The Second Confesion

The basic idea was that Paul Emerson would have been more at home in Hitler's Germany or Franco's Spain. So I was glad of a chance to take a slant at him but it didn't get me much because he confused me by looking exactly like my chemistry teacher in high school out in Ohio, who had always given me better marks than I had earned. Also it was a safe bet that he had ulcers-I mean Paul Emerson-and he was drinking plain soda with only one piece of ice. In swimming trunks he was really pitiful, and I had taken some pictures of him from the most effective angles to please Wolfe with.

It was Emerson's wife, Connie, who seemed to be heading for a situation that might possibly have a bearing on our objective as defined by Wolfe. She couldn't have had more than four or five years to dawdle away until her life began at forty, and was therefore past my deadline, but it was by no means silly of her to assume that it was still okay for her to go swimming in mixed company in broad daylight. She was one of those rare blondes that take a good tan, and had better legs and arms, judged objectively, than either Gwenn or Madeline, and even from the other side of the wide pool the blue of her eyes carried clear and strong.

That's where she was at the moment, across the pool, sitting with Louis Rony, getting her breath after showing him a double knee lock that had finally put him flat, and he was no matchstick. It was a new technique for making a pass at a man, but it had obvious advantages, and anyway she had plenty of other ideas and wasn't being stingy with them. At lunch she had buttered rolls for him. Now I ask you.

I didn't get it. If Gwenn was stewing about it she was keeping it well hid, though I had noticed her casting a few quick glances. There was a chance that she was counter-attacking by pretending she would rather help me take pictures than eat, and that she loved to watch me dive, but who was I to suspect a fine freckled girl of pretending? Madeline had made a couple of cracks about Connie's routine, without any sign that she really cared a damn. As for Paul Emerson, the husband, the sour look on his undistinguished map when his glance took in his wife and her playmate didn't seem to mean much, since it stayed sour no matter where he was glancing.