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broke for lunch.
    After refilling the cartons of microfilm I headed for fresh air and sunlight. Better make that just plain air and sunlight. On the way out I stopped in a phone booth and called my own number. My answering service reported, sleepily, that there had been no calls of any kind for me all morning. That was mildly depressing. It would make nine days without ordinary business.
    For lunch I had to choose between quality and convenience. Having resolved to live the day with a degree of class, I opted for quality. That meant Joe’s Fine Food, and a walk of five blocks to the corner of Vermont and Illinois.
    Joe’s has only been around for a few years, but it’s one of the best joints in the city for lunch. Especially on Monday and Tuesday, when it specializes in Mexican food. But even on Thursday, it is good enough for a man of quality.
    I was moderately lucky to get a counter seat near the door. The place was packed. It really takes something for a lunch joint to be packed. I know about things like that because my mother runs a luncheonette.
    I ordered a cheeseburger with other delicacies. And took a drag on a glass of water.
    I reflected on the Crystals’ European tour. They’d been gone for nearly seven months. If Eloise was sixteen, the odds were good that she had been conceived in Europe.
    That realization did a creditable job of depressing me.
    Looking for a biological father is hard enough when you have a finite number of boyfriends sniffing around a young girl’s door. But when the girl was impregnated nearly seventeen years ago while traveling in Europe, the choice of biological fathers is dazzling.
    I ate my meal with resignation and with a good deal less relish than I had expected.
    If my conjecture was right, if Eloise was born between about the middle of June, 1954, and say, the middle of December, she was conceived on a foreign shore. And in that case it was probably best to cut losses—half a day’s work—and let her find a big detective agency with contacts abroad. But me?
    I had an extra coffee.
    Ah, well. Something that looks like an interesting case walks in the door, during a period which is otherwise a drought, and then it walks out again.
    I had another coffee. And mentally I let my head sink to the counter.
    Ah, well. Don’t let’s hurt other folks. I left a big tip, and went back into the autumn sun.
    All problems at the beginning are too big to grasp. The important knack is to break them down into individual soluble parts. To ask the right questions.
    Just what questions had I asked? Only “Where was the mother at the time of conception?” So I hadn’t gotten an answer I wanted. So big deal.
    I hadn’t even asked the real question. I hadn’t gone to Fleur Crystal and asked her straight. Maybe she would tell me. Maybe if I charmed her. Or tricked her. There were all kinds of possibilities. All kinds of things I could do.
    I increased my stride. One of the questions I had to ask was whether the blood typings were the way Eloise said they were.
    I picked up the microfilm reels for April, 1954, through December, 1954. And I cranked inexorably on, more aggressive than I had been in the morning.
    On June 3 I learned that Fleur Crystal was expecting. Eloise’s first appearance. The baby and heir was due in the middle of October. I counted fingers to reveal that the conception was located roughly mid-February, 1954. Right in the middle of a cold French winter.
    I did not jump straight to October. I was still interested in finding Estes’ death. And I was also interested in the possibility of one of those wretched rituals called a baby shower. I might pick out a useful friend or two to talk about Fleur with.
    But I never got to wet my mind with a baby shower. All through the summer none was reported. I found Estes Graham’s obituary instead. He died of a heart attack on August 20, 1954. He had not lived to see his