The Father Hunt

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 very 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?”

“It might be better,” I said, “for me to tell you first what I already know, or some of it. She was your wife’s secretary from May nineteen forty-two until your wife died. She lived here — and at your house in town. You kept her on. She stopped living with you in March nineteen forty-four, and I can’t prove that you still kept her, with a different meaning for ‘kept,’ but there’s no law against guessing, and we’ve only been on this five days.” I got something from a pocket. “Here are two photographs of her, taken in nineteen forty-six, but she wasn’t Carlotta Vaughn then, she was Elinor Denovo, and her daughter Amy was a year old. Take a look.”

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 twentieth 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 Jarrett 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 the 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 the 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.”

He nodded. “Orrie. Saul will be needed for chores more difficult.”

“He sure will. Now me. It’s entirely my fault. Fritz, I’ve changed my mind. May I have some coffee? You pour it, please, my hand might shake.” I moved my chair around to face Wolfe. “I can’t blame it on McCray. Even if he knew all about where Jarrett spent that summer, he didn’t know when Amy was born. We hadn’t told Ballou, so Ballou hadn’t told him. But me? If I had the brains of a half-wit I would have asked McCray where Ballou was during July nineteen forty-four. It’s entirely my fault that I drove up there through a cloudburst and invited that ape to push my nose in. Bounce me. Don’t pay me for this week. I’ll get a job sewing on buttons.”

Fritz, who was there pouring coffee, said, “Not if you commit hara-kiri, Archie.” He wouldn’t have, with Wolfe there, if it had been the dining room or the office, but we were in his kitchen.

“It wasn’t wholly futile,” Wolfe said. “He gave you confirmation of what had been only a valid assumption, that he knew the date of birth. That’s now established. Those places and dates had been arranged in his head before you arrived.”

“Uh-huh.” I drank coffee and burned my mouth. “Thanks for the bone. That about covers comment. A question, Do I tell the client about Carlotta Vaughn?”

“I think not. Not now. The telephone will do for telling her that we think it highly improbable that Mr. Jarrett sired her. What time is it?” He would have had to pivot his head to ask the kitchen clock.

“Eight thirty-five.”

“You’ll be late for poker. At Saul’s apartment?”

“Yes. It always is.”

“If Saul will be free tomorrow morning ask him to come at ten, and call Fred and Orrie. Also at ten. When they come give them everything; they’ll need it all and there’s nothing we should reserve. You have seen Mr. Jarrett and I haven’t. I need your opinion. Elinor Denovo’s letter said, ‘This money is from your father.’ We know it was sent by Mr. Jarrett, the first check two weeks after the birth, but it appears that he is not the father. Well? You have seen him. What impelled him?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him.” I drank coffee. “And heard him. God only knows. It might be for any one of a thousand reasons, including blackmail, that a man might send a woman a grand every month for twenty-two years, but we decided to take Elinor’s letter without salt, and there it is, this money is from your father. She couldn’t have meant it came direct from Amy’s father because it didn’t, unless we crack Jarrett’s alibi, and we won’t. But she knew it came from Jarrett. Even if there was no understanding or arrangement, the checks were Seaboard Bank and Trust Company, and she knew they were from Jarrett. So this money is from your father really meant this money was sent to me by Cyrus M. Jarrett because a certain man was your father. Then all we have to do is tell Saul and Fred, while Orrie checks the alibi, to pick up Jarrett twenty-two years ago and find out what certain man he would feel obligated to that much and that long.”

“His son.”

“Oh, sure. The son comes first and foremost. You stole my line. I was going to stand up and say, ‘Even a baboon could feel like that about a son, and Jarrett has got one,’ and walk out.” I stood up. “You have Saul’s number if anything happens this evening. Eugene Jarrett might drop in for a chat.”

I walked out.