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toward him, observing the cuts where she had tried to shield herself from the fatal thrust that had entered her heart.
Then he looked closely. There were smudges on several fingers of her right hand. Ink stains.
Shea stood and turned his attention to the desk, observing that it was open. His grandmother had a desk like this, and she always kept the lid in that position, proud to reveal the little pigeonholes and drawers and the matching blotter and desk set that no one ever used.
He thought back to the previous year, when Hilda had sprained her ankle on some broken pavement, and he had stopped by to see her. The desk was closed then. I bet she always left it closed, he thought.
In the desk there was a box of stationery that obviously had just been opened-the cellophane that had sealed it was still there. He half smiled when he read the lettering: "A ban mot for you from Hilda Johnson."
An old-fashioned pen was tying next to the inkwell, the sort of pen people used for sketching. He touched it and then studied the smudge the pen left on his fingers. Next he counted the sheets of paper remaining in the box. There were eleven. Then he counted the envelopes-twelve.
Had Hilda Johnson been writing or sketching on the missing sheet shortly before her death? he wondered. Why would she do that? According to Tony Hubbard, who had been on the desk when Hilda called yesterday, she told him she was going right to bed and would come by the station in the morning.
Ignoring the cameramen, who were packing up their gear, and the fingerprint experts, who were reducing Hilda's painfully neat apartment to a sooty mess, Tom went into the bedroom.
Hilda had gone to bed-that was obvious. The pillow still bore the imprint of her head. It was now eight o'clock. The medical examiner estimated she had been dead between eight and ten hours. So sometime between 10 P.M. and midnight, Hilda got out of bed, put on her robe, went to her desk and wrote or sketched something, then put the kettle on.
When Hilda, notoriously prompt, failed to show up, Captain Shea had tried to call her. Getting no answer, and alarmed, he asked the superintendent to check on her. If he hadn't, it might have been days before her body was discovered. They had found no evidence of a break-in, so that meant that in all likelihood she had opened the door voluntarily. Had she been expecting someone? Or was a suspicious and sharp old bird like Hilda tricked into believing that her visitor was someone she could trust?
The captain went back into the living room. How did she happen to be standing at the desk when she was murdered? he wondered. If she suspected that she was in danger, wouldn't she at least have tried to run?
Had she been showing something to her visitor when she died?-something her visitor took after he killed her?
The two detectives who had accompanied him straightened up as he approached them. "I want everyone in this building interrogated," Captain Shea snapped. "I want to know where each person was last night and what time they got home. I'm particularly interested in anyone who came or went between ten o'clock and midnight. I want to know if anyone is aware of Hilda Johnson writing notes to people. I'm on my way to the station."
There, the unfortunate Sergeant Hubbard, who had joked about Hilda's phone call swearing that Carolyn Wells was pushed and a manila envelope stolen from her, endured the worst dressing-down of his life.
"You ignored a call that could have been significant. If you had treated Hilda Johnson with the respect she deserved and sent someone to talk to her, it's very possible that she'd be alive today, or at least that we'd be on a direct line to a mugger who may now be a murderer. Jerk."
He pointed an angry finger at Hubbard. "I want you to interview every person whose name was taken at the accident scene and find out if anyone noticed whether Carolyn Wells had a manila envelope under her arm before she fell into the street. Got