Rex Stout - Nero Wolfe 43

by The Father Hunt

  Wolfe nodded. “We’ve been balked. It’s highly probable that he is not the father of Elinor Denovo’s daughter.”

  “What?” McCray’s mouth stayed open. “But … why? He sent those checks.”

  “Yes, that’s established, thanks to Mr. Ballou and you. But the daughter was born on the twelfth of April, nineteen forty-five, so she was conceived the preceding summer, and Mr. Jarrett says he spent it abroad on a mission for the Production Allotments Board. He spent the month of July in an army hospital in Naples. He says.”

  “My God.” McCray looked at me. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

  I shook my head. “And I didn’t ask you. I should have, but I didn’t. I apologize. So Mr. Wolfe is asking you now. Jarrett told me that he went to England in late May nineteen forty-four and then to Egypt and Italy and Africa, and came back on September sixth. We’re checking it, and maybe you can help. He called me a liar. Can you call him one?”

  “I can call him anything, but …” He looked at Wolfe. “Are you sure about the date? The birth?”

  “Yes. That can’t be challenged. Mr. Goodwin has seen the birth certificate.”

  “Then I guess we … you … my God. He was out of the country all that summer. I can check the exact dates he left and returned, but does that matter?”

  “No. But we need to know if Elinor Denovo, then Carlotta Vaughn, was also out of the country that summer, however briefly. Can you help on that?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t … I only saw her three or four times after she moved out; I barely spoke to her.” He sounded peevish and looked peevish. “You could have told me this on the phone.” He looked at his watch. “An hour wasted.”

  “Possibly not.” Wolfe cocked his head. “You’re vexed, Mr. McCray, and so are we. Mr. Goodwin and I can’t be charged with making an unwarranted assumption. The checks, certainly, but other circumstances too, supplied by you—that Carlotta Vaughn left Jarrett’s in the spring of nineteen forty-four but did not end their association. It was an acceptable conjecture that he had provided other quarters for her if their relations had taken a course which he preferred not to pursue in his home. We don’t have to abandon that conjecture now; we can merely adapt it. You told Mr. Goodwin yesterday that you had once thought it possible that something was developing between Carlotta Vaughn and Mr. Jarrett’s son. He was twenty years of age and I presume he was away at college, but not in the summer months, and other quarters for her could have been provided by him. For the only son of a wealthy man that wouldn’t have been difficult. I don’t need to waste more of your time by expounding the obvious, that the checks sent by Mr. Jarrett, if not for a daughter, might have been for a granddaughter. I invite your opinion.”

  McCray was frowning. He turned the frown on me and demanded, “Did I say that?”

  I nodded. “I can repeat it to the letter if you want it.”

  “I don’t. I must have been babbling.”

  “No, you weren’t babbling. I was asking you about her relations with everybody, including you, that was all. I asked if you remembered anything specific and you didn’t.”

  “Of course I didn’t.” He turned to Wolfe. “It’s ridiculous. He sent her money for twenty-two years because his son … absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, there’s a reason … No. He wouldn’t … No.” He pursed his lips, eyed Wolfe, then me, and back at Wolfe. “I want to make one thing plain. Two things. When Mr. Ballou asked me about those checks and I learned they had been charged to Cyrus Jarrett and delivered to him, I had no objection to that information being passed to you. I was perfectly willing to supply routine information—that’s all it was, routine—that would make trouble for Cyrus Jarrett. God knows he has made enough trouble for me. But I wouldn’t supply information that would make trouble for his son even if I had any, and I haven’t. I have high regard for Eugene Jarrett, not only as a brother officer of our bank, but as a friend. I’ll tell you this—anybody could tell you this—for ten years Eugene Jarrett and his father haven’t been on speaking terms. My opinion of his father is mild compared to his. Of course with him it’s more personal, father and son; you know how deep that can go. If Cyrus Jarrett continued sending money to that woman—Carlotta Vaughn or Elinor Denovo—for the past ten years, it wasn’t on account of his son, that’s sure.”

