Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 43

by The Father Hunt

  The winding blacktop driveway was a good quarter of a mile. At its end, with its twenty-foot stone pillars, I turned left, and in about a mile right, and in twenty minutes, counting a stop for a root beer, I was at the entrance to the Taconic State Parkway, southbound. A sign said: NEW YORK 88 MILES. I never try to do any deep thinking while I’m driving; the thinking gets you nowhere and the driving might get you where you would rather not be; and anyway there was nothing much to think about, since I knew what would come next. Wolfe and I had agreed on that, without argument, in case I got a brushoff from Jarrett, after Amy left Tuesday evening.

  I had promised I would let her know what happened, so I left the Henry Hudson Parkway at Ninety-sixth Street and took the Eighty-fifth Street transverse through Central Park. Trying to find a legal space at the curb would be like trying to find room for another kernel on an ear of corn, and I drove to the garage on Second Avenue where Elinor Denovo had kept her car. Don’t ask me how or why, but I have always had a feeling that it helps to see places that are in any way connected with a job, even if they tell you nothing. Walking to Amy’s address I took the route Elinor had taken the last time she had walked, and I saw that it would have been no trick at all, at that time of night, for someone who knew she had her car out, to park near the corner on Second Avenue, see her arrive in her car, and see her leave the garage and turn into Eighty-third Street. By then of course he would have had the engine started and would be ready to go.

  I didn’t give Amy a verbatim report. We rarely do to clients; they’ll always ask why you didn’t tell him this or that, or what you said that for, or you should have realized he was lying. Also I didn’t tell her what was next on the program. That’s even worse; they’ll object for some cockeyed reason or they’ll have something better to suggest. When I had given her the facts that mattered, her big question was whether I thought Jarrett was her father, and of course I passed. I told her that while it was still the best guess that he was, I wouldn’t personally risk a buck either way. I tried to get out of her exactly what she intended to do when we finally got it pinned down, but when I left I still didn’t know and I doubted if she did. Apparently that was open and she wouldn’t know the answer herself until she knew for sure who her father was.

  It was only ten minutes to dinnertime when I got home, so the verbatim report had to wait until we had taken on the curried beef roll, celery and cantaloupe salad, and blueberry grunt, and had gone to the office for coffee. When I had finished, including my stopover at Amy’s, his first question was typical. He emptied the coffee pot into his cup, took a sip, and said, “I think it’s quite possible that Paul Revere did make a silver abacus. What gave you the notion?”

  I tapped my skull with knuckles. “You said once that the more you put in the brain the more it will hold. What about the things that come out that were never put in? That’s why I can’t answer your question.”

  “They had been put in. ‘Paul Revere’ was there and ‘silver’ was there and ‘abacus’ was there. The question you can’t answer is what joined them when for the first and only time in your life their juncture would meet a need, and I concede that it’s unanswerable. I withdraw it.” He drank coffee. “Will you telephone Mr. Ballou in the morning or see him?”

  “See him. I can’t show him a photograph on the phone.”

  “Will Mr. Jarrett do anything, and if he does, what?”

  “To the first, I doubt it. To the second, I couldn’t guess. Of course you realize that if that hit-and-run was murder, not just homicide, it’s possible that the client is now a mark. If you ask me if I think it’s conceivable that that rich, retired, respectable upper-class citizen stole a car and ran it over a hard-working respectable middle-class woman, the answer is yes. That tough old fish-eyed buzzard? Yes.”

  He nodded. “It’s remote, but … did you warn her?”

  “No. It’s more than remote, it’s up in the moon, which they haven’t reached yet. From what I said and didn’t say, he knows that all we’ve got is the checks. So if Elinor knew or threatened something that made it necessary to cross her out, he has no reason to suspect that she passed it on to Amy. I can ring her and tell her to be ready to jump when she crosses streets, but she might get a wrong impression. She might think she’s more on my mind than the job is.”

  “Very well.” His shoulders went up an eighth of an inch and down again. I have mentioned his screwy notion about young women and me. He removed the paperweight, a chunk of jade that a woman, not young, had used years ago to conk her husband, from some items on his desk. “If your evening is free, I have three or four letters.”

  I said half of the evening was already gone and got my notebook.

