Might as Well Be Dead

“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.”