The Missing Chapter

As far as I am aware, Franklin Ott still toils as a Manhattan literary agent, although I have no insight as to his success in that Byzantine vineyard. Both Keith Billings and Wilbur Hobbs were unemployed at last report. Billings did indeed lose his job at Westman & Lane, reportedly because of his chronic inability to get along with his writers. And Hobbs “retired” as a Gazette book critic, although I happen to know from Lon Cohen that the departure was instigated by the paper’s management. Lon, who did not appear heartbroken by the news, told me that Hobbs had accepted one too many gifts from a publisher.

Debra Mitchell, who still was screaming at Patricia Royce when she left the brownstone that Sunday night, did not immediately disappear from our lives. In the days following, Ms. Mitchell telephoned Wolfe six times, trying again to get him to appear on her network’s Entre Nous TV show. The first time she called, he told her, politely but plainly, that he had no interest whatever in participating in any television program, now or ever. Damned if she didn’t make another stab two days later, saying on that occasion that public interest in both his life and work was so intense that he had an “obligation” to appear.

“Indeed?” he replied with as much surprise as his voice ever conveys. “Madam, I know of no such obligation. My life is simple and my work is straightforward. The former is of no concern to anyone other than my immediate circle, and the latter already is well-chronicled in the press when such airing is merited. Please do not make this request again. Good day.”

He didn’t respond to her other four calls.

Wolfe’s rebuff may or may not have been a contributing factor to her leaving town. About a month after her last call, Debra Mitchell took a job with a television station in Miami, according to an item I read in the Times. It said she was “leaving network public relations to fulfill her longtime dream of anchoring an evening news show.” God help them in South Florida.

As for Clarice, she, too, is fulfilling a dream. I saw an ad in the Sunday arts section of the Gazette for an exhibit at a Village gallery of “Watercolors by Clarice Wingfield.” I toyed briefly with going, but decided my appearance would bring only bad memories to a woman who already had more than her share of them.

The case had yet another postscript: Two days after the office gathering in which Patricia Royce had been nailed, we were paid a visit by the PROBE threesome, who had asked for ten minutes of Wolfe’s time. As on their earlier visit, Claude Pemberton took the role as spokesman: “Mr. Wolfe, we appreciate your allowing Wilma to sit in on your denouement,” he began after they all had been served coffee by Fritz.

“Stand in, you mean!” Wilma Race said with a good-natured laugh. “I was out in the hall the whole time — peering through the hole in that picture.” She turned and gestured toward our waterfall painting. “Mr. Brenner was kind enough to supply me a footstool. That peephole of yours is built for a six-footer, not somebody five-three like me.” She was beaming.

“She gave us a wonderfully complete description of what transpired,” Pemberton went on. “We can’t thank you enough.”

“Yeah,” Daniel McClellan put in. Today his sweater was pale yellow. “It was a hell of a lot more complete than the version in the Gazette.”

“It should have been,” Wilma chirped. “After all, it was an eyewitness report. The only nervous moment was when I had to jump off the stool and run into the kitchen as people started leaving the office. But nobody saw me.”

“As to the money we raised to help pay you,” Pemberton said to Wolfe, “we made another canvass of the donors, and they agreed with us that it be used to seed a trust fund for Clarice Wingfield’s and Charles Childress’s child. We haven’t told any of our members her identity of course — we in this room are the only ones who know her name, and it will remain sacred within the confines of this room. But our donors were unanimous in saying that was an ideal use for the money.”

Wolfe dipped his head a quarter of an inch, which for him is enthusiastic affirmation.

And yes, the new elevator finally got installed. I even rode in it the first day it was operational, and it’s a dandy: dark, mahogany-look paneling, chrome trim, and indirect lighting. And it’s as quiet as a Trappist monk. Never again will I be able to write that “the rumble of the elevator signaled Wolfe’s descent from the plant rooms.”

Too bad. I’ve grown fond of that phrase.