The Mother Hunt (21 page)

Saul Panzer was downstairs helping Lucy receive and seat the guests, following instructions from Wolfe on the arrangement. He told me later that it was Leo Bingham, coming last, who held it up. It was twenty- five minutes to two when I heard footsteps and looked out and saw Saul at the door of the other room. He spoke to Wolfe, turned to me and said, “All set,” and
went to the stairs and started down. I ushered Upton out and into the elevator, and in a moment we were joined by Wolfe and Anne Tenzer. There would have been room for a couple more provided they weren’t Wolfe’s size. He pushed the button himself and cocked his head as we descended, listening for a creak or a groan, and hearing none. I suspected that before long I would be told to find out how much one like it would cost.

I have never thought that Inspector Cramer was a sap, and still don’t. Take his reaction when he twisted his head around and saw us enter. He jumped up, opened his mouth, and shut it. He realized instantly that Wolfe wouldn’t have dared to stage that charade if he hadn’t had a line he was sure of, and if he blew his top in front of witnesses he might be just making it sweeter for Wolfe in the end. As we crossed to the group his face got redder and his mouth tighter, but he didn’t let out a peep.

Saul had placed them as instructed. Lucy was off to the left, and near her was a chair for Anne Tenzer. Willis Krug and Julian Haft were on the couch, and Leo Bingham was on a chair at its right end. Cramer’s chair was midway of the couch, facing it, and Saul was to his left. The roomiest chair, for Wolfe, was where I had put it earlier, near the left end of the couch, where there was space for Upton and me, putting Upton next to Haft and me not far from Wolfe.

But Upton had other ideas. When we reached the couch, instead of sitting he turned to face Cramer. “I want to enter a charge, Inspector,” he said. “Against Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. They have held me here by force, physical force. Goodwin assaulted me. I am Manuel Upton. I don’t know what the charge is
technically, but you do. I want you to put them under arrest.”

Cramer had enough on his hands for the moment without that. He eyed him. “They’re facing a more serious charge,” he growled. He looked down at Wolfe, seated. “What about this one?”

Wolfe made a face, “Mr. Goodwin and Mrs. Valdon and I will flout it. I suggest that you act on it later, if at all. We have a graver matter to deal with—as you know, since obviously Mrs. Valdon’s phone call was prompted by me.”

“When did you come here?”

“Saturday. Day before yesterday.”

“You’ve been here since Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“Goodwin too?”

“Yes. Won’t you sit? I don’t like to stretch my neck.”

“Arrest them,” Upton croaked. “That’s a formal demand. Arrest them.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Wolfe told him. “I’m going to name a murderer, and Mr. Cramer knows it. Otherwise he would have arrested me, not on your charge, as soon as he caught sight of me.” He looked around, right and then left. Cramer sat. I sat. That left Upton the only one on his feet, so he sat, between Haft and me on the couch.

Wolfe focused on Cramer. “I don’t know how much you know, but gaps can be filled in later. This murderer is one of those unfortunate creatures who, neither designed nor fitted for that spectacular role, find themselves—”

“Save that for later too,” Cramer growled.

“It’s a necessary introduction. Find themselves abruptly rocketed into it. Some seven months ago Carol Mardus asked him to help her dispose of a baby she
didn’t want to keep, and he obliged her. If you had told him then that as a result of that amiable favor to a friend he would be twice a murderer within the year, he would have thought you were demented. The next fateful step, though not amiable, was not murderous; it was merely mischievous. Knowing that Richard Valdon had been the father of the baby, he took—”

“That’s too big a gap. Was it the baby that was boarded by Ellen Tenzer?”

“Yes. I see this won’t do. I must name him. Did you recognize the woman who entered the room with me?”

“No.”

“She is Anne Tenzer, the niece of Ellen Tenzer. She was of course questioned in the investigation of her aunt’s death, but apparently not by you.” Wolfe turned. “Miss Tenzer, will you please tell Mr. Cramer what your occupation is?”

Anne cleared her throat. She was still a blonde, and if you asked ten men which of the two women sitting there was more attractive, her or Lucy, probably seven of them would say her. When she had entered the elevator and seen me she had said one word, hello, very offhand. Hello is not hi.

Her cool competent eyes went to Cramer. “I’m a secretary, with the Stopgap Employment Service. We fill in—vacations, any temporary vacancies. I’m at the senior executive level.”

“So you have worked for many different firms?” Wolfe asked.

“I have worked
at
many different firms. My employer is the Stopgap Employment Service. I average about fifteen assignments a year.”

“Is there anyone in this room you have ever worked for—on assignment?”

“Yes.”

“Do you recognize him?”

“Certainly. Julian Haft, president of the Parthenon Press.”

“When did you work for him?”

“I don’t know the exact dates, but it was early last summer. I think it was the last two weeks in June and the first week in July.”

“Did your work bring you into frequent contact with Mr. Haft?”

“Yes. I was replacing his private secretary. She was on vacation.”

“Was the name of your aunt, Ellen Tenzer, ever mentioned in conversation with him?”

“Yes. He dictated a letter about a book, a manuscript, by a woman who had been a nurse, and I mentioned that I had an aunt who had been a nurse, and we talked about her a little. I must have mentioned that she boarded babies in her house sometimes, because when he called me up he asked—”

“If you please. When did he call you up?”

“Several months later, in the winter, I think some time in January. He called the Stopgap Employment Service and left a message, and I called him. He asked if my aunt still boarded babies, and I said I thought so, and he wanted her name and address.”

“You supplied it? The name and address?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been—”

“Just a minute.” Cramer was glaring at her. “Why didn’t you mention this when you were questioned at the time of your aunt’s death?”

“Because I had forgotten—no, I hadn’t forgotten, but I didn’t think of it. Why should I?”

“What reminded you of it now?”

“A man came and asked me.” She nodded at Saul. “That man. He named some men, four men, and asked if I had ever met any of them. I told him I had met Julian Haft, that I had worked for him, and he asked if I had any reason to suppose that he had ever heard of my aunt. Then of course I remembered, and I told him. He said it might help to find out who had killed my aunt, and I told him all about it.”

“With him helping you to remember?”

“I don’t know what you mean, ‘helping me.’ I do my own remembering. How could he help me remember?”

“He could make suggestions. He could suggest that you had told Mr. Haft that your aunt boarded babies. He could suggest the phone call that you say you received in January.”

“Maybe he could, but he didn’t. He didn’t suggest anything, he just asked questions. It’s you who are suggesting things. I’m doing something I’m not supposed to do, and I’ve never done it before. The kind of work I do, for lots of different men, important men, I’m not supposed to talk about it to anyone, and I never do. I’m talking about this because it’s not really about my work, it’s about my aunt, and she was murdered.”

“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.