November Challenge—"A Detective Story"

I refer to it as my first apartment. In fact, it was only an attic room. I shared the space in Mrs. Lipstick’s house with a girl named Grace. We called our landlady Mrs. Lipstick, and it didn’t seem to bother her—though it was actually spelled Liptschtik. Grace  lived there first and wasn’t pleased when I moved in. My mother had heard good things about Mrs. Lipstick from mutual acquaintances and only agreed to let me leave home if I boarded with the old lady.

So Grace and I shared the small room in the attic and quickly became good friends. Directly below us was Mrs. Lipstick’s room, and next to that a small bathroom the three of us shared. The floor below held a narrow kitchen, a dining room, and a rather large sitting room we rarely used, with an electric heater that was never turned on. 

The house was always cold.

In the basement were two rented rooms. A young man named Leo had one, and an older man named Petrov—we called him Peter—had the other. I wasn't quite sure where their bathroom was, but I assumed there must be one—they never used ours.

Mrs. Lipstick let Grace and me have the bathroom first in the morning so we could get ready for work. Our dinners were eaten together each evening, prepared by Mrs. Lipstick, who wasn’t a very good cook. Leo ate enough for two men, though you’d never know it to look at him. He was one of those beanpole types, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbing whenever he spoke. I often worried it might break through the skin. I wished he would wear a turtleneck or a scarf to hide it. He spoke non-stop, with a nervous cadence, and nothing he said was worth listening to. I couldn’t say for sure, but I guessed him to be in his late twenties.

Peter was the opposite—a short, heavy-set man, probably in his sixties. He pushed his food around the plate, taking little nibbles but never finishing. He rarely spoke. We knew nothing personal about either man. Grace and I surmised, with no proof, that Leo was somehow related to Mrs. Lipstick. They had the same accent, and once in a while, when they thought they were alone, they spoke in hushed tones in a foreign language. We never heard Peter and Mrs. Lipstick conversing. The most he would say to her was 'thank you'. The most she would respond, 'you’re welcome'.

When dinner was finished, the two men would leave the house, saying they were off to play pool and would be back by nine. And they always were. Grace and I always went for a walk, staying out until we were certain Mrs. Lipstick was asleep. If her bedroom light was still on when we returned, we’d walk around the block until her window went dark. This had been the pattern for several months, and it seemed to work for all of us.

But one night in November, a sixth place was set at the dinner table.

We stood at the kitchen door, and Grace asked, “Is there a visitor coming tonight?”

“I’m taking another boarder. Her name is Olga,” our landlady replied without turning from the stove.

“There’s no room in the attic,” Grace almost shouted. “I hope you don’t plan on putting her in with us.”

“I’m putting a cot on the landing outside my bedroom,” Mrs. Lipstick said. “She won’t interfere with you.”

“What about the bathroom schedule?” I asked. That, I worried, would interfere with us.

Still Mrs. Lipstick kept her back to us, stirring something that smelled of cabbage in a pot boiling on the stove. “Olga knows you have first dibs,” she assured us.

That evening, the sixth place setting remained empty through the cabbage soup course. The main meal was served. Mrs. Lipstick said nothing, though she checked her watch and glanced toward the front door more than once. Leo was unusually quiet while Peter poked at his plate and remained oblivious.

It was nearly twenty minutes later when Olga finally arrived. There was a light tapping on the back door. Mrs. Lipstick and Leo shared a curious glance. She hesitated briefly before excusing herself and slipping into the kitchen. Grace kicked me under the table and raised an eyebrow.

A few minutes of whispered conversation and a faint scent of lavender preceded her entrance to the dining room. She was far more attractive than I’d expected—no more than thirty, I guessed. She wore a tailored wool suit, pearl earrings, and a small diamond brooch—or perhaps it was only glass. I glanced at her left hand and noted her thin gold wedding band. She carried a large suitcase and a heavy coat slung over one arm, and she hadn’t removed her high-heeled shoes—a definite no-no in Mrs. Lipstick’s establishment. Her cheeks were flushed, though whether from cold or nerves I couldn’t tell.

“This is Olga,” Mrs. Lipstick said, as if we hadn’t guessed. “She’ll be staying a while.”

