Rex Stout - Might as Well Be Dead

At 3:10 P.M. I used the phone there in the apartment and told Wolfe the bad news, including the empty drawers. Orrie said to tell him that never had so many searched so long for so little, but it didn’t appeal to me. Wolfe told me to tell Fred and Orrie that was all for the day and to bring Saul in with me. After making a tour to verify that we were leaving things as we had found them, we moved out. Down on the sidewalk we parted, Fred and Orrie heading for the corner to get a drink to drown the disappointment, and Saul and I, with the kit of tools, flagging a taxi. It wasn’t a cheerful ride. If the best the genius could do was start us combing the metropolitan area, including Jersey and Long Island, for a relic that might not exist, the future wasn’t very bright.

But he had something a little more specific. We had barely crossed the sill to the office when he blurted at me, “About that Delia Brandt. About Molloy’s proposal to her of a trip to South America. You said last Wednesday that she told you she had put him off, but you thought she lied. Why did you think she lied?”

I stood. “The way she said it, the way she looked, the way she answered questions about it. And just her. I had formed an opinion of her.”

“Have you changed your opinion? Since she is going to marry William Lesser?”

“Hell no. She couldn’t go to South America with a dead man, and evidently, from Fred’s reports, she was playing Lesser all the time on an option. If Lesser found out what the score was and decided to take—”

“That’s not my target. If Molloy was preparing to decamp and take that girl with him, and if she had agreed to go, he might have entrusted certain objects to her care — for example, some of the objects he removed from the empty drawers you found. Is it fantastic to assume that he left them in her apartment for safekeeping pending departure?”

“No, not fantastic. I wouldn’t trust her with a subway token, but apparently his opinion of her wasn’t the same flavor as mine. It’s quite possible.”

“Then you and Saul will go and search her apartment. Now.”

When Wolfe gets desperate he is absolutely fearless. He will expose me to the risk of a five-year stretch up the river without batting an eye. That’s okay, since I am old enough to vote and can always say no, but that time he was inviting another party too, so I turned to look at Saul. He merely asked, “Will she be there?”

“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.