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.
I admit that it would have been a waste of the client's money to have Saul and Fred and Orrie check on Ellen Tenzer, since that was being done by city employees and journalists. From the papers and Lon Cohen we had more facts than we could use and more than you would care about. She had been a registered nurse but had quit working at it ten years ago, when her mother had died and she had inherited the house at Mahopac and enough to get by on. She had never married but apparently had liked babies, for she had boarded more than a dozen of them during the ten years, one at a time. Where they had come from and gone to wasn't known; specifically, no one knew anything about her last boarder except that it was a boy, it had been about one month old when it had arrived, in March, she had called it Buster, and it had left about three weeks ago. If anyone had ever visited it nobody had seen him come or go. The best source of information about the babies, the local doctor who had been called on as needed, was a tightlip. Lon doubted if even Purley Stebbins had got anything out of him.
Besides the niece, Anne, the only surviving relatives were a brother and his wife, Anne's parents, who lived in California. Anne was refusing to talk to reporters, but Lon said that apparently she hadn't seen her aunt very often and didn't know much about her.
When I had got up to go Lon had said, All take and no give, all right, there's still a balance. But I can ask a question. Did you find the buttons? Yes or no.
Having played poker with him a lot of nights, I had had plenty of practice handling my face in his presence. If you had a trained mind like me, I said, you wouldn't do that. We ran that ad, and now we want to know about Ellen Tenzer, so you assume there's a connection. None at all. Wolfe likes white horsehair buttons on his pants.
I raise.
