Dead on the Level (22 page)

I live in an old and stately apartment house with large rooms and high ceilings and no stall showers, built long before I was born. Since I was born more modern apartment house have been erected
with
stall showers but frequently the only way to differentiate between the rooms for living and the stalls for shower is to look up to the ceiling for the shower-head. My bathroom contains a large tub and the shower is part of the bathtub and there are shower-curtains hung on a bar by curtain-rings and the shower-curtains are closed for decor when the shower is not in use and closed when the shower is in use in order that water does not splash the tiles of the floor. I parted the curtains, after divesting myself of my pajamas, so that I could step into the tub in order to take my shower, but I did not step into the tub because, if I would have, I would have stepped upon the lady who was lying there. The lady did not belong in my tub. Nobody belonged.

She had a good, long-legged, well-rounded figure, all of which I was able to observe because the lady was unencumbered by clothes. She lay nude, supine, inert, smiling wistfully. Both of us were naked but only one of us reacted—me. The lady was beyond reaction. I kneeled and touched her. She was cold and rigid. I did no further examination. I stood up, closed the shower-curtains, and trotted to the living room where I put through a call for Detective-lieutenant Parker of Homicide.

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Copyright © 1951 by Helen Nielsen, Registration Renewed 1979
All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4126-4
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4126-1