Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

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.”

Auburn nodded patiently. “Mr. Stamaty works for the coroner. I’m from the police department.”

The parlor was full of her perfume — an old woman’s perfume, heavy and sweet, like overripe fruit. “I never knew such a fuss to be made about somebody dying in their bed.”

Auburn took note of his surroundings — the chessboard, the mandolin, the potted ferns, the matched porcelain partridges with the chipped sides turned towards the wall. For some women the battle against dust is a consuming passion. Evidently Mrs. Helm wasn’t one of these.

“Mr. Stamaty’s department had one or two reasons for thinking Mr. Strode’s death might not have been natural.”

Her heavy eyebrows bunched up like storm clouds. “What do you mean? What kind of reasons?”

“The coroner’s preliminary investigation suggested that he died of suffocation.”

“You mean something cut off his air, like?”

“Something or somebody.”

Her frown deepened. “But the poor soul died in his bed. How could he have suffocated?”

“It’s only a preliminary impression. There may be nothing in it, but we have to follow up on it for the coroner.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions and look around the house.” He slipped a three by five file card from his pocket and made a notation in an upper corner. “If you don’t mind.”

They went over the details of Frank Strode’s final illness and death. “I understand Mr. Strode has no known next of kin,” said Auburn. “Who’s in charge of his affairs?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, somebody will have to take responsibility for making funeral arrangements and settling his estate. Do you know if he had a lawyer?”

“I know full well he didn’t. Mr. Strode didn’t trust nobody. Wouldn’t even put his money in the bank.”

“Kept it all here in the house, did he?”

“I guess so. I really wouldn’t know.”

“Did he have any close friends in town?”

“Just the other gentlemen that lives here in the house. Which they get along together sometimes like a cageful of tigers.”

“Any particular trouble between Mr. Strode and any of the others recently?”

“Only that he’s been talking high and mighty the last couple of weeks since he got a promotion over to the factory. Plus his usual pickiness and feistiness.”

“Have you or the tenants had any visitors at the house in the last two or three days?”

“No, sir. I’m pretty strict. No visitors after dinner, no liquor in the house, no bad language—”

They were interrupted by the entrance of a gaunt, elderly man in a tweed suit that had gone out of style three times and come back in twice. “This is Mr. Gardner,” she told Auburn. “He’s the one that found Mr. Strode dead this morning. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get on with dinner.”

Auburn identified himself. “Sit down, sir, and please make yourself comfortable,” said Gardner with the flamboyant gestures and grandiloquent manner of a frustrated actor. His broad brow and steely eye promised intellectual power and strength of character, but a sensual mouth and an irresolute chin reneged on the deal. Auburn took particular note of his hands, which were chalk-white with tapering fingers — the idle hands of an aesthete.

“Surely Strode’s death isn’t really a police matter, is it?” asked Gardner. “I mean, the chap from the coroner’s office said he was just making routine inquiries, and now...” He watched in evident dismay as Auburn entered his name on a file card.

“At this point it’s not exactly routine any more,” admitted Auburn. “All I can tell you is that the forensic examination of Mr. Strode’s body turned up some questionable findings, and I’ve been assigned to take over the investigation from here on.”

They reviewed the events of the morning. “Are you sure Mr. Strode was dead when you covered him up?”

“Good Lord, yes!” exclaimed Gardner. “I told the other investigator and I’m telling you, Strode was as dead as a frozen mackerel. What sort of questionable findings, if I may ask?”

“Did you hear anything unusual during the night?”