The Devil's Cook (18 page)

“We aren't going to be married, so forget it.”

“Why not? Don't you want to?”

“Yes, I do, if you must know!”

“Then what's the argument about? You can move in with me as soon as it's done, and maybe for brief periods in the meantime.”

“How do you expect me to get married when I come from a family where mental retardation is likely to crop up in my children?”

“Ben Green, you're just plain
ignorant
. Mental retardation isn't hereditary.”

Ben glared at Fanny with mingled astonishment and hope. “It
isn't?”

“Of course not. It can happen to anyone, any time. Your education has really been neglected.”

“I … don't want to talk about it any more now.”

“All right. We'll talk about it later.”

“I wonder if the damn ragout is done.” But Ben's shoulders seemed to have a new squareness about them. Fan wisely decided it was no time to comment. “Stick the potatoes and see, will you?”

She stuck the potatoes with a fork, and they were nearly done, but not quite.

“Not quite,” she said. “They need about fifteen more minutes. Mm! It smells good. I can hardly wait.”

“It would be nice, while we're waiting, if we could have another drink.”

“Hereafter, my gin is yours any time you want to share it.”

They had another drink while they stood around in the kitchen waiting for the ragout, and after fifteen minutes Fanny stuck the potatoes again and pronounced them done. Ben got out a couple of plates, and Fanny served at the kitchen table. They had just pulled up to the steamy succulence of potatoes and onions and carrots and bits of steak and bacon when there was a sharp knocking on the hall door; and Fanny, assuming the role of woman of the house, went through the living room and admitted Bartholdi. The latter's nose, as he entered, quivered.

“Something,” he said, “smells extremely good.”

“It's Student's Ragout,” Fanny said. “We were just sitting down to eat. Will you have some?”

“Thanks, but I just stopped in to have a word with Ben, and then I must be on my way.”

“We've been expecting you.” Fanny headed for the kitchen, Bartholdi following. “Ben, Captain Bartholdi would like to have a word with you.”

“The trouble with this ragout,” said Ben explosively, “is that it seems to be damn near impossible to eat it! Something or someone is always preventing.”

“Don't let me interrupt your meal,” Bartholdi said. “You two go right ahead. I'll pull up a chair and wait.”

He did so, dropping his hat on the floor beside the chair. Ben picked at his ragout as if Bartholdi's appearance had killed his appetite.

“Are you sure you won't have some with us?” Fanny said.

“Quite sure.”

“It's fortunate that you won't, to tell the truth. We planned to share it with Jay and Farley, and it's doubtful that there'd be enough for five.”

“It's doubtful,” Ben said, “that there will even be enough for four. Not that it matters. I suddenly don't seem to want any.”

“Yes, you do,” Fanny said. “You are going to get a proper meal whether you want it or not. There will be plenty, anyhow. You insisted on putting in the usual amount of onions, which is too much for Jay, and so he'll probably eat very little.”

“I just left Mr. Miles,” said Bartholdi, “and I'm sure he's in no mood for eating anything, with onions or without.”

“That leaves only Farley. By the way, where is Farley?”

“He's across the hall. I met him out back as I was coming in, and asked him to accompany me.”

“Do you think that's fair?
I
wasn't allowed to stay.”

“As for me,” said Ben, “I had no desire to stay. The less I have to do with this thing, the better I like it.”

“Which reminds me,” Bartholdi smiled. “It's time we were establishing that you had
nothing
to do with it.”

“That's already established,” Fanny said. “Ben has finally told me where he went last weekend.”

“Is that so? Suppose he tells me, too.”

“He went to visit his sister.”

“Is that right, Ben?”

“That's right. In Corinth. She's in the institution there.”

“She's a retarded child,” Fanny said.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Green,” Bartholdi said. “However painful it is for you to discuss, you can surely see the necessity.”

“I suppose so.”

“How did you go to Corinth?”

“By bus.”

“What time?”

“The bus left the station at two fifty-five.”

