The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

by Rex Stout

  Then I'll have to brief you. I got a chair and moved it up to a polite distance, and sat. If you never read the papers I suppose you didn't see Mr. Wolfe's ad on Thursday.

  No. An ad?

  Right. You may remember that I thought the buttons on the overalls were unusual, and he thought so too. The ad offered a reward for information about white horsehair buttons, and we got some. After some maneuvering that wouldn't interest you, I went to Mahopac Friday morning do you know where Mahopac is?

  Of course.

  And called on a woman named Ellen Tenzer, having learned that she made white horsehair buttons. We have now learned more about her, not from her. She made the buttons that are on the baby's overalls. And the baby came from her house. It's a small house, no one lived there but her, except the baby. It was there about three months.

  Then she's the mother!

  No. For various good reasons, no. I won't. But she knows who the mother is!

  Probably she did. At least she knew where she got it and who from. But she won't tell because she's dead. She was Dead?

  I'm telling you. After a short talk with her Friday morning I left to get to a phone and send for help, and when I got back to the house her car was gone and so was she. I spent three hours searching the house. I'm reporting only the details that you need to understand the situation. Ellen Tenzer never returned to her house. At six o'clock yesterday morning a cop found a dead woman in a parked car here in Manhattan, Thirty-eighth Street near Third Avenue. She had been strangled with a piece of cord. It was Ellen Tenzer, and it was her car. You would know about that if you read the papers. So she can't tell us anything.

  Her eyes were wide. You mean… she was murdered?

  Right.

  But what That's terrible.

  Yeah. I'm describing the situation. If the police don't already know that I was there and combed the house, including the cellar, they soon will. They'll know that right after I talked with her she drove away in her car, and that about fourteen hours later she was murdered. They'll want to know why I went to see her and what was said. The what was said is no problem, since we were alone and she's dead, but why I went is harder. They'll know I went to ask about buttons, but why? Who was curious enough about buttons to hire Nero Wolfe? They'll want the client's name, in fact they'll demand it, and if they get it you will be invited to the District Attorney's office to answer questions. Then they'll get theories, and probably one of the theories will be that the baby wasn't left in your vestibule, that's just your story to account for having it in your house, and investigating that theory will be a picnic. Your friends will get a big kick out of it. The point is No!

  No what?

  I don't. You're going too fast. She was frowning, concentrating. That's not a story. The baby was left in my vestibule.

  Sure, but it's not a bad theory. I've known a lot worse. The point is that if we name the client you'11 be in for a little trouble, even if they don't happen on that particular theory. And if we refuse. Wait a minute. Her frown was deeper.

  I waited more than a minute while she sorted it out. I guess I'm confused, she said. Do you mean that woman was murdered on account of because you went to see her? What you said or something?

  I shook my head. That's not the way to put it. Put it that she was probably murdered very probably because someone didn't want her to tell something or do something about the baby that was left in your vestibule. Or put it that if the inquiry about the baby hadn't been started and got to her, she wouldn't have been murdered.

  You're saying that I'm responsible for a murder.

  I am not. That's silly. Whoever put the baby in your vestibule with that note pinned to it must have known you would try to find out where it came from. The responsibility for the murder belongs to him, so don't try to claim it.

  I hate it. She was gripping the edges of the bench. I hate it. Murder. You said I would be invited to the District Attorney's office. The questions, the talk There was an if, Mrs. Valdon. If we name the client. I started to add. Why don't you call me Lucy?

  Tell me to in writing and I will. You're very giddy for a girl who doesn't know how to flirt. I started to add, if we refuse to name the client we may be in for trouble, but that's our lookout. We would rather not name you, and we won't, if. If you won't name yourself.

  But I why should I?

  You shouldn't, but maybe you have already. Three people know that you have hired Nero Wolfe your maid, your cook, and your lawyer. Who else?

  Nobody. I haven't told anyone.

  Are you sure?

  Yes.

