The Mother Hunt

Chapter 1

When the doorbell rang a little after eleven that Tuesday morning in early June and I went to the hall and took a look through the one-way glass panel in the front door, I saw what, or whom, I expected to see: a face a little too narrow, gray eyes a little too big, and a figure a little too thin for the best curves. I knew who it was because she had phoned Monday afternoon for an appointment, and I knew what she looked like because I had seen her a few times at theaters or restaurants.

Also I had known enough about her, part public record and part hearsay, to brief Nero Wolfe without doing any research. She was the widow of Richard Valdon, the novelist, who had died some nine months ago—drowned in somebody’s swimming pool in Westchester—and since four of his books had been best sellers and one of them, Never Dream Again, had topped a million copies at $5.95, she should have no trouble paying a bill from a private detective if and when she got one. After reading Never Dream Again, five or six years ago, Wolfe had chucked it by giving it to a library, but he had thought better of a later one, His Own Image, and it had a place on the shelves. Presumably that was why he took the trouble to lift his bulk from the chair when I ushered her to the office, and to stand until she was seated in the red leather chair near the end of his desk. As I went to my desk and sat I was not agog. She had said on the phone that she wanted to consult Wolfe about something very personal and confidential, but she didn’t look as if she were being pinched where it hurt. It would probably be something routine like an anonymous letter or a missing relative.

Putting her bag on the stand at her elbow, she turned her head for a look around, stopped her big gray eyes at me for half a second as she turned back, and said to Wolfe, “My husband would have liked this room.”

“M-m,” Wolfe said. “I liked one of his books, with reservations. How old was he when he died?”

“Forty-two.”

“How old are you?”

That was for my benefit. He had a triple conviction: that a) his animus toward women made it impossible for him to judge any single specimen; that b) I needed only an hour with any woman alive to tag her; and that c) he could help out by asking some blunt impertinent question, his favorite one being how old are you. It’s hopeless to try to set him right.

At that, the way Lucy Valdon took it was a clue. She smiled and said, “Old enough, plenty old enough. I’m twenty-six. Old enough to know when I need help—and here I am. It’s about—it’s extremely confidential.” She glanced at me.

Wolfe nodded. “It usually is. My ears are Mr. Goodwin’s and his are mine, professionally. As for confidence, I don’t suppose you have committed a major crime?”

She smiled again. It came quick and went quick, but she meant it. “I wouldn’t have the nerve. No, no crime. I want you to find somebody for me.”

I thought, uh-huh, here we go. Cousin Mildred is missing and Aunt Amanda has asked her rich niece to hire a detective. But she went on; “It’s a little—well, it’s kind of fantastic. I have a baby, and I want to know who the mother is. As I said, this is confidential, but it’s not really a secret. My maid and my cook know about it, and my lawyer, and two of my friends, but that’s all, because I’m not sure I’m going to keep it—the baby.”

Wolfe was frowning at her, and no wonder. “I’m not a judge of babies, madam.”

“Of course not. What I want—but I must tell you. I’ve had it two weeks. Two weeks ago Sunday, May twentieth, the phone rang and I answered it, and a voice said there was something in my vestibule, and I went to look, and there it was on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. I took it in, and pinned to the blanket inside was a slip of paper.” She got her bag from the stand and opened it, and by the time she had the paper out I was there to take it. A glance was enough to read what was on it, but instead of handing it to Wolfe across his desk I circled around to him for another look as he held it. It was a four-by-six piece of ordinary cheap paper, and the message on it, in five crooked lines, printed with one of those rubber-stamp outfits for kids, was brief and to the point:

MRS RICHARD VALDON THIS BABY IS FOR YOU BECAUSE A BOY SHOULD LIVE IN HIS FATHERS HOUSE

There were two pinholes near a corner. Wolfe put it on his desk, turned to her, and asked a question. “Indeed?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Of course I don’t. But it could be true.”

“Is it likely or merely credible?”

“I guess it’s likely.” She closed the bag and returned it to the stand. “I mean it’s likely that it could have happened.” She gestured with the hand that sported a wedding ring. Her eyes came to me and back to Wolfe. “This is in confidence, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Well … since I’m telling you I want you to understand. Dick and I were married two years ago—it will be two years next month. We were in love, I still think we were, but I admit that for me there was this too, that he was a famous man, that I would be Mrs. Richard Valdon. And for him there was my—well, who I was. I was an Armstead. I didn’t know how much that meant to him until after we were married, when he realized that I was sick and tired of being an Armstead.”

