Murder Is My Dish by Stephen Marlowe

I went out for some coffee and something to eat. When I came back, what was left of Andy Dineen had been taken from the morgue drawer and put in a box. They even had a train schedule for me. The undertaker drove over to Penn Station, offering me a lift. It was late in the afternoon and almost dark when we reached the station. The undertaker shook my hand. His hand was cold and clammy.
    Forty minutes later I climbed aboard a Washington-bound Pennsylvania express. A colored porter came through to say dinner was now being served in the dining car, but I didn’t have any appetite. There was a man I had to see in Washington. Then I almost hoped someone would drop a brand new case in my lap.
    But I knew I would turn down the case, if any. Andy Dineen was riding in the baggage car.

Chapter Nine
    I MADE the final arrangements four and a half hours later with the representative of the Washington undertaking establishment in Union Station. He was a young fellow with a fast line of chatter. He looked more like a public relations man who had just been graduated from the mail room than an undertaker. There was a splendid little cemetery he knew of halfway between the District and College Park, Maryland. My friend would be entombed on Monday morning. Would that be satisfactory? I said it would and wrote him a check that was very fat—which explained why they had sent a public relations man with the bill.
    Then I went home to my apartment in a converted old brownstone on Florida Avenue. Outside, a couple of young girls with good legs in short ice-skating skirts twinkled by with figure skates hanging over their shoulders, heading for the Uline Ice Arena. They smiled at me. It was nice to know I didn’t look as bad as I felt.
    Upstairs I gave a long, hard, sour look at two rooms of drably furnished efficiency. There wasn’t any mail for me. The mail would be at my office, and time enough for that Monday, after the funeral. I was going to sleep all day Sunday. To hell with the rest of the world. Attaboy, Drum. I couldn’t get comfortable in the club chair. The bed seemed softer than I had remembered. Too soft.
    I picked up a book on the Hittites. Back in college I’d been a bug on ancient history and archaeology. We all have our vices. It seemed too long ago to be part of the same life. Attis, the book said. Attis, beloved of Cybele. The words swam and crawled and wriggled, eluding me. I shut the book and dropped it with a thud. I went into the bathroom and washed up. In the mirror I saw the blond crew cut and the hard-planed face with the scar on the left cheek and the bruised jaw. An interesting-looking face for taking pokes at or smiling at if you happen to be a pretty girl with ice skates over your shoulder.
    â€œYou well-adjusted son of a bitch,” I said out loud, and went into the kitchen for my old friend, Jack Daniels, who was waiting obediently on the shelf alongside the cold cereal. I poured the kind of drink Eulalia Mistral would have poured, and drank it. Eulalia was out over the Caribbean now, winging south for Caracas and Ciudad Grande with Primo Blas Lequerica and Pablo Duarte.
    I had another drink. Attis, beloved of Cybele. Jack Daniels Sour Mash, beloved of Chester Drum. A voice said, “Don’t make up your mind yet.”
    I listened and didn’t answer. The voice went on: “At least wait till you see Preston Baylis. All right?”
    I nodded sagely and took another drink. The voice was quiet now. It had been, naturally, my own voice.
    When Jack Daniels had been emptied of all but the charcoal-mellowed aroma, I went to sleep.
    On Sunday morning I called Preston Baylis’s home in College Park, Maryland. It was a clear, briskly cool sun-filled day, the nicest we’d had in weeks. Mr. Baylis was not available for comment, sir. He had given the press the only statement he would give them, earlier in the morning. I said I wasn’t the press, wondering if I’d taken up the