He meant it jocularly, and Auburn pursued it in the same vein. “Any reason why she’d want to kill Strode?”
“To the contrary. The dead don’t pay rent. After old Ambrose died, it took her six months to get Bland in here because she won’t have liquor in the house. No, the autopsy will show that Frank just pegged off with a bad case of the flu. We old geezers do that, you know.”
The parlor clock struck five as they were going down the back stairs, which creaked worse than the front ones. They found the others just sitting down to eat in the stark, gloomy dining room. A low-hanging chandelier above the table shed a wan ivory glow over framed photographs of the Arch of Triumph and the Sphinx hanging on the wall above the buffet.
“I’m sorry to disturb you at mealtime,” said Auburn, addressing them all, “but we need to do some further investigation yet this evening. I expect to have an evidence technician here within half an hour or so. I’ll have to ask you all to stay in the house until we’ve finished.”
If Stamaty’s and then Auburn’s own operations in the house that afternoon had stirred up a ground-swell of uneasiness among the tenants, the last announcement nearly set off a panic. But he was deaf to their protests and even forbade anyone to go upstairs until he returned.
He needed some fresh air, and besides, the smell of Mrs. Helm’s beef stew was making him hungry. First he visited the dark alley behind the house and went through the trashcans with the help of a flashlight. In a brown paper bag with coffee grounds and eggshells he found a big old alarm clock, its crystal broken and missing a segment.
He went to his car and, less wary than Stamaty had been of putting sensitive material on the air, he radioed headquarters to request background checks on the surviving occupants of the house on Ninth Avenue, including Mrs. Helm. Then he reported briefly to Lieutenant Savage, expressing himself with sufficient vagueness and ambiguity to prevent electronic eavesdroppers from picking up anything substantial.
“I’m voting with the gentleman who has his office in the courthouse,” he said. “The subject was helped on his way, and one of the focus group did the helping. Maybe all of them did and divided up the residuals. Anyway, we need to disassemble the premises, and we’d better request a document before—”
“It’s lying right here on my desk. Get back over there and sit on them until Kestrel shows up.”
“How come you’ve already got a warrant?” asked Auburn, abandoning the doubletalk.
“Update from the gentleman at the courthouse. Kestrel will tell you.” Savage hung up.
On returning to Ninth Avenue, Auburn found Mrs. Helm and her boarders still in the dining room, sitting somberly over their coffee. The two candy bars and the bag of peanuts he’d nibbled in the car had taken away most of his hunger, but the smell of stew lingering in the air brought some of it back.
When he asked to talk privately with Mrs. Helm, she took him into her sanctum, a long narrow room off the kitchen that had probably been an enclosed porch in the original design of the house.
“There are a couple of other things I want to ask you, ma’am. What day is your trash pickup here?”
“Trash pickup? Friday. Which they’ll have double their work this week after I clean out Mr. Strode’s room.”
“I’ll ask you not to do any cleaning or throwing out just yet. We don’t know whose property Mr. Strode’s things are now, legally. There may be a relative somewhere, or he may have left a will. What arrangements were you planning to make with Mr. Schell for the funeral expenses?”
“Well, I just don’t know. It was different when Mr. Ambrose died. I had power of attorney for him.” She pondered a moment, her brows twitching convulsively. “What are you looking for up there, anyway?”
“Well, a couple of things actually. Mr. Stamaty and I both thought it was a little strange that the top drawer of Mr. Strode’s bureau was unlocked and empty. Would you happen to know if he kept anything in there?”
“No,” she said, studiously avoiding his eye. “I don’t mess with the gentlemen’s personal things. But that drawer never had no key.”
“Then there’s this green quilt from Mr. Strode’s room. A couple of the boarders remember seeing it on the bed lately, but now it seems to be missing. Do you know where it might be?”
“The undertakers must have wrapped him up in it when they took him away.”
“They say they didn’t. Besides, Mr. Stamaty saw it here earlier this afternoon.”
The doorbell rang, but before she could get to the parlor, Gardner admitted Kestrel, the police evidence technician. Standing just inside the door with a camera case in one hand and a field investigation kit in the other, Kestrel gave signs of profound relief when Auburn appeared from the back of the house. They went upstairs to escape prying eyes and curious ears.
Auburn showed Kestrel the room where Strode had lived and died, and Kestrel handed Auburn the search warrant and a memo faxed from the coroner’s office. While Auburn read by the light of the dim ceiling fixture, Kestrel stood in the doorway surveying the room with the eye of an artist. Austere in manner and sparing of speech, he was a perfectionist at his work, more comfortable with cameras and microscopes than with suspected felons or recalcitrant witnesses.
“Before you get too deeply involved in here,” said Auburn, “I want to see what you think about this medicine cabinet.”
A minute or two later he was back downstairs, formally serving the search warrant on Mrs. Helm. He started his serious searching in the basement.
In spite of the sketchy lighting system, fetid drains, and a rank stench of mildew that assailed him like a wire brush up each nostril, he made a good job of it but found nothing. Mrs. Helm and her boarders were watching the news when he went up the back stairs and climbed a further flight beyond a door opposite the bathroom to reach the attic. Here the smell was dusty and mousy and the cobwebs lay so thick that they obviously hadn’t been disturbed for months or years.
He rejoined Kestrel in the bathroom. “There’s not much hope of lifting prints with all this dust,” said Kestrel. “But somebody’s been into this stuff lately.”
Auburn examined the row of bottles ranged on the chipped and discolored washstand. There were three brands of patent medicine for swelling, all with the same active ingredient.
“Mean any thing to you?” he asked.
Kestrel grunted. “Not my field.”
Auburn looked at his watch. “What time does Stamaty go home?”
“Depends. Sometimes he doesn’t.”
“I’m going to try to catch him at the office. Not from here, though. Keep an eye on the folks while I’m gone.” Kestrel glared at him but said nothing.
Phoning from the laundromat, Auburn found Stamaty at home celebrating the birthday of one of his numerous children. “Nick, did you do a toxicology screen on Strode?”
“That’s routine. Reports won’t be back till Friday.”
“Do they test for ammonium chloride?”
“I wouldn’t think so. What’s that — some kind of chemical fertilizer?”
“Pills for swelling. Over the counter. Ring any bells?”
“No, and I haven’t got anything here to look it up in. Let me give you the number of the Poison Control Center.”
“Thanks, I’ve already got it.”
As Auburn was returning to the boardinghouse he saw a familiar figure scuttling along the sidewalk in the deep gloom of evening with a small suitcase under its arm.