The Good Friday Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

home.
    During her three hours, Magda took the boys for a walk along Ocean Avenue, where their apartment house was. (One paper mentioned that Mrs. Talley paid $74.50 for the two-bedroom apartment, and I was not sure whether that was agreat deal or practically nothing, but the reporter seemed surprised at the amount.) The three of them walked to Quentin Road, over to East Seventeenth Street, and up to a park that was a favorite spot of theirs. There they sat and talked and played the kinds of games the boys liked to play, word and number games that gave Magda the feeling that, although they were not normal in the sense that they could function in society (she didn’t use those words), they had been selected by God for greater gifts. On that day Magda asked them about the day she had been born eighteen years earlier (in one of those Baltic countries), and they had told her the weather—in Brooklyn—what they had eaten for lunch, and the color of Mama’s dress (purple). Even though she had been born some five thousand miles away, it had given her a closeness to the boys, knowing they remembered the day.
    About eleven-thirty they had started back, this time going along Avenue S to Ocean Avenue, a slightly longer walk, but they were in no hurry. Mrs. Talley had arrived promptly at noon with her bags of groceries and her freshly coiffed hair and had paid Magda for the week, nine dollars for the nine hours (a generous sum for the time), and thirty cents for carfare. Magda had promised to return on Easter Sunday to help Mrs. Talley take the boys to church—not that she needed help, the boys were so good, but it didn’t hurt to have an extra person along. Generally when they went to church, Mrs. Talley would sit at one end and Magda at the other so that the boys were enclosed between them. Magda never accepted payment for attending church with the Talleys, which was only about once a month; it was her gift to God. But Mrs. Talley always gave her ten cents for carfare and often placed a dollar in the collection basket, a princely sum for the time.
    When she left the Talleys, she went to church for Good Friday services. The Talleys would not go. Services were long, and the boys sometimes became restless.
    Magda spent the evening quietly with her parents and sister. On Saturday she had a special job cleaning a house for a lady who was having a large group over for Easter Sunday.She was paid well, but she worked hard and she came home tired.
    Easter Sunday morning, she dressed and took the bus to Ocean Avenue and Kings Highway.
    Magda had the key to the Talley apartment. It had not started that way. At the beginning, when she was still in high school and came to work a few afternoons after school, Mrs. Talley would give her the key so that she could go walking with the boys. But Mrs. Talley sometimes forgot, preventing their outing. Finally, when a great deal of trust had grown between them, Mrs. Talley had given Magda her own key, and that was how she got in that terrible Easter morning.
    She had rung several times and could hear footsteps inside, but no one answered the door. Perhaps, she thought as she stood waiting, Mrs. Talley was in the bathroom, readying herself for church. The boys had been told never to answer the doorbell, much as one would caution a child, and Magda knew they would be obedient. And since it didn’t really matter whether Mrs. Talley opened the door or whether she let herself in, she took the key out of her bag and used it to enter the apartment.
    She could see that something was wrong the minute she got in. The twins were there, disheveled, dirty—she didn’t realize it was blood until later—and when they saw her, they began to cry.
    “Mama, Mama,” one of them said.
    “What happened?” Magda said, frightened. “And then I thought,” one of the newspapers quoted her, “ ‘Mother of God, Mrs. Talley has had an accident.’ I ran to the bathroom, thinking she had fallen.”
    But Mrs. Talley was