Rex Stout: Might as Well Be Dead

“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.