The Mother Hunt

by Rex Stout

  Wolfe grunted. "You can supply no information relevant to the murder."

  I stared. "The hell I can't."

  "I think not. Let's consider it." He leaned back and closed his eyes, but his lips didn't start the in-and-out routine. That was needed only for problems that were really tough. In a minute he opened his eyes and straightened. "It's fairly simple. A woman came with those overalls and hired me to find out where the buttons came from, and I placed that advertisement. It was answered by Beatrice Epps, and she told you of Anne Tenzer, and Anne Tenzer told you of her aunt, and you went to Mahopac. Since the aunt is dead, the rest is entirely at your discretion. You can't be impeached. As a suggestion: she said she was about to leave to keep an appointment, and after a brief conversation you asked permission to wait there until she returned, and she gave it, saying that she didn't know how long it would be. There alone, and curious about the importance of the white horsehair buttons to our client, and having time to pass, you explored the premises. That should do."

  "Not naming the client?"

  "Certainly not."

  "Then it won't be material witness. Withholding evidence. She made the buttons the client wanted to know about, and I was there asking about them, and she got in touch with someone who is connected with the buttons, and the client is connected with the buttons, so they want to ask her questions, so I will name her or else."

  "You have a reply. The client had no knowledge of Ellen Tenzer; she hired me to find out where the buttons came from. Therefore it is highly improbable that Ellen Tenzer had knowledge of the client. We are not obliged to disclose a client's name merely because the police would like to test a tenuous assumption."

  I took a minute to look at it. "We might get away with it," I conceded. "I can take it if you can. As for your suggestion, you left out my going to phone you and buy lunch, but if they dig that up I can say that was after she left. However, I have a couple of questions. Maybe three. Isn't it likely that Ellen Tenzer would still be alive if you hadn't taken this job and run the ad and sent me to see her?"

  "More than likely."

  "Then wouldn't the cops be more likely to nail the character who killed her if they know what we know, especially about the baby?"

  "Certainly."

  "Okay. You said, quote, 'Homicide is their problem, not ours.' If you mean that all the way, it will get on my nerves. It might even cost me some sleep. I saw her and was in her house and spoke with her, and she gave me a drink of water. I'm all for protecting a client's interests, and I'm against Lucy Valdon's being heckled by the cops, and she gave me a martini, but at least she's still alive."

  "Archie." He turned a hand over. "My commitment is to learn the identity of the mother and establish it to the client's satisfaction, and to demonstrate the degree of probability that her husband was the father. Do you think I can do that without also learning who killed that woman?"

  "No."

  "Then don't badger me. It's bad enough without that." He reached to the button to ring for beer.

  Chapter 7

  I WAS IN CUSTODY from 3:42 p.m. Sunday, when Inspector Cramer took me down, to 11:58 a.m. Monday, when Nathaniel Parker, the lawyer Wolfe calls on when only the law will do, arrived at the District Attorney's office with a paper signed by a judge, who had fixed the bail at $20,000. Since the average bail for material witnesses in murder cases in New York is around eight grand, that put me in an upper bracket and I appreciated the compliment.

  Except for the loss of sleep and missing two of Fritz's meals and not brushing my teeth, the custody was no great hardship, and no strain at all. My story, following Wolfe's suggestion with a couple of improvements, was first told to Inspector Cramer in the office, with Wolfe present, and after that, with an assistant DA named Mandel whom I had met before, and an assortment of Homicide Bureau dicks, and at one point the DA himself, all I had to do was hold on. The tone had been set by Wolfe, Sunday afternoon in his bout with Cramer, especially at the end, after Cramer had stood up to go.

  He had had to tilt his head back, which always peeves him. "I owe you nothing," he had said. "I am not obliged by your forbearance. You know it would be pointless to take me along with Mr. Goodwin, since I would be mute, and the only result would be that if at any time in the future I have a suggestion to offer it would not be offered to you."

  "One result," Cramer rasped, "might be that it would be a long time before you could offer any suggestions."

