“Are you armed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put them all in the dining room and keep them there. Let no one touch anything around this door, especially the knob. Archie, come with me.”
He wheeled and entered the office. Following, I used my foot to swing the door nearly shut, leaving no crack but not latching it. When I turned Vollmer was standing, facing Wolfe’s scowl.
“Well?” Wolfe demanded.
“Dead,” Vollmer told him. “With asphyxiation from strangling sometimes you can do something, but it wasn’t even worth trying.”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know, but not more than an hour or two. Two hours at the outside, probably less.”
Wolfe looked at the thing on the floor, with no change in his scowl, and back at Doc. “You say strangling. Finger marks?”
“No. A constricting band of something with pressure below the hyoid bone. Not a stiff or narrow band; something soft like a strip of cloth — say a scarf.”