Рекс Стаут - The Mother Hunt

“Did this man pay you for the information you gave him?”

“No.” Anne’s eyes flashed and her chin jerked up. “I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself. My aunt was murdered more than six weeks ago, and you’re the inspector in charge of murder cases, and you haven’t arrested anybody, and when someone else tries to do something, and evidently he has done something, you accuse him of bribing me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“I’m accusing no one, Miss Tenzer.” Cramer didn’t look ashamed. “I’m doing what this man did, asking you questions. Did he promise to pay you anything?”

“No!”

“Would you testify under oath to what you have said here?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever met or seen any of the other men in this room? Besides Mr. Haft?”

“No.”

“You haven’t? In the statement you signed some weeks ago, didn’t you tell of a conversation you had had with one of them?”

She looked around. “Oh. Archie Goodwin. Yes.”

“Have you seen Goodwin or spoken with him since the conversation you reported in that statement?”

“No.”

“When did this man, Panzer, first see you and ask you questions?”

“Today. This morning.”

“Had no one asked you any questions along this line before today?”

“No. I mean yes. No one.”

Cramer’s eyes went to Saul. “Panzer, do you confirm everything Miss Tenzer has said?”

Saul nodded. “I do. Everything I know about.”

“You went to see her with instructions from Nero Wolfe?”

“I did.”

“When and where did he give you the instructions?”

“Ask him.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Pfui,” Wolfe said. “Tell him, Saul.”

“In the kitchen in this house,” Saul said. “Around half past nine this morning.”

Cramer turned to Wolfe. “How did you suddenly get this idea about Anne Tenzer?”

Wolfe shook his head. “It wasn’t sudden, it was tardy. Nor was it, properly speaking, an idea; it was merely a grab at a straw.” He looked at Julian Haft. “I assume you recall the occasions described by Miss Tenzer, Mr. Haft? Last summer, a year ago, when she told you about her aunt, and last winter, when you phoned to get her name and address?”

Haft hadn’t decided how to handle it. He must have been working at it ever since he had seen Anne Tenzer enter with Wolfe, but he had taken his cheaters off three times, and put them back on again three times, and if he couldn’t decide what to do with his hands of course he hadn’t decided what to do with his tongue. So he blurted. “No, I don’t,” he blurted.

“You don’t recall those occasions?”

“No.”

“Do you contradict her? Do you say she lies?”

He licked his lips. “I don’t say she lies. I say she’s mistaken. She must be confusing me with someone else.”

“That’s ill-advised. More, it’s puerile. You should either acknowledge the facts she reports and challenge the implication, or call her a liar. But of course you’re a dunce. You foolishly called attention to yourself that day in my office, back in June, when I told you and the others about the anonymous letters. You resisted my request for lists of names and were reluctant to give me one, but you asked to see the envelopes, saying that one of you might get a hint from the handwriting. That invited an assumption. Not the assumption that you had ground for a suspicion regarding the letters, for there were none, but that you knew there were none; and if you knew there had been no anonymous letters you—”

Cramer broke in. “You’re saying there were no anonymous letters?”

“I am.”

“That was all phony?”

“It was a maneuver. I told you gaps could be filled in later.” Wolfe went back to Haft. “If you knew there had been no anonymous letters, and didn’t say so, you probably knew what Mrs. Valdon had hired me to do. As I say, you foolishly called attention to yourself, but you incurred no real hazard since you had removed your link to peril by killing Ellen Tenzer. It would have—”

“That’s a lie. I call you a liar.”

“Of course. That would be imperative even for a worm, and by definition you’re a man. You have nothing more to fear from me, Mr. Haft. I can’t prove that you killed Ellen Tenzer and Carol Mardus; I can only declare it. I am satisfied. The job Mrs, Valdon hired me to do was completed two days ago, and she can’t be expected to pay me to play Nemesis. Now that I have exposed you, your guilt and your impudence, I’ll even offer advice. Leave here at once and prepare your defense. Of so extensive an operation there must be traces — letters or telegrams, check stubs and canceled checks if you paid Ellen Tenzer, a ball of cord, Ellen Tenzer’s phone number jotted down somewhere, the rubber-stamp kit which you used for the message pinned to the baby’s blanket, a hair from Carol Mardus’s head in your car, a hair from your head in Ellen Tenzer’s car — the possibilities are innumerable, now that you have been named. Also, of course, facts you can’t erase, such as your use of a car, your own or another’s, last Friday night. You have a job ahead of you, and you should get at it without delay. Go. Aren’t you going?”

Leo Bingham muttered, “Good God, this is brutal.”

“You know damn well he’s not going,” Cramer rasped. “Nobody is going.” He stood up. “Where’s a phone?”

Wolfe stretched his neck. “I have a suggestion. Two hours ago I asked Mr. Upton a question which he refused to answer. He said he would answer it to someone who has a right to ask it. I presume he would concede that you have the right. I suggest that you ask him if Carol Mardus told him who had helped her dispose of the baby.”

Cramer glared at Upton. “Did she?”

“Yes,” Upton said.

“Why the hell didn’t you say so yesterday?”

“I wasn’t asked. And I didn’t know what I know now. I repeat my formal demand, that you arrest Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin on my complaint. But I’ll answer your question. Carol Mardus told me that Julian Haft had met her at the airport, or right after she left it, and took the baby.” He turned to Haft, beside him. “Julian, you can’t expect me—” He didn’t finish it. Haft was trying to take the cheaters off, and his hands were trembling so he couldn’t manage it.

Cramer asked Mrs. Valdon, “Where’s a phone?”

She pointed. “There.”

He started for it but stopped and wheeled. “Stay where you are,” he commanded. “All of you. I’m sending for cars and I’m taking you to the District Attorney’s office.” He focused on Wolfe. “Including you. You never leave your house, huh? Now that you’ve left it you’ll go back when I say so.” He headed for the cabinet.

Wolfe turned to the client. “Mrs. Valdon. You have indulged me and I am beholden to you. I suggest that you leave the room. Go upstairs and bolt the door. In Mr. Cramer’s present temper he’ll insist that you go along and there’s no reason why you should. Please go.”

Lucy got up and walked out. Forty-eight days had passed since she had walked out on me from that same room.

At my breakfast table in the kitchen one morning last week, the kind of a snowy blowy January morning when it’s nice to be inside a window looking out, I chewed slowly on my third bite of scrapple, swallowed it, and turned to Fritz.

“Creating again?” I asked.

He beamed at me. “You’re learning to taste, Archie. To distinguer. In ten years more you’ll have a palate. Can you tell me what I did?”

“Certainly not. But you did something. What?”

“I reduced the sage a little and added a touch of oregano. What do you think?”