Death of a Doxy (Crime Line)

I arose and stood, thinking it would be better manners to thank her with her eyes open, but they didn't open, so I said thank you, and she said with her eyes shut, "I thought you had gone." If I had been an Irish wolfhound I would have wagged my tail as I left the room and knocked something over. Miss Corcoran, who accompanied me to the elevator to see that I entered it, told me that between ten and eleven in the morning would be the best time for Miss Rowan to phone.

I hadn't had a decent walk since Saturday, it wasn't five-thirty yet, and I might as well save taxi fare. But first there was a phone call to make, so I went to Madison Avenue, found a booth, got Lily Rowan, explained the situation, and said that she had better ring Miss Corcoran in the morning and tell her she had decided to get a dachshund instead. What she said was irrelevant and personal. Outside again, I turned my collar up and put gloves on. Winter was going all out.

If you have the impression that the help was doing all the work, Saul and Fred after the ten names I had got from Julie Jaquette and me cornering a jealous wife, no indeed. When I entered the office at a quarter past six there was Wolfe at his desk with a book, and I saw at a glance that it wasn't Invitation to an Inquest. It was The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, so I tiptoed across to my desk, not to disturb him. When he finished a paragraph and looked up I asked, "Wouldn't you get the feel better if you read aloud? Pretend I'm her."

He ignored it and demanded, "Have you done any better?"

"No, sir. Unless we want an Irish wolfhound for stalking. Mrs. Ballou is scratched. Even if someone had told her all about it, full details, she couldn't have gone there and settled Isabel Kerr because (a) she would have been too tired, and (b) she would have forgotten the name and address. Of course Miss Jackson has broadened your understanding of women, and you may not agree."

I reported. It was so brief that he hadn't much more than got comfortably arranged, leaning back with his eyes closed, when I reached the end, the phone call to Lily Rowan.

"There is one difference between you and her," I said. "You shut your eyes to concentrate on what I'm saying, and she shuts hers to hope I'm not there. She didn't even notice that I dragged her husband in by the heels, twice. I swear I could have told her all about Isabel Kerr and the pink bedroom, and when he came home from work she wouldn't have bothered to mention it to him."