John was playing it too heavy. It was time he stepped in. "You'll have to excuse John. This case is frustrating. We're sure the man's not Jack O'Brien, too. We came because we hoped you could help us prove it. It's indelicate to mention it, I know, but you knew him best."

"It is that. But if I can help, I must." She was in such rigid control that her accent and structural stumbling all but disappeared. "There is so little to tell. He was like a-what do you call those spring storms?-like a tornado. Here, there, gone before he left a deep hurt. I know what people thought. But love him I never did… Does that surprise you, Sergeant?"

"No." But it did. He had fixed notions about his elders and their times. Casual affairs then? No, not till later, once Prohibition had reached its absolute nadir.

John horned in. "Would you be willing to look at the body?"

"For what?"

"To tell us how it can't be O'Brien. So we have something to go on."

That flustered her. It meant a trip downtown. "I… I don't know. To going out I'm not accustomed." Her accent thickened again. She slowed her speech as she groped for words.

Cash groped too, for the high school German that had been the army's excuse for sticking him into the AMG operation. Maybe he could catch her off-guard.

But no useful phrases would come.

What about maintenance? he thought. A big house like hers, so old, had to have paint, tuckpointing, and repairs all the time. The plumbing had to be crankier than a '47 Ford. How did she manage upkeep without going out? And, if they did find someone who had made repairs, would they learn anything?

Harald softened his approach. "I know. I don't think you'd have to if we could find some other way. Say, fingerprints."

She frowned, turned to Cash for an explanation. He tried, showing her the difference between their thumbs. "The natural oils leave marks," he told her. "I'm sure you've noticed, housekeeping. No two people's are alike. We hoped you'd have something around…" Her housekeeping habits did not appear the sort that would leave fingerprints lying around for fifty years.

Cash was fishing for an invitation to see the rest of the house.

She was cool for having been so long alone. Panic scrambled around behind her eyes, like a roomful of mice with a cat thrown in, but she did a good job of controlling it. Time had made her timid, but she refused to be spooked when the world assaulted her privacy.

"Is no chance, I think. No. But look we can. Where do we begin?" She rose, patted her skirts down.

"Any souvenirs?" Cash asked. "Something glass might have taken a print. Or paint if he touched it while it was tacky. Or a photo."

"Was a photograph once, yes. Just one. Your Leutnant Carstairs never gave it back. I do not remember any painting doing then. Everything has been painted since. Many times. I would not leave a dirty glass sitting for fifty years."

"We're grasping at straws," Cash admitted.

Her spectral smile informed him that she was aware of that fact.

For a moment he felt he and John were being manipulated, that her cooperation was a subtle form of mockery.

"Well, come then. Upstairs we'll go and see."

Cash didn't know what to expect. A locked, dusty room, memorially closed in respect for a withered love? Something like that. He just couldn't take her no love claim at face value.

What he did see was pretty much what an ordinary visitor would expect: just an old lady's house.

Cash stuck close. He was briefly bemused by her spryness on the stairs. John hung back, sticking his nose everywhere. With another of her quiet smiles, Miss Groloch pretended not to notice.

"Where to look I really do not know," she said, leading Cash into a bedroom. "But this seems the best place to start. It's a mess. I'm sorry."

"My wife should be so slack."

"Most of his time he spent here. Or in the kitchen. He was that kind."

Despite her ingenuous claim, the room had been kept with the care of a woman who had little else to occupy her. Cash picked up a perfume bottle that looked old enough, but which was of cut glass. "Any presents?" he asked. "He ever bring you anything?"

"Presents?" She looked thoughtful. "Now that I think, yes. Once. A porcelain doll. From Germany. Dresden, I think. He stole it, probably."

She went to an alcove off the bedroom which seemed to function as storage space, though it had probably been meant for a nursery. She opened a wardrobe which showed flecks of dust, rummaged around the back of a cluttered top shelf.

Cash noted four dresses hanging inside, all in styles a woman might have worn shortly after the Great War. They appeared to have hung undisturbed since their proper period. Miss Groloch wore appropriate old lady clothing now.

She might live outside it, but she was not unaware of the world.

It just keeps getting weirder, Cash thought.

"Here it is." She brought out something wrapped in yellowed tissue paper that crumbled when she tried to unwrap it.

"Hold on." John appeared genielike, a doily in hand. "Lay it here. You'll ruin any prints if you handle it."

"Fah!" she said. "Filthy it is. Laziness. No excuse is there. Someday to clean this, I will come." She stirred through the wardrobe, muttering to herself. "Sergeant, your force. It has the… vas ist?… charity?" She held up several sound but ancient shoes.

"We do." He forebore saying that he didn't think anyone was desperate enough to accept something fifty years old.

John slipped away with the doll, carrying it in front of him, on his palms, as though it were a nitro bomb. Miss Groloch abandoned the wardrobe in disgust, continued giving Cash the tour. John rejoined them as they were about to look into the attic, which proved to be a vast, dark, dusty emptiness. Miss Groloch refused to go up.

"Up there Tom gets sometimes," she said. "Filthy he comes back. I maybe should get one of those vacuum sweepers…"

"Don't you go climbing around up there," Cash told her. "If you fell over a joist and broke a leg, who'd come help you?"

She smiled, but didn't reply.

Cash was satisfied. He did not bother going into the attic. As Carstairs had noted so long ago, she was too smart to leave any evidence. If ever there had been any.

But Harald asked to see the basement. He seemed determined to push till he found the limit of her cooperation.