The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

by Rex Stout

  Cramer spoke. It's been twenty-three days. He was hoarse. That was unusual. Usually it took ten minutes or so with Wolfe to get him hoarse. Also his big round face was a little redder than normal, but that could have been the July heat.

  Twenty-five, Wolfe said. Ellen Tenzer died the night of June eighth.

  Twenty-three since I was here. Cramer settled back. What's the matter? Are you blocked?

  Yes, sir.

  The hell you are. By what or whom?

  A corner of Wolfe's mouth went up an eighth of an inch. I couldn't answer that without telling you what I'm after.

  I know you couldn't. I'm listening.

  Wolfe shook his head. Mr. Cramer. I am precisely where I was twenty-three days ago. I have no information for you.

  That's hard to believe. I've never known you to mark time for over three weeks. Do you know who killed Ellen Tenzer?

  I can answer that. No.

  I think you do. Have you any other client at present than Mrs. Richard Valdon?

  I can answer that too. No.

  Then I think you know who killed Ellen Tenzer. Obviously there's a connection between her murder and whatever Mrs. Valdon hired you to do. I don't need to spell it all out the buttons, Anne Tenzer, the overalls, the baby Ellen Tenzer had boarded, the baby in Mrs. Valdon's house, Goodwin's going to Mahopac to see Ellen Tenzer, her sudden departure after he had seen her. Do you deny that there is a direct connection between Goodwin's seeing Ellen Tenzer and the murder?

  No. Nor affirm it. I don't know. Neither do you.

  Nuts. Cramer was getting hoarser. You can add as well as I can. If you mean neither of us can prove it, okay, but you intend to. I don't know what Mrs. Valdon hired you to do, but I know damn well you intend to tag that murderer, provided it wasn't her. I don't think it was, because I think you know who it was, and if it was her you would have got from under before now. I can tell you why I think you know.

  Please do.

  I'm damn sure you would like to know. Do you deny that?

  I'll concede it as a hypothesis.

  All right. You're spending Mrs. Valdon's money like water. Panzer and Durkin and Cather have been on the job for three weeks. They're here every day, and sometimes twice a day. I don't know what they're doing, but I know what they're not doing, and Goodwin too. They're absolutely ignoring Ellen Tenzer. None of them has been to Mahopac, or seen that Mrs. Nesbitt, or seen Anne Tenzer, or dug into Ellen Tenzer's record, or questioned her friends or neighbors, or contacted any of my men. They haven't shown the slightest interest in her, including Goodwin. But you would like to know who killed her. So you already know.

  Wolfe grunted. That's admirably specious, but drop it. I give you my word that I haven't the faintest notion of who killed Ellen Tenzer.

  Cramer eyed him. Your word?

  Yes, sir.

  That settled that. Cramer knew from experience that when Wolfe said my word it was straight and there was no catch in it. Then what the hell, he demanded, are Panzer and Durkin and Cather doing? And Goodwin?

  Wolfe shook his head. No, sir. You have just said that you know what they're not doing. They're not trespassing in your province. They're not investigating a homicide. Nor Mr. Goodwin. Nor I.

  Cramer looked at me. You're under bail.

  I nodded. You ought to know.

  You spent the night in Mrs. Valdon's house. Last night.

  I raised a brow. There are two things wrong with that statement. First, it's not true. Second, even if it were true, what would it have to do with homicide?

  What time did you leave?

  I didn't. I'm still there.

  He turned a hand over. Look, Goodwin. You know I've got to depend on reports. The eight-to-two man says you entered at nine-twenty-five and didn't come out. The two-to-eight man says you didn't come out. I want to know which one missed you. What time did you leave?

  I was wondering what you came for, I said. I knew it couldn't be homicide, the way you were flopping around. So you're checking on the boys. Fine. By a quarter to two Mrs. Valdon and I were somewhat high, and we went out to dance on the sidewalk in the summer night. At a quarter past two she went back in and I left. So they both missed me. Also, of course You're a clown and a liar. He slowly raised a hand and pinched his nose. He looked at Wolfe. He got a cigar from his pocket, glared at it, rolled it between his palms, stuck it in his mouth, and clamped his teeth on it. I could get your licenses with a phone call to Albany, he said.

