The Mother Hunt (12 page)

“Archie.”

“Yes?”

“Just six weeks ago I was just going along. There was no baby upstairs, I had never seen you, I wouldn’t have dreamed it would ever be … like this. When I say I hate it you understand, don’t you?”

“Sure I do.” I glanced at my watch, finished the martini, put the glass down, and rose. “I’d better mosey.”

“Must you? Why not stay for dinner?”

“I don’t dare. It’s half past five. It’s even money that either Stebbins or Inspector Cramer will turn up at six or soon after, and I should be there.”

She pulled her shoulders in, released them, and left the couch. “And all I have to do is say nothing.” She stood, her head tilted up. “Then come back later and tell me. Business relations.”

I don’t know what it was, what she said or the way she said it or something in her eyes. Whatever it was, I smiled and then I laughed, and then she was laughing
too. Half an hour earlier it wouldn’t have been reasonable to suppose that we would so soon be having a good laugh together. Obviously it was a good way to end a conversation, so I turned and went.

It was two minutes short of six o’clock when I used my key on the door of the old brownstone, went to the kitchen to tell Fritz I was back, and then to the office. Even people who know better ask a lot of unnecessary questions—for instance, my asking Fritz if there had been any phone calls. In the first place, he would have told me without being asked, and in the second place, Cramer or Stebbins hardly ever phoned. They just came, and nearly always at eleven a.m. or around half past two, after lunch, or at six p.m., since they knew Wolfe’s schedule. As I entered the office the elevator was whining down the shaft.

Wolfe walked in. Usually he goes to his desk before asking or looking a question, but that time he stopped short of it, glowered at me, and growled, “Well?”

“Well enough,” I said. “What you would expect. Being set for a jolt is one thing and actually getting it is another. She was shying a little. She needed some assurance that you can stay in the saddle and I supplied it. She understands why she makes no exceptions when she’s not answering questions. Purley asked her if she knew Ellen Tenzer. I assume we’re standing pat.”

“Yes.” He crossed to the bookshelves and looked at titles. I had stopped long ago being nervous when his eyes went up to the two top shelves. If he decided to have another go at one of the books up out of reach he would get the ladder, mount it as high as necessary, and step down, and he wouldn’t even wobble, let alone tumble. This time no title, high or low, appealed to him, and he moved to the big globe and started twirling it,
slow motion. Presumably looking for a spot where the mother of a discarded baby might be hiding out, or perhaps for one where he could light when he had to blow town.

At dinnertime no company had come. There had been two phone calls, but not on official business. One was from Saul, reporting that two more names had been crossed off, and the other was Orrie. He had eliminated one more and had only two left. Fred was in Arizona. We were about to the end of the string.

At the table, when Wolfe finished his strawberries Romanoff, used his napkin, and pushed his chair back, I got to my feet and said, “I won’t join you for coffee. They never come after dinner unless it’s urgent, and I have a sort of a date.”

He grunted. “Can I reach you?”

“Sure. At Mrs. Valdon’s number. It’s on the card.”

He looked at me. “Is this flummery? You said she shied but you reassured her. Is she in fact in a pucker?”

“No, sir. She’s set. But she may be afraid that you might pull out. She asked me to come and report after I spoke with you.”

“Pfui.”

“Yes, but she doesn’t know you as well as I do. You don’t know her as well as I do, either.” I dropped my napkin on the table and departed.

C
ramer came at a quarter past eleven in the morning, Tuesday, July 3. When the doorbell rang I was on the phone, a purely personal matter. Back in May I had accepted an invitation to spend a five-day weekend, ending on the Fourth of July, at a friend’s place up in Westchester. The marathon mother hunt had forced me to cancel, and the phone call was from the friend, to say that if I would drive up for the Fourth I would find a box of firecrackers and a toy cannon waiting for me. When the doorbell rang I said, “You know I would love to, but a police inspector is on the stoop right now, or maybe a sergeant, wanting in. I may spend the night in the jug. See you in court.”

As I hung up the doorbell rang again. I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass, and when I told Wolfe it was Cramer he merely tightened his lips. I went to the front, opened the door wide, and said, “Greetings. Mr. Wolfe is a little grumpy. He was expecting you yesterday.” Most of that was wasted, at his back as he marched down the hall and into the office. I followed. Cramer removed the old felt hat he wears winter and summer, rain or shine, sat in the red leather
chair, no hurry, put the hat on the stand, and focused on Wolfe. Wolfe focused back. They held it for a good five seconds, just focusing. It wasn’t a staring match; neither one had any idea he could out-eye the other one; they were just getting their dukes up.

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 back- ground 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. Shell 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 kidnapping 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 Anne Tenzer, 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 said, “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 type—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 message 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.”