Two Women
It was a beautiful day outside: calm, mild and clear. The distant trees of the park could just be made out in the fading twilight and the lights in the Union Club library were taking on the golden hue that produced a warm glow within us as well. Griswold's soft, rhythmic snore was the touch that made it all seem exactly as it should be.
I speculated idly if I could make matters totally perfect by tipping the scotch and soda in Griswold's hand, and soaking his trouser leg, but common sense told me he'd wake up if I moved a fraction of an inch toward him.
For all I knew, Baranov and Jennings were having the same thought.
I said, "Do either of you ever wonder why we have to spend enormous sums on a police force when Griswold solves all crimes without budging from his chair?"
"Ah," said Jennings, "but we have only Griswold's side of it. I wonder what the police would have to say • about it if we asked them."
Griswold stirred in his high-winged armchair and stabbed us with a sudden glare from one ice-blue eye. "They would say nothing at all," he muttered in his deep voice, "for I have consulted them frequently in cases where that seemed advisable."
"Oh, you did?" I said triumphantly. "You admit, then, that you can't do everything yourself?"
"I never claimed anything else," said Griswold with hauteur, "but I generally prove more useful to them than vice versa. There's a particular case in point that took place not many years ago, but I'm sure you wouldn't want to hear about it."
"Actually," said Baranov, "we wouldn't, but how do we stop you?"
"Well," said Griswold, "since you insist, I'll tell you about it."
Word gets around, of course [said Griswold], that I am a court of last resort. When things seem hopeless, therefore, and people are ashamed of going to the police and can't afford a private detective, they sometimes turn to me.
Through a chain of intermediaries too long to burden you with, I found myself consulted by a Mrs. Harkness, who sat opposite me, face blotched with tears and fingers twisting her handkerchief.
It was a matter of her daughter, with whom she had not been in contact for over a year.
"Why do you come to me now, Mrs. Harkness?" I asked.
"I didn't realize she was gone. She had left for Europe, you see—"
"How old was she?" I asked at once. Mrs. Harkness was a short and dumpy woman who was clearly in middle life.
"She was twenty-eight, sir," she said. "Well, she's over twenty-nine now. Thirty, next month—if she's still alive." Mrs. Harkness was suddenly too far gone to continue, and I waited.
"As I said," she finally went on, "she was twenty-eight when I last saw her, quite the grown woman, supporting herself very well as a medical artist. She had been living on her own for five years, and she was planning to go to Europe, she told me, partly on business and partly for the joy of travel. She warned me she might not have a chance to write to me.
"I understood, of course. She never was much for writing or communicating, but she was very self-sufficient, and quite able to take care of herself—financially and every other way. I didn't think I had any reason to worry.
"However, she said she wouldn't be away more than two or three months, and when over a year passed, and I hadn't heard from her, I wrote to her address in Philadelphia, where she made her home, and the letter came back. I called the apartment complex in which she lived, and it turned out she had not sublet her apartment, but had moved out and placed her furnishings in storage. I went to Philadelphia and located the storage people. She had never reclaimed the furniture, and the bill amounted to quite a sum.
"I became very panicky. I felt she was still in Europe, and I checked various airlines in the hope of finding some starting thread that would help me track her down, but there was no record of her having taken any of them. I don't think she ever went to Europe after all; either it wasn't her plan from the start, or something stopped her. She has simply disappeared off the face of the earth."
I said, "That's harder to do than you think, ma'am. Can you think of any reason she might have wanted to disappear?"
"No," said Mrs. Harkness sharply.
"Was she married?"
"No, but she did have a couple of young men in her life. After all, she was a good-looking woman—five inches taller than I am and slim. She took after her father's side."
"Might she have been pregnant?"
Mrs. Harkness nearly snorted. "Of course not. She was a very methodical and systematic person. Even before she went off to live by herself, she was on the pill and owned a diaphragm. She was not one to take chances."
"Accidents happen even to people who don't take chances—"
Mrs. Harkness said sharply, "Then, if she didn't want a baby, she would have had an abortion. This is not fifty years ago. Neither pregnancy nor illegitimacy is much worried about these days. They certainly offer no reason to disappear."
"True enough, ma'am," I admitted. "Please forgive an elderly man for being behind the times.—Let me ask you, then, to describe your daughter to me. Tell me about her habits, her schooling, anything that might give me any way of identifying her—even the name of her dentists and doctors, if you know them, and even if they treated her years ago."
Her tears began to flow again. "You think she's dead?"
"Not at all," I said as gently as possible. "I merely want as much information as I can get in order to cover all eventualities. For instance, I would like several photographs, if you have them."
It took her quite awhile to give me enough information, and then I let her go.
And I went to the police. I had to. They had files of disappearances and, what's more, had it all computerized.
The head of Missing Persons owed me a favor. Several, in fact. That didn't mean he enjoyed taking time out to help me, but he did it anyway.
"Philadelphia," he said, "and about March of last year. Five feet eight inches tall—" He muttered other facets of the description as he punched the computer keyboard. It took him less than a minute. He looked up and said, "Nothing!"
"How can that be?" I said. "She's a person. She's corporeal. She existed."
