Rex Stout - The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

Not much of a tip this time, I told him. I'm checking on a rumor I just heard. Have you got anything on a woman named Tenzer? Ellen Tenzer?

Ellen Tenzer.

Right.

We might have. Don't be so damned roundabout, Archie. If you want to know how far we have got on a murder just say so.

So.

That's more like it. We haven't got very far unless more has come in the last hour. Around six o'clock this morning a cop glanced in a car, a Rambler sedan, that was parked on Thirty-eighth Street near Third Avenue and saw a woman in the back, on the floor. She had been strangled with a piece of cord that was still around her throat and had been dead five or six hours. She has been tentatively identified as an Ellen Tenzer of Mahopac, New York. That's it. I can call downstairs for the latest and call you back if it's that important.

I told him no, thanks, it wasn't important at all, and hung up. So did Wolfe. He glared at me and I glared back.

This makes it nice, I said. Talk about ifs.

He shook his head. Futile.

One particular if. If I had stuck and gone to work on her then and there I might have opened her up and she would be here right now and we would be wrapping it up. To hell with intelligence guided by experience.

Futile.

What isn't, now? We couldn't have asked for anything neater than white horsehair buttons, and now we've got absolutely nothing, and we'll have Stebbins and Cramer on our necks. Thirty-eighth Street is in Homicide South.

Homicide is their problem, not ours.

Tell them that. The niece will tell them that a button merchant named Archie Goodwin got her to give him her aunt's address Thursday afternoon. The guy at the filling station will describe the man who wanted directions to her place Friday morning. They'll find thousands of my fingerprints all over the house, including the cellar, nice and fresh. I might as well call Parker now and tell him to get set to arrange bail when I'm booked as a material witness.

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 did 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. 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.