The Case of the Petticoat Murder

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ACCORDING to the classification the desk officer had entered on the UF 61 form that had brought us to this one-room basement apartment on Bleecker Street, the squeal was an “apparent suicide.”

The classification was wrong.

This was no “suicide,” apparent or otherwise.

This was murder.

Even by Greenwich Village standards, the apartment was a small one. There were a few vivid water colors on the white brick walls, a pair of almost man-size oriental dragons embroidered in orange on the black wall-to-wall drapes opposite the hall door, and, scattered about the slate floor, a half-dozen straw mats decorated with Aztec masks and symbols in black and red. There was very little furniture. Ranged in front of the drapes were a Hollywood bed with a quilted black spread, a nightstand supporting a telephone and an ash tray, and an old-fashioned dresser with claw feet and a large oval mirror. In the middle of the room were two black leather club chairs and a red hassock grouped about a cocktail table fashioned from a cobbler's bench. That was all.

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