Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 43

by The Father Hunt

  “It might be better,” I said, “for me to tell you first what I already know, or some of it. She was your wife’s secretary from May nineteen forty-two until your wife died. She lived here—and at your house in town. You kept her on. She stopped living with you in March nineteen forty-four, and I can’t prove that you still kept her, with a different meaning for ‘kept,’ but there’s no law against guessing, and we’ve only been on this five days.” I got something from a pocket. “Here are two photographs of her, taken in nineteen forty-six, but she wasn’t Carlotta Vaughn then, she was Elinor Denovo, and her daughter Amy was a year old. Take a look.”

  I offered them, but he didn’t take them. He said, “Who’s paying you, Goodwin? Just McCray? He’s probably only the errand boy for them—he would be—but you must have their names. If I could prove conspiracy to defame … Would you like to pocket ten thousand dollars?”

  “Not particularly. That’s peanuts. Only last week I took home a box that contained two hundred and forty-four grand—and by the way, it had come from you.” I put the photographs back in my pocket. “The checks you sent Elinor Denovo, formerly Carlotta Vaughn—”

  “That’s enough!” He was reacting. Not the eyes, but the voice. He fired those two words at me as if they were bullets. “This is ridiculous. The brainless idiots. You’re expecting to show that I am the father of a girl named Amy, that her mother is the Carlotta Vaughn who once worked for my wife and me and is now known as Elinor Denovo. Is that correct?”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “When was this girl Amy born?”

  “Two weeks before you sent the first check to Elinor Denovo. April twelfth, nineteen forty-five.”

  “Then she was conceived in the summer of nineteen forty-four. July, unless the birth was abnormally premature or delayed. I suppose you have a notebook. Get it out.”

  I wasn’t subservient enough yet. I tapped my skull. “I file things here.”

  “File this. In late May nineteen forty-four I went to England on a mission for the Production Allotment Board to consult with Eisenhower’s staff and the British. Seven days after the landing in Normandy I flew to Cairo for more consultations, and then to Italy. On July first I was put to bed with pneumonia in an army hospital in Naples. On July twenty-fourth I was still shaky and I was flown to Marrakech to recuperate. My room in the villa was the one Churchill had once occupied. On August twentieth I flew to London and was there until September sixth, when I returned to Washington. If you had got your notebook when I told you to you’d have those dates.” He turned his head and called, “Oscar!”

  The door, the big one, opened and Oscar entered and stood with a hand on the knob.

  “Brainless idiots,” Jarrett said. “Especially McCray; he was born an idiot. If they didn’t know how and where I spent that summer they could have found out. Anyone with a spoonful of brains would have. Oscar, this man’s going and he isn’t coming back.” He turned and left by the door he had come in at.

  I was in no mood for another waiting match with Oscar. I moved—out by the big door, down the hall and the corridor, and on out. I damn near forgot my raincoat, but the corner of my eye caught it as I was passing, and I got it. I didn’t bother to use it crossing the gravel to the car because the downpour had thinned out to a drizzle.

  It was just luck that I didn’t get a ticket. I usually hold to sixty on the Taconic and the Saw Mill, but I must have hit at least seventy a dozen times and it was probably a personal record for that route. I suppose the idea was that I wanted to get the driving done so I could start thinking, but evidently one thing kept pushing, because at one point on the Saw Mill I braked down, eased off onto the grass, got out my notebook, and jotted down the places and dates Jarrett had rattled off. As I bumped back over the curb to the lane I said out loud, “By God, if I can’t even trust my memory I’d better quit.”

  It was exactly eight o’clock when I mounted the stoop of the old brownstone and used my key, and Wolfe was in the dining room. I stuck my head in at the door and said I’d get a bite in the kitchen, and continued to the rear. Fritz, who always eats his evening meal around nine o’clock, was on his stool at the big center table doing something with artichokes. When I entered he crinkled his eyes at me and said, “Ah. You’re back on the feet. Have you eaten?”