“Can you prove you were at the institution that day?”

“I wasn't there that day. The bus got in after visiting hours. I went there the next morning.”

“Oh? Where did you spend the night?”

“At the hotel. There's only one in town.”

“I see. And what time next morning did you visit the institution?”

“Nine o'clock or thereabouts.”

“This can be verified?”

“Sure. There's a register for visitors. I signed it.”

“You see?” Fanny said triumphantly. “Ben went to visit his sister.”

“Next time I go,” said Ben bitterly, “I'll hire a brass band and carry a banner.”

Bartholdi, rising to leave, was sympathetic in principle. In practice, however, he held his sympathy in reserve until he was certain, after investigation, that it would not be wasted.

His melting point was considerably higher than Fanny's.

22

“Oh!” Ardis Bowers's mouth made the startled shape of the vowel she had sounded. “It's Captain Bartholdi, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said Bartholdi. “I don't believe we've had the pleasure of meeting.”

Ardis, recovering, made it evident by her succeeding expression that the pleasure was not reciprocal. Her position in the doorway suggested an impediment. She did not bother to explain how she had learned his identity, and Bartholdi, for his part, was not sufficiently interested to ask.

“What is it you want, please?” Ardis demanded.

“I was downstairs and, since I was here, I thought I'd have a talk with you and Professor Bowers. May I come in?”

“I'm sure there is nothing Otis and I can tell you. However—”

“Thanks. I appreciate your cooperation.”

Bartholdi entered, and Otis Bowers rose to meet him from a chair under a reading lamp. He was holding a thick book in his hand, the index finger inserted among the pages to mark his place.

“This is my husband,” Ardis said. “Otis, Captain Bartholdi.”

“Good evening, Captain.” Otis shifted the book to his left hand, thereby losing his place, in order to offer Bartholdi the one that had been holding it. “Sit down, won't you?”

Bartholdi kept his coat on and his hat in his hands. “As you know, I've been investigating the disappearance of Professor Miles's wife.”

“If you want my opinion,” Ardis said, “you're wasting your time.”

“Your opinion is welcome,” Bartholdi said. “Why do you think so?”

“Terry Miles is a tramp. She's off somewhere on the usual business of a tramp, and she'll show up again when she's good and ready.”

“That's an interesting opinion, but circumstances don't seem to support it.”

“Well, I know nothing about circumstances, but I do know Terry, and that's enough for me.”

“What circumstances?” Otis said. “Has there been a new development?”

Bartholdi stole a couple of seconds to study the male Bowers physiognomy. They gave Bartholdi all the time he needed to reach an irrelevant conclusion. In spite of its lonely hours and arid spaces, he concluded, the life of a bachelor had its negative compensations. He wondered if Otis Bowers was expressing a genuine curiosity, or was trying to create a desperate diversion.

“I was referring to the dinner Mrs. Miles left cooking, the fact that no clothes were taken, and her failure to leave any word of explanation.”

“There's the Personal,” Ardis said. “Isn't that the explanation?”

“I didn't know you'd learned about that, Mrs. Bowers. May I ask how you did?”

“I read it in the papers. Newspapers are published to be read, you know.”

“But Personals often aren't. Except by people with particular interests.”

“I'm curious about all sorts of things.”

“The Personal, I thought, was on the obscure side. It's remarkable that you were able to interpret it so easily.”

“Nonsense. It was transparent. Anyone who knew Terry would have suspected immediately that it was directed to her.”

“Yes. And that's a curious point. In fact, this whole matter of the Personal is curious. It's curious, in the first place, that it should have been resorted to at all. It's even more curious that it should have been made, as you said, so transparent.”

“I don't agree. Terry is devious, but she isn't very smart.”

“Maybe so. Anyway, I've made inquiries at the university library, and no one seems to remember Mrs. Miles's being there at the time the ad specified. That doesn't necessarily mean, of course, that she wasn't there. It's a busy place, and she could have gone unnoticed.” Bartholdi paused again. Then he suddenly said, “Did
you
happen to see her, Professor Bowers?”

