there was a telegram for me, written in code, which advised me to continue on to her house in Queens.”

Harry asked, “Am I adult enough to be hearing all this?”

“Please, no jokes,” Judd said. “This is very serious. I did as I was told—the kitchen door was open—but while I was in the house, waiting for her, there was a burglary. Seemed like Italian thugs. Didn’t know what to do so I hid in the closet for I don’t know how long. Hours. Hiding behind the dresses hanging on the hooks as the Italians ransacked the house. But then the family got home from a party and got caught in the middle of it.”

“The family?” Haddon asked. “Wasn’t she intending to see you alone?”

Judd delayed his story as he considered amendments. Haddon and Harry watched him lift his highball and swallow some. Judd finally settled on, “There must have been some miscommunication. I could hear the ruckus from my hiding place. She was assaulted and her husband was slugged and bound. And I couldn’t do anything to help them.”

“Why not?” Harry asked.

Haddon intervened. “Well, for criminy sakes! Was he supposed to jump out of the closet? Wouldn’t the husband figure out Bud’s been having a fling with the wife?”

“I guess so,” Harry said. “Caught between a rock and a hard place, you were.”

“Cowardice was forced on me by the situation. I just hoped they weren’t too badly hurt. After things quieted down—golly, it must have been just about sunrise—I hightailed it out of there. Caught a bus to Grand Central Station and then the train to Syracuse.”

Haddon frowned. “Were the husband and wife okay?”

Judd had forgotten elements of his tale; he’d have to rehearse it some more. “Oh, sorry. I’m so ashamed to admit it that I left out the worst part. I huddled there in the closet until I heard not a peep in the house, then I screwed up my courage and investigated. The wife had fainted and her wrists and ankles were tied with clothesline, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. I thought it better to let her sleep, to let her think I hadn’t gotten there rather than to have to confess my fear and weakness. But I found the husband lying on his bed, unconscious, and maybe I got too close as I listened for a heartbeat because I got his blood on me. And then I ran out. Calling the police was out of the question. The jealous husband versus the philandering salesman caught in his house? I saw no way of defending myself against their accusations.” Judd watched their faces with interest as he finished his whisky.

“Was there a heartbeat?” Haddon asked.

“Well, I’m no doctor,” Judd said, and filled his own and his friend’s glass with more Scotch as he figured out the right thing to say. “A faint heartbeat, I think.” Harry finished his highball and held out his glass. Judd poured. “Seltzer?”

“No, thanks,” Harry said.

Judd raked his hair with his hand. “But what if the husband winds up dying from his injuries? Then it’s murder, and I’ll be the principal suspect, won’t I? Italian burglars will sound like some thugs I made up from whole cloth. Even if I’m just called in for questioning, my poor mother will be horrified, my wife and child humiliated, if not lost to me. I’ll probably be fired from my job. To be frank, I’m in such a fix that I have been entertaining thoughts of suicide.” Judd held up the half-pint of rye. “I have poisoned this. And I’m prepared to drink it.”

Haddon exclaimed, “Shame on you for even thinking that!”

Harry told him, “Calm down, Judd. You had a rough night, but it’s over now and who’s going to know you were there?”

Judd put the flask on the desk and sank down on the chair with his head in his hands.

“There’s my Bud. That’s better,” Haddon said. “Don’t get overheated. Aren’t there steps we can take to protect you?”

Judd lifted his face. “But I hate involving you both.”

“We’ve been in jams, too,” Harry said.

Consolingly, Haddon asked, “Really, how can we help?”

Judd smiled with soft pleasure in his high school chum’s friendship and with a full measure of disdain for his gullibility. “We need to destroy the evidence.”

And so it was that they cooperated in packing a small black suitcase with the gray wool three-piece suit with its handprint of blood on the vest, Albert’s patterned blue shirt with its scissored buttonhole, and the bloodstained gray buckskin gloves that Ruth had worn. Then they got into their overcoats and hats and Judd held the black suitcase to his chest as the three rode in Harry Platt’s car to the Onondaga County Savings Bank Building on Salina Street. The night watchman took them up to the sixth floor. Harry’s insurance office was in room 641. There Harry got on his knees to snatch the clothing out of the suitcase and tightly bundle it inside brown shipping paper, tying it closed with twine. Haddon Jones was the tallest of the three, so it was he who lifted the empty suitcase onto the highest shelf in the office as Judd helped a huffing Harry to his feet.

Early Monday morning, Harry Platt would take the package of bloodstained clothing down to the furnace room, where a janitor heaved it into the fire without inquiry about it. And during her lunch hour, Harry’s pregnant secretary would haul the suitcase to the Onondaga Printing Company, her husband’s job site, for incineration in that furnace. She later claimed she did not ask Mr. Platt why that was necessary.

On Sunday night, Harry Platt ferried Haddon and Judd to Haddon’s house but floored the car even as Haddon was inviting him inside. Waiting for dinner, Judd entertained Haddon’s “two little rascals” by reading the Syracuse Post-Standard’s comics page, handling the ballooned dialogue in different voices, and after gin and sandwiches, Judd helped them with their Sunday school homework. Easter would be on April 17th in 1927 and he stunned Haddon and his children with the esoteric information that each year Easter occurred on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Judd faintly smiled at Haddon’s surprise. “I was a churchgoer once.”

“Well,” Haddon said, “religion’s fine as long as you don’t take it too seriously.” Haddon couldn’t read Judd’s face. Was it sneering gloom or regret?

Haddon’s wife put the children to bed and Haddon and Judd stayed up, forcing themselves to recall old times in their fraternity at William Barringer High School and finishing off a quart of London dry gin. Each avoided mention of the night in Queens Village. Around eleven, Judd was slurring his words and confessed he was hallucinating, with weird shapes like panthers crouching in the periphery of his vision.