“Hoberman was here,” I said.

“For ten minutes, fifteen at the outside.”

“When he left here, he probably went straight back to Seventy-sixth Street. I was going to be bringing the portfolio there directly, so he must have wanted to be there when I arrived.”

“But well before you could arrive, Candlemas struck him down. To avoid splitting the take, even before there was any take on hand to split?” He waved a hand, dismissing the question. “We don’t need to know the reason. It was a sudden and urgent one, so that Candlemas felt obliged to do what he would have greatly preferred to do at another time and in another place. In his own residence, and with you likely to appear at any moment, he plunged a knife into his fellow.”

“And left him there.”

“Left him to write his last words, quite as mysterious as the only trace of the original colonial settlement at Roanoke Island. They’d all utterly disappeared, you know, and they’d left the word CROATOAN carved in a tree trunk, and no one’s ever been able to make head or tail out of it. What could they possibly have meant? And what could Cappy have meant by CAPHOB, and why did Candlemas let him write it?”

“If somebody other than Candlemas killed him, it still doesn’t figure that he’d go away and leave the dying message behind.”

“No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t. But if it was Candlemas, he’d have a problem.”

“I’ll say. The problem would be lying right in the middle of his living room.”

“Exactly. What would he do about it?”

“He’d have to get rid of it.”

“How? Cappy was still a big man. Was Candlemas a huge brute, capable of slinging Cappy over his shoulder and carrying him downstairs?”

“Hardly. He was no more than medium height, and slightly built.”

“Not a weight lifter, certainly.”

“No.”

“Well, what was he going to do? What would you do in his position?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Suppose you found yourself with a dead body on your hands. It’s not like a stain on the wall, you can’t hide it by throwing a coat of paint over it. How are you going to get rid of it?”

“Actually,” I said, “I had that happen once.”

“Oh?”

“In my store,” I said quickly, “and I had nothing to do with it, but all the same I had to get the body out of there. I rented a wheelchair.”

“That was damned clever,” Weeks said admiringly. “Hard to manage in the middle of the night, however, and not terribly useful anyway on the fourth floor of a walk-up.”

“No.”

“Nothing for it, then. You’d have to make several trips.”

“How’s that?”

“Unpleasant subject,” he said, “but there’s no way around it, is there? You’d cut the corpse into manageable segments and carry them out one at a time, disposing of them wherever your ingenuity might suggest.”

“An arm here, a leg there. But Captain Hoberman wasn’t missing any pieces when the cops got there. Otherwise I’m sure they would have mentioned it.”

“Your Mr. Candlemas wouldn’t have begun the operation yet,” he said gently. “He’d need tools, wouldn’t he? And wouldn’t have them lying around unless he made a habit of this sort of thing. He’d need a saw or an ax or both. The average suburban householder might have such tools close at hand, but not the average New York apartment dweller.”

“So he goes out in the middle of the night looking for a meat saw?”

“That’s a point. He can’t have expected to find a restaurant supply outlet open at that hour. But a restaurant would be another matter. Perhaps he knows a friendly chef who will lend him the necessary items with no questions asked. Or perhaps he does own a heavy-duty knife equal to the task, and goes out to buy some stout plastic bags and tape to seal them up. He’s out of his apartment, poor Cappy’s stretched out on the floor, and you’re still stuck in a closet on the eighth floor.”

“And the cops turn up, roust the super, and wind up waiting around for a locksmith to open the door for them.”

“What brought the police in the first place? An anonymous call?”

“That’s what Ray Kirschmann said. Somebody heard a noise.”

“Hmmm. Candlemas comes home, I suppose, and sees that there are people in his apartment, or on the landing waiting for the locksmith. So what does he do?”

“Gets all the money he can out of his bank’s ATM,” I said, “and jumps ship for Australia, determined to make a new life for himself. Because he’s never been heard from since.”

“That’s true, he hasn’t. Why hasn’t he contacted you, do you suppose? As far as he knows, you got out of Eight-B with the portfolio. Wouldn’t he want to collect it?”

“Maybe he tried. Maybe he sent somebody.”

“The fellow with the unusual name?”

“They’ve all got unusual names,” I said. “I never ran into this many people with unusual names outside of a Ross Thomas novel. But if you mean Tiglath Rasmoulian, yes, Candlemas could have sent him. He wouldn’t want to show himself because the cops think they’ve got him neatly filed away at the morgue. In fact, when Rasmoulian came to my store, I hadn’t gone yet to identify the body.”

“So if Candlemas had walked into your store on his own-”

“I’d have thought I was seeing a ghost. Maybe Candlemas did send him. Who else knows I’m involved?”

“If there’s one thing I learned over there,” he said, waving a hand in what I suppose must have been the general direction of Europe, “it’s that more people know something than you would suspect. Information leaks out, you see. People play multiple roles. Very little remains a secret.”

“Candlemas walked into my store Tuesday, and the following night I committed illegal entry at about the same time that he was committing homicide. By Friday afternoon, Tiglath Rasmoulian knew enough about me to come into my shop and point a gun at me. For God’s sake, he even knew my middle name.”

“Grimes.”

“Right. Now what time was there for word to get around? The only two people who knew I was involved were Candlemas and Hoberman, and Hoberman was dead.”

“Aren’t you forgetting the girl?”

“Ilona.”

“Or course.”

After a moment I said, “I thought of that myself. That she didn’t walk into my shop by accident. It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise. But all we ever did was go to the movies, and all we ever talked about was what we’d just seen on the screen. If she was setting me up, she was taking her time about it. And then, when she had me ready to slay dragons, or at least jump through hoops for her, she disappeared. I don’t get it.”

“It’s puzzling. But then the Anatrurians are a puzzling people.”

“Evidently.”

“Candlemas is puzzling enough to be Anatrurian. Did he have an accent?”

I shook my head. “He spoke educated American English. I’d guess he was born here, though not necessarily in New York. His name certainly doesn’t sound Anatrurian.”

“He sounds like the sort of fellow who could have had many names over the course of a lifetime. Candlemas would be English. It’s a church holiday, you know. In the winter, if I’m not mistaken, after Twelfth Night but well before Lent. It celebrates the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of the infant Christ in the temple. Early in the year, probably so many days before or after a new moon. Hugo Candlemas-perhaps it is indeed the name he was born with. It would be an odd one to invent.”

“Names,” I said. “Candlemas, Tsarnoff, Rasmoulian. All I’ve got is a batch of names and nothing to go with them. Maybe I should drop the whole thing.”

“Why don’t you?” he said. “You don’t have a great investment. A night’s work went for nothing, but I suspect that must happen now and then in your line of work.”

“More than now and then,” I said.

“I can understand your infatuation with the woman. But she would seem to have disappeared voluntarily. Have you any reason to suspect she’s in danger? Or in need of your assistance?”