Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

I started with the thirty-eighth floor. That’s where the Secretary-General and Chef de Cabinet have their offices. Maybe Akutagawa was right, but I still wanted to test my theory. I could be right, and in any case both theories would get aired.

I spent most of my time on the thirty-eighth floor, though I hopped around on some of the lower floors, chatting with people who knew Mrs. Draftsman or had worked with her. That killed most of the day. And left little to show for it. Nothing in any case to shore up my theory of attempted suicide.

By four-thirty I’d collected the following, drawn from both Mrs. Draftsman’s dossier and my interviews: She was a woman of thirty-six, a US national, dedicated to the United Nations and performing her role at the Secretariat in an intelligent and efficient manner.

She was an attractive brunette with large black eyes and a good figure. She was trusted by her boss, the Chef de Cabinet, as well as by the Secretary-General, and the executives and staff with whom she worked found her trustworthy and tactful. Her position was a responsible one. She was privy to most of the top level business conducted by the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. The same for General Assembly business, for the Chef de Cabinet was also Under Secretary for General Assembly affairs.

Mrs. Draftsman had been married. She wasn’t divorced, though, only separated. She shared a Chelsea apartment with a female roommate named Joan Chandler. She was a quiet one about her personal life, but someone knew she’d been separated from her husband, whose name was Noel Draftsman, for about a year. No romances during that period that anyone knew about.

She was involved in some extracurricular activities. She played violin for the UN Chamber Group; she worked afterhours for UN Amici, a private organization dedicated to furthering and explaining the work of the International Organization. That was about it. She looked very clean. I wasn’t giving up though.

I wanted to get a look at Mrs. Draftsman’s apartment and her roommate. Maybe they confided in one another. And maybe I could get enough information to wrap things up tonight. Akutagawa gave me a rare smile when I told him that. He told me to get a photograph of Noel Draftsman while I was at it, which I promised to do as I exited.

I traced Mrs. Draftsman’s steps back and got involved in the rush hour. Which gave me a chance to verify my suspicions about the way the subway mob acted. I was right. Angus Narijian was wrong. It tended to lean away from incoming trains. Then it surged forward after the doors of the train opened.

I got carried in by it, without effort on my part, but had a hell of a time fighting my way out at West 23rd Street. I finally did, though, crossed over and picked up a Transit cop on the way. He showed me where Mrs. Draftsman had landed on the uptown tracks.

He’d been on duty that morning and arrived moments after the train screeched to a halt. The first four cars ran over her. Subway trains don’t stop on dimes — ever. They only seem to when you’re riding in them and maybe don’t have a strap to hang onto.

Getting her out had been a process. They didn’t dare run the rest of the train over her. They didn’t dare back up. So they uncoupled the cars closest to her and split the train, the front and rear portions moving in opposite directions. It held up traffic for more than twenty minutes, which threw the timetable off for the entire day.

Rough shake for the Transit Authority, I told the cop, and he looked at me funny, not quite sure how to take it. I told him thanks anyway and invited him to the United Nations to take a tour of the buildings and maybe buy some UNICEF cards in the General Assembly concourse.

I got to Mrs. Draftsman’s apartment at five thirty-five. She lived in an old high rise apartment house on Twenty-fourth Street, just off Ninth Avenue. I rang the 3-G bell several times and got no reply. My luck. I began to curse slowly and methodically.

“That’s no way to talk about a lady,” the lady said, and I spun around to face her. I hadn’t heard her approach because the corridor was heavily carpeted, also because I’d been making too much noise with the mouth organ. She was something else again — six feet tall with flaming red hair, a pale skinned angelic face and a figure whose curves literally drew your eyes out. She was carrying a paper sack filled with groceries.

I cleared my throat, gave her the crooked smile and said: “Joan Chandler?”

She was. I told her who I was and she invited me in. I then told her I was doing a background investigation on Mrs. Draftsman and that she could help further her friend’s UN career by answering my questions. She didn’t mind. No raised eyebrows. Nothing to indicate surprise or foreknowledge.