Peter glanced up for the first time. He and I were sitting on the same side of the table, so I didn’t see his face. But the look I saw on Grace’s face told me something was happening.

Olga gave a polite nod, set her case at the foot of the stairs, and returned to the empty chair between Peter and me. The lavender scent was now overwhelming. She seemed familiar with the house, and later Grace and I wondered if she had been there before. Olga ate quickly, without uttering a word, though when Leo began talking she looked up sharply, as if to signal him to stop—and he did. 

Peter placed his fork down and suggested to Leo it was time to play pool. The two men politely excused themselves.

Grace dared to converse with Olga, asking what kind of work she did. Mrs. Lipstick answered for her. “She helps with things around the house,” the old woman said. “Errands. Cleaning.”

After dinner, Olga carried her plate to the sink, washed it, and left the room without another word. She climbed the stairs and stopped near Mrs. Lipstick’s door.

Grace and I went for our walk.

We didn’t speak until we reached the corner, when Grace finally broke the silence. “Well, she’s not your average boarder. Did you notice her suit? Her pearls?”

“And the brooch,” I said. “No one wears diamonds—real or fake—to dinner at a boarding house. And she’s here to help with cleaning and errands? I think not!”

Grace commented that she made herself at home pretty quickly, and I agreed that she seemed very familiar with the layout of the house.

“And the way she looked at Leo, and he just stopped talking.”

I laughed. “So you think they’re married?” I intended that to sound flippant, but once said, we acknowledged it was a real possibility.

But more importantly, I needed to know what Grace had seen when Peter first set eyes on Olga.

“I thought he was going to faint," she reported. "The colour literally drained from his face. He was clearly shocked.”

We determined there was a connection between Olga and Leo and Olga and Peter. But what was the connection to our landlady?

Grace stopped walking for a moment. “Could Mrs. Lipstick be Leo’s mother?” Her eyes widened and she grabbed my arm, squeezing a little too hard. “Olga would be her daughter-in-law.”

“And Peter could be her husband,” I suggested facetiously.

Grace continued her theory, ignoring my attempt to downplay it. “Why do they all pretend they don’t know each other?”

We walked on for a few moments.

“Maybe Leo got himself into trouble,” I said, lowering my voice as if he might be hiding in the hedges.

“And Olga’s come to confront him? Or maybe blackmail him?”

“And Mrs. Lipstick’s caught in the middle.”

Grace nodded solemnly, as though we’d solved an important part of the story. “But Peter—how does Peter figure into it?”

When we turned the corner and saw the house again, both of us fell quiet.

The light in Mrs. Lipstick’s room was still on. Grace slowed her step. “She’s not asleep yet,”

“We’d best go in. There must be something going on,” I suggested, and Grace agreed.

The front door squeaked open. The house was quiet except for a low murmur coming from Mrs. Lipstick’s room. We snuck up the stairs, and Grace tapped my arm and nodded toward the closed bedroom door. We could hear two voices—Mrs. Lipstick’s, nervous and hurried; Olga’s, lower and steadier and most definitely authoritative. They were speaking in the foreign language we only heard when Leo and Mrs. Lipstick thought they were alone. Though we couldn’t make out what they were saying, we knew by the rise and fall of their tones they were arguing.

We leaned closer. There was a pause, then the scrape of a chair, a few words in that same language, then the squeak of floorboards.

Grace grabbed my sleeve, and we darted toward the stairs, trying to look casual, as though we’d just come in. The door flew open. Olga stood in the doorway.

She looked from me to Grace with a cold glare, as if she knew exactly what we’d been doing. Then she turned and went back inside, closing the door firmly behind her.

We scurried up the stairs to the attic. I tripped on the top step. Grace shut the attic door behind us and we leaned against it, exhaling.

“Do you think she knew we were listening?” she asked.

“Oh, she knew.”

I checked the clock on the nightstand. It was after nine.

We stood still for several moments, waiting for the familiar sound of the men returning from pool—the squeak of the front door, the creaking of the floorboards—but the house remained silent.

We sat up until midnight, listening to the muffled voices of the women in the room below. We kept our light turned off so we could watch out the window for Leo and Peter, but we fell asleep before knowing if they returned.

We woke at six, earlier than usual, dressed for work, then sat in silence listening for signs of life in the house. It was quiet. Grace opened our door just a crack and peeked down the stairs to where Olga’s cot had been set up.