The lieutenant grunted. "Disappearance by itself doesn't mean a thing. They don't get into our records unless someone reports them missing. The parents never did till they came to you. There were no other relatives to do so, apparently, and no lover or friend who was close enough to notice she was gone—or to care."
I said, "How about unsolved murders? Any appearances of an unidentified body at the time she disappeared?"
"Not likely," said Delaney. "These days it's pretty hard for a body to be unidentified unless it is hacked up and key portions are hidden or destroyed. But I'll check." And after a while he said, "Only one who could even vaguely qualify and she was black. I gather the one you're interested in isn't black."
"No."
"My guess, then, is that she did go to Europe. The mother's checking of the airlines means nothing. The daughter may have gone under an assumed name, for instance, and she may still be there, or she may have died there—and, in either case, she is certainly out of our jurisdiction. Maybe the Philadelphia police—"
I interrupted. "Why on earth should she leave under an assumed name?"
"She might have been involved in something criminal, or—" Then he stopped and said, "Oh, boy!"
"What now?"
"We had an appearance in this city at the time of your gal's disappearance. Right height, slim—"
"Where is she? Who is she?"
"I don't know. She just disappeared, too."
I brought out the photographs again. "Is this she?"
He looked at them briefly. "Can't say. She avoided notice. She wore a wig, dark glasses, muffling clothes. It's possible she was a member of a terrorist gang. We were about to close in, when she disappeared."
"There's no indication," I said, "that the young woman I'm looking for had any political or social interests that would lead to terrorist activity."
The lieutenant snorted. "All you have is what her mother told you, and her mother has known nothing about her for years now."
"How much do you know?"
He wasn't listening. His lips had gone thin and he said, half to himself, "The FBI is moving in, after our force had done the work. If we can pull it off, before they can—"
"Well," I said impatiently, "what do you know?"
He concentrated on me again, with an effort. "We've gone through her quarters thoroughly. We weren't in time to get her, but when we know all the objects with which a person surrounds herself, we can't help but know a great deal about the person.
"For instance, we have a picture here of a woman who was intensely feminine. She had an imposing battery of makeup, from hair tint to toenail polish. Would you believe she had separate polish for fingers and toes?"
I said dryly, "Perhaps all that is not so much a matter of femininity as paraphernalia for disguise."
"She had flowered toilet paper."
"What?"
"Toilet paper with floral designs on each sheet. Is that for disguise? Or is it just feminine? She was methodical, too. She had an ample supply of everything. Nothing without reserves."
"But she left without taking anything. Why was that?"
"Desperation," said the lieutenant grimly. "She left only an hour before we arrived. There must have been a leak, and when we locate the leaker, he will set records for regrets.—But for now, we will have to get your Mrs. Harkness to make an identification."
"From what?" I asked. "From your list of belongings?"
"Certainly. According to you, Mrs. Harkness described her daughter as feminine and methodical. That fits. She can tell us if her daughter ever used floral toilet paper or toenail polish. She can tell us if the shade of lipstick and the brand of panty hose were the shade and the brand her daughter would wear. If she gives the right answers, I may have a name, a face, and medical records to apply to the terrorist, and that will put me neatly one up on the FBI."
I was looking over the list of belongings—-clothes of all sorts, cosmetics, knickknacks, towels, shampoos, soap, canned food, cutlery, drugstore items for headaches and minor infections, combs, cotton-tipped swabs, mouthwash, pills of various legitimate sorts, foods of various kinds in the refrigerator, books listed by name and title. Clearly, nothing had been omitted. Kitchen matches and toothpicks and dental floss. Some bottles of wine but no smoking paraphernalia, incidentally—but then, young Miss Harkness did not smoke, according to her mother.
I put down the list and said, "Lieutenant, let me stop you from embarrassing yourself—perhaps fatally—vis-avis the FBI. Your alleged terrorist is not my client's daughter." "Oh? You can tell that from the list of belongings?" "Exactly! We are talking of two different women." I was right, of course. Using my information, the lieutenant put the FBI on the right track, instead of the wrong, and was commended rather than laughed at. I may have consulted the police, you see, but they just ended up owing me one more. They caught the terrorist in three days and she was not Miss Harkness.
Griswold took a brisk swig at his scotch and soda, and then mopped his mustache with a handkerchief that was, perhaps, a shade less white than the mustache. He looked smug.
Jennings said, "Come on, Griswold. We make nothing of this, as you well know."
"Indeed?" said Griswold with affected surprise. "I told you, I believe, that Mrs. Harkness's daughter was not yet thirty, and was sexually active? Did I not also rattle off many things on the list of possessions of the terrorist and was there not an important omission?"
"What omission?" demanded Jennings.
"The terrorist seemed both feminine and methodical, yet there was not included in the list of contents of her apartment anything in the way of tampons or sanitary napkins. No woman not quite thirty with Miss Harkness's methodical character could conceivably be without an ample supply. That the terrorist lacked any at all was proof enough that she was probably past the menopause, and over fifty—and so she proved to be."
I said, "Well, then, what was the story on Miss Harkness? Did you find her?"
"That," said Griswold with great dignity, "is another story."