Well *that* murder should be easy to solve. Unless he got on the elevator with the knife already in his back. Or if someone stabbed him and then got off the elevator on the previous floor before anyone noticed it. Or…alright I guess it won’t be that easy to solve.
If you read the novelet, you’ll learn that the man was stabbed to death because, as a window cleaner, he was the only witness to the murder of Mrs Quackenbush, a lady who thought she could make some easy money blackmailing her former lover, the janitor of the Townsend Apartment Building (where she formerly lived) and who was working as an informant for the cops while selling cocaine to wealthy residents.
The man had no other solution than to get rid of the eye-witness. He couldn’t do it himself because the daughter of Mrs Quackenbush, Callista (helped by her fiancé, Tom Galbraith, a private investigator, very tough guy) kept an eye on him.
Vassilevsky (the janitor) therefore gets a drug-addicted young man (Walter, the son of a banker) to kill the window cleaner. That is the moment where the plot gets interesting because Walter accidentally meets Callista one night in a boat crossing the Hudson River and the two fall in love instantly.
Blablabla… Well, in the end you’ll find out that jealous Tom is the killer and signed his crime with a “V” (for Vassilevsky since he thought Walter was his father).
But I must say that I have not read the novelet.
![Ten Detective Aces v47 n02 [1943-04] 0007 thumbnail](https://pulpcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Ten-Detective-Aces-v47-n02-1943-04-0007-92x100.jpg)
![Ten Detective Aces v47 n02 [1943-04] 0007](https://pulpcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Ten-Detective-Aces-v47-n02-1943-04-0007.jpg)
Well *that* murder should be easy to solve. Unless he got on the elevator with the knife already in his back. Or if someone stabbed him and then got off the elevator on the previous floor before anyone noticed it. Or…alright I guess it won’t be that easy to solve.
If you read the novelet, you’ll learn that the man was stabbed to death because, as a window cleaner, he was the only witness to the murder of Mrs Quackenbush, a lady who thought she could make some easy money blackmailing her former lover, the janitor of the Townsend Apartment Building (where she formerly lived) and who was working as an informant for the cops while selling cocaine to wealthy residents.
The man had no other solution than to get rid of the eye-witness. He couldn’t do it himself because the daughter of Mrs Quackenbush, Callista (helped by her fiancé, Tom Galbraith, a private investigator, very tough guy) kept an eye on him.
Vassilevsky (the janitor) therefore gets a drug-addicted young man (Walter, the son of a banker) to kill the window cleaner. That is the moment where the plot gets interesting because Walter accidentally meets Callista one night in a boat crossing the Hudson River and the two fall in love instantly.
Blablabla… Well, in the end you’ll find out that jealous Tom is the killer and signed his crime with a “V” (for Vassilevsky since he thought Walter was his father).
But I must say that I have not read the novelet.