“Forget the shower,” I said. “The water wasn’t on and the body wasn’t wet.”

“Some men tend to lock themselves in the bathroom,” Lolly Stoppelgard said, with a glance at her husband. “Did they find any funny magazines in there with him?”

Time to grab the wheel again. “He would lock himself in the bathroom,” I said, “as a way of hiding. Once, years ago, back in the days when I still engaged in occasional acts of burglary—”

“Aw, Jesus,” Ray muttered.

“—I was an uninvited guest in an empty apartment when its occupant returned. I hid in the closet, though a bathroom would have done as well had one been close at hand. I couldn’t lock the closet, of course.” Someone else had locked the closet, with me in it, and when I managed to get out I found a corpse on the floor. I winced at the memory.

“Nor was I naked,” I continued. “Last week Ray Kirschmann asked me what kind of burglar takes off his clothes in the course of a burglary. No burglar I ever heard of, I told him, so—”

“He was posing,” Patience said. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She smiled at Joan Nugent. “He was posing for you, wasn’t he?”

“I’ve never painted nudes,” Joan Nugent said. “I don’t believe in it.”

“You don’t believe in it?”

“No, I don’t. I think we’ve had entirely too much of that sort of thing down through the centuries. My most recent painting of Luke was in harlequin garb. I assure you he was fully clothed.”

“Then he was changing,” Patience said. “He’d posed in costume, and—”

“Never in costume. When he posed for me he wore street clothes. I would sketch the lines of his body, and then I’d paint the harlequin costume in later. I didn’t need him for that.”

“But he was naked,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’d remember that. I’m sure it’s not at all the sort of thing I would forget.”

“Joan,” Harlan Nugent said gently, “shut up.”

“You might have remembered,” I told her, “if you’d known what was going on. But you were unconscious. You’d been drugged.”

“Not a word, Joan,” Nugent said.

“If you’ll all follow me,” I said, leading the way to the studio or guest bedroom, as you prefer. “You were drugged, Mrs. Nugent, and you were unconscious. Your clothes were off. Luke Santangelo’s clothes were off as well, and he was attempting to—”

“Oh my God,” someone said.

“I suppose you were on the daybed over there, or perhaps on the floor. Then there was the sound of your husband’s key in the lock, and seconds later he had thrown open the hall door and announced his presence. He’s a big, hearty man. I’m sure he tends to make his presence known.”

“Sometimes he’ll say, ‘Lucy, I’m home.’ Like Ricky Ricardo, you know. He does a good Cuban accent. Show them, darling.”

Harlan Nugent looked like a man trying to think of a reason to take the next breath.

“You walked in,” I said to him, “and found your wife unconscious, or at the very least out of her mind on drugs. You saw the bathroom door, closed. You tried the knob and it was locked.”

“And then what did I do?”

“You banged on the door, demanding that it be opened. Luke Santangelo was many things, most of them unsavory, but he was not entirely out of his mind. The last thing he was going to do was open the door.”

“Then I’d say we were at an impasse,” Nugent said, “since I’m hardly of a size to slither through the keyhole, and the door doesn’t have one anyway, does it?” He made a huge fist and gave the door a thump. “Pretty sturdy,” he observed, “but I suppose I could have knocked it down in extremis. Kicked it in, put my shoulder to it, that sort of thing. But didn’t I understand that it was still intact, indeed still locked, when the police were forced to break in?”

“I was wondering about that myself,” I said. I went over and tapped on the door, then flicked the switch alongside it. No lights went on or off. I opened the bathroom door and repeated the process, with the same results. “What have we here?” I said. “Doesn’t seem to do anything, does it?”

“I think it may control one of the baseboard outlets,” Nugent said. “What possible difference could it make?”

“I wonder,” I said, and whipped out my ring of burglar’s tools and began unscrewing the screws that held the switch plate in place. “Voilà,” I said at length, showing them all the rectangle devoid of the usual switchbox. “Once upon a time, this must have been a child’s bedroom. And after the child locked itself in the bathroom and couldn’t get out, perhaps for the second or third time, one of its parents resolved to make sure nothing of the sort ever happened again. Hence this little safety device.”

“Our children were grown when we moved here,” Joan Nugent said. “This room has always been my studio. And I’ve never locked myself in this bathroom. I hardly ever use this bathroom, and I rarely lock the door in the other bathroom, either.”

“Joan,” her husband said, “nobody cares. And you, sir,” he said to me. “What you’re suggesting makes no sense at all. Even if all the other nonsense you’ve suggested were true, which it is not, and even if I had known about this ancient passageway, which I did not, and even if I were sufficiently outraged to want to injure the villain, why would I leave him in the bathroom? If I went in there and killed him, why wouldn’t I get rid of the body?”

“Because you couldn’t get in the room.”

“Bernie,” Ray Kirschmann pointed out, “you just showed us how to do it. Remember?”

“Vividly,” I said. “But that’s not what Mr. Nugent did. Instead he got a gun from wherever he keeps that sort of thing, and he stuck the business end of it through the opening and shot Luke Santangelo right between the eyes. I don’t know if Luke was standing in the tub at the time. He may have tried backing away when he saw a gun poking through a wall at him, and who could blame him? But once he was shot the impact would have sent him reeling, and one way or another he wound up in the tub. He was dead, and the door was still locked.”

“So, Bernie? He reaches in like you did, unlocks the lock, an’ walks out with the stiff draped over his shoulder. Mr. Nugent here’s a big guy, the stiff was a wiry little punk, he wouldn’t have no trouble doin’ it. Your doctor didn’t say nothin’ about not doin’ any heavy liftin’, did he, Mr. Nugent?”

“Had any of this happened, Officer, I’d have done exactly what you’ve just said.”

I said, “Oh yeah? Let’s see you do it, Mr. Nugent.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Come on,” I said. “Show us how you’d have done it and we’ll all go home.”

“This is a farce,” he said. “Why should I dignify it by—”

“Oh, give it a rest,” I told him. “You’re too big. You’ve got forearms like a Bulgarian weightlifter. I don’t even know if you could get your hand through the opening, but you’d never get enough of your arm in to reach the lock. And why should you make a fool of yourself now by trying? You already tried once and found out it didn’t work.”

“And then what did I do, Mr. Rhodenbarr?”

“You tidied up. You screwed the switch plate back where it belonged. You threw a blanket over your wife and let her sleep it off. When she woke up asking whatever happened to cool bland Luke, you said he must have left before you arrived. ‘I guess I must have dozed off,’ she said. ‘I guess you did at that,’ you said, ‘but don’t you think we ought to start packing? We’ve got a flight tomorrow evening.’ ”

“And I suppose I left the corpse in place and trotted off to London.”

“Why not? He wasn’t going anywhere. Your wife already said she hardly ever uses that bathroom. If she tried to get in there during the twenty-four hours before you left for the airport, she’d find the door locked. ‘Seems to be stuck,’ you could tell her. ‘Wood must have swelled over the summer. Have to get the super to look at it after we come back.’ ”

“You’re forgetting something.”

“Oh?”