walk between rows of herbs, down four steps and on in, and up a stair with twelve steps. At the top, you turn right for the kitchen or left for the office or the front.
I took Lucy to the office. When we entered, Wolfe nodded, barely, tightened his lips, and eyed her with no enthusiasm as she took the red leather chair, put her bag on the stand, and tossed her stole back, sable or something.
I told Archie I'm sorry I'm a little late, she said. I didn't realize he would have to wait there for me.
It was a bad start. Since no client has ever called him Nero or ever will, the Archie meant, to him, either that she was taking liberties or that I already had. He darted a glance at me, turned to her, and took a breath. I don't like this, he said. This is not a customary procedure with me, appealing to a client for help. When I take a job it's my job. But I am compelled by circumstance. Mr. Goodwin described the situation to you yesterday morning.
She nodded.
Having settled that point, having got her to acknowledge, by nodding, that my name was Mr. Goodwin, he leaned back. But he may not have made the position sufficiently clear. We're in a pickle. It was obvious that the simplest way to do the job was to learn where the baby had come from; once we know that, the rest would be easy. Very well, we did that; we know where the baby came from; and we are stumped. Ellen Tenzer is dead, and that line of inquiry is completely blocked. You realize that?
Why yes.
If you have a reservation about that, dismiss it. To try to learn how, from where, and by whom the baby got to Ellen Tenzer would be inept. Such a job is for the police, with their army of trained men, some of them competent, and their official standing; not for Mr. Goodwin and me; and presumably they are working at it as relevant to their investigation of the murder. So for the present we shall leave Ellen Tenzer to the police, because we must, with this observation: we know that she didn't put the baby in your vestibule. But we How do we know that? Lucy was frowning.
By inference. She did not attach a piece of paper to a blanket with a bare pin and wrap the blanket around the baby. Mr. Goodwin found a tray half full of safety pins in her house. But he found no rubber-stamp kit and no stamp pad, and one was used for the message on the paper. The inference is not conclusive, but it is valid. I am satisfied that on May twentieth Ellen Tenzer delivered the baby to someone, either at her house or, more likely, at a rendezvous elsewhere. She may or may not have known that its destination was your vestibule. I doubt it; but she knew too much about its history, its origin, so she was killed.
Then you know that? Lucy's hands were clasped, the fingers twisted. That that's why she was killed?
No. But it would be vacuous not to assume it. Another assumption: Ellen Tenzer not only did not leave the baby in your vestibule or know that was its destination; she didn't even know that it was to be so disposed of that its source would be unknown and undiscoverable. For if she had known that, she would not have dressed it in those overalls. She knew those buttons were unique and that inquiry might trace their origin. Whatever she. Wait a minute. Lucy was frowning, concentrating. Wolfe waited. In a moment she went on. Maybe she wanted them to be traced.
Wolfe shook his head. No. In that case her reception of Mr. Goodwin, when she found that they had been traced, would have been quite different. No. Whatever she knew of the baby's past, she knew nothing of its intended future. And whoever left it in your vestibule must have satisfied himself that none of its garments held any clue to its origin, so he didn't know enough about infants' clothing to realize that the buttons were unusual, even extraordinary, and might be traced. But Mr. Goodwin realized it, and so did I.
I didn't.
He glared at her. That is informative merely about you, madam, not about the problem. My concern is the problem, and now I not only have to do a job I have undertaken, I must also avoid being charged, along with Mr. Goodwin, with commission of a felony. If Ellen Tenzer was killed to prevent her from revealing facts about the baby that was left in your vestibule, and almost certainly she was, Mr. Goodwin and I are both withholding evidence regarding a homicide, and as I said, we're in a pickle. I do not want to give the police your name and the information you have entrusted to me in confidence. You would be disturbed and pestered, and probably badgered, and you are my client; so my self-esteem would suffer. It is my conceit to expose myself to reproach only from others, never from myself. But if Mr. Goodwin and I withhold your name and what you have told us, it won't do merely to meet our commitment to you and leave the homicide to the police; in addition to finding the mother, we must either also find the murderer or establish that there was no connection between Ellen Tenzer's death and her association with the baby that was left in your vestibule. Since it's highly probable that there was a connection, I shall be tracking a murderer on your behalf and at your expense. Is that clear?
Lucy's eyes came to me. I told you I hate it.
I nodded. The trouble is, you can't just bow out. If you drop it, if you're no longer his client, we'll have to open up, at least I will. I'm a VIP, I'm the one who last saw Ellen Tenzer alive. Then you'll have the cops. Now you have us. You'll just have to take your pick, Mrs. Valdon.
She opened her mouth and closed it again. She turned, got her bag from the stand, opened it, took out a slip of paper, rose, stepped to me, and handed me the paper. I took it and read, handwritten in ink:
Monday To Archie Goodwin Call me Lucy. Lucy Valdon Picture it. In Wolfe's office, in his presence, his client hands me a note which she must know I would prefer not to show him. It took handling. I raised one brow high, which always annoys him because he can't do it, put the paper in my pocket, and cocked my head at her, back in the red leather chair. Not if you're no longer a client, I told her.
But I am. I hate it, the way it is now, but of course I am.
I looked at Wolfe and met his eye. Mrs. Valdon prefers us to the cops. Good for our self- esteem.
She spoke, to him. It was the way you said it, tracking a murderer on my behalf. Do you mean must you do that first?
No, he snapped. She was not only a woman, she was a creature who had passed me a private note before his eyes. That will be incidental but it must be done. So I proceed?
Yes.
