Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

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 twen

tieth 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 Jatrett 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 lie 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 flie 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."