The Missing Chapter

Seventeen

Although I had told Wolfe otherwise, business actually did get touched on at Saul’s place that night, albeit briefly. We had finished playing and I had pocketed my modest winnings, thanks mainly to the last hand, where I held three tens to beat Fred Durkin’s two pair. As I said my good-nights to the others and started to leave, Saul collared me. “I’m still on this Clarice Wingfield business,” he said apologetically. “Nothing yet, but I’ve got an idea, or maybe it’s just a hunch. Tell Mr. Wolfe that if I don’t turn something up by the weekend, there’s no charge, and that includes expenses.” Vintage Saul Panzer; he takes his work seriously, and he hates to let Wolfe down — and Wolfe knows it. Which is why Saul will always get paid out of our coffers, whether he’s successful or not. Come to think of it, I can’t remember a time when he hasn’t been successful.

The next morning, Friday if you’re the type who likes to keep track, I was in the office balancing the checkbook and trying to ignore the pounding and drilling from the elevator shaft when the phone rang.

“Bingo!” It was Saul.

“I assume that means something positive,” I replied, trying to sound sedate.

“Damn right. The lady in question is. over in Hoboken, working in a small art gallery. She’s there right now.”

“You’re positive?” I asked unnecessarily.

“As positive as I am that I’m standing at a pay phone in the old Hoboken railroad station. I saw her not fifteen minutes ago.”

“Damn and double-damn. How’d you find her?”

“Long story, professional secret and all that. But I might just tell you some time during a gin rummy game. I didn’t talk to her, of course — I leave that to the pros like you. I assume you want the particulars?”

I told him I did, and while he unloaded, I took notes. We hung up at ten-fifty-two, leaving eight minutes before Wolfe’s descent from the plant rooms — assuming he had gone up there after having breakfast in his room. And during the current crisis, I wasn’t about to assume a thing.

Sure enough, at 11:03, he walked into the office, not even breathing hard, slipped an Oncidium truliferum into the vase on the desk, and eased into his chair. “Good morning, Archie. Were you successful at poker last night?”

At least it was a change from his usual “Did you sleep well?” I replied that I was a few pesos richer and then filled him in on Saul’s discovery.

He listened, dipping his head a fraction of an inch. “Hoboken. That is just across the river, I believe.”

“You’ll never get a medal for your knowledge of local geography, but this time you are on target. I can probably get there by train from Herald Square in twenty minutes or so.”

That brought a slight shudder, but he recovered nicely. “Very well. After lunch.”

In fact, the trip from Thirty-third Street on the PATH train — or the Hudson Tubes, as it’s known to longtime New Yorkers who aren’t big on acronyms — took only sixteen minutes, and that included several lurching stops in the dank old tunnels under the Hudson River. When I got off the train and emerged into bright sunshine on the Jersey side, I realized it was the second time I’d left the state on the same case. If that happened before, I couldn’t recall it.

I did recall the last time I’d been in Hoboken, though. Several years back, the husband of a friend of Lily Rowan’s started an Italian restaurant there, and we went to the grand opening. The food was well above average — Wolfe himself would have approved — and the atmosphere was pleasant, even festive. But the couple had a yearning to live in Italy, so they sold the place and, last I heard, the two of them were running a fancy eatery in Siena. Lily thinks we should visit them some time, and maybe we will.

Downtown Hoboken was about as I remembered it, although there were a few tall apartment buildings now, and many of the old brick office buildings and hotels in the business district had been spruced up and painted, some in pinks and light blues. All in all, the old burg on the river facing Lower Manhattan looked to be thriving.

I walked west from the depot along Hudson Place, passing the Italian restaurant we’d helped to christen that night years before. Judging by the facade, it was alive and well. When I got to Washington Street, the main drag, I turned right. The art gallery was in the second block, where Saul said it would be. I peered in through the plate glass and spotted her right away. She wore a navy blue dress with white trim and big white buttons the size of bar coasters, and she was standing next to a desk, talking on the telephone. Her hair was shorter than in the old picture, but otherwise she looked pretty much the same. And her cousin Belinda’s estimate that she was five-three and one-hundred-ten pounds seemed about on target.

After looking in at Clarice for a few more seconds, I went north to the next cross street and headed west. Hoboken’s business district quickly gave way to residential streets, and within three minutes, I found the one I wanted.

