Free Wife or Death by Ellery Queen

right?”
    So it was “Jim” again. Good old Augie. Denton opened his eyes. “I’m all right.”
    â€œWe got to have a formal identification, Jim. That’s going to be rough. You want to sit down for a few minutes first?”
    Denton looked at Crosby. The man was regarding him with intensity; there was a predatory curl to his lips. “Where is she, Augie?”
    â€œIn the hospital morgue.”
    He braced himself. “Let’s get it over with.”
    It was worse, far far worse, than he had imagined. Fortunately the morgue in the hospital basement was equipped for such emergencies. Denton was in the rest room for ten minutes. When he finally came out he was greenish-pale, but his stomach was settled. There was nothing left in it to unsettle.
    He forced himself, he commanded himself, to look for the second time while Chief Spile and a stone-faced Crosby stood by. Except for the hair—that lovely golden hair of which she had been so vain, now mud-streaked and entangled in burrs and bits of leaf and twig and tumbled about her unrecognizable face like an obscene cloud—he saw nothing resembling the Angel he had known.
    He shook his head.
    â€œShow him her left hand,” the district attorney snapped.
    The morgue attendant did something, and Denton opened his eyes and fixed them on a dirty, torn and swollen hand. The wedding band and engagement ring were nearly buried in the livid flesh.
    Denton wet his lips. “They’re Angel’s rings.”
    â€œOkay, John,” said Chief Spile, “put her back and show Mr. Denton her clothing.”
    The thing with the blonde hair disappeared in the wall. Denton expelled a tremulous breath. The attendant went over to a wall cabinet and opened a big drawer and pulled out a disorderly heap of clothing. Everything was ripped and filthy and bloodstained. The skirt near the waistband was in bloody shreds.
    â€œThat’s her new fall suit, all right,” Denton said hoarsely. “She bought it in New York on a shopping trip about a month ago. Isn’t there a Saks Fifth Avenue label in it? And the fall coat—she got that at the same time. I’m not sure about the shoes, but she wore size five and a half triple A.”
    The orderly glanced at the chief of police, and Spile nodded. The man reached into the cabinet again and withdrew a suitcase. It was the one missing from her matched set.
    â€œThat’s hers,” Denton said. He wet his drawn, dry lips. “Augie. How about the man?”
    â€œMan?” Chief Spile seemed puzzled. “What man?”
    â€œYes,” said a voice. It was Crosby’s; Denton had forgotten he was there. “What man are you referring to, Denton?”
    â€œThe man who drove her away—the one she ran off with. Wasn’t he killed, too?”
    â€œKilled?” The district attorney cocked his head eagerly. “How do you mean that?”
    â€œHow do I mean it!” Denton cried. “Killed!—don’t you understand English? In the automobile accident.”
    An unholy light blazed from Crosby’s eyes. He opened his mouth—and Chief Spile’s meaty hand clamped about his biceps. “Don’t, Ralph,” Spile said; and for a moment Denton thought the district attorney was going to hit him. But then Crosby relaxed with a secretive smile.
    â€œThat’s enough,” the chief said gruffly to the morgue attendant. “He won’t have to check the contents of the suitcase. Jim, your wife ever been fingerprinted?”
    â€œNot as far as I know.”
    â€œWe’ll take her prints, anyway. Just in case. All right, Jim, let’s get out of here.”
    In a daze, Denton walked back to the square between Spile and Crosby. A thought kept gnawing at him; he kept jerking away from it. The chief steered him firmly up the courthouse steps and along the main corridor to the district attorney’s office. In the anteroom