“I?” Otis's voice, reacting to the prod, was almost a yelp. “Not I! Why do you ask me?”

“Because you were on the scene. At least the girl at the charging desk said you went into the stacks about that time.”

“Did I? Yes, I recall now that I did. I had to consult a certain book. I used one of the carrels for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, then I left.”

“The girl at the desk doesn't remember your leaving.”

“I didn't go out past her. I went down the stairs of the stacks to the basement and out a rear door.”

“Did you leave the campus?”

“No. I went to the physics lab and worked on an experiment until rather late. I was alone in the lab, so I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it. When I finished, I went directly home.”

“Did you and Mrs. Bowers meet on the campus and come home together?”

“We did
not,”
Ardis said. “I got home about noon with a migraine headache. I took some aspirin and a sleeping pill and went to bed. I slept most of the afternoon.”

By the asperity of her tone, Bartholdi gathered that Otis, having placed himself under suspicion through carelessness, design, or both, was being deliberately left to save or hang himself as best he could. Ardis, judging from the set of her jaws, did not especially care which. Bartholdi was prompted to his next remark by a contrary imp impelled by a malice of its own.

“I see,” he said. “You were, as we say, Mr. Bowers, at the scene of the crime at the significant time.”

“Crime?” shrieked Ardis. “What crime?”

“Just a manner of speaking.” Bartholdi rose. “Thank you both.”

Otis went with him to the door. Half opening it, he whirled on Bartholdi and spoke in a rush—as if, having something painful to say, he meant to say it in one breath and get it over with.

“I know what's on your mind, Captain! Fanny or Farley or Ben or someone has told you about Terry and me. Whatever they said, it must have been mostly untrue. I
assure
you there was never really anything between us. Now there is nothing at all. Absolutely nothing.”

“Oh?” said Bartholdi.

“It's true. I
assure
you it is. I know things look bad because of that damn Personal. Because it was signed with the initial letter of my given name. I've been thinking about that, and I'm convinced it was done
deliberately
. As a rotten trick to get me in hot water—all over again. If my wife hadn't seen the Personal, someone would have mentioned it to her. Do you know what I think? I think Terry had it put in the paper herself! She's malicious enough to enjoy making trouble for people! She thinks it's amusing!”

Bartholdi's eyes, fastened on Otis's serio-comic face, widened briefly in surprise. Otis's explanation of the Personal was one that he had not thought of. It made a certain kind of sense. It not only explained why the item had been published, but also why it had been published in such transparent terms as to be readily understood by anyone familiar with the parties involved. And Terry's real appointment, it was practically certain, had been the one with O'Hara that O'Hara had mentioned.

“You make her sound,” he said, “like a very unpleasant person.”

“She's more than that. She's
dangerous.”

With a final nod of his head, like an exclamation point, Otis slammed the door. Bartholdi, retreating down the hall, was forced to agree. Terry Miles had been dangerous. And, dead, she was more dangerous than she had ever been alive.

The danger, however, was no longer dispersed. It was pointed, like a loaded gun, directly at her murderer.

Going down the stairs at the end of the hall, Bartholdi continued his descent to the basement. His nose told him, as he approached Orville Reasnor's door, that the building superintendent had recently cooked his dinner. The smell of it hung heavily in the hall. Among other things, Bartholdi's nose said, there was onion in it.

Orville, opening his door, brought his own odor with him; and if onion was still in it, it was not smellable. Orville's perfume, Bartholdi decided, was compounded of pine-scented disinfectant and stale perspiration.

He identified himself and declined an invitation to enter. “I just want to ask you a question or two.”

“What about?” Orville's tone clearly implied that he was an employee of infinite discretion. “Has Prof Miles finally got the police after that floozy wife of his? If he has, there's no use asking me anything about it. I mind my own business.”