She took a breath. “He had a sort of a Don Juan reputation before he married me, but it was probably exaggerated—those things often are. For two months we were completely …” She stopped and her eyes closed. In a moment they opened. “There was nothing for me but us, and I think for him too. I’m sure. After that I simply don’t know, I only know it wasn’t the same. During that year, the last year of his life, he may have had one woman, or two, or a dozen—I just don’t know. He could have had, I know that. So the baby— what did I say? It’s likely that it could have happened. You understand?”

Wolfe nodded. “So far. And your problem?”

“The baby, of course. I intended to have one, or two or three, I sincerely did, and Dick wanted to, but I wanted to wait. I put it off. When he died that was hard, maybe the hardest, that he had wanted me to have a baby and I had put it off. Now there is one, and I have it.” She pointed at the slip of paper on Wolfe’s desk. “I think what that says is right. I think a boy should live in his father’s house, and certainly he should have his father’s name. But the problem is, was Richard Valdon this baby’s father?” She gestured. “There!”

Wolfe snorted. “Pfui. Never to be solved and you know it. Homer said it: no man can know who was his father. Shakespeare said it: it is a wise father that knows his own child. I can’t help you, madam. No one can.”

She smiled. “I can say ‘pfui’ too. Of course you can help me. I know you can’t prove that Dick was the father, but you can find out who put the baby in my vestibule, and who its mother is, and then we can— Here.” She got her bag and opened it. “I have figured it out.” She produced another slip of paper, not the same size or kind. “The doctor said the baby was four months old, that evening, the day it came, May twentieth, so I used that date.” She looked at the paper. “So it was born about January twentieth, so it was conceived about April twentieth, last year. When you know who the mother is you can find out about her and Dick, how sure it is, or anyway how likely it is, that they were together then. That won’t prove this baby is his son, but it can come close—close enough. And besides, if it’s just a trick, if Dick wasn’t the father and couldn’t have been, and you find that out, that would help me, wouldn’t it? So the first thing is to find out who left it in my vestibule, and then who the mother is. Then I may want to ask her some questions myself, but I don’t— Well, we’ll see.”

Wolfe was leaning back, scowling at her. It was beginning to look like a job he could refuse only with a phony excuse, and he hated to work, and the bank balance was fairly healthy. “You’re assuming too much,” he objected. “I’m not a magician, Mrs. Valdon.”

“Of course not. But you’re the best detective in the world, aren’t you?”

“Probably not. The best detective in the world may be some rude tribesman with a limited vocabulary. You say your lawyer knows about the baby. Does he know you are consulting me?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t approve. He thinks it’s foolish to want to keep it. There are laws about it and he has attended to that so I can keep it temporarily, because I insisted, but he’s against my trying to find the mother. But that’s my business. His business is just the law.”

Though she didn’t know it, that was a hit. Wolfe couldn’t have described his own attitude toward lawyers any better himself, with all his vocabulary. He let up a little on the scowl. “I doubt,” he said, “if you have sufficiently considered the difficulties. The inquiry would almost certainly be prolonged, laborious, and expensive, and possibly fruitless.”

“Yes. I said, I know you’re not a magician.”

“Can you afford it? My fees are not modest.”

“I know that. I have an inheritance from my grandmother, and the income from my husband’s books. I own my house.” She smiled. “If you want to see a copy of my income-tax report my lawyer has it.”

“Not necessary. It could take a week, a month, a year.”

“All right. My lawyer says keeping the baby on a temporary basis can be extended a month at a time.”

Wolfe picked up the slip of paper, glared at it, put it down, and moved the glare to her. “You should have come to me sooner, if at all.”

“I didn’t decide to until yesterday, definitely.”

“Possibly too late. Sixteen days have passed since Sunday, May twentieth. Was it daylight when the phone call came?”

“No, in the evening. A little after ten o’clock.”

“Male voice or female?”

“I’m not sure. I think it was a man trying to sound like a woman or a woman trying to sound like a man, I don’t know which.”

“If you had to guess?”

She shook her head. “I can’t even guess.”

“What was said? Verbatim.”

“I was alone in the house because the maid was out. When I answered the phone I said, ‘Mrs. Valdon’s residence.’ The voice said, ‘Is this Mrs. Valdon?’ and I said yes, and the voice said, “Look in your vestibule, there’s something there,’ and hung up. I went down to the vestibule, and there it was. When I saw it was a live baby I took it in and called my doctor and—”

“If you please. Had you been in the house all day and evening?”

“No. I had been in the country for the weekend. I got home around eight o’clock. I hate Sunday traffic after dark.”

“Where in the country?”

“Near Westport. At Julian Haft’s place—he publishes my husband’s books.”

“Where is Westport?”

Her eyes widened a little in surprise. Mine didn’t. What he doesn’t know about the metropolitan area would fill an atlas. “Why, Connecticut,” she said. “Fair- field County.”

