Эллери Куин: The Devil's Cook

“Come and get it, Farley,” he said. “There’s no use making a production out of this. Serve yourself from the skillet and eat here in the living room if you like.”

“I’ll serve,” said Fanny. “I can be useful as well as ornamental.”

She went into the kitchen, relieving Jay of the serving spoon as she passed, and began to fill a plate from the skillet. She passed the plate to Farley, who had followed, and began to fill another.

“Just a little for me,” Jay said. “I’m not very hungry.”

“Neither am I,” said Farley.

“The ragout looks wonderful,” Fanny said, “in spite of cooking so long. I must learn how to make it.”

“Won’t you have some?” Jay said. “There’s more than enough.”

“I couldn’t possibly. I’ll put some coffee on to perc.”

“Thanks, Fanny. As long as you’re being useful, would you mind fixing your own drink? The stuff’s there in the cabinet,”

Fan put the coffee on and got a bottle of gin out of the cabinet. She couldn’t locate any vermouth for a martini, but she found a bottle of quinine water and made a minimum gin and tonic, not bothering with lemon or lime. She carried it into the living room, where Farley and Jay were eating the good ragout with less enthusiasm than it deserved. Sipping her gin and tonic, she looked at a Picasso print on the wall; she went over and stared for a moment at the record player; she examined carefully, one by one, all the items on the telephone table; finally she drifted into the bedroom. When she returned her glass was empty, and so was Farley’s plate. Jay’s plate, however, still held some of the ragout, pushed to one side as if it had been emphatically scorned and rejected.

“Shall I serve you some more ragout?” Fanny asked.

“No more for me,” said Farley.

“No, thank you,” said Jay.

“How was it?”

“Delicious,” Farley said.

“Too damn many onions,” Jay said. “Terry knows very well that I like her to use fewer onions than the recipe calls for. They don’t agree with me — a soupçon is plenty. She did it deliberately. We haven’t been exactly congenial lately.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Fanny’s derision was palpable. “If you ask me, Jay, you are simply being petty. There was nothing to compel her to fix your dinner at all.”

Jay said something impolite. “See if the coffee’s ready, will you, Fanny?”

Carrying the two plates, she went to see. The coffee was.

“Sugar or cream?” she called.

“Black,” they both said.

She delivered the coffee and returned to the kitchen. She found a plastic refrigerator dish and put the leftover ragout in it. Then she washed and dried the two plates, the silverware, and the electric skillet. She considered another gin and tonic, decided against it, and went back into the living room. She sat down on a sofa, raising her knees and hugging them to her chest, thereby creating a perilous tautness over a choice section of her anatomy.

“While you guys were eating,” she said, “I looked for clues.”

“Clues to what?” Jay said.

“Clues to wherever Terry might have gone.”

“Of all the colossal nerve!” Farley said. “I wondered what the devil you thought you were doing, prowling around and prying into everything.”

“Looking for clues is not prowling or prying. Obviously, Farley, you’re determined to put everything I do or say in the worst possible light. If Terry had an appointment, it’s reasonable to assume that she might have made a note of it somewhere.”

“Now that you mention it, it is,” Farley conceded.

“I couldn’t find it, however. Not on the table by the telephone or on her dressing table in the bedroom. Can you think of any place else likely to look?”

Jay’s voice was quietly desperate. “Terry’s appointments are rarely the kind she’d make written notes of to leave lying about. I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but I’d appreciate your just cutting it out. I have a notion where Terry went, if you must know, but I have no intention of proving myself right by going after her. I’ve become weary of painful scenes.”

“Well,” said Fanny, “I have no wish to intrude where I’m not wanted. But I’m compelled to point out that a lot of people seem to be jumping to a certain conclusion. It’s being assumed Terry is out having a time. That is not, as I see it, necessarily so.”

Jay shrugged angrily. “What do you expect me to do?”

“If I were her husband, I would at least call the hospitals and see if there have been any accidents or anything like that.”

“She was carrying a purse with identification in it. If she’d been in an accident, I’d have been notified.”

“Perhaps she was mugged and robbed. If so, the mugger would have run off with the purse and thrown it away somewhere.”

“All right, damn it! If she isn’t back by ten, I’ll call the hospitals. Nothing will come of it, but I suppose I’m expected to act like a husband.”

“If you ask me, you aren’t even acting like a husband whose wife may be out having a good time.”

“I used to act like one,” said Jay, “but I got tired of it.”

Farley had been pinching his lower lip, thinking hard. Now he said suddenly to Fanny, “Was there a memo pad on the table by the telephone?”

“I didn’t see any. Why?”

“I was just thinking. When there isn’t anything else handy, don’t women often make notes of appointments on old envelopes, the margins of magazines, things like that?”

“Farley, sometimes you show faint signs of intelligence,” Fanny said. “There are some magazines in that bucket at the end of the sofa. I believe I’ll look at them, Jay, if you don’t mind.”

“Help yourself,” said Jay.

The bucket was just that. Fanny removed its contents, half a dozen magazines and a newspaper. Kneeling, she began to examine the magazines, looking at the covers, riffling rapidly through the pages to check the margins. Jay leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, bearing the futility of it all with a pretense of patience; Farley, after a moment, went over and sat down on the end of the sofa, by the bucket He reached for the newspaper and began to examine it, holding it folded over in his hands just as he had picked it up. It was folded twice at a page of classified ads, including a column of personals.

“Wait a minute!” Farley’s voice had acquired all at once an excitement qualified by incredulity. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” said Fanny, looking up.

“It’s damn funny, that’s all I can say. Here, Jay, you’d better read this.”

Jay Miles opened his eyes. Farley, rising again, walked over and handed him the newspaper, indicating with his index finger an item. Jay stared at the item for a long time. Then he sighed, twisted the paper into a tight roll, and slapped a bony knee with it. Leaning back, he closed his eyes again.

“Damn it, what is it?” Fanny said. “Am I allowed to know, or not?”

Farley took the paper from Jay’s hand and read aloud: “‘T. M. Friday at three. Stacks. Level C. O.’”

Fanny jumped up, snatched the paper, and read it for herself. Then, as if to dispose of it once and for all, she dropped the paper back into the wooden bucket.

“That’s that,” she said. “T. M. is Terry Miles. Today is Friday. Three is when she said she had an appointment. Stacks and level clearly refer to a library, probably the one at the university. But who in hell is O?”

“That,” Farley said, “is none of your goddam business.”

Jay stirred. His face was strangely untroubled. The Personal, rather than increasing his anxiety, seemed actually to have relieved it.

“It’s just a coincidence,” he said.