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the way down my back.
    â€œThere’s another possibility in Dresden,” I said.
    â€œMore?” She half-smiled. “You know your work, don’t you? Strange, one wouldn’t guess it to look at you.”
    â€œA one-armed roustabout?” I said.
    She shook her head. “The one arm is incidental. It gives you a piratical look, nothing more. No, it’s your dress and manner. You seem inconsequential, uneducated, but you’re not at all, are you? You know that my side table is eighteenth-century English, and good. I saw it in your eyes. People underestimate you, don’t they? They confuse a missing arm with a missing intelligence, and I think you foster that image.”
    â€œIt’s just me, Mrs. Crawford.”
    â€œPerhaps,” she smiled. “What is the other possibility?”
    â€œFrank Keefer.”
    She nodded. “I know, but it was never serious. Francesca toyed with him, found him physically interesting. I expect he had other thoughts, but he’s a fool with grandiose ideas.”
    â€œShe dumped him just before she left.”
    â€œDid she? I didn’t know, but would that make him kill her? She was the golden girl he wanted. Why kill his dream?”
    â€œMaybe because he couldn’t have her?”
    â€œFrank Keefer?” At another time she would have laughed. Now she only smiled. “He’s the stupid, dull type who never gives up. To admit that a woman was beyond his grasp, would never have him, would lower his self-esteem so much I doubt if he could consider that possible.”
    â€œWould he kill to keep her?”
    She hesitated. “I would say no, he hasn’t the necessary moral strength, but I suppose you never can be sure. Anyway, it’s Francesca who’s dead, Mr. Fortune. How would that mean—”
    â€œMaybe Keefer made a mistake,” I said.
    She was silent again. I stood up.
    â€œIf Felicia comes home, sit on her and call me, okay?”
    The “if” seemed to weigh down the porch, but she nodded.
    â€œWhere can I find your husband now?” I asked.
    â€œAt a meeting of civic leaders at City Hall. He has to go to these meetings, but it’s a terrible bore for me.”
    There was an annoyance on her face as I left, as if thinking of a lot of things that bored her.

9.
    City Hall was in an old, downtown section of Dresden. An ugly graystone building in late Victorian style. Floodlights bathed it in a glare, and the lawn was manicured in an attempt at some dignity.
    The chill night, the big building in its square, and the dark, narrow streets leading off into a silent, deserted black made me think of London. I could almost feel the fog, hear the mellow musical sound of a London police whistle.
    A night guard at a desk inside called up to the Mayor’s office for me. Two silent black women mopped the lobby floors. It was dim and cold in the lobby, bare, as if designed to prove that the city fathers did not spend taxpayers’ money on frivolous decoration. (We seem to insist that city employees work with none of the shine and comfort of private companies, but happily swallow the plush homes and privilege city leaders have in private life.)
    I found the Mayor’s office on the second floor where he waited for me alone now. It was a big, austere office, and Martin Crawford seemed smaller behind his desk. He also seemed tired. Maybe it was too much civic-minded meeting.
    â€œYou have some news, Mr. Fortune?” he asked.
    He was the first one in Dresden who’d asked that, who hadn’t been more concerned with who my client was.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t have much to work with.”
    He nodded. “The New York police sent a man here. But where do you look for what killed a girl out in a jungle?”
    â€œShe’d left home before. Four years in college, even the summers away. She knew how to be alone on her own.”
    â€œCollege, even a