“What time did you leave there?”

“A little after six o’clock.”

“Driving? Your own car?”

“Yes.”

“With a chauffeur?”

“No. I have no chauffeur.”

“Was anyone with you in the car?”

“No, I was alone.” She gestured with the wedding- ring hand. “Of course you’re a detective, Mr. Wolfe, I’m not, but I don’t see the point of all this.”

“Then you haven’t used your brain.” He turned. “Tell her, Archie.”

He was insulting her. Not caring to bother with something so obvious, he switched it to me. I obliged. “You’ve probably been too busy with the baby to go into it,” I told her. “Say it was me. I put the baby in the vestibule before I phoned you. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t known you were there, that the phone would be answered. It’s possible that I had hung around until I saw you come home or until I saw a light in the house, but it’s even more possible that I knew you were away for the weekend and would get home by dark. I might even have known what time you left Westport. Take the last question: was anyone with you in the car? That would have been the simplest and surest way for me to know when you got home, to be with you in the car. So if you had said yes, the next question would have been, who?”

“Good heavens.” She was staring at me. “Someone I know well enough to …”She let it hang and turned to Wolfe. “All right. Ask anything you want to.”

He grunted. “Not want. Must—if I take the job. You own your house. Where is it?”

“Eleventh Street near Fifth Avenue. I inherited it. My great-grandfather built it. When I said I was sick and tired of being an Armstead I wasn’t just talking, I meant it, but I like the house, and Dick loved it.”

“Do you share it? Have you any tenants?”

“No. Now I may—I don’t know.”

“Do the maid and the cook live there?”

“Yes.”

“Any others?”

“Not living in. A woman comes five days a week to help.”

“Could the maid or the cook have had a baby in January?”

She smiled. “Certainly not the cook. Nor the maid either. She has been with me nearly two years. No, she hasn’t had a baby.”

“Then a relative of one of them. Perhaps a sister. An ideal arrangement for an inconvenient infant nephew.” Wolfe moved a hand to put it aside. “That will be routine.” He tapped the slip of paper with a fingertip. “The pinholes. Was it a safety pin?”

“No, it wasn’t. Just an ordinary pin.”

“Indeed.” His brows went up. “You said inside the blanket. Where? Near what part of the body—feet, middle, head?”

“I think the feet, but I’m not sure. I had the baby out of the blanket before I saw the paper.”

Wolfe swiveled. “Archie. You like to give an opinion in terms of odds. What odds that no woman would so expose a baby to a bare pin?”

I took three seconds. “Not enough data. Exactly where was the pin? What did the baby have on? How accessible was a safety pin? Roughly, say ten to one, but that doesn’t mean that one will get you ten that it was a man. I’m merely answering a question. No bet.”

“I didn’t invite one.” He swiveled back to her. “I don’t suppose it was naked in the blanket?”

“Oh no. It was dressed—too much. A sweater, a corduroy ha£, corduroy overalls, a T-shirt, an under- shirt, rubber pants, and diaper. Oh, and booties. It was dressed all right.”

“Any safety pins?”

“Certainly, in the diaper.”

“Was the diaper—uh—fresh?”

“No. It was a mess. It had probably been on for hours. I changed it before the doctor came, but I had to use a pillow case.”

I cut in. “A bet, since you asked my opinion. One will get you twenty that if a woman pinned the paper to the blanket, it wasn’t the one who dressed him.”

No comment. He turned his head for a look at the wall clock. An hour till lunch. He took in through his nose all the air he had room for, which was plenty, let it out through his mouth, and turned to her. “It would be necessary to get more information from you, much more, and Mr. Goodwin can do that as well as I. My commitment would be to learn the identity of the mother and establish it to your satisfaction, and to demonstrate the degree of probability that your husband was the father, with no warranty of success. Is that correct?”

“Why … yes. If you— No, I’ll just say yes.”

“Very well. There’s the formality of a retainer.”

“Of course.” She reached for her bag. “How much?”

“No matter.” He pushed back his chair and rose. “A dollar, a hundred, a thousand. Mr. Goodwin will have many questions. You will excuse me.”

He crossed to the door and in the hall turned left, toward the kitchen. Lunch was to be shad roe in casserole, one of the few dishes on which he and Fritz had a difference of opinion that had never been settled. They were agreed on the larding, the anchovy butter, the chervil, shallot, parsley, bay leaf, pepper, marjoram, and cream, but the argument was the onion. Fritz was for it and Wolfe dead against. There was a chance that voices would be raised, and before I got my notebook and started in on the client I went and closed the door, which was soundproofed, and on my way back to my desk she handed me a check for one thousand and 00/100 dollars.