It was a tree-lined block with three- and four-story brick flats on both sides, many also painted in bright colors and every one of them well-kept despite their age, which in most cases was pushing the century mark. I found the address Saul had given me — a light green brick building with a maple tree poking up through uneven bricks in a small courtyard enclosed by a black iron fence with a gate. After glances to the right and left, I opened the squeaking gate and walked to the door of the garden apartment, which had a typewritten C. WINGFIELD in the plastic-covered holder above the bell. Pulling a key from my pocket, I took aim at the lock. It slipped in smoothly, and I could feel it slide the bolt, which was all I had come for. I eased the key back out, did a snappy about-face, and returned to the art gallery.

This time I went in. Clarice, now seated at the ornate cherry wood desk shuffling some papers, rose fluidly as I entered and smiled. “Hello, may I help you?” she asked in a pleasant, cultured voice.

“Possibly. Are you Clarice Avery, née Wingfield, formerly of Mercer, Indiana?”

She recoiled as if she had been slapped. Her “What do you want?” came out in barely more than a whisper.

“Just to talk,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to disarm her with a smile. “Is there anybody who can take over here so we can grab a cup of coffee?”

“Who are you?” Her voice was slightly stronger than before, but her face stayed frozen and white.

“I work for the private investigator Nero Wolfe in Manhattan,” I responded, holding up my license. She stared at it, and then at me. As she began to hyperventilate, another young woman, this one Oriental, emerged through a doorway from the rear.

“Anything I can help with, Clare?” she asked, obviously puzzled.

“No — well, yes,” Clarice said, recovering her composure. “Amy, this is someone I know, Mr. ... Goodwin. And we need to talk for a few minutes. Over coffee. I won’t be gone for long.”

Amy nodded and said she would hold the fort. We were outside in the sunlight before Clarice turned to me again. “Really, what is it you want? I’ve never heard of you, or — who’s that person you work for?”

“Nero Wolfe, and he happens to be a legend. Where’s a good spot for coffee?”

She gestured toward a sign a few doors down the block at a corner. It was an Italian restaurant — there is no shortage of them in Hoboken. The pink neon-bordered clock on the wall above the bar read two-thirty, so whatever lunch crowd they attract had dispersed; the place was almost empty, and we slipped into a booth near the door.

After a tired, indifferent waitress took our coffee orders and shuffled off, Clarice leaned forward and fixed me with light blue eyes. Close up, she looked surprisingly young and fresh-faced. “All right, you got me to come here,” she said, lapsing into a twang not unlike what I heard — and probably used myself — growing up in Ohio. “Now will you tell me what this is all about?”

“I’ve got to believe you have at least an inkling,” I responded as thick mugs of very black coffee were plunked unceremoniously on the spotless Formica in front of us. “It has to do with Charles Childress.”

I thought she might start her panting again, but she fooled me. “Yes, I did have that inkling,” Clarice said, letting out air and leaning back against the brown leatherette seat. “How did you find me?”

“That’s not important. Almost anyone can be located if the resources are available. I assume you are aware that people in Mercer are worried about you and wonder where — and how — you are?”

She forced a smile. “That’s a gallant thing for you to say, Mr. Goodwin, but I happen to know that it isn’t true. And I’m damned if I’ll ever go back there. Did someone from Mercer — or Merciless, as I like to call it — send you to find me?”

“No, although I won’t deny that I’ve been there. Returning to Charles Childress — he was your cousin.”

“That’s right,” she said stiffly.

I drank the below-par coffee, cupping the mug with both hands. “Miss Wingfield, or Mrs. Avery, or whatever name you prefer, we could dance around each other for another half-hour or more, or we could get straight to the point. I prefer the second option. When did you last see Charles Childress?”

Now it was Clarice’s turn to sip coffee; her pale, unmanicured hands trembled slightly as she lifted the mug to her mouth, then made a face. “Wingfield is my name. Forget Avery. I did, long ago. What did they tell you about me in Mercer?”

“I know about the pregnancy, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s part of it. You must have seen my mother, right?”

“Briefly. Very briefly. She wasn’t inclined to pass the time with me.”

That brought a slight smile. “I’ll just bet she wasn’t. Did she threaten you?”

“With the wrath of the sheriff, which was enough to discourage me. I left.”

“She uses his name more than once when it serves her purpose. So then you went and saw Aunt Melva and Cousin Belinda, right?”

“Your order is slightly off, but yes, I talked to them, too.”

Clarice nodded and let her eyes roam idly around the nearly deserted room before coming back to me. “And they — Belinda in particular — were no doubt eager to fill you in on my wanton ways. Am I going too fast for you?”

“Good line,” I replied. “Bogart used it on a court stenographer in The Maltese Falcon.”

“Where do you think I got it? You may be surprised to learn that not everybody from small-town Indiana is culturally deprived.”