  He put his palms on the chair arms and levered himself to his feet. “I’m going,” he said. “You can forget Eugene Jarrett. But if I had any more information that would help with his father you’d be welcome to it. Frankly, I would like to see him get hurt, really hurt, and so would other people I could name, and he did send those checks for twenty-two years. Was it blackmail? Did she know something that would hurt? If so I hope you dig it up. Frankly, I would help if I could. Do you …” He hesitated. “If it needs any financing …”

  “It doesn’t. I have a client.”

  “Well, then …” He turned and started out, so slow, his feet dragging, that I didn’t have to hurry to beat him to the hall and on to the front. At the door he thought he had something to say, but decided not to. His car, down at the curb, was a 1965 Imperial.

  In the office Wolfe was pulling at his earlobe, his eyes closed. I went to my desk and sat, and said, “If you want my opinion, we wasted not only his time but ours too. I don’t buy his slant on the son, even if they hate each other’s guts. His obligation was to the mother, not the father. Damn it, it’s got to be the son. Who else?”

  He grunted and his eyes opened. “What if our basic assumption is false? What if the payments had no connection with the birth?”

  “We’re sunk. We bow out. But in that case there wasn’t just one lie in Elinor’s letter, the whole damn letter was a lie, and I don’t believe it. If the payments had nothing to do with Amy, why did Elinor keep it, every century of it, for her?”

  “Women are random clusters of vagaries.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did.”

  “Not that random.”

  His shoulders went up and down. “Have you time for a letter before you leave? To be mailed now?”

  “No. But I might as well start making up for the boner I pulled.” I got my office notebook from a drawer. “Miss Rowan will feed me no matter what time I come. She’s the understanding type.”

  “Pfui.” He would never forget the time she had called him Pete and he had had Houri de Perse perfume sprinkled on him. “Have you Eugene Jarrett’s home address?”

  I nodded. “I got it this morning. I thought Saul might need it.”

  “To him at his home, special delivery. Dear Mr. Jarrett: On behalf of a client I need information regarding the activities and associates of Miss Carlotta Vaughn during the years nineteen forty-three and nineteen forty-four, comma, when she was in your father’s employ, comma, and I have been told that you may be able to supply some details. Period. I shall appreciate it if you will kindly call at my office, comma, at the above address, comma, on Monday, comma, at eleven in the morning, comma, or at either two-thirty or six in the afternoon. Period. I hope that one of those hours will be convenient for you. Sincerely yours.”

  “Why not offer him nine in the evening too?”

  “As you know, I don’t like to work after dinner. But I suppose … Very well. Add it.”

  I pulled the typewriter around and got out paper and carbon.

  An hour later, as I headed north on the Henry Hudson Parkway, keeping to sixty, I wasn’t on a perch either professionally or personally. Professionally, the client was being neglected. I had phoned her Friday morning that it was very unlikely that Jarrett was her father, and told her why, and that was all. She deserved to know that she had been right about Denovo, that her mother’s real name was Carlotta Vaughn; at least we could give her that for the eight days we had been on it. Personally, there I was bound for a swimming pool in a glade while Orrie was in Washington digging into army records and Saul and Fred were poking into holes that were probably empty. I should have been doing something brilliant, like fi
nding a mattress somewhere with hairs from two human heads on it which a scientist would prove had been left there by Carlotta Vaughn, alias Elinor Denovo, and Eugene Jarrett.

  I wasn’t feeling any better as I drove back to town Sunday evening. The weekend had been messy. There is never more than one house guest besides me; it may be anybody from a female poet to a cowboy from the Montana ranch Lily owns; and that time it was Amy Denovo. She gave it a good start only an hour after I arrived. She called me Archie. We were on the terrace. I had finished off the steak Mimi had broiled—they had eaten—and was forking the blueberry pie when Amy got out a cigarette and I lit it, and she said “Thank you, Archie.” Of course Lily didn’t bat an eye; she wouldn’t. But as far as she knew Amy had seen me only three times for a total of about nine minutes, and she didn’t have to be a cluster of vagaries to wonder what the score was. Was Amy just being flip, or had I decided to see more of her, not at the penthouse, and taken steps? I couldn’t tell her what Miss Denovo had hired Wolfe to do, so I skipped it. But it was there in the air. Between Lily and me it was thoroughly understood that what I did was none of her business unless it touched her—and, naturally, vice versa—but the fact that I had met Miss Denovo at the penthouse put it on the borderline. So it didn’t help the weekend.

