Рекс Стаут - The Father Hunt

“Try it and see what happens. I might like it. Since you say your mother was being sarcastic when she tagged you Amy I suppose you wish your name was Araminta or Hephzibah, or you pick it.”

“I could pick a better one.”

“I’ll bet you could. Now we have a problem. I have to ask people countless questions about your mother, a few of those whose names you gave me yesterday, and I am to start with Raymond Thorne. You’ll phone him and tell him you’re sending me and you hope he’ll cooperate, but I can’t just say I’m after men your mother knew in the summer of nineteen forty-four — that’s when the genes met — since you don’t want anyone to know or even suspect that it’s a father hunt. So I have a suggestion, approved by Mr. Wolfe, which we expect you to approve.”

“Oh, I’ll approve anything you—” She stopped and tightened her lips. Then she smiled. “Listen to me. You might think I had no brains at all. Tell me and we’ll see.”

I told her.

The office of Raymond Thorne Productions was on the sixth floor of one of the newer steel-and-glass hives on Madison Avenue in the Forties. Judging from its size, and the furniture and fixtures, and the cordial smile of the receptionist, the television art, or maybe industry, was doing fine. Also I had to wait twenty minutes to get in to Thorne, though he had told Amy on the phone that his door would always be open for her or anyone she sent.

Of course I wasn’t suspecting that he might himself be the target. In her letter Elinor had told Amy that she hadn’t seen or heard from her father since four months before she was born, and there was no reason to suppose that that might be flam and she had seen him every work day for twenty years. The idea that a detective should suspect everything that everybody says is a good general rule, but there’s a limit.

Thorne and his room went together fine. The room was big and modern and so was he. After giving me a man-to-man handshake and saying how much he would like to help Amy any way he could, and telling me to sit, he returned to his desk and said he didn’t know what it was I wanted because Amy had been rather vague on the phone.

I nodded. “She thought I could tell it better, but it’s really very simple. She wants Nero Wolfe — you may have heard the name.”

“Oh, sure.”

“She wants him to find out who killed her mother. I think she’s a little hipped on it, but that’s her privilege. She thinks the cops should have nailed him long ago, and also she thinks they went at it wrong. She thinks it was premeditated murder. In fact, she’s sure it was. Don’t ask me why she’s sure; I have asked her, and she says it’s intuition. How old were you when you learned not to argue with intuition?”

“It’s so long ago I’ve forgotten.”

“Me too. But intuition hasn’t told her who it was. She has made a list of names, twenty-eight of them, people who were friends of her mother, everybody who had personal contact that could be called close even by stretching it, and she has said no to all of them. She says none of them could possibly have had a reason, so it must have been someone she doesn’t know about — someone connected with her work here, or someone from many years ago when she was too young to remember. Therefore I come to you first, naturally. She worked here, and you knew her — how long?”

“More than twenty years.” He had his head cocked. “Do you think it was premeditated murder?”

“Mr. Wolfe would say it’s ‘cogitable.’ He likes words like that. It could have been; none of the facts say no. If we find someone with a healthy motive that will make it interesting. The first thing I would like from you is a photograph of Mrs. Denovo. You must have some.”

His eyes left me for a quick glance down and to the right, then up again. “I don’t think...” He let that go. “Didn’t you get one from Amy?”

“She hasn’t any. There aren’t any in the apartment. Surely you have some. At least one.”

“Well...” He glanced down again. “I’m not surprised that there are none in the apartment. Mrs. Denovo had a thing about photographs — I mean of her. When we wanted pictures of the staff, for promotion, we had to leave her out. She couldn’t be persuaded. Once we got up a folder with separate pictures of seven of us, but not of her, though she should have been up front, after me. No picture of her at all, period.” He rubbed his chin with fingertips, eying me. “But I’ve got one.”

“Yeah.” I gestured with a hand. “There in the bottom drawer.”

His head jerked up. “How the hell do you know?”

“Any detective just learning how would have known, and I’ve been at it for years. When I said ‘photograph’ you glanced down there; you did it twice.”

His head went back to normal. “Well, you’re wrong. They’re in the next to the bottom drawer. Two of them. They were taken years ago by a camera man trying angles, and she didn’t know they existed. A week or so after her death I remembered about them and took a look in the old files and found them. But I don’t think I should... Well, if she had known they were there she would have destroyed them long ago. Wouldn’t she?”

“Probably. But she’s dead. And if Amy’s intuition happens to be right and it was murder, and if the photos would help us get him, do you want to destroy them?”

“No. Of course I don’t.”

“I should hope not. May I see them, please?”

He leaned over to reach down to the drawer, came up with a brown envelope, slipped two prints out, and gave them a look. They were about five by eight inches. “Until I saw these,” he said, “I had forgotten how attractive she was. It must have been nineteen forty-six or forty-seven, a year or so after she came here. My God, how people change.”

I had got up and circled the end of the desk, and he handed them to me. One was about three-quarters face and the other was profile. There wasn’t much of her figure, not down to her waist, but they were good shots of a good face. There was some resemblance to Amy, but the forehead was a little wider and the chin a little more pointed. I looked at the back, but there was no date or other data.

“I can’t let you take them,” Thorne said, “but I can have copies made. As many as you want.”

I gave them another look. “They could be extremely useful. I can have copies made and return these to you.”

He said no, they were the only pictures he had of a woman who had been a big help to him for many years, and he was going to hang on to them, and I handed them over. I told him I needed at least six copies, ten would be better, and returned to my chair and got out my notebook.

“Now a leading question,” I said. “You’ll dodge it, naturally, but I’ll ask it anyway. Amy thought it might be someone connected with her work here. Could you suggest a candidate?”

He shook his head. “You mentioned that before. I don’t have to dodge. Forget it. There are forty-six people in this organization, counting everybody. Over the years there have been, oh, I suppose around a hundred and fifty. They haven’t all thought Mrs. Denovo was perfect, we’ve had our share of scraps and grudges, but murder? Not a chance. Forget it.”

Of course I was glad to, since Amy’s father couldn’t have been one of the hundred and fifty unless Elinor had lied in the letter, and I decided it wasn’t necessary to nag him just to keep up appearances. I opened the notebook. “Okay, we’ll pass that for now. Now some dates. When did Mrs. Denovo start with you?”

“I looked that up the day I found the pictures. It was July second, nineteen forty-five.”

“You had known her before that?”