tail.
That was not in my mind.
It's in mine. It was just bad luck, sure, but luck beats brains. My getting in the house and finding things doesn't square it. We would only have had to inquire around for an hour or so to learn that she had had a baby there. I hate bad luck. Saul phoned.
When?
Half an hour ago. The niece didn't have a baby in December, January, or February. He has checked on her for that whole period and will report details. He is now finding out if the aunt has been to the niece's apartment since yesterday noon. It's nice to have brains and luck. He'll phone around noon to ask if he is to relieve Orrie and The phone rang and I swiveled to get it. Nero Wolfe's off Orrie Cather speaking. A booth in Mahopac.
Well?
No. Not well at all. At ten-fifty-five a car came, state police, and turned in. Three men got out, a trooper, and one I suppose was a county dep, and Purley Stebbins. They went and tried the door and then they went around the corner and the dep climbed in that open window and Stebbins and the trooper went back to the door. Pretty soon it opened and they went in. It didn't look like I could help any so I dusted. Do I go back?
How sure are you it was Purley?
Nuts. I didn't say I thought it was, I said it was. I'm reporting.
You certainly are. Come in.
If I went back maybe I. Damn it, come in!
I cradled the phone gently, took a breath, and turned. That was Orrie Cather speaking, a booth in Mahopac. I told him to come in because the aunt won't be coming home. She's dead. Three men came in a state police car and are in the house, and one of them is Purley Stebbins. It doesn't take luck or brains to know that a New York Homicide sergeant doesn't go to Putnam County looking for white horsehair buttons.
Wolfe's lips were pressed so tight he didn't have any. They parted. A presumption is not a certainty.
I can settle that. I turned and lifted the phone and dialed the Gazette number, and when Wolfe heard me ask for Lon Cohen he pulled his phone over and got on. Lon is on one of his phones at least half of the time and usually you have to wait or leave a message, but I caught him in between and had him right away. I asked him if I still had a credit balance, and he said on poker no, on tips on tidings yes.
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
