The Missing Chapter

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?”