Might as Well Be Dead

“I don’t know whether I did or not. We were at it nearly two hours, and mostly it was just stirring up the dust, but there were a couple of things, maybe three, that you might want to hear. One day in the fall of nineteen fifty-two, she thinks it was October, a man called at the office, and there was a row that developed into combat. She heard a crash and went in, and the caller was flat on the floor. Molloy told her he would handle it, and she returned to the other room, and pretty soon the caller came out on his feet and left. She doesn’t know his name, and she didn’t hear what the row was about because the door between the rooms was shut.”

Wolfe grunted. “I hope we’re not reduced to that. And?”

“This one was earlier. In the early summer. For a period of about two weeks a woman phoned the office nearly every day. If Molloy was out she left word for him to call Janet. If Molloy was in and took the call he told her he couldn’t discuss the matter on the phone and rang off. Then the calls stopped and Janet was never heard from again.”

“Does Mrs. Molloy know what she wanted to discuss?”

“No. She never listened in. She wouldn’t.”

He sent me a sharp glance. “Are you bewitched again?”

“Yes, sir. It took four seconds, even before she spoke. From now on you’ll pay me but I’ll really be working for her. I want her to be happy. When that’s attended to I’ll go off to some island and mope.” Orrie Cather laughed, and Johnny Keems tittered. I ignored them and went on. “The third thing was in February or March nineteen fifty-three, not long before they were married. Molloy phoned around noon and said he had expected to come to the office but couldn’t make it. His ticket for a hockey game that night was in a drawer of his desk, and he asked her to get it and send it to him by messenger at a downtown restaurant. He said it was in a small blue envelope in the drawer. She went to the drawer and found the envelope, and noticed that it had been through the mail and slit open. Inside there were two things: the hockey ticket and a blue slip of paper, which she glanced at. It was a bill from the Metropolitan Safe Deposit Company for rent of a safe-deposit box, made out to Richard Randall. It caught her eye because she had once thought she might marry a man named Randall but had decided not to. She put it back in the envelope, which was addressed to Richard Randall, but if she noticed the address she has forgotten it. She had forgotten the whole incident until we dug it up.”