  Well, don't. Absolutely no one. Not even your best friend. People talk, and if talk about your hiring Nero Wolfe gets to the police, that will do it. Lawyers aren't supposed to talk but most of them do, and on him and the maid and cook we'll have to trust to luck. Don't tell them not to, that seldom helps. People are so damn contrary telling them not to mention something gives them the itch. That doesn't apply to you because you have something to lose. Will you bottle it?

  Yes. But you what are you going to do?

  I don't know. Mr. Wolfe has the brains, I only run errands. I stood up. The immediate problem is keeping you out, that's why I came. They haven't come at us yet, though they found thousands of my prints in that house and as a licensed private detective mine are on file. So they're being cute. For instance, it would have been cute to follow me here. When I left I didn't bother to see if I had a tail; that takes time if he's any good. I walked and made sure of losing him if I had one. I turned, and turned back. If you think we owe you an apology for letting a mother hunt hatch a murder, here it is.

  I owe you an apology. She left the bench. For being rude. That day. She took a step. Are you going?

  Sure, I've done the errand. And if I had a tail he may be sitting on the stoop waiting to ask me where I've been.

  He wasn't. But I had been home less than half an hour when Cramer came and started the wrangle that finally ended at eighteen minutes to four, when he took me.

  When I arrived at the old brownstone shortly after noon on Monday, having been bailed out by Parker and given a lift to 35th Street, I was glad to see, as I entered the office, that Wolfe had kept busy during my absence. He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question.

  Twenty grand, I told him. The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch?

  Sweetbreads in bйchamel sauce with truffles and chervil. Beet and watercress salad. Brie.

  If there's enough you may have some. I headed for the stairs.

  I could list five good reasons why I should have quit that job long ago, but I could list six, equally good, why I shouldn't and haven't. Turning it around, I could list two reasons, maybe three, why Wolfe should fire me, and ten why he shouldn't and doesn't. Of the ten, the big one is that if I wasn't around he might be sleeping under a bridge and eating scraps. He hates to work. It has never been said right out, by either of us, that at least half of my salary is for poking him, but it doesn't have to be.

  But when I poke hard he is apt to ask if I have any suggestions, and therefore, when we returned to the office after lunch that Monday afternoon and he settled back with his book, I didn't let out a peep. If I had poked and he had asked for suggestions I would have had to pass. I had never seen a dimmer prospect. We had found out where the baby came from, and we were worse off than when we started.Three months had passed since it had arrived at Ellen Tenzer's, so that was hopeless. As for the names and addresses and phone numbers I had collected at t
he house, I had spent hours on them Saturday afternoon and evening, and none of them was worth a damn, and anyway the cops had them now and they were working on a murder. If anything useful was going to be uncovered by checking on Ellen Tenor or the baby, the cops would get it. That was probably how Wolfe had it figured as he sat buried in his book. If they tagged the murderer he could go on from there to find the mother. Of course if they tagged someone not only as the murderer but also as the mother, he would have to shave the client's bill, but it would save him a lot of work. I had to admit it would be a waste of Mrs. Valdon's I mean Lucy's money to send Saul and Fred and Orrie chasing around Putnam County.

  So I didn't poke and he didn't work anyhow I assumed he didn't. But when he closed the book and put it down at five minutes to four, and pushed his chair back and rose, to go to the elevator for his afternoon date with the orchids, he spoke.

  Can Mrs. Valdon be here at six o'clock?

  He must have decided on it hours ago, possibly before lunch, because he doesn't decide things while he's reading. But he had put off committing himself until the last minute. Not only would he have to work; he would have to converse with a woman.

  I can find out, I said.

  Please do so. If not at six, then at nine. Since our door may be under surveillance, she should enter at the back. He marched out, and I turned to the phone.

