“He didn’t know about it,” Audrey said. “He died not knowing. Besides, Davy was born after the divorce.”
“Johnny didn’t notice you were pregnant?”
“We separated before it showed.”
“You never notified him you were carrying his child?”
“Davy was conceived the last time Johnny and I were intimate,” Audrey said. “Right after that we separated and he divorced me. I had my pride, Al, and — okay — I wanted revenge, too. I was goddam mad at the way he treated me, tossing me out of his life like I was — like I was a pair of old shoes! I wanted to be able to tell him later in his life — when he wasn’t a cocky stud any more — tell him that all these years he’d had a son he didn’t know a thing about... and wasn’t going to.”
“Indeed, Mr. Congreve, Heav’n has no rage, and so forth,” Ellery muttered; but nobody heard him.
“Now, of course,” Effing said smoothly, “with the father dead, the situation is quite different. Why should the son of the father be denied his birthright, and all that jazz? I don’t have to go through the routine, Marsh. You know how surrogates feel about the rights of infants. Regular old mammy-tigers, they are. I’d say Miss Carpenter’s got something to worry about.”
Ellery glanced at Leslie, but aside from a certain pallor she seemed serene.
“Tell us more about this child,” Inspector Queen said abruptly. “What’s his full name? When and where was he born? Do you have custody of him? If not, where and with whom is he living? That’s for openers.”
“Hold it, Miss Weston,” Effing said, making like a traffic cop. “I don’t think I’m going to let my client answer those questions right now, Inspector. I’ll merely state for the record that the boy is known as Davy Wilkinson, Wilkinson being my client’s legal maiden name, Arlene Wilkinson — she took ‘Audrey Weston’ as her stage name—”
“Johnny didn’t know that, either,” Marsh said. “How come, Audrey?”
“He never asked me.” Her hands were back in her lap and her blonde head was lowered again.
Marsh pursed his lips.
“Miss Weston felt she couldn’t adequately bring up her child and at the same time pursue a theatrical career, too,” Effing went on. “So she gave the baby out for adoption immediately — in fact, the arrangements were settled before the birth — but she knows where Davy is and she can produce him on reasonable notice when necessary. The people who adopted him are certainly as interested in securing his legal rights and insuring his future as the natural mother is.”
“The fact that she can produce the child,” Marsh said, “is a far cry from proving Benedict was its father.”
“Then you’re going to fight this?” Effing asked with an unpleasant smile.
“Fight? You have a peculiar idea of an attorney’s responsibilities. I have an estate to protect. Anyway, in the long run it’s the surrogate you’re going to have to satisfy. So worry about impressing him, Effing, not me. I’ll have my secretary send you a transcript of this meeting.”
“Don’t bother.” Sanford Effing unbuttoned the three buttons of his sharp suit coat. A little black box hung there. “I’ve recorded the entire conversation.”
When Audrey and her lawyer were gone, Marsh relaxed. “Don’t worry about this, Leslie. I don’t see how they can prove the boy is Johnny’s especially now that she’s admitted before witnesses that she never told Johnny about this Davy. That’s why I was careful to pinpoint that part of her testimony. The will is perfectly clear about Johnny’s intentions: if he was not married to Laura at the time of his death, his estate was to go to you, Leslie, period. Unless this Laura comes forward with proof of a marriage to Johnny, which seems very unlikely now, it’s my opinion you’re in the clear.”
“That’s one of the difficulties a mere layman runs into,” Leslie said, “dealing with lawyers.”
“What is?”
“Trying to get a meeting of minds that isn’t all fouled up in quidnuncs and quiddities, or whatever your jabberwocky is. I’m not the least bit interested in the law of this, Al. If I’m convinced the Weston woman had a child by Johnny, as far as I’m concerned that’s it. In my lawbook the boy would be entitled to his father’s estate, not me. It’s true I’ve been making plans for the money — a certain project in East Harlem I had my heart specially set on — but I’m not going to break down and boohoo about it. I’ve been churchmouse poor and largely disappointed all my life, so I can put all this down to a dream and go back to washing out my nylons and hanging them up to dry on the shower rail. Nice seeing you again, Inspector, Mr. Queen. And Miss Smith. Just let me know how it all comes out, Al.”
And with a smile Leslie left.
“Now there is a gal,” Inspector Queen said “—if I were, say, thirty years younger—”
“Almost too good to be true,” Ellery fretted. When his father said, “What did you say, son?”, he shook his head, said, “Nothing of importance,” and began to fumble with his pipe and the tobacco discovery he had just made by mail in a Vermont country store. Everybody knew there was no particular harm in smoking a mild pipe tobacco if you didn’t inhale. He got the briar fired up and drew a deep lungful of the aromatic smoke.
“That’s all, Miss Smith, thank you,” Marsh was saying; and Miss Smith stalked past the Queens to the office door. Ellery thought he detected a certain twitch of her hip as she passed him. “You know, there’s an irony in this development. Benedict Senior’s will, as I told you, contained an ambiguity that allowed Johnny to draw another five million every time he contracted a new marriage. Now Johnny’s will — I wish people would take lawyers’ advice about not trying to write their own wills! — also contains an ambiguity he didn’t intend... I wonder about this Davy.”
“We can be all-fired certain Audrey Weston has a kid farmed out somewhere,” the Inspector said in the quaint slang of his youth. “She’d have to be an idiot to try to pull a stunt like this based on nothing but hot air. And Effing doesn’t strike me as the kind of lawyer to take on a tough will case that could drag along in the courts for years without something good and solid behind it. If Effing’s in on it, there’s a child, all right. But that the child was Benedict’s, that Audrey never told him about it...” The old man shook his head. “I don’t know how this claim ties in, Mr. Marsh, if it ties in at all, but one thing’s for sure: we have to start with the fact. How do you plan to establish that the boy is or isn’t Benedict’s son?”
“I don’t have to establish either,” Marsh said. “Proving the child is Johnny’s is Effing’s problem.”
“Effing,” Ellery repeated with distaste. He unfolded from the chair. “Un type, definitely. What — or who — next? Coming, dad?”
In these days of universal holdups, muggings, assaults, rapes, homicides, and other public indecencies it is a seldom-noticed fact of urban life that there is one class of citizen for whom late-night strolls in little-frequented places of the city hold no terrors; to the contrary, he positively looks forward to his midnight meander in the park.
And who is this hero, this paragon of courage? Some holder of the black belt? A just-returned Congressional Medal of Honor winner, schooled to the wiliest tricks of Charlie? Alas, no. He is the robber, mugger, assailant, rapist, or man-slaughterer himself, who, like the vampire bat hanging in its cave, finds warmth and security where simpler creatures feel a shivering fear.