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small excrescenses of bone. In short, smooth, asymmetric swellings on the body of the vertebrae.”
    “Indicating what?”
    “Arthritis?”
    “Are you asking?”
    “Do you know whether or not she was arthritic?”
    “She was.”
    “Well, there,” Blaney said.

    Hawes was still trying to remember the title of that movie. He asked Sam Grossman if he remembered seeing it.
    “I don’t go to movies,” Grossman said.
    He was wearing a white lab coat, and standing before a counter covered with test tubes, graduated cylinders, beakers, spatulas,
     pipettes and flasks, all of which gave his work space an air of scientific inquiry that seemed in direct contrast to Grossman
     himself. A tall, angular man with blue eyes behind dark-framed glasses, he looked more like a New England farmer worried about
     drought than he did the precise police captain who headed up the lab.
    Some ranking E-flat piano player in the department had undoubtedly decided that the death of a once-famous concert pianist
     rated special treatment, hence the dispatch with which Svetlana’s body and personal effects had been sent respectively to
     the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office and the lab. The mink coat, the cotton housedress, the pink sweater, the cotton panty
     hose, and the bedroom slippers were all on Grossman’s countertop, dutifully tagged and bagged. At another table, one of Grossman’s
     assistants sat with her head bent over a microscope. Hawes looked her over. A librarian type, he decided, which he sometimes
     found exciting.
    “Why do you ask?” Grossman said.
    “Cause of death was two to the heart,” Carella said.
    “Plenty of blood to support that,” Grossman said, nodding. “All of it hers, by the way. Nobody else bled all over the sweater
     and dress. The dress is a cheap cotton
schmatte
you can pick up at any Woolworth’s. The house slippers are imitation leather, probably got
those
in a dime store, too. But the sweater has a designer label in it. And so does the mink. Old, but once worth something.”
    Which could have been said of the victim, too, Carella thought.
    “Anything else?”
    “I just
got
all this stuff,” Grossman said.
    “Then when?”
    “Later.”
    “When later?”
    “Tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Sooner.”
    “A magician I’m not,” Grossman said.
    They went back to the apartment again.
    The yellow crime scene tapes were still up. A uniformed cop stood on the stoop downstairs, his hands behind his back, peering out at the deserted
     street. It was bitterly cold. He was wearing earmuffs and a heavy-duty overcoat, but he still looked frozen to death. They
     identified themselves and went upstairs. Another of the blues was on duty outside the door to apartment 3A. A cardboard crime scene card was taped to the door behind him. The door was padlocked. He produced a key when they identified themselves.
    Hidden under a pile of neatly pressed and folded, lace-trimmed silk underwear at the back of the bottom drawer in her dresser,
     they found another candy tin.
    There was a savings account passbook in it.
    The book showed a withdrawal yesterday of an even one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, leaving a balance of sixteen
     dollars and twelve cents. The withdrawal slip was inserted in the passbook at the page that recorded the transaction. The
     date and time on the slip were January 20, 10:27 a.m .
    This would have been half an hour before Svetlana Dyalovich went downstairs to buy a fifth of Four Roses.
    According to Blaney and the man down the hall, she was killed some twelve hours later.
    The man in apartment 3D did not enjoy being awakened at ten minutes to three in the morning. He was wearing only pajamas when
     he grumblingly unlocked the door for them, but he quickly put on a woolen robe, and, still grumbling, led the detectives into
     the apartment’s small kitchen. A tiny window over the sink was rimed with frost. Outside, they could hear the wind howling.
     They kept on their coats and