  “No.”

  “He was worried about you.” He left the stool. “As you know, I never worry about you. There’s a little mussel bisque—”

  “No, thanks. No soup. I want to chew something. Don’t tell me he ate a whole duck.”

  “Oh, no. I knew a man, a Swiss, who ate two ducks.” He was at the range, putting on a plate to warm. “Was it a good trip?”

  “It was a lousy trip.” I was at a cupboard getting out a bottle. “No milk or coffee. I’m going to drink a quart of whisky.”

  “Not here, Archie. In your room is the place for that. Some carottes Flamande?”

  I said, “Yes, please,” poured a shot of bourbon, sat at my breakfast table, took a swallow, and scowled. Fritz, seeing the scowl, didn’t talk.

  As I lifted the glass for the third swallow the door swung open and Wolfe was there. He said to Fritz, “I’ll have coffee here,” and went and mounted the stool at the near side of the center table. Once in the past he had bought a chair big enough for the back of his lap and had it put in the kitchen, but the next day it wasn’t there. Fritz had taken it to the basement. As far as I know it has never been mentioned by either of them—not then, and not since.

  Another thing that had never been mentioned but was mutually understood was that the rule about talk at meals didn’t apply when I was eating alone in the kitchen or office, because it was a snack, not a meal. So when my snack was on my plate and I had chewed and swallowed a man-size morsel of duck Mondor and a forkful of carrots, I told Wolfe, “I appreciate this. You knew I had something on my chest I wanted to unload and you came to have coffee perched on that roost instead of in your chair. I appreciate it.”

  He made a face. “You’re drinking whisky with food.”

  “It should be hemlock. Who drank hemlock?”

  “You’re posing. We have discussed that at length more than once. Your chest?”

  I was using the knife on the duck—a knife with a wooden handle and a blade dull to the eye but sharp enough to filet a fish. There is plenty of stainless steel up in the plant rooms—the bench frames—but it’s taboo in the kitchen or dining room. “This knife would be fine for hara-kiri,” I said, “but you’ll have to know how it stands so you can carry on. I’ll tell you in installments between bites. And swigs of bourbon.”

  I did so, word for word, a couple of sentences at a time. By the time I got to Jarrett’s exit line the carrots were gone and there wasn’t much left of my share of the duck but bones, and most of the sauce had been mopped up with pieces of rolls. Wolfe had finished his first cup of coffee and poured the second.

  I swallowed the last bite of duck and said, “I don’t like the idea of hara-kiri on a full stomach, and anyway I’ve got about a dime’s worth of comments. Do you want to go first?”

  “No. You’ve had two hours to consider it.”

  “I was driving, not considering. Okay. First, of course, his alibi. Almost certainly it’s tight, since he knows it can be checked, but I think Saul or Orrie should be put on it, not only the details but also whether she was with him for any part of it—even granting that he spent the month of July in a hospital with pneumonia. Opinion: it will be a waste of time and money. One will get you fifty that he is not Amy’s father. He’s too damned sure we’re stopped. But I suppose it must be checked.”

  He nodded. “Orrie. Saul will be needed for chores more difficult.”

  “He sure will. Now me. It’s entirely my fault. Fritz, I’ve changed my mind. May I have some coffee? You pour it, please, my hand might shake.” I moved my chair around to face Wolfe. “I can’t blame it on McCray. Even if he knew all about where Jarrett spent that summer, he didn’t know when
Amy was born. We hadn’t told Ballou, so Ballou hadn’t told him. But me? If I had the brains of a half-wit I would have asked McCray where Ballou was during July nineteen forty-four. It’s entirely my fault that I drove up there through a cloudburst and invited that ape to push my nose in. Bounce me. Don’t pay me for this week. I’ll get a job sewing on buttons.”