  Thursday morning I made a mistake I often make, crowding my luck. That’s fine when it works, but too often it doesn’t. Instead of ringing Avery Ballou for an appointment I just went, arriving a little after ten, and as a result I spent two hours in a reception room on the thirty-fourth floor of a forty-story financial castle on Wall Street. Mr. Ballou was in conference. That means anything from scouting around for indigestion pills to presiding at a gathering to decide something that will affect the future of thousands of people, but whatever it meant that morning, it was affecting my present. There was plenty for the eye in the marble-walled room, people coming and going and sitting around waiting and worrying, but I was too sore at my luck to get any fun out of it. It was five minutes past noon when a handsome junior financier came and took me inside and led me along a hall and around a corner to Ballou’s room.

  It had six windows, five upholstered leather chairs, two other doors, and I suppose other things to fit, but that was all my glance caught as I crossed to Ballou. There was a king-size desk near the far end, but he was standing at a window. If he was sorry he had kept me waiting for so long he didn’t mention it.

  “What a morning,” he said. “I can give you five minutes, Goodwin.”

  “That might do it,” I said. I took something from a pocket. “You told us that the checks were endorsed by Elinor Denovo. Here are two photographs of her, taken twenty years ago.” I handed them to him. “Can you place her?”

  He gave them a good look, taking half of one of the five minutes, then shook his head. “No, I can’t. You say it’s Elinor Denovo?”

  “Right. That’s certain.”

  “And she endorsed the checks. And you’re expecting to connect her with Jarrett. Twenty years ago, that was nineteen forty-seven. I hadn’t known him long then, and I never have known him as a—socially. Practically all my contacts with him have been business.” He handed me the photographs. “Of course you think it’s important to connect her.”

  “It’s essential.”

  He went to the king-size desk, sat, pushed a button, and said, “Get Mr. McCray at Seaboard.” I’m glad we don’t have an intercom at the old brownstone. It would annoy me to be up in my room ready for a shower and just as I reached to turn it on hear Wolfe’s voice, “Where’s that letter from Mr. Hewitt?”

  Ballou didn’t have to wait long. There was a buzz and he took a phone. “Ballou .… Good morning, Bert. A man named Archie Goodwin here.… That’s right, I told you yesterday, for Nero Wolfe.… He has asked me a question I can’t answer, but you probably could. Can I send him over? It wouldn’t take long.… Yes, of course.… No, he’s presentable, jacket, tie—hell, he’s neater than I am.… Good. I knew you would.”

  He hung up and turned to me. “You’ll have lunch at the Bankers Club with Bertram McCray.” He spelled the McCray. “One-twenty Broadway. He’ll be there in ten minutes. Check in as McCray’s guest. He’s a vice-president at Seaboard. Twenty years ago he was Jarrett’s secretary and protégé; he was often at his home. He has a grudge because Jarrett didn’t move up around nineteen fifty and make him president—of course that was absurd—and he switched to our side in fifty-three. He got that information for me yesterday about the checks. He said he’d like to meet Nero Wolfe, so ask him anything you want to. Have you go
t that?”

  I said yes and he pushed a button and said, “Ready for that man from Boston.”

  So at one o’clock I was seated at a table by a wall in a room with about a hundred other tables. With an average of three men to a table, I supposed around twenty billion dollars was represented, either in person or by proxy. I was certainly glad I had a necktie on. My host, facing me, had ears that were a little too big and a nose that was a little too small, and a slight pinch at the corner of his right eye. He was either very polite or he had no initiative; when I had chosen sole Véronique and salad and lemon ice he had taken the same. We were both polite, though; we talked about the heat wave and air pollution and the summer crop of riots until we had finished the sole and salad, but as we waited for the ices and coffee he said he only took an hour for lunch and Ballou had told him that I wanted to ask him something. I said Ballou had told me that he had known Cyrus M. Jarrett for many years and might be able to identify a woman Nero Wolfe wanted to know about, and produced the photographs and handed them to him. He looked at the top one, the three-quarters face, widened his eyes at me, looked at the profile, then again at the other one, and again at me.

  “Why,” he said, “it’s Lottie Vaughn.”