  "Pfui. If you really thought that likely you would take me. You have in your pocket a statement signed by me declaring that I have no knowledge whatever, no inkling, of the identity of the murderer of Ellen Tenzer, and I have good ground for my conviction that my client has none. As for your threat to deprive me of my license, I would sleep under a bridge and eat scraps before I would wantonly submit a client to official harassment."

  Cramer shook his head. "You eating scraps. Good God. Come on, Goodwin."

  We had no inkling of the identity of the mother, either, and had taken no steps to get one, though we hadn't been idle. We had let Saul and Fred and Orrie go. We had read the newspapers. We had sent me to ask Lon Cohen if the Gazette had anything that hadn't been printed. We had also sent me to see the client. We had mailed fifty bucks to Beatrice Epps. We had answered phone calls, two of them being from Anne Tenzer and Nicholas Losseff.

  I admit that it would have been a waste of the client's money to have Saul and Fred and Orrie check on Ellen Tenzer, since that was being done by city employees and journalists. From the papers and Lon Cohen we had more facts than we could use and more than you would care about. She had been a registered nurse but had quit working at it ten years ago, when her mother had died and she had inherited the house at Mahopac and enough to get by on. She had never married but apparently had liked babies, for she had boarded more than a dozen of them during the ten years, one at a time. Where they had come from and gone to wasn't known; specifically, no one knew anything about her last boarder except that it was a boy, it had been about one month old when it had arrived, in March, she had called it Buster, and it had left about three weeks ago. If anyone had ever visited it nobody had seen him come or go. The best source of information about the babies, the local doctor who had been called on as needed, was a tightlip. Lon doubted if even Purley Stebbins had got anything out of him.

  Besides the niece, Anne, the only surviving relatives were a brother and his wife, Anne's parents, who lived in California. Anne was refusing to talk to reporters, but Lon said that apparently she hadn't seen her aunt very often and didn't know much about her.

  When I had got up to go Lon had said, "All take and no give, all right, there's still a balance. But I can ask a question. Did you find the buttons? Yes or no."

  Having played poker with him a lot of nights, I had had plenty of practice handling my face in his presence. "If you had a trained mind like me," I said, "you wouldn't do that. We ran that ad, and now we want to know about Ellen Tenzer, so you assume there's a connection. None at all. Wolfe likes white horsehair buttons on his pants."

  "I raise."

  "For his suspenders," I said, and went.

  The phone call from Nicholas Losseff came Saturday afternoon. I had been expecting it, since of course Anne Tenzer would have told the cops that Archie Goodwin was from the Exclusive Novelty Button Company, and they would see him, and no one enjoys talking with homicide dicks. So he would be sore. But he wasn't. He only wanted to know if I had found out where the buttons came from. I asked him if he had had official callers, and he said yes, that was why he thought I might have news for him. I told him I was afraid I never would have, and then he was sore. If I ever get as hipped on one thing as he was, it won't be buttons.

  Anne Tenzer phoned Sunday morning. I was expecting that too, since my name had been in the papers' accounts of the developments in what the News called the baby-sitter murder. One paper said I was Nero Wolfe's assistant and another said I was his legman. I don't know which one Anne Tenzer had seen. Sh
e was sore, but she didn't seem to know exactly why. Not that she resented my pretending to be a button man, and not that she blamed me for what had happened to her aunt. When we hung up I took a minute to consider it and decided that she was sore because she was phoning me. It might give me the false impression that she wanted to hear my voice again. Which it did. Granting it was false, she should have settled on exactly what she was sore about before she dialed.

  Nobody is ever as famous as he thinks he is, including me. When, keeping an appointment I had made on the phone, I pushed the button in the vestibule on West Eleventh Street, Sunday morning, and was admitted by Marie Foltz, there was no sign that she had seen my name in the paper. I was just an interruption to what she had been doing. And when I entered the big room one flight up and approached the client, who was at the piano, she finished a run before she turned on the bench and said politely, "Good morning. I suppose you have news?"

  My tongue wanted to ask if she had ever finished the martini, but I vetoed it. "Of a sort," I said. "If you have seen the morning paper—"

  "I've seen it but I haven't read it. I never do."

  "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'll 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 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 apa
rt, 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 béchamel 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 the 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 Tenzer 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.