  Fritz, who was there pouring coffee, said, “Not if you commit hara-kiri, Archie.” He wouldn’t have, with Wolfe there, if it had been the dining room or the office, but we were in his kitchen.

  “It wasn’t wholly futile,” Wolfe said. “He gave you confirmation of what had been only a valid assumption, that he knew the date of birth. That’s now established. Those places and dates had been arranged in his head before you arrived.”

  “Uh-huh.” I drank coffee and burned my mouth. “Thanks for the bone. That about covers comment. A question, Do I tell the client about Carlotta Vaughn?”

  “I think not. Not now. The telephone will do for telling her that we think it highly improbable that Mr. Jarrett sired her. What time is it?” He would have had to pivot his head to ask the kitchen clock.

  “Eight thirty-five.”

  “You’ll be late for poker. At Saul’s apartment?”

  “Yes. It always is.”

  “If Saul will be free tomorrow morning ask him to come at ten, and call Fred and Orrie. Also at ten. When they come give them everything; they’ll need it all and there’s nothing we should reserve. You have seen Mr. Jarrett and I haven’t. I need your opinion. Elinor Denovo’s letter said, ‘This money is from your father.’ We know it was sent by Mr. Jarrett, the first check two weeks after the birth, but it appears that he is not the father. Well? You have seen him. What impelled him?”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him.” I drank coffee. “And heard him. God only knows. It might be for any one of a thousand reasons, including blackmail, that a man might send a woman a grand every month for twenty-two years, but we decided to take Elinor’s letter without salt, and there it is, this money is from your father. She couldn’t have meant it came direct from Amy’s father because it didn’t, unless we crack Jarrett’s alibi, and we won’t. But she knew it came from Jarrett. Even if there was no understanding or arrangement, the checks were Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, and she knew they were from Jarrett. So this money is from your father really meant this money was sent to me by Cyrus M. Jarrett because a certain man was your father. Then all we have to do is tell Saul and Fred, while Orrie checks the alibi, to pick up Jarrett twenty-two years ago and find out what certain man he would feel obligated to that much and that long.”

  “His son.”

  “Oh, sure. The son comes first and foremost. You stole my line. I was going to stand up and say, ‘Even a baboon could feel like that about a son, and Jarrett has got one,’ and walk out.” I stood up. “You have Saul’s number if anything happens this evening. Eugene Jarrett might drop in for a chat.”

  I walked out.

  Chapter 8

  When Wolfe came down to the office from the plant rooms at eleven o’clock Friday morning, Saul Panzer ($10 an hour and worth double that), Fred Durkin ($8 an hour and worth it), and Orrie Cather ($8 an hour and usually worth it) were on three of the yellow chairs facing me, with notebooks in their hands. They had been there an hour. Saul, wiry and a little undersized all but his ears and nose, could have occupied about any spot in life that appealed to him, but he had settled for free-lance operative years ago because he could work only when he wanted to, make as much money as he needed, be outdoors a lot, and wear his old wool cap from November 1 to April 15. A reversible cap like that, light tan on one side and plaid on the other, and not there at all if you stick it in a pocket, can be a help when you’re tailing. Fred, shorter than me but some broader, was apt to fool you. Just when you decided that it was too bad that some of his muscle power couldn’t be traded in for brain power, he might get a wedge in where it was hard to see a crack. It was too bad that Orrie knew how good-looking he was. A mirror can be a handy tool, either your own or one on a wall, but not if you’re more interested in checking on your hair than in the subject.

  They got up when Wolfe entered, and when, after shaking hands around because he hadn’t seen them for weeks, he went to his desk, they shifted their chairs to face him. I told him that they had been briefed and given expense money and that we had discussed Orrie’s assignment, checking Jarrett’s alibi. Wolfe looked at Saul and asked, “Comments?”

  Saul closed his notebook. “I could make a few dozen. Who couldn’t? But if we want to place her from March to October nineteen forty-four, the snag is that we don’t know when she switched from Carlotta Vaughn to Elinor Denovo. To place someone that long ago is always tough, and that makes it a lot tougher.”