  I tried not to bat an eye. “Good,” I said. “At least we have her name. Who is Lottie Vaughn?” But I realized I was being silly; I had told Ballou. So I went on, “The name we have is Elinor Denovo. Those pictures are of her, taken twenty years ago.”

  “I don’t see …” He was frowning. “I don’t get it.” He looked at the photographs. “This is Carlotta Vaughn, I’m absolutely certain. What do you mean, it’s Elinor Denovo?”

  “Those are the only pictures we have of her,” I said, “and we need them.” I put out a hand. As he hesitated the waiter came with the ices and coffee, and I let him go on hesitating until we were served and the waiter had gone, then reached again and he handed them over. “It’s a long story,” I said, “and most of it is confidential information from our client. From what Mr. Ballou told me I don’t think you would pass anything on to Jarrett. I know you wouldn’t, but you’re a banker and you know it’s always better to be too careful than not careful enough. You also know that Mr. Wolfe is hoping and expecting to get Jarrett out on a limb. So I’ll appreciate it if you’ll tell me about Carlotta Vaughn. Did Jarrett know her?”

  He nodded. “That’s where I met her. At his home.”

  “Was she a guest?”

  “No. She was Mrs. Jarrett’s secretary when I met her. When Mrs. Jarrett died he kept her. I was his secretary then, dividing my time between his home—his homes—and the office, and you might say she was my assistant. She was very intelligent and competent.”

  The ices didn’t get eaten and not much of the coffee was drunk, and McCray’s hour for lunch got stretched. That was one of the times that my memory, which I’ll match with anybody, came in handy, because I didn’t want to take out my notebook. I doubted if my host would approve there with all those billions around. I submit these facts about Carlotta Vaughn, of course all of them according to Bertram McCray.

  He had first seen her at the Jarrett town house in New York, when she had started as Mrs. Jarrett’s secretary, in May 1942. She had continued at that job until November 1943, when Mrs. Jarrett had died of cancer, and then had stayed to work for Jarrett. At that time McCray had been spending about two-thirds of his time at the bank and one-third at the house, either in town or in the country, and she was extremely useful. She almost never did anything at the bank, only two or three times in four or five months.

  As for her background, he knew she had come from Wisconsin, some small town near Milwaukee, and that was all. He didn’t know how long she had been in New York, or where she had gone to school, or how she had got the job with Mrs. Jarrett.

  So much for her entrance. Where he flunked worse was on her exit. Since starting with Mrs. Jarrett she had lived there, town and country; and in the early spring of 1944, he thought late in March, she suddenly wasn’t there, but she might still have been doing something for Jarrett because she came to the house three or four times in the next six or seven months. The last time he saw her was in late September or early October 1944, when she spent part of an evening with Jarrett in the library.

  Exit. Curtain.

  He wasn’t much more helpful on relationships. He had liked her and admired her, and he thought she had liked him, but he had been married just the year before, at the age of thirty, and his first son had just been born, so his intimate concerns were elsewhere. He remembered vaguely that he had got the idea that something might be developing between her and Jarrett’s son Eugene, who was twenty years old in 1944, but he recalled no specific incidents. On her relations with Jarrett himself, he had an internal tussle that was so apparent that I had one too, to keep from grinning. Of course he knew from Ballou what we expected to get on Jarrett, and he would have loved to help by supplying some good salty evidence, but he had been born either too honest or too shy on invention. He rang the changes on what was obvious, that Jarrett and Carlotta were alone together a lot, but when he tried to remember that he had seen things that had made him suspect that Carlotta’s services weren’t exclusively secretarial, he couldn’t make it.

  That’s what my memory took home for me. I accompanied him on the short walk back to his job, for a look at the main office of the Seaboard Bank and Trust Company from the outside, thanked him for the lunch, and spent ten minutes on the toughest job in New York, finding a vacant hack. I finally beat a guy with a limp to one. When it rolled to a stop in front of the old brownstone at twenty minutes to three, I had arranged in my mind a draft all ready for the typewriter. As follows:

  CARLOTTA VAUGHN RÉSUMÉ

  from Bertram McCray, August 25, 1967

  Up to May 1942

  Not known, but according to her via McCray, somewhere in Wisconsin for most of it.

