“Nero Wolfe, and he happens to be a legend. Where’s a good spot for coffee?”
She gestured toward a sign a few doors down the block at a corner. It was an Italian restaurant — there is no shortage of them in Hoboken. The pink neon-bordered clock on the wall above the bar read two-thirty, so whatever lunch crowd they attract had dispersed; the place was almost empty, and we slipped into a booth near the door.
After a tired, indifferent waitress took our coffee orders and shuffled off, Clarice leaned forward and fixed me with light blue eyes. Close up, she looked surprisingly young and fresh-faced. “All right, you got me to come here,” she said, lapsing into a twang not unlike what I heard — and probably used myself — growing up in Ohio. “Now will you tell me what this is all about?”
“I’ve got to believe you have at least an inkling,” I responded as thick mugs of very black coffee were plunked unceremoniously on the spotless Formica in front of us. “It has to do with Charles Childress.”
I thought she might start her panting again, but she fooled me. “Yes, I did have that inkling,” Clarice said, letting out air and leaning back against the brown leatherette seat. “How did you find me?”
“That’s not important. Almost anyone can be located if the resources are available. I assume you are aware that people in Mercer are worried about you and wonder where — and how — you are?”
She forced a smile. “That’s a gallant thing for you to say, Mr. Goodwin, but I happen to know that it isn’t true. And I’m damned if I’ll ever go back there. Did someone from Mercer — or Merciless, as I like to call it — send you to find me?”
“No, although I won’t deny that I’ve been there. Returning to Charles Childress — he was your cousin.”
“That’s right,” she said stiffly.
I drank the below-par coffee, cupping the mug with both hands. “Miss Wingfield, or Mrs. Avery, or whatever name you prefer, we could dance around each other for another half-hour or more, or we could get straight to the point. I prefer the second option. When did you last see Charles Childress?”
Now it was Clarice’s turn to sip coffee; her pale, unmanicured hands trembled slightly as she lifted the mug to her mouth, then made a face. “Wingfield is my name. Forget Avery. I did, long ago. What did they tell you about me in Mercer?”
“I know about the pregnancy, if that’s what you’re asking.”
She nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s part of it. You must have seen my mother, right?”
“Briefly. Very briefly. She wasn’t inclined to pass the time with me.”
That brought a slight smile. “I’ll just bet she wasn’t. Did she threaten you?”
“With the wrath of the sheriff, which was enough to discourage me. I left.”
“She uses his name more than once when it serves her purpose. So then you went and saw Aunt Melva and Cousin Belinda, right?”
“Your order is slightly off, but yes, I talked to them, too.”
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?”