Might as Well Be Dead

THE MAID’S NAME WAS Ella Reyes. I got that from Selma Molloy on the phone at eight o’clock Friday morning, and also that she was around thirty years old, small and neat, the color of coffee with cream, and had been with the Irwins for about a year.

But I didn’t get to tackle her. Relieving Fritz of the chore of taking Wolfe’s breakfast tray up to his room, where, a mountain of yellow silk pajamas, he stood barefoot in the flood of sunshine near a window, I learned that he had shifted the line-up. Orrie Cather was to call on the man and woman who, sitting in a parked car, had seen the end of Johnny Keems. Their name and address was in the papers, as well as the fact that they agreed that the driver of the hit-and-run car had been a man, and that was about all. They had of course been questioned by old hands at it, but Wolfe wanted Orrie to get it direct.

Saul Panzer was to take the maid, write his own opening, and ad lib it from there. He was to be equipped with five hundred bucks from the safe, which, added to the C he already had, would make six hundred. A rosy prospect for Ella Reyes, since it would be tax-free. I was to be on call for the ceremony of opening the safe-deposit box, if and when it was scheduled. Wolfe was good enough to supply a reason for giving Saul the maid and me the ceremony. He said that if difficulties arose Mrs. Molloy would be more tractable with me present. Wit.

I was fiddling around the office when Wolfe came down from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock. Saul had arrived at nine and got a thorough briefing and five Cs, and departed, and Orrie had come and gone, to see the eyewitnesses. Parker phoned a little after ten, said he would probably get the court order before noon, and told me to stand by. I asked if I should alert Mrs. Molloy, and he said she wouldn’t be needed, so I phoned her that she could relax.

Feeling that the situation called for a really cutting remark to the wit, I concocted a few, but none of them was sharp enough, so when he entered and crossed to his desk I merely said, “Mrs. Molloy isn’t coming to the party. You have bewitched her. She admits she wouldn’t stay last night because she was afraid to trust herself so close to you. She never wants to go anywhere any more unless you are there.”

He grunted and picked up a catalogue that had come in the morning mail, and the phone rang. It was Parker. I was to meet him and Patrick Degan at the Metropolitan Safe Deposit Company at noon.