Blunt Darts

was headed out again. By the time I closed the car door, the main door to the house was open, and a middle-aged black woman stood frowning at me.
    “Hello,” I said, “I’m—”
    “I don’t want to know your name. I don’t even know you’re here. Mrs. Kinnington is upstairs. Follow me.
    Maybe, I thought, it’s my breath.
    The central staircase was beautifully maintained, with a polished, curving mahogany handrail atop off-white pickets. The steps were mahogany under a narrow, oriental runner. I glanced left and right as we climbed the stairs. On one side I could see a living room with a large portrait of a young army officer over the mantel. On the other side was the corner of a dining room. Polished hardwood floors and no wall-to-wall, only old, tasteful orientals. A natural product of old, tasteful money.
    At the top of the staircase was an invalid lift, a chair that would slide mechanically up and down on a floor-and-wall track. Through clever coloring, the wall tracks were almost invisible. We turned right, then left. There appeared to be a similar wing on the other side of the stairs. I realized that the house was a good deal bigger than it appeared from the driveway.
    We entered a robin’s-egg-blue bedroom that must have measured thirty by thirty feet. Sitting on a love seat, with a beautiful silver service on a low table in front of her, was a double for the late actress Gladys Cooper. A double except for the eyes, which were flinty-hard and so dark that there was no way to tell where the pupil stopped and the iris began. On one side of her rested a pair of metal braces; on the other was a Princess phone the color of the walls.
    “Good afternoon, sir,” she said. “Thank you, Mrs. Page; that will be all.”
    I half-turned, and Mrs. Page shot me a look that indicated that she was sorry her name had ever been mentioned in my presence. She closed the door behind her.
    “No need to worry about Mrs. Page,” she said in a tone she probably believed to be pleasant. “She and I have an understanding. Please sit down.”
    The least delicate-looking chair in the room had apparently been moved from a now-bare corner to a conversational distance from her. I took it.
    “Will you have some tea?”
    I declined.
    She settled back with hers. “You look younger than I expected,” she said from behind her teacup.
    “It’s the booze,” I replied. “It acts as a preservative.”
    She sniffed a smile at me. “Middle-aged and impudent. Well, that’s probably just the combination I require. Has Miss Jacobs fully informed you of what has happened?”
    “Miss Jacobs has told me everything she believes is important.”
    A better smile this time, and the teacup was replaced on the tray. “Why don’t we begin discussing what I feel is important, then?”
    “Fine. Just so it doesn’t interrupt our train of thought later, my fee is two hundred and fifty dollars per day, plus expenses.”
    “I trust then that you intend working on no other cases save this one?”
    “By some frantic telephoning, I was able to clear my calendar.”
    “Continue.”
    “Second, the chances of one investigator finding one boy two weeks after he has vanished, even assuming he hasn’t been kidnapped, are very, very slim.“
    “He hasn’t been kidnapped.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “There has been no ransom note, and Stephen packed before he left.”
    “Both good reasons, Mrs. Kinnington, but I’m afraid the lack of a ransom note would be consistent with packing if someone were trying to give the impression that the boy had skipped on his own.” She broke eye contact and retrieved her teacup. “Could we please refer to my grandson as ‘Stephen’ rather than ‘the boy’?” she said softly.
    “Of course.” A sincere emotion? Yes, all the more because while the voice changed, the face, more easily controlled, did not.
    “I’m certain Stephen packed himself, because items are missing that another person, even his father, would never have thought to take.”
    I let the reference to the judge pass for the moment. “For instance?”
    “Before we go any further, I really must give you some insight about Stephen. He is an exceptionally gifted child. He was reading at age three. I had feared so that his mother’s behavior and the shock of her death would crush his talents. But if anything, his unfortunate home life seems to have spurred him. His teachers and I, recognizing his abilities, have given him more and