She looked at him with the impersonal appraisal one would give an insect impaled on a pin and said, “I’ve got lots of proof. Here’s a picture — a family group taken the year my mother died. I was six at the time, almost seven.”
She extracted a somewhat faded photograph from her purse. It was of the peculiar muddy tone which characterized the matte-surface prints of that period. It was a square picture three and a half inches by three and a half inches, and showed a man and a woman seated on what was apparently the upper step of a front porch. The man was holding a girl on his knee. Despite the pigtails and extreme youth of the girl in the picture, the resemblance to Doris Wickford was very pronounced.
Wenston pursed his lips, caught Mason’s eye, and almost imperceptibly nodded.
“You remember your father?” Mason asked.
“Naturally. Of course, it’s the memory of a girl of seven years of age. I was seven the last time I saw him. I suppose there are some things on which my memory is distorted, and you’ll have to make allowances for youth, but aside from that, I remember him quite distinctly, numerous little things about him, his tolerance, his unfailing consideration of the rights of others, and, what didn’t impress me as being particularly remarkable at the time but what does now that I’ve seen more of the world, is that I never knew him to lose his temper over anything, or say a sharp word to anyone. And yet the man must have been beset by worries.”
“Where did you live?”
“The address is on this letter,” she said. “It was in Denver, Colorado.”
“You lived there all the time until your father disappeared?”
“He didn’t disappear. He simply went away. There weren’t any jobs in Denver, and...”
“All right, have it your own way,” Mason interposed. “Had you lived there long? I notice that your birth certificate says that you were born in California.”