In the course of the afternoon a pudgy man with dark curly hair and gold-rimmed glasses called and handed Mrs. Helm his card.
“ ‘Coroner’s office,’ ” she read aloud in a vaguely inquiring tone. “ ‘Nicholas Stamaty.’ That’s foreign, isn’t it?”
“According to my grandfather,” said Stamaty with a good-humored expression that accentuated the premature crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, “it’s a Hungarian spelling of a Czech version of a Greek name.”
“Isn’t that interesting! Where was your grandfather born?”
“Right outside Cleveland.”
She may have thought that was interesting, too, but she didn’t mention it. “Is anything wrong? About Mr. Strode?”
“Mr. Schell at the funeral parlor reported the death to us, and we’re following it up as a matter of routine. Did you think anything was wrong?”
“No, but I’m just saying — nobody came to see me after Mr. Ambrose died. Another one of my boarders. That was two or three years ago.”
“Probably just an oversight. How long had Mr. Strode been living here?”
“About two years.”
“Was he related to you?”
“No, sir. What he told me is, he was born in Wisconsin—” she pronounced it “West Consin” “—but he didn’t have no living relations there nor here, neither one.”
“How long was he sick?”
“Only just a few days. He caught a terrible cold from walking in the rain about a week ago.”
“Did he have a doctor?”
“No, he didn’t. He didn’t trust doctors nor lawyers. Nor banks.”
“When did you last see Mr. Strode alive?”
Her bushy brows sloped down to a point above her nose as she concentrated on her reply. “It must have been about noon yesterday. I nursed him as good as I could, but I don’t go up and down them stairsteps no more than what I have to. Mostly Mr. Bland took his trays up to him. Or Mr. Drebbel, once or twice.”
“I’d like to talk to them if they’re around.”
“They’re at work. All my boarders works over to Gromacki’s — the furniture factory. They’ll be in for dinner about five.”
“Who found Mr. Strode dead this morning?”
“That was Mr. Gardner. He stayed home today, if you want to talk to him. He’s not feeling very well himself.”
She went to the foot of the front stairs and called up to advise Gardner that he was about to have a visitor. “You just go on up,” she directed Stamaty. “It’s the room right at the top of the stairs.”
Stamaty found Gardner reading at a small desk on which stood an old fashioned brass lamp with a pen-holder built into the base. Between the crowded bookshelves and the heavy, battered bedroom suite there was little room to spare anywhere.
“Mr. Gardner? Coroner’s office. I understand you found Mr. Strode dead this morning.”
“That’s correct, sir.” Gardner stood up and bowed with an exaggerated and palpably phony cordiality. “Here, please take the chair. I’ll sit on the bed.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need to sit down.” For the rest of the interview they both stood. “What time was it when you found Mr. Strode dead?”
“A couple of minutes before seven. I looked in on him while I was getting dressed because he’d been sick of late.”
“Did you notice anything unusual in the room?”
“No. Just that Strode was dead. Must have been dead for hours.”
“You touched him, then?”
“Why yes.”
Gardner was suddenly wary, but instead of abandoning his pompous, melodramatic manner, he laid it on thicker.
“When I saw that Strode had — dropped out of the game, so to speak, I closed his eyes and covered his face. ‘Last sad office of a friend’ type of thing.”
“Covered his face with what, sir?”
Gardner shrugged. “The covers on the bed. An old green quilt. He used to wrap up in it like an Arab when the house was cold at night.”
“Mind showing me which is Mr. Strode’s room?”
Gardner led him to a bedroom smaller than his own, wedged between the bathroom and the back stairs.
“Thanks,” said Stamaty in a tone of polite dismissal. “I won’t bother you any more. I understand you’re a little under the weather today.”
“Oh, it’s nothing much. Strode pegging off like that just sort of threw my nerves out of gear. I called in sick and went back to bed. Slept past noon.”
Having gotten rid of Gardner, Stamaty conducted a thorough search of Frank Strode’s room. The undertaker had left the covers pulled down to the foot of the bed — a cotton sheet, a khaki blanket that was unmistakably army surplus, and a worn green quilt. He subjected the quilt to intense scrutiny, but being a stickler for protocol, he forbore to handle it, much less remove a sample of the fabric.
Under the bed Stamaty found only mounds of dust and cobwebs and a fragment broken from the crystal of a good-sized clock, probably an alarm clock. Of the clock itself there was no sign. The drawers of the stained old dresser were crammed with miscellaneous personal effects — all except the shallow top one, the only drawer that had a lock. Stamaty found it unlocked and practically empty.
On the top of the dresser lay a matching wallet and keyfold, both ancient. He made a note of Strode’s Social Security number and a few other data from the wallet, which contained seven one-dollar bills.
He found Mrs. Helm in the kitchen peeling potatoes and carrots.
“Sorry to have inconvenienced you, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll be going now, but somebody may be back in touch with you later. Do you expect to be here all afternoon and evening?”
“Why yes, I’ll be here. I don’t never go out after dark, and this time of year it’s dark by the time dinner’s over.”
After letting himself out of the house, Stamaty drove as quickly as the afternoon traffic would permit to a pay phone in front of a laundromat. From there he called police headquarters and asked to speak with the senior watch lieutenant.
Detective Sergeant Cyrus Auburn was at his desk at headquarters bringing his memoirs up to the hour and wishing he’d had something other than coffee on his afternoon break when Lieutenant Savage appeared in the doorway. “You want to pick up line two, Cy? Stamaty thinks he’s got a homicide over on Ninth Avenue.”
Less than twenty minutes later Auburn parked his car next to Stamaty’s van at the laundromat and joined him in the van.
“You alone?” asked Stamaty.
Auburn spread his hands. “Totally solitary.”
“But you’ve got a warrant?”
“Not this trip.”
Stamaty squirmed in his seat and shook his head. “You guys operate funny. I told you—”
“The lieutenant wants me to check it out first. If there’s probable cause, he’ll send Kestrel with a search warrant.”
“If there’s probable cause? Didn’t you tell him about the green fibers and the toothmarks?”
“I told him. What are those women looking at?”
“Us. It’s the sign on the door. People always think I’ve got a body in the back. Listen, Cy, there’s a ratty old green quilt on Strode’s bed. Warrant or not, you or Kestrel or somebody else from your lab better get your hands on it quick.”
Mrs. Helm’s boardinghouse was a tall, narrow, white frame building with peeling paint and rusted spouting, nearly indistinguishable from its neighbors. Auburn’s ring at the door was answered by a stout woman in a voluminous apron.
Her cheeks blazed with rouge, and her sturdy square-toed shoes looked as if they had been polished with a tar brush. He showed identification.
“I just had another person here,” she said, “a white man, not no more than an hour ago, asking me all kinds of questions.”