  Wolfe nodded. No doubt.

  But you're so goddam pigheaded. He removed the cigar. You know I can get your license. You know I can take you down and book you as a material witness. You know you'll be wide open on a felony charge if you get stuck in the mud. But you're so goddam bullnecked I'm not going to waste my breath trying to put the screw on you.

  That's rational.

  Yeah. But you've got a client. Mrs. Richard Valdon. You're not only withholding evidence yourself, you and Goodwin you have told her to.

  Does she say so?

  She doesn't have to. Don't possum. Of course you have. She's your client and she's clammed up. The DA has asked her down and she won't go. So we'll take her.

  Isn't that a little brash? A citizen with her background and standing?

  Not with what we know she knows. It was the buttons on the overalls that sent Goodwin to see Ellen Tenzer. The overalls were on the baby that Mrs. Valdon says was left in her vestibule and is now in her house. So You said Mrs. Valdon is mute.

  She told at least two people the baby was left in her vestibule when she was alone in the house. She hasn't told us, but if she has any sense she will, if she's clean. She'll tell us everything she knows if she's clean, including what she hired you to do and what you've done. I don't think it was anything as raw as kidnaping because she had a lawyer make it legal on a temporary basis. But I'm damn sure the baby in her house is the one Ellen Tenzer had in her house until around May twentieth. There were two overalls in Ellen Tenzer's house exactly like the ones Goodwin showed to AnneTenzer, with the same kind of buttons. Those goddam buttons.

  It seemed to me beside the point for him to be nursing an anti-button grudge, but maybe he had had an interview with Nicholas Losseff.

  He was going on. So I want to know what Mrs. Valdon knows, and what you know, about that baby. The DA can't get anything out of her lawyer or her doctor, and of course they're privileged. The nurse, and the maid and the cook aren't privileged, but if they know anything they've been corked. The nurse claims that all she knows about it is that it's a boy, it's healthy, and it's between five and seven months old. So Mrs. Valdon is not its mother. She didn't have a baby in December or January.

  I have given you my word, Wolfe add, that I have no notion of who killed Ellen Tenzer.

  I heard you.

  I now give you my word that I know no more about that baby its parentage, its background, who put it in Mrs. Valdon's vestibule than you do.

  I don't believe it.

  Nonsense. Certainly you do. You know quite well I wouldn't dishonor that fine old phrase.

  Cramer glared. Then what in the name of God do you know? What did she hire you to do? Why have you kept her covered? Why have you told her to clam?

  She consulted me in confidence. Why should I be denied a privilege that is accorded to lawyers and doctors, even those who are patently unworthy of it? She had violated no law, she had done nothing for which she was obliged to account, she had no knowledge of an actionable offense. There was no. What did she hire you to do?

  Wolfe nodded. There's the rub. If I tell you that, with all details, or if she tells you, she will be a public target. When the baby was left in her vestibule it was wrapped in a blanket, and attached to the blanket inside, with an ordinary bare pin, was a slip of paper with a message on it. The message had been printed with rubber typo one of those kits that are used mostly by children. Therefore What did it say?

  You're interrupting. Therefore it was useless as a pointer.It was the mess
age that moved Mrs. Valdon to come to me. If I. Where is it?

  If I told you what it said my client would be subjected to vulgar notoriety. And it I want that message and I want it now!

  You have interrupted me four times, Mr. Cramer. My tolerance is not infinite. You would say, of course, that the message would not be published, and in good faith, but your good faith isn't enough. No doubt Mrs. Nesbitt was assured that her name wouldn't become known, but it did. So I reserve the message. I was about to say, it wouldn't help you to find your murderer. Except for that one immaterial detail, you know all that I know, now that you have reached my client. As for what Mrs. Valdon hired me to do, that's manifest. I engaged to find the mother of the baby. They have been at that, and that alone, for more than three weeks Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Panzer, Mr. Durkin, and Mr. Cather. You ask if I'm blocked. I am. I'm at my wit's end.

