The Missing Chapter

“Not necessarily. Well, thanks for the time you’ve given me. If you think of anything that would be helpful, here’s my card. Oh, and one more thing,” I said, trying to make it sound like an afterthought, as I rose from a chair that should be tossed on the nearest New York City dump.

“Yes?”

“For the record, where were you a week ago Tuesday before you went to Childress’s apartment — say from about noon on?”

“I’ve been expecting you to ask me that.” Patricia Royce, too, stood. Her sandy head came just up to my shoulders. “I was here all day, until I walked over to Charles’s place. Your next question, of course, is, ‘Did anyone see me during that time?’ And the answer is no, other than passersby on the street during my three-block walk, none of whom I knew.

“If that makes me a suspect in your eyes, so be it. I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful, Mr. Archie Goodwin, and I guess I can’t be, at least if your goal still is to show that Charles died by any hand but his own.”

Okay, maybe she wasn’t the life of the party, but the woman did have a way with words. I thanked her again and we shook hands, but her dark blue eyes never met mine. If we didn’t part as friends, we weren’t enemies, or at least I didn’t feel we were. After she closed her door, I lingered in the hallway long enough to determine that the lock on her apartment door was not a match for the mystery key.

Six

It was a little after two when I got back to the brownstone, which meant Wolfe was still in the dining room consuming flounder poached in white wine. I wasn’t about to interrupt him in mid-meal, but I wasn’t about to pass on Fritz’s flounder, either, so I marched directly to the kitchen.

“Archie, I kept a plate warm for you,” he said, popping up from the high stool where he was reading one of his German-language magazines.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” I told him, getting milk from the refrigerator and filling a glass. “Any calls while I was gone?”

“Mr. Cohen, at ten-fifteen — he sounded irritated, but he didn’t leave a message. And Mr. Horace Vinson, at ten-twenty-five. He wanted to know if we had received his check, and I told him we had.” Although Fritz did not know the amount of the check that had been delivered to our door that morning, he now had that cheerful “there’s-money-in-the-bank-again” lilt to his voice. He was dying to ask me how things were going, but he didn’t, and I didn’t volunteer anything. I was too busy concentrating on the plate of flounder that he had just set in front of me.

After polishing off two helpings plus a dish of papaya custard, I carried coffee into the office, where Wolfe had settled in with beer and a fresh book, Dreadnought, by Robert K. Massie.

“Have you eaten?” he asked peevishly.

“Yes, sir, and I gave it the usual number of stars — the maximum. Sorry you had to dine alone, but as you know, I had assignments. Would you like a report?”

Wolfe set down his book, closed his eyes, and nodded. With that fresh check in the bank, he was committed to working, or at least to listening, and he didn’t much like it. I had not been idly boasting when

I told Patricia Royce about my good memory. I’ve been known to give Wolfe verbatim accounts of conversations several hours long, so filling him in on my chats with the two women in Charles Childress’s life was a snap.

As I talked, he leaned back and got comfortable. When I finished, he didn’t move. Any stranger walking in would have sworn he was asleep, but I know better; Wolfe ingests reports like he does food — with deliberation. At last he opened his eyes. “You told me how they looked and what they’ said. Now, what is your impression of them?”

At some point long ago, Wolfe got it into his noggin that I have no peers when it comes to analyzing the opposite sex and getting them to spill their innermost thoughts to me. Through the years, I’ve done a number of things — intentional and otherwise — to dissuade him from this belief, but to no avail.

“Debra Mitchell is as hard as the diamonds in a scarf pin she was wearing,” I said. “Not the kind of woman who’d be likely to mourn the death of a fiancé for long, if at all. She didn’t seem the least bit broken up. Her mind was on other things, like getting a celebrity guest for the Entre Nous show. I had no business speaking for you. I can call and have her schedule you for next Tuesday and—”

“Archie! Stop prattling.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, as easy on the eyes as she is, Debra Mitchell doesn’t do a thing for me, if you can believe that. I think Patricia Royce’s analysis of the lady is accurate: She’s overbearing and would try to control every area of a mate’s life, including the color of his toothbrush. Could she have knocked off Childress? Maybe, if she thought he was cheating on her. But if she did, the motivation wouldn’t be a bruised heart, it would be cold anger over losing what she considered to be a possession.