Honest Doubt (A Kay Fansler Mystery Series)

CHAPTER ONE "Some work of noble note, may yet be done." --Tennyson, "Ulysses" When I had finished writing up my report, covering everything in the investigation as it then stood, I leaned back in my chair and gave myself up to facing facts. So far, so good, but only so far and no further. I knew the moment had come to call upon Kate Fansler. She had been recommended to me as the logical, perhaps the only person who could be of help at the current impasse. As a private investigator of some reputation and accomplishment, I never shy away from consulting anyone who can offer me a shove, however minimal, in the right direction, but Kate Fansler gave me pause. She was a detective herself, if strictly amateur, and a professor into the bargain. I don't mind asking experts for explanations in any abstruse field--I'm ready to admit what's beyond my powers--but I couldn't help fearing that the air that lady breathed was a little too rarefied for my earthly self. And then of course there was the fact that she was said to be slender. I, being fat, dislike thin women--I'm more open-minded about men--and in the end I admitted this to my client, the one who had suggested Fansler. I was guaranteed that though she was undoubtedly skinny--that term, being vaguely insulting, appeals to me--Fansler never worried about her weight or threatened to go on a diet. If there is one thing more revolting than another, it is thin women complaining about their fat and screaming about their need to lose weight. Not Fansler, I was assured. With her it's a matter of metabolism--genes, really. She eats what she wants and hates health food and any form of low-fat diet, my client told me. Well, blessings are unevenly distributed in this world, though Hindus think we all earned our fate by our actions in a previous life. I probably was starving, skeletal, and yearning for food every minute of the day and night. Hence my current figure. I'd gone to many doctors and diet specialists, all of whom tried to determine why I was fat, and how I might get thin. It was always assumed it was some problem with my psyche. One day I happened to meet up with a doctor who explained that there was such a thing as an inherited tendency to largeness. He held to this view even under my vigorous cross-examination. I began not only to accept the fact that I was fat, that my father had weighed three hundred pounds and my mother not far behind, but that, furthermore, once people got used to the idea of my size it might not matter that much anymore. It was genes with me, same as with Fansler. But of course it still matters. I collect plump people who are accomplished as well as heavy. It helps to knit up my raveled self-esteem. People seldom realize it, but fat is the only affliction that has never been protected by affirmative action, antibias laws, or any other category like sexual harassment, date rape, or domestic violence, though I seem to remember someone once wrote a book called Fat Is a Feminist Issue. The point is, it's okay to say and do anything to fat people short of murder, and to refuse them a job because you think their failure to lose weight is a character and mental defect. They don't even call it heft-disadvantaged or weightily challenged. There was Nero Wolfe. It's easier for men, of course, with this as with everything else. Dorothy Sayers was fat. When she lived in Witham, they used to say that her husband drank and she ate. When she wasn't translating Dante, that is. When she'd had enough of Peter Wimsey. I'm afraid I've gotten in the habit of mentioning my size to bring it out into the open when I meet someone so that we can go on to other things. I'd have to be careful not to overdo that with Kate Fansler. Enough, I told myself firmly.Cross, Amanda is the author of 'Honest Doubt (A Kay Fansler Mystery Series)' with ISBN 9780345440112 and ISBN 0345440110.