  I'll bet you are. Cramer's eyes were slits. If you're reserving the message why did you tell me about it?

  To explain why Mrs. Valdon is at such pains about a baby left in her vestibule. To prevent her harassment I had to tell you what she hired me to do, and if I told you that, I had to tell you why.

  Of course you've got the message.

  I may have. If you have in mind getting a judge to order me to produce it, it will not be available. Don't bother.

  I won't. Cramer stood up. He took a step, threw the cigar at my wastebasket, and missed as usual. He looked down at Wolfe. I don't believe there was a message. I noticed you didn't use that fine old phrase. I want the real reason Mrs. Valdon is spending a fortune on a stray baby, and keeping her lip buttoned, and if I don't get it from you, by God I'll get it from her. And if there was a message I'll get that from her.

  Wolfe hit the desk with his fist. After all this! he roared. After I have indulged you to the utmost! After I have given you my word on the two essential points! You would molest my client!

  You're damn right I would. Cramer took a step toward the door, remembered his hat, reached across the red leather chair to get it, and marched out. I went to the hall to see that he was on the outside when he shut the door. When I stepped back in, Wolfe spoke.

  No mention of anonymous letters. A stratagem?

  No. The mood he's in, he would have used any club he had. So it wasn't Upton. Not that that matters. There were a dozen lines to her.

  He took in air through his nose, clear down, and let it out through his mouth. She knows nothing he doesn't know, except the message. Should you tell her to talk, reserving only that?

  No. If she answers ten questions they'll make it a million. I'll go and tell her what to expect, and I'll be there when they come with a warrant. I suggest you should phone Parker. Tomorrow's the Fourth of July, and arranging bail on a holiday can be a problem.

  The wretch, he growled, and as I headed for the front I was wondering whether he meant Cramer or the client. When Saul Panzer phoned at half past three Saturday afternoon, July 7, to report that he had closed the last gap on the adoption, eliminating the girl who worked in Willis Krug's office, the second stage of the mother hunt was done. A very superior job by all five of us (I might as well include Wolfe): 148 girls and women covered and crossed off, and nobody's face scratched. Very satisfactory. Nuts. I told Sal that would be all for now but there might be more chores later. Fred and Orrie had already been turned loose.

  Wolfe sat and scowled at whatever his eyes happened to light on. I asked him if he had any program for me, and when he gave me a look that the situation fully deserved but I didn't, I told him I was going to a beach for a swim and would be back Sunday night. He didn't even ask where he could reach me, but before I left I put a slip on his desk with a phone number. It belonged to a cottage on Long Island which Lucy Valdon had rented for the summer.

  Cramer's bark had been worse than the DA's bite. She hadn't even had her name is the paper. When I arrived at Eleventh Street, Tuesday noon, and told her a caller would be coming she had a mild attack of funk, and she didn't eat much lunch, but when a Homicide Bureau dick came around three o'clock he didn't even have a warrant. Just a written request, signed by the DA himself. And when she phoned some four hours later she was already back home. The captain in charge of the bureau and two assistant DA's had each had a go at her, and one of them had been fairly tough, but she had lost no hide. The trouble with a clam is that you have only two choices: just sit and look at her, or lock her up. And she was an Armstead, she owned a house, she had a lot of friends, and the chance that she had killed Ellen Tenzer or knew who had was about one in ten million. So she spent the Fourth of July at the beach cottage with the baby, the nurse, the maid, and the cook. It had five bedrooms and six baths. What if the rooms are all occupied and a Homicide Bureau dick drops in and wants to take a bath? You have to be equipped.

