Death Is My Comrade Read Free

Ilya gave her something, all right. An envelope. While you and Laschenko were out on the beach, she gave it to me.”
    â€œYou mean you had it all the time?” I said stupidly.
    Marianne patted her pocketbook. “Take me home, Chet.”
    We tiptoed into Marianne’s Georgetown apartment, but Mrs. Gower, the housekeeper, greeted us in a hearty voice. “That’s all right, they’re sleeping like a pair of angels. You don’t have to walk on eggshells.”
    â€œDid they sleep right through?” Marianne asked.
    â€œThey did, the little dolls. Have fun?”
    â€œWhy yes, thank you, we did,” Marianne said. “A very interesting evening.”
    Mrs. Gower stretched, her starched uniform rustling. She was a large woman with a jaw like the business end of an ax and big, kind eyes. “Well, if there’s nothing else you’ll be wanting, it’s about a week past my bedtime.”
    â€œYou didn’t have to stay up,” Marianne said.
    â€œYou know something now, dear,” Mrs. Gower said, “I like those twin boys some myself.”
    When she had excused herself and gone to bed, Marianne told me: “That old phony, she just wanted to see if I had a good time. You’d better watch yourself, Chester Drum. She’s a matchmaker type, and you’re her number-one candidate.”
    â€œI’ll remember that.”
    â€œIt’s funny. When I first had to think about hiring a full-time housekeeper because Wally was dead and I had to go back to a full-time job, I thought she’d get in my hair ten times a day. But now I don’t know what I’d do without Mrs. Gower. Drink?”
    â€œSwell.”
    â€œYou make them. The matchmaker’s pride and joy is leaving to look at the twins and to get comfortable.”
    I got the Jack Daniels from the living-room bar and spilled a couple of ounces over ice for each of us. I always felt dangerously domesticated in Marianne’s apartment. Maybe it’s that kind of place, or maybe Marianne is that kind of girl. We’d been friends for years. It had started out as one of those skyrocketing affairs when I was on the rebound from my one and only marriage, which hadn’t worked out. Marianne had recognized the rebound symptoms and had wisely broken things off. But we’d remained friends. Later, I was best man at her wedding to Wally Baker, then the Time-Life photo-bureau chief in Southeast Asia. And last year, when Wally had been murdered in the Brandvik case, I’d gone to Scandinavia to find his killer. *
    For a while after the twins were born, Marianne was a pretty sick girl. Borderline post-partum psychosis, the doctor had called it. Marianne had been in love with Wally Baker with every atom of her body and every compartment of her mind—the way Marianne would be in love. Time, and going back to work, and—I like to think—my friendship, had brought her out of it. But the doctor had had a warning.
    â€œShe’s gone through a traumatic experience at the worst possible time in her life,” he’d told me. “Another such experience and.… But let’s just say, Mr. Drum, that she is to lead a very sane and ordered and sheltered life for the next year or so.”
    â€œBlue funk or brown study?” Marianne said, now, in her apartment in Georgetown.
    I handed her her drink. She was wearing pajamas and a dark blue cotton robe with red piping.
    â€œTo blue funks or brown studies,” I said, and we drank.
    â€œTo curiosity.”
    We hadn’t looked at Ilya’s envelope yet. I hadn’t even seen it.
    Marianne drained her drink and set it down on the night table. We were seated on the sofa, close together but not touching. Marianne’s hair had a perfume and healthy-young-woman smell. At first, with the wedge of sorrow between us after Wally’s death, I hadn’t felt anything but pity for Marianne. But lately, alone with her,