Might as Well Be Dead

I told her that the only thing that had been wrong with her was that she thought Peter Hays had killed Molloy, whereas now she didn’t, got the keys from her, went downstairs, where the hired help was waiting for me in the hall, put the phone number on Wolfe’s desk, told Fritz where we were going, and left. Saul and Fred had assembled a kit of tools from the cupboard in the office where we kept an assortment of everything from keys to jimmies.

If I described every detail of our performance in the Molloy apartment that day between 9:35 A.M. and 3:10 P.M. you might get some useful pointers on how to look for a lost diamond or postage stamp, but if you haven’t lost a diamond or a postage stamp it wouldn’t interest you. When we got through we knew a lot of things: that Molloy had hoarded old razor blades in a cardboard box in his dresser; that someone had once upon a time burned a little hole in the under side of a chair cushion, probably with a cigarette, and at a later time someone had stuffed a piece of lemon peel in the hole, God knew why; that there were three loose tiles in the bathroom wall and a loose board in the living room floor; that Mrs. Molloy had three girdles, liked pale yellow underwear and white nighties, used four different shades of nylons, and kept no letters except those from a sister who lived in Arkansas; that apparently there were no unpaid bills other than one for $3.84 from a laundry; that none of the pieces of furniture had hollow legs; that if a jar of granulated sugar slips from your hand and spills you have a problem; and a thousand others. Saul and I together went over every scrap of the contents of the three cartons, already inspected by Orrie.

It would be misleading to say we found nothing whatever. We found two empty drawers. They were the two top drawers, one on each side, of a desk against the wall of what Molloy might have called his den. None of the six keys Selma had given me fitted their locks, which were good ones, Wetherbys, and Saul had to work on them with the assortment in the kit. The drawers were as empty as the day they were built, and had presumably been locked from force of habit.