"I'm afraid that I am, but that's not the worst of it. I also snore. My dear departed wife used to say I sound like a locomotive undergoing a coughing fit, but it has never disturbed my sleep."
"When did you lose your wife?"
"It will be eight years in December."
I told him I was sorry for his loss. He accepted my condolences with a heavy nod.
"She didn't hear anything either," Sassoon said. "For the same reason, I suppose." He shook his head again and sucked on his cigarette.
"What can you tell me about Esther?"
He touched his
I nodded. I had read Rivlin's interview with Natalie Davidson, in which she had presented herself as a friend of Esther, and I was planning on talking to her.
"Do you happen to know where the Davidsons are living these days?"
Sassoon started shaking his head, but paused midway. "I got a letter from them at Rosh Hashanah two years ago. I should have it somewhere…now where did I put it…ah, here it is."
He had been rummaging in a desk drawer and now presented me with a white envelope. Inside was a generic greeting for the Jewish New Year. Printed on the envelope was a return address on Ben Yehuda Street, in Tel Aviv. I copied it in my notebook.
"Do you know where I can find the other neighbors who lived here at the time?"
The corners of his mouth curled down again, almost to his jawline. "Zelig Joselewicz in apartment two was about eighty when the murders took place. He died in hospital from the flu three…no, four years ago. Yisrael Metzner, who lived in apartment four, was killed in 1940 when the Italians bombed Tel Aviv. Lastly, there's the couple who lived in apartment five, Mr. and Mrs. Rutte. They returned to the Netherlands. They were Dutch Jews. The murders put the scare into Mrs. Rutte. She told me she didn't feel safe here any longer, that she wanted to go back to Amsterdam. You can imagine what happened to them after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands."
I could. I had met Dutch Jews in Auschwitz, though I could not recall anyone named Rutte.
"So," he continued, "the killer is really responsible for the deaths of four people, not just two."
He finished his coffee and set it aside. A dark, muddy sediment clogged the bottom third of the glass. He crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray and brushed tobacco crumbs from his fingers.
"Did Esther have any visitors? Any men who came calling?"
"I never saw any, and it's not that I forbade it, like other landlords do. As long as you pay the rent and don't make trouble, you can do what you please in your apartment. That's the way I run things."
I scratched my cheek. "I've seen pictures of Esther. I find it hard to believe that a woman as beautiful as her did not have any suitors."
"Some men don't want a woman burdened with a child. But maybe she did have someone and I never knew about it. Natalie Davidson might know."
I asked him if I could see the apartment where the murders had occurred. He raised both eyebrows.
"What good would that do you? It's been ten years. Not a stick of furniture is the same."
"Still. I'd like to see it. Who lives there now?"
"My son, with his wife and baby boy."
"The same son you sent to call the police when you discovered the bodies?"
"Yes. Haim. He's twenty-two now." Sassoon must have read the question on my face, because he added, "You think it's strange that I'd let my family live in that apartment. For two years after the murders, I didn't even rent it out. I could have done so in a heartbeat—it's a good apartment. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Gradually, my aversion subsided. I removed all the furniture, repainted every wall, installed a sturdier door—this I did to all the apartments in the building—and rented it out. Two years ago, when my son got married and told me he wanted to move up there, I was aghast. But he persisted, and I gave in." A small shrug. "At first it felt strange, but ever since my grandson was born, it doesn't anymore. It's like the apartment has a fresh start. Come, let's go up."
We climbed the stairs together. Sassoon was showing his age, or maybe his lifetime of smoking Turkish tobacco, as he huffed with each step, pulling himself up with the metal banister. He knocked on the door before opening it, explaining that he was not sure whether his daughter-in-law was home. She wasn't. We entered the apartment and he led me to the bedroom and pointed out where the bodies had lain.
