Might as Well Be Dead

Saul looked at me. “Do you want to note that, Archie?” I did so and he resumed. “I went down and asked the doorman if he had noticed Mrs. Irwin’s maid going out this morning, and he said no, and he hadn’t noticed her coming in either. He said Thursday was her night out and she always came in at eight o’clock Friday morning and he hadn’t seen her. He asked the elevator man, and he hadn’t seen her either. So I went to Three-oh-six East One-hundred-and-thirty-seventh Street. It’s a dump, a coldwater walk-up. I saw Ella Reyes’ mother. I was as careful as possible, but it’s hard to be careful enough with those people. Anyway, I got it that Ella always came home Thursday nights and she hadn’t showed up. Mrs. Reyes had been wanting to go to a phone and call Mrs. Irwin, but she was afraid Ella might be doing something she wouldn’t want her employer to know about. She didn’t say that, but that’s what it was.

“I spent the rest of the day floundering around. Back at the Irwins’ address the doorman told me that Ella Reyes had left as usual at six o’clock yesterday, alone. Mrs. Reyes had given me the names of a couple of Ella’s friends, and I saw them, and they gave me more names. Nobody had seen her or heard from her. I phoned Mrs. Irwin twice during the afternoon, and I phoned headquarters once an hour to ask about accidents, of course not mentioning Ella Reyes. My last call to headquarters, at five o’clock, I was told that the body of a woman had been found behind a pile of lumber on the Harlem River bank near One-hundred-and-fortieth Street, with nothing on it to identify it. The body was on its way to the morgue. I went there, but the body hadn’t arrived yet. When it came I looked at it, and it fits Mrs. Molloy’s description of Ella Reyes-around thirty, small and neat, coffee with cream. Only the head wasn’t neat. The back of the skull was smashed. I just came from there.”

I stood up, realized that that didn’t help matters any, and sat down. Wolfe took a long deep breath through his nose, and let it out through his mouth.

“I needn’t ask,” he said, “if you communicated your surmise.”

“No, sir. Of course not. A surmise isn’t enough.”

“No. What time does the morgue close?”

That’s one way I know he’s a genius. Only a genius would dare to ask such a question after functioning as a private detective for more than twenty years right there in Manhattan, and specializing in murder. The hell of it was, he really didn’t know.

“It doesn’t close,” Saul said.