LITMIR.BIZ

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with her chin in one hand and languidly pounding on the pipes under the wash basin with a big empty mouthwash bottle in the other. She looked up from her pounding and after reeling in her eyes, she recognized me.

      “Angel,” she said, “for God’s sake bring me a drink.” She tossed the bottle in a corner where it shattered around a couple of times then lay still. I walked over to help her. My shoes crunched broken glass on the tile floor. “What happened to you?” I helped her to sit up. She yelped and, rolling over on one hip, looked at her behind. Blood was staining her sheer nightgown.

      “Now isn’t that maddening? A brand-new one, too. Well, don’t just stand there, darling. Get me out of here.” I picked her up, carried her into the bedroom and deposited her gently, stomach down, on the bed. The cut wasn’t very deep, but was bleeding quite a lot. I gave her a face towel to hold on it while I ransacked the medicine cabinet.

      “It was that damned doorknob coming off. I’ve been trapped in there for hours. I broke a couple of bottles pounding on the pipes, but no one would come. If you’re expecting to find bandages in that thing you’re wasting your time…. There’s nothing but sleeping pills.” She was right. “Call the superintendent. He’s very sweet. I don’t think it’s worth quite all this fuss, though I’m glad you came in when you did. I was running out of bottles. What about that drink?” I came back to the bed.

      “Maggie, how drunk are you?”

      “I’m not drunk, Timmy. Honestly I’m not. Well, maybe a little hungover, but I was in there for over two hours, and I do think I should be allowed to be just a little testy, if I want.”

      “Can you grapple with a horrid fact?”

      “Couldn’t it wait till I got bandaged up and had a real drink? It’ll keep that long, won’t it?”

      “Yes. I think it’ll keep that long.” I phoned the superintendent on the little house phone, and he promptly brought bandages, Mercurochrome and a screwdriver.

      He was most apologetic and fixed the doorknob in a few minutes. He could have done it even quicker if he had kept his eyes on his work instead of Maggie, who was still on the bed covered with a blanket trying to negotiate, while lying on her stomach, the drink I had mixed for her. I finally got him out and left Maggie to fix the bandage by herself and started pacing back and forth in the living room.

      The cut wasn’t at all serious, but I was still a little queasy from it. Bleeding women, two in the same hour, were rapidly getting me down.

      Maggie finally came out of the bedroom dressed in a blue housecoat with more stripes and brushing her hair.

      “I know I’m stuck with that adhesive tape for the rest of my life. I used practically the whole roll.”

      “At least you’ve got a cast-iron alibi.”

      “Whatever should I want an alibi for?”

      “Did you have any appointments this morning?”

      The brush stopped in midair. “Oh my God, Nellie! I forgot all about it. She called yesterday and told me to come in this morning for a job. I’d better phone her.”

      “You needn’t bother. She’s been murdered.”

      “What a pity. Oh, well, I don’t suppose I’d have gotten the job anyway.”

      “Maggie, I said that Nellie’s been murdered.”

      “I heard you, dear. And about time, too, if you ask me.”

      “What makes you say that?”

      “But, angel…she’s an agent.”

      “Maybe so, but sooner or later the police are going to want to know who killed her.”

      “What are you getting in such a tizzy about? It isn’t anybody we know, is it?”

      “Maybe it is.”

      “Oh, good. Who? Tell me.”

      “I thought perhaps you’d know something about it. That’s why I came here this morning.”

      “Believe me, Timmy, I’ve got something better to do than go around murdering Nellie Brant. I think I will now have another drink. No, you stay here, I’ll get them this time. Since I can’t sit down, I might as well be busy.” She went into the foyer to the bar and brought us back a couple of straight Scotches. “Would you like to play Gin Rummy? We could do it on the mantelpiece.”

      “No, I would not like to play Gin Rummy. Please, Maggie, I’m serious.”

      “I’m sorry, Timmy. I do mean to listen but that affair with the bathroom has made me rather jumpy. I wish I could sit down.” She pulled some pillows from the couch and lined them up on the floor and lay on her stomach. “There, that’s much better. Now tell me everything in one word.”

      “Well, Nellie called me up this morning and…”

      “What time was that?”

      “About ten o’clock, I think.”

      “And she was dead when you saw her, whenever it was? As a matter of fact, I don’t imagine she was dead at all. Probably drunk. She’s a notorious nipper.”

      “She was dead, all right. I took her pulse. She was still warm, but definitely dead.”

      “Oh, but that doesn’t mean a thing. I’m forever reading about people with no pulse at all carrying on like mad. I read about a chicken with his head chopped completely off, mind you, living to a ripe old age.”

      I didn’t like it one bit that my big moment did not turn out to be a big moment after all. And besides, I knew Nellie was dead. The picture of that body kept coming into focus in spite of the Scotch. I kept fighting it, trying to make it vague and blurry again, but it didn’t work. I lay down on the floor beside Maggie and stared up at the ceiling.

      “Here, lift up your head a minute.” I lifted up my head and she pushed a pillow under it. “Now lie back.” She stroked my forehead. Her hand was cool. It felt good. “Now then, tell me all. She called you at ten and then what happened?”

      I told her exactly what had happened, or at least as near as I could remember. She thought it over for a moment.

      “What about fingerprints? They’re very smart this season.”

      “I had my gloves on,” I said. I was rather pleased with myself not to be caught with that one.

      “Pretty damned clever, aren’t you, to…”

      “Actually, I didn’t really plan it that way,” I said. “It just happened.”

      “…to be able to take a pulse with your gloves on.” She finished on what I thought was an unnecessarily triumphant note.

      And, of course, I must have taken my gloves off to feel for Nellie’s pulse. I admitted that rather sheepishly.

      “And did you put your gloves back on right after you picked up the Youth and Beauty Book?” I couldn’t remember. “And did you close the door after you left?” Yes, I was positive of that. “Well, then, you have probably left a print large as life and twice as natural on the office door.” I tried desperately to remember if I had put my gloves back on or not.

      “But what if I did,” I said defensively. “They won’t necessarily know whose they are. I’m not in the rogues’ gallery—yet.”

      Maggie regarded me with what I can only describe as a pitying expression.

      “Well, what’s wrong now?”

      “But you were in the army, weren’t you? You can remember that much, can’t you?” After four years of that production you’re not liable to forget it in a hurry, and I told her so. “Remember that little card you had to carry about with you that had that repulsive picture of you on it…I could never understand why you didn’t go to a really good photographer….”

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