Murder by the Book

"Yeah. I shouldn't have copped it, but you said to get you something and I wanted to produce it. Shall I take it to him or phone him to send for it?","Neither. Put it here on the bench. I'll wash my hands and phone him. You have work to do. It's possible that Miss Abrams told someone something about the contents of that novel she typed. Try it. See her family and friends. Get a list of them. Saul and Fred and Orrie will phone in at fiveMURDER BY THE BOOK 25

thirty. You will phone at five-twenty-five, to tell me where I can tell them to join you. Divide the list among you."

"My God," I protested, "we're stretching it thinner and thinner. Next you'll be trying to get it by photo-offset from her typewriter platen."

He ignored it and headed for the sink to wash his hands. I went to my room, one flight down, for my raincoat. Downstairs I stopped in the kitchen to tell Fritz I wouldn't be home for dinner.

5

IT WAS more than I had bargained for. Having go^ the home address of a Rachel Abrams from the Bronx phone book, having learned by dialing the number and speaking briefly with a female voice that that was it, and having bit the subway before the rush hour, I had congratulated myself on a neat fast start. I entered the old apartment building on 178th Street a block off the Grand Concourse less than an hour after Wolfe had told me to see her family and friends.

But now I realized that I had been too damn fast. The woman who opened the door of 4E to me was meeting my eyes straight and inquiring placidly, "You're the one that phoned? What is with my Rachel?"

"Are you Rachel's mother?" I asked.

She nodded and smiled. "Since some years I am. I have never been told the opposite. What is?"

I hadn't bargained for this. I had taken it for granted that either a cop or a journalist would'have relayed the news before I got there, and had been ready to cope with tears and wailing, but obviously I had beat them to it. Of course the thing to do was spill it to her, but her quiet self-satisfaction when she said "my Rachel" was too much for me. Nor could I say excuse it please, wrong number, and fade, because I had a job to do, and if I muffed it merely because I didn't like it I was in the wrong line of business. So I tried my damnedest to grin at her, but I admit that for a couple of seconds I was no help to the conversation.

Her big dark friendly eyes stayed straight at mine.

"I will maybe ask you to come in and sit," she said, "when you tell me what you want."