Might as Well Be Dead (20 page)

“If she’s working, probably not until around five-thirty, maybe later. If she’s there I might be able to take her out to buy champagne, but then you’d have to do the work. Shall I phone?”

“You might as well.”

I went to my desk and dialed the number, waited through fifteen whirrs, hung up, and swiveled. “No answer. If you like the idea, we won’t want the kit, just some of the keys. The door downstairs has a Manson lock, old style. The one to her apartment is a Wyatt. You know more about them than I do.”

Saul brought the kit to my desk and opened it, selected four strings of keys and dropped them in his pocket, and closed the kit. While he was doing that I went to the cupboard and got two pairs of rubber gloves.

“I must remind you,” Wolfe said as we started out, “that prudence is no shame to valor. I shall not evade my responsibility as accessory.”

“Much obliged,” I thanked him. “If we’re caught we’ll say you begged us not to.”

We went to Ninth Avenue for a taxi, and on the way downtown discussed modus operandi. Not that it needed much discussion. Dismissing the cab on Christopher Street, we walked on to Arbor Street, rounded the corner, and continued to Number 43. Nobody had painted it in the five days since I had seen it. We entered the vestibule, and I pushed the button marked Brandt. Getting no click, I pushed it again, and, after another wait, a third time.

“Okay,” I told Saul, and stepped to the outer door, which was standing open, for an outlook. Arbor Street is not Fifth Avenue, and only two boys and a woman with a dog had passed by when Saul told my back, “Come on in.” It had taken him about a minute and a half. We entered.

He preceded me up the narrow dingy stairs, the idea being that we would do a quick once-over and then I would stand guard outside, at the head of the stairs, while he dug deeper. As we reached the top of the third flight he had a string of keys in his hand, ready to tackle the Wyatt, but I remembered that prudence is no shame to valor and went to the door first and knocked. I waited, knocked louder, got no response, and stepped aside for Saul. The Wyatt took longer than the one downstairs, perhaps three minutes. When he got it he pushed the door open. Since I was supposed to be in command, the proper thing would have been for him to let me go in first, but he crossed the threshold, saying, “Jumping Jesus.”

I was at his elbow, staring with him. At my former visit it had been one of those rooms that call for expert dodging to get anywhere. Now it would have taken more than dodging. The piano bench was still where it belonged, in the center of the main traffic lane, and the other pieces of furniture were more or less in place, but otherwise it was a first-rate mess. Cushions had been ripped open and the stuffing pulled out and scattered around; books and magazines were off their shelves and helter-skelter on the floor; flowerpots had been dumped and dropped; and the general effect was about what you would get if you turned a room over to a dozen orangutans and told them to enjoy themselves.

“He didn’t leave it as neat as we—” I started to comment, and stopped. Saul had spotted it too, and we moved together, on past the piano bench. It was Delia Brandt, on the floor near the couch where I had sat with her. She was on her face, her legs stretched out. I squatted on one side and Saul on the other, but one feel of her bare forearm was enough to show that no tests were necessary. She had been dead at least twelve hours and probably longer. We didn’t look for a wound because that wasn’t necessary either. A cord as thick as a clothesline was tight around her neck.

We got erect and I stepped through the clutter to a doorway, the door standing open, for a look at the bedroom, while Saul went and closed the door to the hall. The bedroom was even worse, with the bed torn apart, the innards of the mattress all over, and clothing and other objects sprayed around. A glance in the bathroom showed that it had not been neglected. Back in the living room, Saul was standing looking down at her.

“He killed her,” he said, “before he started looking. Stuff from cushions on top of her.”

“Yeah, so I noticed. He worked the bedroom and closets too, so there’s nothing left for us except one thing. She’s got her clothes on. Either he found it or something scared him out or what he was after was too bulky to be on her.”

“The clothes women wear nowadays he wouldn’t have to take them off. Why the gloves? Going to rake through the leavings?”

“No. Put them on.” I handed him a pair, and started pulling mine on. “We’ll try the one thing he left. Unless you’ve got a date.”

“You don’t make prints on clothes.”