“She’s not there. I don’t even think her bed was slept in.”

I tiptoed over to look for myself. Still, we didn’t know if Leo and Peter had come back. A light was shining across the floor of the hallway. We listened. We heard nothing.

We didn’t want to, but we had to go to work. We crept down the stairs, noticing it was Mrs. Lipstick’s bedroom light that was glowing softly beneath her door. There was no sign of Olga.

“Should we knock on her door?” I whispered to Grace.

“No,” she whispered back. “Let’s go downstairs. She must be making breakfast. I smell bacon.”

We skulked down the second flight of stairs as quietly as we could. Leo and Peter’s coats now hung over the newel post. They had come home. Someone was moving about. Grace and I locked arms and approached the kitchen.

We both stiffened, and I think we gasped in unison. Olga was preparing breakfast. She turned suddenly.

“Your breakfast will be ready. Sit in the dining room. I’ll bring it to you.”

Who was she to be telling us what to do? And why wasn’t Mrs. Lipstick preparing breakfast?

As we sat at the dining room table awaiting our breakfast, I shuddered as it dawned on me that we shouldn’t eat whatever she had made. I tried unsuccessfully to mime my concern to Grace. She shrugged her shoulders, indicating she wasn’t getting my message.

I leaned over and whispered, “Don’t eat it,” just as Olga entered with a tray.

“Eat,” Olga seemed to demand. “I made it specially for you.”

There was a choice: eat or create a delay. I chose the latter and tried to sound casual, asking, “Is Mrs. Lipstick up yet?”

“I don’t know. And her name is Liptschtik. A proud Ukrainian name. Show respect.”

So Mrs. Lipstick is Ukrainian. That’s news.

“Mrs. Lip-shtick,” I tried to pronounce it correctly, fearing that Olga could turn on me if I got it wrong, then repeated it for good measure. “Mrs. Lip-schtick is always up by now. I’m going to check on her.”

Grace joined me as we ran up the stairs. Olga was right behind us. I knocked on the door. No answer. I attempted to turn the knob but discovered the door was locked. Olga ordered us to stop. We ignored her. Mrs. Lipstick only locked her door when she was going out. It locked from the outside. The key was missing from the string it usually hung on.

“Where’s the key?” I screamed at Olga, and when she didn’t respond, I screamed again. “Quickly, Grace, phone the police. I’m afraid she’s killed her.”

Grace pushed by Olga, running downstairs to make the emergency call.

Olga should have been making her escape, you would think. Instead, she stepped toward the door, removed the key from her pocket, and turned it in the lock.

“Prepare yourself,” she warned me.

She threw the door open, and there, lying across the blood-soaked bed, was Peter. Nothing could have prepared me for that.

“Petrov,” she said quietly. “He’s dead.”

Although I was relieved it wasn’t Mrs. Lipstick lying in a pool of blood, I feared the worst—that Olga had killed her too.

Grace flew up the stairs and into the bedroom. She screamed at the sight. “Peter. You killed Peter!”

Olga was silent.

We heard footsteps bounding up the stairs. The police rushed in.

“Don’t touch anything. And don’t anyone move.”

We obeyed.

One of the officers checked for a pulse. Peter’s body was cold. Rigor mortis was setting in.

“This man’s been dead for several hours. Who wants to tell me what happened?”

“She killed him,” I shouted, pointing to Olga. “And we think she killed poor old Mrs. Lipstick too.”  To hell with Olga. She was always Mrs. Lipstick to me.

We heard footsteps approaching and thought it was more police officers. Grace stepped into the hallway to make room for them, and we heard her gasp.

“Oh my God, Mrs. Lipstick. You’re alive.”

I pushed past the officers to see Leo standing with the old lady at the top of the stairs.

Peter’s body was covered. The mortician was called. We gathered in the sitting room. The house was freezing. Mrs. Lipstick turned on the electric heater and sat on the sofa with a blanket wrapped around her. Leo and Olga stood together. Grace and I warmed ourselves by the heater. Several police officers were searching the house for possible clues, while one officer remained with us.

“Can anyone tell me what happened here?” he asked, looking directly at Olga.