“Tell me. I’m from small-town Ohio, myself. What made you come East?”

She set her mug down hard. “To use your own words, ‘I’ve got to believe you have an inkling.’ Don’t play dumb with me, Mr. Goodwin. Stop shilly-shallying; it doesn’t become you.”

“All right. Childress returned home to Mercer to take care of his dying mother. While he was there, the two of you, cousins who had known each other since childhood, renewed an old acquaintance. Among the results was that you managed to get pregnant. After his mother’s funeral, et cetera, Charles returned to New York. You followed him and covered your tracks so that the folks back home couldn’t locate you.”

Her expression didn’t change. “Obviously I didn’t cover my tracks well enough.”

“As I said before, it’s damn near impossible for people to lose themselves today. I’ll concede it can be done, but not easily. Two questions: Did you have the baby? And did you keep in touch with Childress?”

Clarice desperately wanted to be anywhere except in that little Hoboken restaurant. I felt for her, but not enough to let her loose. We looked at each other for what seemed like minutes but was only a few ticks.

“Not that it’s any business of yours, but I do have a child now,” she murmured, breaking off to stare into her mug. “A little girl. There’s somebody who takes care of her while I’m at the gallery. I live close by, just a short walk, and I paint when I’m at home.”

“That answers the first question.”

She glared at me. “You don’t let up, do you? Yes, I saw Charles several times after I got here.”

“And?”

“And what?” she shot back angrily.

“Miss Wingfield, you picked up and moved from Indiana to New York, or technically, to a place in the shadow of New York. You were pregnant, and the father of your child — or unborn child — was here. You sought him out, which is natural, for a number of reasons — emotional, psychological, financial.”

“Well now, aren’t we the psychiatrist?” she mocked. For the first time, color blazed in her cheeks. “I think it’s simply wonderful when men analyze what women do, and why we do it. However would any of us be able to survive without any of you?”

“Okay, I stand corrected, chagrined, and whatever else you want to hang on me,” I replied, turning both palms up. “Did you get together in New York? Or did he come to see you? Or both?”

“He did not come to see me, not ever, although I wanted him to. But I did go to his place over in the Village. And, as I said before, I went several times.”

“What happened on those visits?”

She drummed her fingers on the Formica, then looked up. “Not much. The truth is, I wanted Charles to marry me. Since you’re into analyzing my actions, does that seem outrageously forward?”

“No. Should it?”

“It would in Mercer, at least in my family. But then, I already had been ostracized, including by my own dear mother. She couldn’t stand the idea of a pregnant, unmarried daughter around where everybody could see her and gossip about her and, worst of all, pity her. Reflected badly on a pillar of the community, you know?”

I nodded. “Apparently Childress wasn’t interested in marriage?”

“At least not to me. He said he was engaged to a woman at one of the television networks, but then you probably already—” Clarice stopped herself in mid-sentence and jerked upright in the booth as though she just remembered something. “Wait a minute. Just what is your interest in all this, anyway? Here I am spouting personal things to a man I don’t know from Adam. I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re after. Explain, and explain fast, or I’m gone.” She sounded like she meant it.

“All right,” I answered. “Someone, it doesn’t matter who, hired Nero Wolfe to investigate Charles Childress’s death. That individual felt this was not a suicide, but murder — and Mr. Wolfe agrees. What do you think?”

She paused a beat too long before responding, and when she did, she was reading her lines. “I— That’s terrible! I don’t believe it. Who would want to kill Charles?”

“I was about to lob that very question in your direction,” I told her. “You said you saw him a few times. Did he seem particularly concerned about anything — or anyone?”

Another pause. “Not that I could see. Oh, he was always worried about his writing, his work. He was the high-strung type, tense, you know? That was his nature. Always a little jumpy, always on edge.”

“How many times did you go to his place in the Village?”

“Too many,” Clarice said ruefully. “The first time, he was shocked to see me; I had gone without phoning. He didn’t even know I’d moved East, and he didn’t know I was pregnant, either. Believe me, he was not happy to learn either fact.”

“Was he willing to help with the support of the baby?”

“Yes, absolutely,” she answered without hesitation. “I didn’t mean to make Charles out to be some sort of an ogre. When I told him about, well, about the baby, he said he’d pay for everything. That’s what he said — everything. In fact, he set up a trust fund with one hundred thousand dollars. I can draw a certain amount from it each month for my baby, and the rest is drawing interest. I’m not quite sure of all the details. That’s very comforting to have, but what I really wanted was him, more than his damn precious money,” she said bitterly.