“You don’t make prints on anything with gloves on.” I got my knife from my pocket, opened it, squatted, slipped two fingers under the neck of the blouse, and slit it down to the waist. Saul, squatting on the other side, unzipped the skirt and moved to the feet to take the hem and pull the skirt off. I told him to look at the shoes, which were house sandals, tied on, and he did so, removing them and tossing them aside. The slip was as simple as the blouse. I cut the straps and slit it down the back from top to bottom and pushed it to either side. The pants were simple too; I got my fingers inside under the hips, and Saul worked them down and off. The girdle was slower, since I didn’t care to scratch the skin. Saul squatted on the other side again and helped me keep it lifted enough to slit it and leave her intact.

“She’s good and cold,” he said.

“Yeah. Stuff the edges under and we’ll roll her over to you.”

He did so, and with one hand under a hip and the other under a shoulder I rolled her, and Saul eased her as she came, and she was on her back. That way, face up, it was something else. The face of a girl who was strangled to death twelve or fourteen hours ago is not a girl’s face. Saul covered it with what was left of a cushion and then helped me finish the operation. There was nothing between the blouse and the slip, and nothing between the slip and the girdle, and nothing between the girdle and the skin, but when I lifted the brassiere and she was naked, there it was, fastened between the breasts with tape. A key. I pulled it loose, pulled the tape off, gave it a look, said, “Grand Central locker, out quick,” went to the bedroom for a blanket, and came back and covered her. Saul was at the door, peeling his gloves off, and I had mine off by the time I joined him. He used one of his to turn the doorknob, and, in the hall, to pull the door shut. The spring lock clicked and we made for the stairs.

We saw no one on the way down, but as we stepped out to the sidewalk a man turned in, evidently a tenant, as he gave us a glance. However, he was two seconds too late to be able to swear that we had been inside the house. When we had turned the corner and were on Christopher Street, Saul asked, “Walking for our health?”

“I could use some health after that,” I told him. “I suppose it doesn’t matter how you do it if you do it, but some ways seem worse than others. At Seventh Avenue we’ll split. One of us will take the subway and shuttle to Grand Central, and the other will phone Centre Street and go and report to Wolfe. Which do you prefer?”

“I’ll take Grand Central.”

“Okay.” I handed him the locker key. “But it’s possible there’s an eye on it, no telling whose. You’d better give me the keys and gloves.”

He transferred them to my pocket as we walked. At Seventh Avenue he went for the subway stairs and I entered the cigar store at the corner, found the phone booth, dialed SP 7-3100, and, when I got a voice, whined into the transmitter, high and thin, “Name and address, Delia Brandt,
B-R-A-N-D-T
, Forty-three Arbor Street, Manhattan. Got it?”

“Yes. What—”

“I’m telling you. I think she’s dead. In her apartment. You’d better hurry.” I hung up, heard the rattle, felt in the coin-return cup to see if the machine had swallowed the wrong way because you never know, departed, and got a taxi.

When I got out in front of the old brownstone it was a quarter to five, precisely one hour since Wolfe had told us he wouldn’t evade his responsibility as accessory. With the chain bolt on as usual during my absence, Fritz had to come to let me in, and after one glance at my face he said, “Ah.”

“Right,” I told him. “Ah it is. But I don’t want you to be an accessory too, so if they ask you how I looked say just like always, debonair.”

In the office I put the gloves and strings of keys away and then went to my desk and buzzed the plant rooms. He must have been hard at work, for it took him a while to answer.

“Yes?”

“Sorry to disturb you, but I thought you ought to know that it’s more serious than breaking and entering. It’s also disturbing a body in a death by violence. Her apartment looked as if a hurricane had hit it, and she was on the floor, dead and cold. Strangled. We took her clothes off and found a key to a Grand Central checking locker taped to her skin, and took it and left. I phoned the police from a booth, and Saul has gone to Grand Central to see what’s in the locker. He should be here in about twenty minutes.”

“When did she die?”

“More than twelve hours ago. That’s the best I can do.”

“What time was William Lesser here yesterday?”

“Four-thirty.”

Silence. Then: “There is nothing to say or do until we learn what is in the locker. If it is merely another fortune in currency—But speculation is idle. Whatever it is, you and Saul will examine it.”