  Entering the old brownstone by the back door is a little more complicated than by the front door, but not much. You come in from 34th Street through a narrow passage between two buildings and end up at a solid wooden gate seven feet high. There is no knob or latch or button to push, and if you have no key for the Hotchkiss lock and haven't been invited you'll need a tool, say a heavy ax. But if you're expected and you knock on the gate it will open, as it did for Lucy Valdon at ten minutes past six that Monday afternoon, and you will be led along a brick walk between rows of herbs, down four steps and on in, and up a stair with twelve steps. At the top, you turn right for the kitchen or left for the office or the front.

  I took Lucy to the office. When we entered, Wolfe nodded, barely, tightened his lips, and eyed her with no enthusiasm as she took the red leather chair, put her bag on the stand, and tossed her stole back, sable or something.

  I told Archie I'm sorry I'm a little late, she said. I didn't realize he would have to wait there for me.

  It was a bad start. Since no client has ever called him Nero or ever will, the Archie meant, to him, either that she was taking liberties or that I already had. He darted a glance at me, turned to her, and took a breath. I don't like this, he said. This is not a customary procedure with me, appealing to a client for help. When I take a job it's my job. But I am compelled by circumstance. Mr. Goodwin described the situation to you yesterday morning.

  She nodded.

  Having settled that point, having got her to acknowledge, by nodding, that my name was Mr. Goodwin, he leaned back. But he may not have made the position sufficiently clear. We're in a pickle. It was obvious that the simplest way to do the job was to learn where the baby had come from; once we know that, the rest would be easy. Very well, we did that; we know where the baby came from; and we are stumped. Ellen Tenzer is dead, and that line of inquiry is completely blocked. You realize that?

  Why yes.

  If you have a reservation about that, dismiss it. To try to learn how, from where, and by whom the baby got to Ellen Tenzer would be inept. Such a job is for the police, with their army of trained men, some of them competent, and their official standing; not for Mr. Goodwin and me; and presumably they are working at it as relevant to their investigation of the murder. So for the present we shall leave Ellen Tenzer to the police, because we must, with this observation: we know that she didn't put the baby in your vestibule. But we How do we know that? Lucy was frowning.

  By inference. She did not attach a piece of paper to a blanket with a bare pin and wrap the blanket around the baby. Mr. Goodwin found a tray half full of safety pins in her house. But he found no rubber-stamp kit and no stamp pad, and one was used for the message on the paper. The inference is not conclusive, but it is valid. I am satisfied that on May twentieth Ellen Tenzer delivered the baby to someone, either at her house or, more likely, at a rendezvous elsewhere. She may or may not have known that its destination was your vestibule. I doubt it; but she knew too much about its history, its origin, so she was killed.

  Then you know that? Lucy's hands were clasped, the fingers twisted. That that's why she was killed?

  No. But it would be vacuous not to assume it. Another assumption: Ellen Tenzer not only did not leave the baby in your vestibule or know that was its destination; she didn't even know that it was to be so disposed of that its source would be unknown and undiscoverable. For if she had known that, she would not have dressed it in those overalls. She knew those buttons were unique and that inquiry might trace their origin. Whatever she. Wait a minute. Lucy was frowning, concentrating. Wolfe waited. In a moment she went on. Maybe she wanted them to be traced.

  Wolfe shook his head. No. In that case her reception of Mr. Goodwin, when she found that they had been traced, would have been quite different. No. Whatever she knew of the baby's past, she knew nothing of its intended future. And whoever left it in your vestibule must have satisfied himself that none of its garments held any clue to its origin, so he didn't know enough about infants' clothing to realize that the buttons were unusual, even extraordinary, and might be traced. But Mr. Goodwin realized it, and so did I.

  I didn't.