  Ordinarily, when I am out and away I forget the office and the current job, if any, and especially I forget Wolfe, but that Sunday at the beach my hostess was the client, so as I lay on the sand while she was inside feeding the baby I took a look at the prospect. One hundred per cent gloom. It often happens with the first look at a job that there seems to be no place to start, but you can always find some little spot to peck at. This was different. We had been at it nearly five weeks, we had followed two lines and come to a dead end both times, and there was no other possible line that I could see. I was about ready to buy the idea that Richard Valdon had not been the baby's father, that he had never met the girl who was its mother, and that she was some kind of a nut. She had read his books or seen him on television, and when she had a baby it wasn't convenient to keep, she had decided to arrange for it to be named Valdon. If it was something screwy like that, she was a needle in a haystack and the only hope was to forget the mother and go after the murderer, and the cops had been doing that for a solid month. At least ninety-nine per cent gloom. On my back on the sand with my eyes closed, I pronounced aloud an unrefined word, and Lucy's voice came. Archie! I suppose I should have coughed.

  I scrambled up and we made for the surf.

  And Monday morning at eleven o'clock Wolfe walked into the office as if he were bound for somewhere, put the orchids in the vase, sat, and without glancing at the mail said, Your notebook.

  That started the third stage.

  By lunchtime we had settled the last detail of the program and all that remained was to carry it out, which of course was my part. It took me only three days to get it act, but it was another four before the ball started to roll, because the Sunday Gazette appears only on Sunday. My three days went as follows.

  MONDAY AFTERNOON. Back to the beach to sell the client on it. She balked and I stayed for dinner. It wasn't so much the moving back to town she objected to, it was the publicity, and it would have been no go if I hadn't stretched a point and mixed personal relations with business relations. When I left I had her promise to be back at Eleventh Street by Wednesday noon and to stay as long as necessary.

  TUESDAY MORNING. To Al Posner, co-owner of the Posart Camera Exchange on 47th Street, to persuade him to come and help me buy a baby carriage. Back at his place with it, I left the selection of the cameras and their installation to him, after explaining how they were to be used, and he promised to have it ready by Wednesday noon.

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON. To Lon Cohen's office on the twentieth floor of the Gazette Building. If Lon has a title I don't know what it is. Only his name is on the door of the small room, the second door down the hall from the big corner office of the publisher. I have been there maybe a hundred times over the years, and at least seventy of them he was at one of the three phones on his desk when I entered. He was that Tuesday. I took the chair at the end of the desk and waited.

  He hung up, passed his hand ova his smooth black hair, swiveled, and aimed his quick black eyes at me. Where'd you get the sunburn?

  I don't burn. You have no fling for color. I patted my cheek. Rich russet tan.

  When that point had been settled, or rather not settled, I crossed my legs. You're one lucky
guy, I said. Just because I like you, within reason, I walk in and hand you an exclusive that any paper in town would pay a grand for.

  Uh-huh. Say Ah.

  This is not a gift horse you have to look in the mouth of. You may have heard the name Lucy Valdon. The widow of Richard Valdon, the novelist?

  Yeah.

  It will be a Sunday feature, full page, mostly pictures. A good wholesome title, maybe WOMEN LIKE BABIES. What text there is, there won't be much, will be by one of your word artists. It will tell how Mrs. Valdon, the young, beautiful, wealthy widow of a famous man, with no child of her own, has taken a baby into her luxurious home and is giving it her loving care. How she has hired an experienced nurse who is devoted to the little toddler no, it can't toddle yet. Maybe the little angel or the little lambkin. I'm not writing it. How the nurse takes it out twice a day in its expensive carriage, from ten to eleven in the morning and from four to five in the afternoon, and wheels it around Washington Square, so it can enjoy the beauties of nature trees and grass and so forth.

  I gestured. What a poem! If you have a poet on the payroll, swell, but it must include the details. The pictures can be whatever you want Mrs. Valdon feeding the baby, or even bathing it if you like nudes but one picture is a must, of the nurse with the carriage in Washington Square. I'll have to insist on that. Also it will have to be in next Sunday. The pictures can be taken tomorrow afternoon. You can thank me at your leisure. Any questions?

  As he opened his mouth, not to thank me, judging by his expression, a phone buzzed. He turned and got it, the green one, listened and talked, mostly listened, and hung up. You have the nerve of a one-legged man at an ass-kicking convention, he said.