The Devil's Cook

22

“Oh!” Ardis Bowers’s mouth made the startled shape of the vowel she had sounded. “It’s Captain Bartholdi, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Bartholdi. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

Ardis, recovering, made it evident by her succeeding expression that the pleasure was not reciprocal. Her position in the doorway suggested an impediment. She did not bother to explain how she had learned his identity, and Bartholdi, for his part, was not sufficiently interested to ask.

“What is it you want, please?” Ardis demanded.

“I was downstairs and, since I was here, I thought I’d have a talk with you and Professor Bowers. May I come in?”

“I’m sure there is nothing Otis and I can tell you. However—”

“Thanks. I appreciate your cooperation.”

Bartholdi entered, and Otis Bowers rose to meet him from a chair under a reading lamp. He was holding a thick book in his hand, the index finger inserted among the pages to mark his place.

“This is my husband,” Ardis said. “Otis, Captain Bartholdi.”

“Good evening, Captain.” Otis shifted the book to his left hand, thereby losing his place, in order to offer Bartholdi the one that had been holding it. “Sit down, won’t you?”

Bartholdi kept his coat on and his hat in his hands. “As you know, I’ve been investigating the disappearance of Professor Miles’s wife.”

“If you want my opinion,” Ardis said, “you’re wasting your time.”

“Your opinion is welcome,” Bartholdi said. “Why do you think so?”

“Terry Miles is a tramp. She’s off somewhere on the usual business of a tramp, and she’ll show up again when she’s good and ready.”

“That’s an interesting opinion, but circumstances don’t seem to support it.”

“Well, I know nothing about circumstances, but I do know Terry, and that’s enough for me.”

“What circumstances?” Otis said. “Has there been a new development?”

Bartholdi stole a couple of seconds to study the male Bowers physiognomy. They gave Bartholdi all the time he needed to reach an irrelevant conclusion. In spite of its lonely hours and arid spaces, he concluded, the life of a bachelor had its negative compensations. He wondered if Otis Bowers was expressing a genuine curiosity, or was trying to create a desperate diversion.

“I was referring to the dinner Mrs. Miles left cooking, the fact that no clothes were taken, and her failure to leave any word of explanation.”

“There’s the Personal,” Ardis said. “Isn’t that the explanation?”

“I didn’t know you’d learned about that, Mrs. Bowers. May I ask how you did?”

“I read it in the papers. Newspapers are published to be read, you know.”

“But Personals often aren’t. Except by people with particular interests.”

“I’m curious about all sorts of things.”

“The Personal, I thought, was on the obscure side. It’s remarkable that you were able to interpret it so easily.”

“Nonsense. It was transparent. Anyone who knew Terry would have suspected immediately that it was directed to her.”

“Yes. And that’s a curious point. In fact, this whole matter of the Personal is curious. It’s curious, in the first place, that it should have been resorted to at all. It’s even more curious that it should have been made, as you said, so transparent.”

“I don’t agree. Terry is devious, but she isn’t very smart.”

“Maybe so. Anyway, I’ve made inquiries at the university library, and no one seems to remember Mrs. Miles’s being there at the time the ad specified. That doesn’t necessarily mean, of course, that she wasn’t there. It’s a busy place, and she could have gone unnoticed.” Bartholdi paused again. Then he suddenly said, “Did you happen to see her, Professor Bowers?”

“I?” Otis’s voice, reacting to the prod, was almost a yelp. “Not I! Why do you ask me?”

“Because you were on the scene. At least the girl at the charging desk said you went into the stacks about that time.”

“Did I? Yes, I recall now that I did. I had to consult a certain book. I used one of the carrels for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, then I left.”

“The girl at the desk doesn’t remember your leaving.”

“I didn’t go out past her. I went down the stairs of the stacks to the basement and out a rear door.”

“Did you leave the campus?”

“No. I went to the physics lab and worked on an experiment until rather late. I was alone in the lab, so I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it. When I finished, I went directly home.”

“Did you and Mrs. Bowers meet on the campus and come home together?”

“We did not,” Ardis said. “I got home about noon with a migraine headache. I took some aspirin and a sleeping pill and went to bed. I slept most of the afternoon.”

By the asperity of her tone, Bartholdi gathered that Otis, having placed himself under suspicion through carelessness, design, or both, was being deliberately left to save or hang himself as best he could. Ardis, judging from the set of her jaws, did not especially care which. Bartholdi was prompted to his next remark by a contrary imp impelled by a malice of its own.