  He glared at her. That is informative merely about you, madam, not about the problem. My concern is the problem, and now I not only have to do a job I have undertaken, I must also avoid being charged, along with Mr. Goodwin, with commission of a felony. If Ellen Tenzer was killed to prevent her from revealing facts about the baby that was left in your vestibule, and almost certainly she was, Mr. Goodwin and I are both withholding evidence regarding a homicide, and as I said, we're in a pickle. I do not want to give the police your name and the information you have entrusted to me in confidence. You would be disturbed and pestered, and probably badgered, and you are my client; so my self-esteem would suffer. It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself. But if Mr. Goodwin and I withhold your name and what you have told us, it won't do merely to meet our commitment to you and leave the homicide to the police; in addition to finding the mother, we must either also find the murderer or establish that there was no connection between Ellen Tenzer's death and her association with the baby that was left in your vestibule. Since it's highly probable that there was a connection, I shall be tracking a murderer on your behalf and at your expense. Is that clear?

  Lucy's eyes came to me. I told you I hate it.

  I nodded. The trouble is, you can't just bow out. If you drop it, if you're no longer his client, we'll have to open up, at least I will. I'm a VIP, I'm the one who last saw Ellen Tenzer alive. Then you'll have the cops. Now you have us. You'll just have to take your pick, Mrs. Valdon.

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. She turned, got her bag from the stand, opened it, took out a slip of paper, rose, stepped to me, and handed me the paper. I took it and read, handwritten in ink:

  Monday To Archie Goodwin Call me Lucy. Lucy Valdon Picture it. In Wolfe's office, in his presence, his client hands me a note which she must know I would prefer not to show him. It took handling. I raised one brow high, which always annoys him because he can't do it, put the paper in my pocket, and cocked my head at her, back in the red leather chair. Not if you're no longer a client, I told her.

  But I am. I hate it, the way it is now, but of course I am.

  I looked at Wolfe and met his eye. Mrs. Valdon prefers us to the cops. Good for our self-esteem.

  She spoke, to him. It was the way you said it, tracking a murderer on my behalf. Do you mean must you do that first?

  No, he snapped. She was not only a woman, she was a creature who had passed me a private note before his
eyes. That will be incidental but it must be done. So I proceed?

  Yes.

  Then you'll have to help. For the present we leave Ellen Tenzer to the police and start at the other end the birth of the baby, and its conception. On Tuesday you gave Mr. Goodwin, with reluctance, the names of four women. We must have more. We want the names of all women who were or might have been in contact with your husband, however briefly, in the spring of last year. All of them.

  But that's impossible. I couldn't name all of them. She gestured with the wedding-ring hand. My husband met hundreds of people that I didn't meet for instance, I almost never went to literary cocktail parties with him. They bored me, and anyway he had a better time if I wasn't there.

  Wolfe grunted. No doubt. You will give Mr. Goodwin all the names you do know, reserving none. Their owners will not suffer any annoyance, since inquiry about them can be restricted to one point, their whereabouts at the time the baby was born. It is an advantage that a woman can't carry a baby, and bear it, without interruption of her routine. Very few of them will have to be approached directly, possibly none. You will omit no one.

  All right. I won't.

  You also gave Mr. Goodwin some names of men, and we shall now make use of them, at least some, but for that we need your help. We can start with only a few of them, say three or four, and go on to others if we must. I shall want to see them, and they will come here, since I never leave my house on business. I need not see them separately; in a group will do. You will arrange that, after they have been selected.

  You mean I'll ask them to come to see you?

  Yes.

  But what will I tell them?

  That you have hired me to make an investigation for you, and I wish to talk with them.

  But then… She was frowning. Archie told me to tell no one, not even my best friend.

  Mr. Goodwin was following instructions. On further consideration I have concluded that the risk must be taken. You say that your husband knew hundreds of people you have never met. I trust that the hundreds' was an overestimate, but if there are dozens I must have every name. You say you hate it the way it is now. Confound it, madam, so do I. If I had known the job would develop thus a murder, and my involvement, and routine fishing in a boundless sea I wouldn't have taken it. I must see the three or four men who are best qualified to complete the list of your husband's acquaintances, and to give me information about him which you do not have. After you and Mr. Goodwin select them, will you get them here?