  A couple of other things didn’t help either. One of the five guests for lunch Saturday was a woman with a green wig who had positive inside information that President Johnson and Dean Rusk had decided three years ago to kill everybody in China with hydrogen bombs, and that was the real reason for what they were doing in Vietnam. Of course the only thing to do with such a clunk is to ignore him or her, but she kept it up so loud and long that I finally told her that I had positive inside information that Senator Fulbright had once had an affair with one of Ho Chi Minh’s concubines, and that was the real reason he wanted the bombing stopped. That was a mistake. The idea appealed to her and she wanted all the details.

  And Sunday afternoon some uninvited people dropped in—a couple I had met there before who had a place over beyond Bedford Village. They weren’t so bad, but they had a guy with them who they said had talked them into coming because he wanted to meet me. His name was Floyd Vance and he said he was a public-relations counselor. Evidently he wanted to meet me because he wanted to meet Nero Wolfe. He was drumming up trade. He said that if anybody needed expert handling of his public image a private detective did, and he would like very much to create a presentation to propose to Nero Wolfe. He also said that if we were working on a case and I would tell him about it, he could use that as a basis for the presentation. When he said that I sharpened my eyes and ears a little, and my tongue, thinking he might be making a stab at detective work himself for somebody, for instance Cyrus M. Jarrett, but decided he was just another character who was so dedicated to improving other people’s images that he had no time left for his own. I met one once who—no, that’s enough for that weekend.

  So as I said, I wasn’t feeling any better as I drove back to town. Sometimes it’s things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you’re hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you’re in a hurry, but usually it’s people. Of course, of the three people who had made that weekend less than perfect Amy was the only one whose contribution would carry over. Lily would do some wondering for a week or so—who wouldn’t?—but I certainly wasn’t going to explain. When two people who want to get along start needing to have things explained, look out. I would tell the client about her mother’s real name when I felt like it.

  Chapter 9

  The trouble with putting a box number on an ad instead of your name and address and phone number, especially if it’s in three papers, is getting the replies. Phoning at ten o’clock Monday morning and learning that there were some, I went for them, got two at the Times and four at the Gazette, opened them there, and found them so screwy that I bothered to take them home only because I always keep everything connected with a job until it’s finished. One was from a man who said Carlotta Vaughn was his grandmother, and maybe a Carlotta Vaughn was, but he didn’t mention Elinor Denovo.

  When I got back a little after eleven Fritz said there had been no calls, but as I entered the office the phone rang and I crossed to my desk, nodding to Wolfe on the way and got it.

  “Nero Wolfe’s office, Archie Goodwin speaking.”

  Female voice: “Good morning. Mr. Jarrett would like to speak to Mr. Wolfe.”

  “Good morning. Please put Mr. Jarrett on.”

  “Is Mr. Wolfe there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please put him on.”

  “Now listen.” I motioned to Wolfe. “Last Friday I got Mr. McCray for Mr. Wolfe and I was forced to put Mr. Wolfe on first. You can’t have it coming and going. Put Mr. Jarrett on or I hang up.”

  “May I have your name, please?”

  “Archie Goodwin.”

  “Please hold the wire, Mr. Goodwin.”

  I timed it: two minutes and twenty seconds. Wolfe had his phone.

  “Eugene Jarrett speaking. Nero Wolfe?”

  Me: “Please hold the wire, Mr. Jarrett.”

  Wolfe should have waited at least a minute, but he hates the phone, either holding or talking. “This is Nero Wolfe. Yes, Mr. Jarrett?”

  “I have your letter. I’ll come around six.”

  “Good. As I said in the letter, I’ll appreciate it. I’ll expect you.”

  They hung up together. There was a case where the approach took five minutes and the meet about ten seconds. A piece by a scientist in the Sunday New York Times Magazine which I had read during the weekend had explained why this is the age of instant communication.

