On one of the armchairs was a pile of clothes: a frock, stockings, a grey-pink girdle and a greyer pink brassiere.
There was a distinct smell of marijuana smoke in the room. Not new, but of many months’ standing. It had seeped into the walls and the curtains and the bed and hung over the room like a muted memory of sin.
I moved silently past the bed to the closed door, rapped sharply and listened. I heard nothing. No one called out, and I was suddenly aware of a drop or two of sweat running down my face from inside my hat.
I turned the handle and pushed. The door opened heavily and sluggishly, but it opened. Something behind the door jumped against the panels and sent my heart jumping like a frog on a hot stove. I looked into the empty bathroom, saw the soiled pink bath, the mussed-up towels, the loofah, the cake of toilet soap and the half-squeezed tube of toothpaste.
I knew she was behind the door. She had to be.
I stepped into the bathroom, my nerves creeping up my spine. She was there all right: hanging from a hook in the door, in a blue, crumpled nightdress, her knees drawn up, her head on one side, the knot of her dressing-gown cord carefully under her right ear, the cord imbedded in the flesh of her neck.
I touched her hand.
It was cold and hard and lifeless.