I choked the temptation to ask if he wanted us to bring it up to the plant rooms. He would have had to say no, and to pile that on top of the news of another corpse would have been hitting him when he was down. But I had no ironclad rules between me and normal conduct, so when he hung up I went out to the stoop to wait for Saul. I even went down the seven steps to the sidewalk. Two neighborhood kids who were playing catch on the pavement stopped, stepped onto the opposite curb, and stood watching me. That house and its occupants had been centers of attraction, either sinister or merely mysterious, I wasn’t sure which, ever since a boy named Pete Drossos had been let in by me for a conference with Wolfe and had got murdered the next day. By the time I looked at my wristwatch the tenth time the situation was a little strained, with them standing there staring at me, and I was about ready to retreat to an inside post behind the glass panel when a taxi came rolling up and stopped at the curb, and Saul climbed out, after paying the driver, with a medium-sized black leather suitcase dangling in his hand. Letting him have the honor of delivering the bacon, I followed him up the steps and on in. He took it to the office and put it on a chair.

At a glance it had been manhandled. The lock had been pried open, not by an expert, and it was held shut only by the catches at the ends. I asked Saul, “Do you want to tell me or shall I tell you?”

“You tell me.”

“Glad to. Wolfe guessed right. Molloy had it stowed in her apartment, and after his death, maybe right after or maybe only yesterday, she busted it open and took a look.” I hefted it. “Another deduction: she didn’t clean it out. Because if she had why should she stash it in a locker and tape the key to her hide, and also because it’s not empty. Wolfe says we’re to examine it, but first, I think, for prints.”

I went to the cupboard and got things and we set to work. We weren’t as expert as the scientist had been with the safe-deposit box, but when we got through we had an assortment of photographs marked with locations that were nothing to be ashamed of. Of course they were only for future reference, since we had no samples of anybody for comparison. After putting them in envelopes and putting things away, we placed the suitcase on my desk and opened it.

It was about two-thirds full of a mixed collection. There were shirts and ties, probably his favorites that he couldn’t bear to leave, a pair of slippers, six tubes of Cremasine for shaving, two suits of pajamas, socks and handkerchiefs, and other miscellaneous personal items. Stacking them on the desk, we came to a bulging leather briefcase. It should have been dusted for prints too, but we were too warm to wait, and I lifted it out, opened it, and extracted the contents.

It wasn’t a relic, it was a whole museum. Saul pulled a chair up beside mine, and we went through it together. I won’t describe the items, or even list them, because it would take too long and also because it was Wolfe who had guessed where they were and he should have the pleasure of showing them. We had just reached the bottom of the pile when six o’clock brought Wolfe down from the plant rooms. He started for his desk, veered to come to mine, and glared down at the haberdashery.

“That’s just packing,” I told him. I tapped the pile of papers. “Here it is. Enough relics to choke a camel.”

He picked it up and circled around his desk to his chair and started in. Saul and I put the rest of the stuff back in the suitcase and closed it, and then sat and watched. For ten minutes the only sounds were rustlings of the papers and Wolfe’s occasional grunts. He had nearly reached the bottom of the stack when the phone rang and I answered it.

“Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Good—”

“This is Stebbins. About a woman named Brandt, Delia Brandt. When did you see her last?”

“Hold it a second while I sneeze.” I covered the transmitter and turned. “Stebbins asking about Delia Brandt, if you’re interested.” Wolfe frowned, hesitated, took his phone, and put it to his ear. I uncovered the transmitter and sneezed at it and then spoke.

“I hope I’m not going to have a cold. The last one I had—”

“Quit stalling,” he snarled. “I asked you a question.”

“I know you did, and you ought to know better by this time. If there’s any good reason, or even a poor one, why I should answer questions about a woman named Delia Brandt, what is it?”

“Her body has been found in her apartment. Murdered. Your name and address are on the memo page in her phone book, the last entry. When did you see her last?”

“My God. She’s dead?”

“Yeah. When you’re murdered you’re dead. Quit stalling.”

“I’m not stalling. If I didn’t react you might think I killed her myself. The first and last time I saw her was last Wednesday evening around nine-thirty, at her apartment. We were collecting background on Molloy, and she was his secretary for ten months, up to the time he died. I had a brief talk with her on the phone late Thursday afternoon. That’s all.”