The Father Hunt

That took a full hour, and I barely made it home by lunchtime. Wolfe was standing in the doorway to the dining room when I entered. By standing there he was asking me, without putting it into words, why I hadn't phoned that I might be late, but since I was only three minutes late I ignored it and merely asked him if he wanted to take a glance inside the box before lunch. He said no, and I took it to the office and put it on his desk and then went and joined him at the table. As I sat I said it wouldn't hurt his appetite to know that she had taken our suggestion and would meet me at her bank Monday morning, so if more than the retainer was needed it would be available.

As a rule we stay at the table for coffee at lunch, though not at dinner, but sometimes, when I have or may have something to report about a job he is committed to, he tells Fritz to bring it to the office, and my bringing the box showed that he was committed. So when we had put away the diced watermelon, which had been sprinkled with granulated sugar and refrigerated in a cup of sherry for an hour, we moved across the hall and Fritz brought coffee. I opened the box, but he merely gave it a brief glance and sat, and I went to my desk, swung my chair around, and got my notebook from a pocket.

"I was there nearly three hours," I said. "Do you want the crop?"

"No." He was pouring coffee. "Only what may be useful."

"Then you should be back at your book in about ten minutes. To simplify it I'll make it Elinor and Amy. The most interesting item is the fact that Elinor had no photographs anywhere, not even at the bottom of a drawer. Not one. That's extremely significant, so please tell me what it signifies."

He made a noise, not enough of one to be called a grunt. "Did you get nothing at all?" He sipped coffee.

"Close to it. The trouble is, Amy doesn't know anything. I doubt if there's another girl anywhere who had a mother for twenty-two years and knows so little about her. One thing she knows, or thinks she does, is that her mother

hated her and tried hard to hide it. She says that Amy means 'beloved,' and that Elinor probably wasn't aware that she was being sarcastic when she named her that."