Leo put his arm around her shoulder. Grace and I nodded, satisfied we’d guessed correctly.

Olga spoke. “I am Anya Liptschtik, Leonardo’s wife.” She smiled at Leo, and he seemed to give her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “The dead man is my father, Petrov Romulski. He is, or was, a hitman for the Soviet intelligence agency. He took his own life.”

This was taking a different turn than Grace and I had anticipated.

She took a deep breath. Her voice shook as she shared her story.

“When I left Russia, I changed my identity. I became Olga. I wanted nothing to do with my father. When Leo and I married, I told him nothing of this. The past was behind me, and I hoped it would remain so. This became our home. Leo’s mother, Sophia, lived with us.”

Mrs. Lipstick looked up and smiled. Grace and I were right again. Leo is her son.

Olga went on.

“We needed help with expenses and advertised the basement room for rent. One day, while I was out, Petrov Romulski answered the ad, and Leo and Sophia had no idea who they were letting into our home. By the time I returned, Petrov had already been given permission to move his belongings in the next day. As long as he didn’t connect me to them, I believed they would be safe. So I left—escaped—with our unborn baby, the child Leo never knew existed.”

She paused, and I looked at Leo, expecting some sign of shock, but his face didn’t change.

“Andrei, our son, is six months old now, and I realized I couldn’t keep him from his father any longer. I contacted Sophia and told her I was returning, but she wanted nothing to do with me. Then I told her I had money—blood money, I’m ashamed to admit—from my father’s secret accounts. Money I could use to help them. That’s when she agreed to let me come back. 

“She followed my instructions: Leo should be told I was coming home, but they were both to act as though I were a stranger. Still, I didn’t tell her about the baby. I knew I was putting us all at terrible risk. When I saw Petrov last night, though, I could see he was a weakened old man.”

“Didn’t you think Petrov might harm Leo when they left the house last night?” I asked. I had so many questions.

“Petrov hadn’t made the connection yet. As I said, as long as he didn’t connect us, Leo was safe.”

Now Leo spoke up, providing us with details about his time with Petrov the previous night.

“We didn’t play pool as usual. Instead, Petrov began to tell me about his time in Russia—his daughter Anya, who now called herself Olga. I didn’t dare tell him we were husband and wife. I had just learned he was a hitman, after all. I knew I was in danger. But more important, I knew my Olga had risked her life to return. I allowed him to talk, buying myself time, trying to determine what I should do. I hoped Olga had a plan.”

Olga began crying, and the police officer suggested she take a break.

“No,” she insisted through her tears, “I must finish.”

“I had to make Sophia understand. That’s what you heard last night,” she said, nodding toward me and Grace. “I told her everything, and at last she believed me. We went down to the basement to wait for Leo and Petrov. When they still hadn’t returned by two o’clock, I grew anxious. But then we heard the door open, and they came downstairs. 

“I confronted Petrov. We argued. He pulled a pistol from his bedside table, attached a silencer, and I was convinced he meant to kill us all. He ordered me up stairs and forced Leo and Sophia into the tiny bathroom, telling them to lock it from the inside when he realized he couldn’t do it himself. Leo tried to stop him, but I begged him to stay with his mother. 

“Petrov and I went up to the second floor. I was terrified the two girls in the attic might be in  danger too, so I did as he said. We entered Sophia’s room. Petrov sat on the bed—and as I looked into his eyes, I knew what he intended. He turned the gun toward himself. I covered my eyes. Then he pulled the trigger. I backed out of the room, closed the door, and locked it.”

My mind was reeling. And as Grace trembled beside me, I knew we shared the same thought: Was it possible this had all happened while we slept?

Olga continued. “I returned to the basement, where Sophia was sharing my story with Leo—telling him about his son.  His joy reassured me we’d get through this. We planned to report the incident once the girls had gone, but their detective work interfered.”

For now, the police had what they needed. While they removed Petrov’s body the five of us remained in the sitting room. Grace and I didn’t go to work that day and had already decided to move out. We promised to keep in touch but never did. The Lipstick house sold a few months later, and I heard they all moved to Canada. 

I have fond memories of my first apartment—though you wouldn’t think it possible: the tiny attic room, smells of cabbage and lavender—and a hitman lying dead in my landlady’s bedroom.