“But he wasn’t interested?”

“Not at all.” She underscored each word. “I was too stupid to accept his rebuff the first time I was there, so I kept coming back, begging, I mean really begging, for us to get together. It was pathetic. I was pathetic.”

“You also were under a lot of strain, and understandably so.”

She looked at me dismally, then shook her head. A shadow of a smile touched her lips. “I’m sorry for what I said before, about you trying to analyze me. That was a cheap shot.”

“Don’t worry about it, please. I’ve got the hide of an armadillo. Did you ever spend much time at Childress’s apartment?”

That drew a hollow laugh. “Usually just long enough to get into a shouting match. One night I got really angry with him about — well, about how he had dumped me. I was frustrated, and I was still yelling when I walked out the front door. And who was out in front but the janitor — I guess you call them supers here, don’t you? Anyway, this super, who’s really nosy anyway, was puttering around. He must have heard every single word.”

“But Childress never came over to your place in Hoboken?”

“Never, not once. I left him a key, and I even tried to get him to come and see... his daughter. But he never would. He sent money, all I needed and then some. And, as I said, he set up the trust fund.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

Clarice blinked twice. “That’s the worst part.”

“How so?”

A shudder shook her. “I went to see Charles the night before he died. It was sort of a last-ditch thing for me, one final chance to find out if maybe we could get back that feeling we had during the time we had in Mercer when he was taking care of his mother.”

“But now he was engaged, wasn’t he?” I asked.

“No-o-o, not any more he wasn’t, or at least he was about to end it with the Mitchell woman, whom I never met, never laid eyes on. He had told me that a few days earlier, which is what really pushed me to try again.”

“Why was he breaking off with Debra Mitchell?”

“He said something melodramatic about how they lived in different worlds. I got the impression she had a very public life, and thrived on it — you know, parties, dinner out with important people every night, that sort of thing. Charles was no recluse, but he really didn’t care for the cocktail-party circuit or whatever they call it in New York. I think in many ways he was still sort of small-town, even after all these years in the big city. Although he would have hated to hear someone describe him that way.”

“I’m curious. How did he happen to tell you he was ending the engagement?”

One corner of her mouth turned up. “You’re curious about all sorts of things, aren’t you? Well, the second-to-the-last time I went to Charles’s apartment, which was almost three weeks ago now, I asked him what was so special about Debra Mitchell. I guess I was really trying to pick a fight with him. Anyway, he said that he didn’t think she was so special anymore, that he was tired of all the demands she was making on him — all that social stuff I mentioned a minute ago. When I asked if he was going to break off with her, he said something like ‘Yeah, I think so, but don’t get any ideas about you and me. Right now, I’m down on commitment of any kind.’ He seemed very depressed. Still, I have to be honest and tell you that gave me a little hope.”

“You said earlier that you didn’t believe Childress was murdered. That leaves suicide. Got any ideas why he’d want to kill himself?”

She went through a head-shaking routine. “Like I also said before, Charles got depressed about his writing a lot. I picked up on that when he was in Mercer for all those months. I mean, there were periods when days would go by that he’d hardly speak at all. But since I’ve been living here, he didn’t seem particularly mopey. Angry, yes, mainly at me, for bugging him all the time. But depressed — no, I wouldn’t say so.”

“So you don’t have any explanation why he’d be driven to suicide?”

“I really don’t. But from what I read in the papers and saw on the TV news, it sounded like that’s what it was. Nothing was taken from his apartment, was it?”

“Apparently not. Did Childress indicate to you that anybody was particularly angry with him, or possibly was threatening him?”

“Not really. Oh, he did mention a fight he was having with a book reviewer.” She screwed up her face. “And, yeah, he also muttered one time about how ticked off he was at his agent. He’d just been on the phone with the man — Ott, I think his name is — when I got there. And he was fuming. Called the guy all sorts of names and said he was going to fire him and get even with him.”

“How was he going to get even?”

“He didn’t say. But I just figured it was Charles sounding off. He did that a lot when he was angry. He had a bad temper.”

“Did you know he kept a gun in his apartment?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. He told me there’d been some burglaries in his neighborhood.”

“Miss Wingfield, can you account for your time on the day Childress was killed? Specifically, up until three in the afternoon?”

Clarice’s face froze. She got to her feet without a word. “I have told you all that I am going to,” she said tightly, raising her chin. “And I’m warning you, Mr. Goodwin: If you try to follow me back to the gallery, I will phone the police immediately.” Her hands shook as she swept her purse from the table and did an about-face, marching out into the sunlight. I made no effort to go after her.