Who's sorry now?

shed we set up for him. Come quickly. We haven’t touched him. We knew better.”
    Edwin was indeed dead. Dr. Polhemus was already there before Chief Walker arrived. Howard would have been happier with almost any other doctor to sign the death certificate. Howard wouldn’t have even recognized Edwin except for his brown hair and plaid shirt and brown trousers, both much patched. His face was reddish-blue, his blue eyes were wide open, and his mouth was open with his purple tongue protruding as if he were still gasping for breath.
    ”Strangled with a fine wire,” Polhemus proclaimed. ”Must have died hours ago. The flesh has swollen, concealing it, all but at the back of his neck. A thin piano wire, probably.”
    Or some other kind of wire, Howard thought, but said nothing.
    Both Harry and Jim Harbinger were seriously upset. ”He was a nice, hardworking man,” Harry said. ”Who would do such a horrible thing to him?”
    ”He had no enemies?” Chief Walker asked.
    ”Not a chance,” Harry said firmly.
    ”We’ll have to get him to a pathologist. I know several of them,” Chief Walker said. ”It’s clearly a murder, not an accident. First, I’m calling the funeral home in Beacon to pick him up until I can find someone to do a thorough examination.”
    ”Be careful stepping outside,” Harry said. ”Jim found him and upchucked near the shed door. I’ll wash it away soon.”
    Howard asked for permission to call the Beacon funeral home from the Harbinger house and had an ambulance around in record time. By then Chief Walker had contacted the pathologist who’d been at Grace and Favor when the skeleton was discovered.
    Dr. Meredith gave Walker the address of the morgue in New York City.
    The ambulance was still present, so Walker gave them the address to deliver the corpse. The guy driving the ambulance said, ”I can’t go that far. We don’t have the budget for using that much gasoline. But there’s a good pathologist in Newburgh. Could we deliver the body there?”
    ”What is the pathologist’s name?”
    The driver told him.
    Walker called Dr. Meredith back to explain and ask if the other pathologist was known to him, and if he was reliable. Meredith said he knew the man and he’d do a good job.
    ”You’ll see that I’m right about the piano wire,” Dr. Polhemus said in a cranky voice. ”It’s obvious.”
    Walker ignored him and gave Harry a handful of change to pay for the calls. ”Be sure to let me know if I owe you more when the bill comes.” Then he asked Harry again, Are you sure that Mr. McBride had no enemies?”
    ”I can’t imagine him having a single one. He was such a shy man, and worked so hard at the train station. Golly!” Harry said. ”Edwin was about to make a little more money there with the post office boxes. Who’s going to do the sorting now?”
    ”Robert Brewster, I assume,” Howard said. ”It was, after all, his idea.”
    Howard was thinking furiously about where to go from here. A nice man. No enemies whatsoever. Howard’s experience told him this was seldom true. Everybody had said or done something wrong to somebody else at one time or another. Mostly it was harmless and was forgotten or forgiven. But there were also people who were of a mind to take offense when none was meant. Even a well-meaning compliment could set them off.
    ”Did Edwin tell you anything about his past?” Walker asked Harry.
    ”Mostly he talked about how grateful he was to Jack Summer, who told him about Voorburg at the Bonus March. You know he came here because of Jack’s description of the town?”
    ”That’s what I’d heard,” Walker said. Anything else? Like where he grew up, or if he had family elsewhere?”
    Harry thought for a few minutes. ”I think he mentioned growing up somewhere in south Yonkers.”
    ”Nothing about family?”
    ”Only that his mother is a really good cook.”
    ”Did he suggest that she was still living?”
    Harry shrugged. ”I assumed she was because he said ‘she is’ not ‘she was.’ ”
    ”Do you have any idea of his age?”
    ”No. But he met Jack at the Bonus March, so he must have served in the Great War. That would make him at least in his mid-thirties or older. I think he might have been in his early forties.”
    Chief Walker went back to his office and put in calls to the county records people in Yonkers. He was told they probably had the information he needed, but he’d have to hunt for it himself. Someone would help him, but