  May 1942, to November 1943

  Mrs. Jarrett’s secretary. Lived there.

  November 1943, to March 1944

  Jarrett’s home secretary. Lived there.

  March 1944, to October 1944, which includes the month Amy was conceived.

  Living elsewhere, presumably in or near New York, since McCray saw her at Jarrett’s house three or four times.

  October 1944, to July 2, 1945, which includes April 12, 1945, Amy’s birthday.

  Nothing known.

  July 2, 1945

  Elinor Denovo walked in on Raymond Thorne.

  Chapter 7

  When, at five minutes to six that afternoon, I braked the Heron to stop at the edge of the gravel in front of the main entrance to the Jarrett mansion, it was dark enough for midnight. Clouds had been making passes as far south as Hawthorne Circle. At Shrub Oak they had closed ranks, and at Millbrook they had cut loose on three fronts: for the ears, noise to scare you; for the eyes, flashes to blind you; and for the skin, water to soak you. It stayed right with me the rest of the way, and having made it to my destination in spite of the big try at stopping me, I turned off the engine and pocketed the key, switched the lights off, reached to the back seat for my raincoat, the spare that is always there, draped it over my head, opened the door, and dashed across the gravel for cover.

  My reception was fully down to expectations. It was Oscar who opened the door after I had pushed the button three times. In the circumstances it wasn’t only natural, it was compulsory, for any fellow being to say “Quite a storm” or “Are you wet?” or “Nice day for ducks.” He barely gave me room enough to enter without brushing him.

  I was expected. Often, after I make a report to Wolfe, there is a long discussion, and sometimes an argument which stops just short of me quitting or him firing me, about what comes next, but that time it had been obvious. The discussion had lasted maybe three minutes, then I had pulled the phone around and dialed area code 914 and a number, and got the same male voice I had got the day before. I didn’t know if it was Oscar because Oscar in person had said v
ery little in my hearing.

  “This is Archie Goodwin,” I said. “I was there yesterday. Please tell Mr. Jarrett that I am coming again. I’ll be there in about two hours.”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Goodwin. Mr. Jarrett has given orders that you are not to be admitted. There’s a man at the entrance, and he—”

  “Yeah. Excuse me for interrupting, I expected that, that’s why I’m phoning. Please tell Mr. Jarrett that I want to ask him some information about Carlotta Vaughn.” I repeated the name, distinctly. “Carlotta Vaughn. He’ll recognize that name. I’ll hold the wire.”

  “But I assure you, Mr. Goodwin—”

  “I assure you, sir. He won’t thank you for the messages, but he’ll see me.”

  A brief silence; then: “Hold the wire.”

  The wait was longer than the ones the day before. Wolfe, with his receiver in one hand, was adjusting the spray of Miltonia hellemense in the vase on his desk with the other. Finally the voice came.

  “Mr. Goodwin?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You say in two hours?”

  “More or less. Maybe a little more.”

  “Very well. You will be admitted.”

  As I hung up, Wolfe growled, “That creature has been so reduced to chronic subservience that he was deferential even to you. I would like to deal with Mr. Jarrett. I am almost minded to go along.”

  Just chatter. Before leaving I typed the résumé of the life of Carlotta Vaughn as we knew it, which I had arranged in my mind on the way. You have seen it.

  Now, as I put my raincoat on a bench and followed Oscar across a reception hall, along a wide corridor, and around a turn into a narrower hall that took us to an open door at the end, I forgot to observe things because I was too busy looking forward to dealing with Mr. Jarrett. One would have got you ten that this time I would get a reaction. But I did observe the room I entered. It had a fifteen-foot ceiling, a rug twice the size of Lily Rowan’s 19-by-34 Kashan, a big desk that was presumably Colonial handiwork, and more books than Wolfe owned, on shelves that reached nearly to the ceiling. Not one of the chairs was occupied. Oscar turned on some lights and said Mr. Jarrett would come shortly, and this time “shortly” was more like it, only a couple of minutes. As he entered by another and narrower door between two tiers of shelves, a dazzle of lightning darted in through the windows, and as he halted and stood after five or six steps, the boom of thunder shook them. Good staging. He focused the frozen eyes on me and said, “What do you want to know about Carlotta Vaughn?”