“I see,” he said. “You were, as we say, Mr. Bowers, at the scene of the crime at the significant time.”

“Crime?” shrieked Ardis. “What crime?”

“Just a manner of speaking.” Bartholdi rose. “Thank you both.”

Otis went with him to the door. Half opening it, he whirled on Bartholdi and spoke in a rush — as if, having something painful to say, he meant to say it in one breath and get it over with.

“I know what’s on your mind, Captain! Fanny or Farley or Ben or someone has told you about Terry and me. Whatever they said, it must have been mostly untrue. I assure you there was never really anything between us. Now there is nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.”

“Oh?” said Bartholdi.

“It’s true. I assure you it is. I know things look bad because of that damn Personal. Because it was signed with the initial letter of my given name. I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m convinced it was done deliberately. As a rotten trick to get me in hot water — all over again. If my wife hadn’t seen the Personal, someone would have mentioned it to her. Do you know what I think? I think Terry had it put in the paper herself! She’s malicious enough to enjoy making trouble for people! She thinks it’s amusing!”

Bartholdi’s eyes, fastened on Otis’s serio-comic face, widened briefly in surprise. Otis’s explanation of the Personal was one that he had not thought of. It made a certain kind of sense. It not only explained why the item had been published, but also why it had been published in such transparent terms as to be readily understood by anyone familiar with the parties involved. And Terry’s real appointment, it was practically certain, had been the one with O’Hara that O’Hara had mentioned.

“You make her sound,” he said, “like a very unpleasant person.”

“She’s more than that. She’s dangerous.”

With a final nod of his head, like an exclamation point, Otis slammed the door. Bartholdi, retreating down the hall, was forced to agree. Terry Miles had been dangerous. And, dead, she was more dangerous than she had ever been alive.

The danger, however, was no longer dispersed. It was pointed, like a loaded gun, directly at her murderer.

Going down the stairs at the end of the hall, Bartholdi continued his descent to the basement. His nose told him, as he approached Orville Reasnor’s door, that the building superintendent had recently cooked his dinner. The smell of it hung heavily in the hall. Among other things, Bartholdi’s nose said, there was onion in it.

Orville, opening his door, brought his own odor with him; and if onion was still in it, it was not smellable. Orville’s perfume, Bartholdi decided, was compounded of pine-scented disinfectant and stale perspiration.

He identified himself and declined an invitation to enter. “I just want to ask you a question or two.”

“What about?” Orville’s tone clearly implied that he was an employee of infinite discretion. “Has Prof Miles finally got the police after that floozy wife of his? If he has, there’s no use asking me anything about it. I mind my own business.”

“What makes you think I’m looking for Mrs. Miles?”

“She’s missing, ain’t she? Dr. Miles was here Friday night with Mr. Moran looking for her, and she ain’t come back. Leastwise, I ain’t seen her.”

“I’m trying to find out where she’s gone.”

“Not knowing, I couldn’t say.”

“She left here, I understand, about the same time as Ben Green. I’m wondering if they could have gone away together.”

“I wouldn’t put it past either one of them. But it so happens that they didn’t.”

“Oh? You’re sure about that?”

“I saw Mr. Green leave — carrying a bag, he was — and there wasn’t nobody with him. I was working in the vestibule upstairs, and he walked right past me. He’s a snooty bastard. Talks when he takes a notion, which ain’t often.”

“What time was that, do you remember?”

“I couldn’t say. Some time in the afternoon. I’m no clock-watcher when I’m about my work.”

“Well, that seems to settle it.” Bartholdi sniffed, wishing he could somehow eliminate the olfactory evidence of Orville. “You had something good for dinner, eh? I love the smell of onions cooking.”

“I had liver. Onions go good with liver.”

“I thought for a minute you’d been making a Student’s Ragout.”

“Student’s what? Never heard of it. I don’t go for them fancy dishes. Plain eats is what I like.”

“I’m with you. You can’t go wrong on plain eats.”

On the apron behind the building, Bartholdi breathed gratefully pi the good cold November air. Remembering his thoughts after leaving Otis Bowers, he felt a stirring at the roots of his hair, an electric tingling in his flesh that had nothing to do with the cold.

Yes, Terry Miles was still dangerous. She was deadly dangerous to a frightened and desperate murderer; and in spite of irrelevancies and diversions and unconfirmed assumptions, Bartholdi was sure — as he had been sure for some time — who her murderer was.