Inspector Queen’s Own Case

She crawled toward the window, reached up, got hold of the short end of the drape pull, and yanked. Before she climbed to her feet she felt for the drapes to make sure they were drawn.

She located the lamp on the piano, felt for the button, found it. The lamp remained dark. Why didn’t it turn on? The wall switch. It controlled all the lights in the room.

She groped toward where Richard Queen had scuttled at the first shot. After a while she located the switch.

Connie Coy was lying between the Steinway and the pulled-out piano bench, on her back. Her robe had twisted open in her fall. She was wearing nothing underneath.

The blonde girl was staring intently at the ceiling, as if something were written there that she could not understand.

4 Even in the Cannon’s Mouth

“Don’t touch anything, Jessie.”

Jessie had not heard him come in. He was just inside the doorway from the kitchen, breathing in heaves, getting his breath. Perspiration was streaming down his cheeks.

“She’s dead, Richard.”

“I know.”

He had a handkerchief on his right hand again. He went into Connie Coy’s bedroom, wiped the knob of the bathroom door. He came back and went to the piano and picked up the fallen lighter and wiped it clean and put it back on the end table. He wiped the chair he had used. He glanced at the glass of water Jessie had brought the girl from the kitchen, then at Jessie’s hands.

“You’re still wearing your gloves. That’s good.” He went over to the sofa, picked up Jessie’s purse, looked around the living room. “You’ve pulled the drapes.” He did not sound angry. He said it like a man taking inventory. He came over to her and led her to the kitchen doorway. “Stay right here.” He went to the wall switch and rubbed it with the handkerchief.

Then he flipped the switch.

The room got dark again.

She heard him making his way to the window. The drapes hissed open again.

“Let’s go, Jessie.” He was back by her side.

“No,” Jessie said.

“What?” He sounded surprised, grabbed her arm.

“Just one more minute.” She began to pull away.

He held on, pulling gently the other way. “You can’t do anything for her, Jessie. Don’t you understand that we’ve got to get out of here? Come on, now.”

“I won’t leave her exposed like that,” Jessie said stubbornly. “It isn’t fair. All I want to do is close her robe, Richard. Let me go.”

But he did not. “We mustn’t touch anything.”

“All those men looking at her! A woman’s nakedness is her own. It isn’t fair.”

“She’s dead, Jessie.”

The street was just the same. No, not quite. Kripps’s car was gone. Where Richard Queen had paused to light a cigarette and talk to the retired policemen in the car there was space, signifying flight or chase.

Jessie walked stiff-legged, letting him lead her.

They walked over to Broadway, waited for the light, crossed to the east side, headed downtown.

Jessie kept moving one stiff leg after the other. Once in a while it would come to her that she was somebody named Jessie Sherwood, a registered nurse, and that behind her a blonde girl with her robe open to the navel lay under a grand piano and that none of it should be that way.

The old man did not speak to her. He was busy strolling along, her right arm tucked beneath his left, stopping for signals at corners, nudging her ahead, glancing into shop windows, pausing to light a cigarette, wipe his face, let the cigarette go out, pause to light it again. He lit a great many cigarettes.

At 72nd Street he suddenly stepped up their tempo. He hurried her across the intersection, steered her briskly into a cafeteria. The cafeteria was crowded. He picked up a tray, two spoons, two paper napkins. He made her stand on line with him behind the railing. He put two cups of coffee on the tray. He had their tickets punched, paused to look around as if for a table. Then he took her over to where a pair of elderly men were sitting over cups of coffee, too. One had a scar on his face, the other wore heavy glasses. The other two chairs at the table were unoccupied; they were tilted against the third and fourth sides as if they were reserved.

Richard Queen set the tray down, pulled out one of the tilted chairs for her, seated himself in the other.

Only then did he say, “Giffin. Kripps. What happened?”

“We lost him, Inspector.”

“You first, Giffin.”