  “But you think that should be tackled first?”

  “For Fred and me, yes. Of course the son is the best bet, or rather, he’s the only bet as it stands now, but that’s for you and Archie. McCray. Ballou told Archie that he wanted to meet you.”

  Wolfe tightened his lips. Paying four grown men and paying them well, or the client was, and he had to work. He growled. “Archie. Get Mr. McCray. I’ll talk.”

  You would think that getting through to a vice-president would be easier and quicker than to a president, but it wasn’t. Some underling positively wouldn’t put Mr. McCray on until Mr. Wolfe was on, and when they were both on, voice to voice, Wolfe got clogged too. He was polite enough, saying how he would appreciate it if Mr. McCray would come at three o’clock, but McCray wasn’t even sure he could come at six, and wouldn’t Monday do? He wanted to get away for the weekend, but finally agreed to make it at six or a little after.

  The trio stayed until lunchtime. I got a Washington call through to a three-star general at the Pentagon who hadn’t forgotten something Wolfe had once done for him, strictly private, and he told Wolfe he would be glad to see Orrie Cather and give him any assistance that security would permit. Most of the hour and a half was spent on Saul’s and Fred’s program. All they would have were the two names and the photographs; they didn’t even know if during those long-gone months she had slept among eight million others in New York or in some suburb—or even in Wisconsin. We had the names of only four people who had known her then: the Jarretts, father and son and daughter, and Bertram McCray. The daughter lived in Italy, and McCray had told me that all he knew about Elinor Denovo after she moved out of the Jarrett house was that he had seen her there three or four times during those six or seven months. It’s hard to start when you have nowhere to start from. The best we could do was three feeble stabs: Fred, with photographs, would go the rounds of shops, from dry cleaners to drugstores, in the neighborhood of the Jarrett houses, town and country; Saul would try anything that occurred to him, from old telephone directories to the charge-account records of midtown stores; and I would put an ad in all New York papers.

  After lunch I did that, taking it to an agency instead of phoning it in, because it was to be a display, not a classified, two columns wide and three inches high. Wolfe had drafted it:

  $500

  will be paid for

  any verifiable information

  regarding the whereabouts

  and movements of

  CARLOTTA VAUGHN

  alias

  ELINOR DENOVO

  between April 1, 1944

  and

  October 1, 1944

  Box ———

  Wolfe had drafted it, but not without an argument. He wanted to make it six inches high, not three, with the bottom half a reproduction of the three-quarters-face photograph. My objection was that that would bring us stacks of answers from people who would grab at any chance to collect five hundred dollars and I would have to spend a week or so following some of them up on a-million-to-one odds, and a good percentage of them would develop into pests. I won. Another objection, from Saul, not me, was that we would be hooked by people who had seen her in circumstances that wouldn’t help, for instance, servan
ts who had been at Jarrett’s then, but Wolfe overruled that one. It might cost five or ten grand, but there was plenty in the twelve savings banks. Of course another objection was that Raymond Thorne wouldn’t like it, with its public implication that there was something about the past of Elinor Denovo that needed to be investigated, but that was just mentioned, not argued.

  At the agency, Green and Best, they said four inches high would be better than three, but I won that argument too.

  It was 6:08 when Bertram McCray arrived. He looked as if he needed a weekend; his whole face was pinched, not just the corner of an eye, and his feet dragged as he walked down the hall. It’s enough to wear a man out, helping to decide what to do with a couple of billion dollars’ worth of other people’s money. After presenting him to Wolfe and motioning him to the red leather chair, I asked if he would like to have a drink and he said no, he was going to drive eighty miles. He sat and blinked at Wolfe and said he hoped it wouldn’t take long. “I don’t want to be blunt,” he said, “but I’ve had a hard week and I want some air. I didn’t ask you on the phone, but I assume it’s about Jarrett.”