The Chapman Report by Irving Wallace

Author:Irving Wallace [Wallace, Irving]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-05-23T04:32:51+00:00

“The frequency of-“

“Oh, yes. Three times a week,” she blurted.

“Would that be the average?”

“More or less, when he was home. He was away a good deal.”

“Did you engage in petting before-“

She was ready for that one, too. “Yes, of course.”

“Could you describe-“

Hastily, she described it.

“How much time, on the average, did you devote to petting?”

She suffered a moment of panic. Ursula had left that one out. Of had she forgotten to note it? No, Ursula would forget nothing, Odd. She was so thorough. Maybe Ursula had not been asked the question. Why not? And why now? How much time, on the average? How could that be answered? What should it be? An hour? Too fanciful. Too pat. “Fifty minutes,” she said.

Coolly, so she thought it must appear, she went on and on, with no hesitancy, with full confidence, from magnificent performances to incredible satisfactions, always the paragon of enlightened womanhood.

She had replied to a crucial question. There was a momentary silence, and she watched the screen and wondered if he approved.

“Now, as I have it here,” said Paul, “you and your husband were intimate three times weekly, with fifty minutes devoted to petting and an hour devoted to love. Do I have it right?”

The cigarette almost burned her finger, and she hastily rubbed it in the tray. Nerve filaments quivered tautly beneath her skin, and it was difficult to swallow. “Yes,” she said loudly. Too loudly, she decided. “It’s difficult … to remember exactly.”

More questions, too carefully worded, she thought. She wondered.

More answers, too recklessly given, he thought, He wondered.

“To what degree did you enjoy intimate relations with your mate-very much, somewhat, not very much, not at all?”

“I always enjoyed it very much. Isn’t that normal?”

At ten minutes after five, Paul Radford noisily pushed back his chair to indicate clearly that the interview had been terminated. “Well, that gives us everything we need. Thank you very much.”

“It was painless. Thank you.”

He listened intently, and heard her remove the purse from the end table, heard the clack of her high-heeled pumps on the floor, heard the door open and close, and at last he was alone with the coded sex history of Kathleen Ballard, Widow.

Scowling, he took up the sheet, rose, and started around the screen. Twenty minutes stretched between now and the next scheduled interview. He decided that he needed a cup of black coffee in the conference room. Going past the screen into the forbidden female place, he halted a moment to contemplate the empty chair, recently vacated, and the ash tray with the remains of six or seven cigarettes. And then he saw on the floor, beneath the end table, a dark-green wallet.

He moved to the table, kneeled, and picked up the wallet. It was plainly feminine, and because no one else had been in the chair this morning, he knew who its owner must be. Unsnapping it, he pondered how she could have left it behind. Then he recollected when it must have happened. During the first minutes of the interview, he had heard her drop her purse.

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