Basous assumed that the small group of curious people huddled in the courtyard lived in the apartments surrounding the courtyard. They were in bathrobes and slippers.
“All you people live here?” he questioned.
A general murmur in the affirmative ran through the group.
“Anybody hear a disturbance up there last night?”
No response.
“Well, then, who called the police?”
A plump, middle-aged woman attired in a housecoat, her hair in curlers, moved slightly forward. “I did, Mr. Policeman. I am Mrs. Le Monnier, the landlady. I live there on the ground floor.” She pointed across the courtyard to a door half hidden by vines and banana trees. “I came out this morning to get my paper, and the first thing I saw were those horrible bloodstains.”
“Who lives up there?” Basous nodded at the apartment at the top of the stairs where the violence had taken place.
“Bubba Noss rents the place. Hardly ever seen him here, though. He often lets friends use the room.”
Basous took out his notebook and jotted down the name of the landlady and the apartment tenant. “Was he here last night?”
“Don’t know. I don’t pry on my tenants.”
Somebody in the crowd made a derisive sound. She turned and glared at them.
Basous’ partner, Lieutenant Roy D’Aquin, entered the courtyard from the north gate. “I had the dispatcher check it out, Mercer. Nothing at the morgue last night, and none of the hospitals got anybody severely cut up or suffering from loss of blood.”
Basous nodded. “Roy, would you get statements from these people? I’ll go take a look at the room.”
He motioned to the young patrolman who turned and jogged up the stairs. Basous walked. He’d had a hard week.
The patrolman, opening the door for Basous, said, “I didn’t enter the premises, sir. Just looked in. Didn’t want to disturb any evidence or fingerprints.”
“You’re disturbing any fingerprints that might have been on that doorknob,” Basous commented, nodding at the uniformed officer’s freckled hand grasping the outer knob.
The patrolman’s face turned red and he drew his palm back, self-consciously wiping it on his trouser leg. Stiffly, he said, “I observed blood and the appearance of a struggle, but no person, alive or dead, was in the room.”
“Anything else?”
“The room had an odor of cigarette smoke, whiskey and perfume, sir.”
Basous took pity on the kid. He was trying very hard and was obviously fresh out of the academy.
“Very good, Officer. You did it all right by the book.”
The patrolman beamed.
Basous took a single step into the room. A bed lamp had been left burning. He murmured an exclamation in his native Cajun French as he made his preliminary survey before moving farther into the room. The one-room efficiency had a kitchen alcove to the right. To the left, a door opened on a small bathroom. In the main room, a couch had been opened to make a bed. The sheets and pillows appeared to have been slept on. There was little blood on the bed except for a few splattered drops. Most of it was on the north wall, the floor, and the bathroom.
D’Aquin joined him. “Nobody down there had a thing to say. Must have been a quiet murder or we have a bunch of sleepers. Mon dieu!” He looked around the room. “Looks like a convention of hemophiliacs got into a knife fight.”
Basous began moving in slow, careful steps about the room, his trained eyes inspecting everything. Then he came to the bed. He studied it for a minute, bent over and sniffed the pillows. He took envelopes and a pair of tweezers from his coat pocket and carefully plucked some fallen hairs from the pillows and bed, placing them in individual envelopes, afterward sealing and labeling them. Then he slipped the pillowcases from the pillows, folded them and stuffed them into his pockets.
Basous and D’Aquin got on their hands and knees and, placing their cheeks close to the floor, sighted across it for any small objects the preliminary search might have missed. With an exclamation, Basous picked up a bit of plastic. He examined it for a moment, passed it on to his partner. “What do you make of it?”
D’Aquin frowned at the object. “Looks like a contact lens that got dropped and stepped on.”
“Yes, I think that’s what it is.” It went into an envelope.
Then Basous, who was a very careful, deliberate man, and a confirmed believer in the value of keeping notes, sat on the side of the bed, placed his notebook on his thigh, and began writing. Following the date and address of the investigation, he wrote:
“Investigating officer reported bloodstains around room and on stairs leading down to patio and across patio. He also reported the odor of cigarettes, whiskey and perfume in the room. This was all confirmed by our inspection. Further examination revealed no weapon. Table and chairs were overturned. General appearance of a struggle. Bed had been slept in, apparently by a man and woman. One pillow smelled of perfume, and pillowcase had powder, lipstick smears, and a few strands of long, dark hair. The other pillowcase was slightly stained by hair oil and contained strands of shorter dark hair. Found on the floor near the bed was a small object which appears to be a piece of a contact lens. Effort had been made to remove fingerprints and other objects which might identify room’s occupants. There was no ash tray, whiskey bottle or glasses which one would expect to find in the room. No articles of clothing.”
He thought for a moment, then added: “Preliminary evaluation: possible rape-murder or lovers’ quarrel. Woman might have been killed and the body carried away and disposed of.”
D’Aquin, who sometimes grew impatient at Basous’ slow, deliberate methods asked, “Shall I put in a call to have a fingerprint man sent over from the lab.”
“Yes. I have a feeling he won’t find much, though. And of course we’ll need the blood typed.”
On the way down the winding iron stairway, D’Aquin observed, “Of course we don’t know a crime was committed here.”
“You think it was just a bad case of nosebleed?” Basous said dryly.
“Well, it could have been some kind of accident—”
“Then why did they go to the trouble to remove all traces of cigarettes, ash trays, bottles and glasses that must have been here, according to the odor in the air? No, an act of violence took place here last night,” Basous said firmly.
When they reached the street, one of the early-morning Mardi Gras parades was passing by. A marching Dixieland band was playing “High Society” loudly. The sidewalks were already crowded.
D’Aquin took Basous’ envelopes to the police laboratory while Basous spent an hour around the neighborhood asking questions. He made one call that proved fruitful. Directly across the narrow cobblestone street from the courtyard’s north entrance was an artist’s shop and private gallery. The artist was Benjamin Wyle, a thin man with a bushy red beard. He had been open until long past midnight, trying to sell some of his paintings to tourists. Around two a.m. he had seen a man and woman unlock the courtyard gate and go in. The couple appeared to have been drinking and were on very friendly terms. He did not get a clear look at the man, but did see the woman and was able to describe her in detail. “She was a remarkably beautiful woman,” he said.
“You’re an artist,” Basous pointed out. “Could you draw a sketch of her in color?”
“Yes, I think so. An artist doesn’t forget a face like that.”
The artist went right to work on the sketch. Basous went in search of breakfast. He found a small coffee shop not too jammed with tourists where he had pancakes and several cups of café au lait. When he returned to the artist’s shop an hour later, Benjamin Wyle handed him the finished sketch. It was of a brunette woman about thirty years of age.