I was at his elbow, staring with him. At my former visit it had been one of those rooms that call for expert dodging to get anywhere. Now it would have taken more than dodging. The piano bench was still where it belonged, in the center of the main traffic lane, and the other pieces of furniture were more or less in place, but otherwise it was a first-rate mess. Cushions had been ripped open and the stuffing pulled out and scattered around; books and magazines were off their shelves and helter-skelter on the floor; flowerpots had been dumped and dropped; and the general effect was about what you would get if you turned a room over to a dozen orangutans and told them to enjoy themselves.
“He didn’t leave it as neat as we-” I started to comment, and stopped. Saul had spotted it too, and we moved together, on past the piano bench. It was Delia Brandt, on the floor near the couch where I had sat with her. She was on her face, her legs stretched out. I squatted on one side and Saul on the other, but one feel of her bare forearm was enough to show that no tests were necessary. She had been dead at least twelve hours and probably longer. We didn’t look for a wound because that wasn’t necessary either. A cord as thick as a clothesline was tight around her neck.
We got erect and I stepped through the clutter to a doorway, the door standing open, for a look at the bedroom, while Saul went and closed the door to the hall. The bedroom was even worse, with the bed torn apart, the innards of the mattress all over, and clothing and other objects sprayed around. A glance in the bathroom showed that it had not been neglected. Back in the living room, Saul was standing looking down at her.
“He killed her,” he said, “before he started looking. Stuff from cushions on top of her.”
“Yeah, so I noticed. He worked the bedroom and closets too, so there’s nothing left for us except one thing. She’s got her clothes on. Either he found it or something scared him out or what he was after was too bulky to be on her.”
“The clothes women wear nowadays he wouldn’t have to take them off. Why the gloves? Going to rake through the leavings?”
“No. Put them on.” I handed him a pair, and started pulling mine on. “We’ll try the one thing he left. Unless you’ve got a date.”
“You don’t make prints on clothes.”
“You don’t make prints on anything with gloves on.” I got my knife from my pocket, opened it, squatted, slipped two fingers under the neck of the blouse, and slit it down to the waist. Saul, squatting on the other side, unzipped the skirt and moved to the feet to take the hem and pull the skirt off. I told him to look at the shoes, which were house sandals, tied on, and he did so, removing them and tossing them aside. The slip was as simple as the blouse. I cut the straps and slit it down the back from top to bottom and pushed it to either side. The pants were simple too; I got my fingers inside under the hips, and Saul worked them down and off. The girdle was slower, since I didn’t care to scratch the skin. Saul squatted on the other side again and helped me keep it lifted enough to slit it and leave her intact.
“She’s good and cold,” he said.
“Yeah. Stuff the edges under and we’ll roll her over to you.”
He did so, and with one hand under a hip and the other under a shoulder I rolled her, and Saul eased her as she came, and she was on her back. That way, face up, it was something else. The face of a girl who was strangled to death twelve or fourteen hours ago is not a girl’s face. Saul covered it with what was left of a cushion and then helped me finish the operation. There was nothing between the blouse and the slip, and nothing between the slip and the girdle, and nothing between the girdle and the skin, but when I lifted the brassiere and she was naked, there it was, fastened between the breasts with tape. A key. I pulled it loose, pulled the tape off, gave it a look, said, “Grand Central locker, out quick,” went to the bedroom for a blanket, and came back and covered her. Saul was at the door, peeling his gloves off, and I had mine off by the time I joined him. He used one of his to turn the doorknob, and, in the hall, to pull the door shut. The spring lock clicked and we made for the stairs.
We saw no one on the way down, but as we stepped out to the sidewalk a man turned in, evidently a tenant, as he gave us a glance. However, he was two seconds too late to be able to swear that we had been inside the house. When we had turned the corner and were on Christopher Street, Saul asked, “Walking for our health?”
“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