  There were some items in the morning mail that needed attention, or at least got it, but we were interrupted a few times by phone calls: from Saul, who had drawn nothing but blanks; from Fred, who had found three people who had recognized the photographs but hadn’t been any help; and from Orrie, from Washington, who had verified most of Jarrett’s places and dates and was working on the rest. The hospital part, which covered most of July, was airtight. You are probably thinking that the client was getting damned little for her money, and I agree. When I returned from a trip to the mailbox at the corner it was lunchtime, and as we crossed to the dining room Wolfe said something about Mr. Cramer and I asked if he had phoned. Wolfe said no, he had come, late Saturday afternoon.

  I was sorry I had missed it because talk by those two is always worth hearing. You get good examples of how much a man can say in a few words and also of how little he can say in a lot of words. So back in the office after lunch I said I would just as soon know what Cramer had wanted, and Wolfe said only what he always wanted, information; he had said nothing that would help us any.

  I settled back and crossed my legs. “I haven’t kept count,” I said, “but at least a thousand times I have given you a verbatim report of a conversation. I can’t tell you to because I don’t pay you, you pay me, but I can suggest it. I am suggesting it.”

  A corner of his mouth went up a sixteenth of an inch. For him it was a broad smile. “My memory is as good as yours, Archie.”

  “Then it would be no strain. I said verbatim.”

  “I know you did.” He squinted at me. “Well … Mr. Cramer, admitted by Fritz, arrived shortly after six o’clock. We ex—”

  “The exact time?”

  “I don’t have it on my wrist, as you do. We exchanged greetings and he sat.

  “Cramer: ‘Where’s Goodwin?’

  “Wolfe: ‘Not here, as you see.’

  “Cramer: ‘Yeah. I doubt if there’s a man on earth as good at fielding questions as you are. So I’ll ask another one. Saturday the nineteenth, a week ago, Goodwin rang Sergeant Stebbins and asked him about a hit-and-run three months ago that killed a woman named Elinor Denovo. Some crap about you and him discussing crime. Last Monday morning, I came and asked Goodwin why he had called Stebbins. He said he knew nothing about that hit-and-run except what he had read in t
he papers, and neither did you, and you hadn’t been consulted about it, and your only client was a girl who wanted to find her father. I want the name of that girl. I wish Goodwin was here. Where is he?’

  “Wolfe: ‘Absent. Mr. Cramer. You may query me in that tone only when your questions are justified by your official function.’

  “Cramer: ‘Okay, I’ll ask one that is justified. If you haven’t been consulted about that hit-and-run why do you offer to pay five hundred dollars for information about Elinor Denovo? That also justifies my question about the girl—and about Goodwin. He told me a goddam lie.’

  “Wolfe: ‘No. I can repeat now what he told you a week ago, and I do, and it is true. I—”’

  He broke off and demanded, “How the devil did he know that advertisement was mine?”

  I turned my palms up. “Someone on some newspaper did a favor for some cop. If I find out who, you can write a letter to the publisher.”

  “Pah. To resume:

  “Wolfe: ‘… and it is true. I am not investigating that hit-and-run. My client’s concern with Elinor Denovo relates not to her death but to her life. You should have inferred that from the advertisement; it asks for information, not about her last day or even her last year, but about many years ago. The information—’

  “Cramer: ‘Who is Carlotta Vaughn?’

  “Wolfe: ‘You’re not in good form, Mr. Cramer. The advertisement makes it obvious that Carlotta Vaughn is, or was, Elinor Denovo. The information my client has given me is confidential and has no bearing on the hit-and-run.’

  “Cramer: ‘You don’t know that. When I’m investigating a homicide I decide what has a bearing and what hasn’t.’

  “Wolfe: ‘Must we repeat ourselves? Must I remind you again that until events answer that question conclusively my judgment, for which I alone am responsible, need not bow to yours—nor yours to mine? Am I withholding information from an officer of the law? Yes. Is it pertinent to his investigation of a crime? No. You have never made me change that no to a yes. Do that and you’ll have me.’