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

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.

“Leaving town, Mr. Bland?”

Bland nearly jumped out of his skin. “Oh no. Just stepping down to the bus station.”

“With your suitcase? Why don’t we go back to the house and see what’s in it?”

Bland offered no resistance as Auburn took charge of the suitcase. Gardner and Drebbel barely looked up from their chess game as Auburn led Bland through the parlor and back to the kitchen. He put the suitcase on the kitchen table and called up the back stairs for Kestrel to come down.

“This seems to be locked, Mr. Bland,” he said. “Got the key handy?”