The Mother Hunt (18 page)

He took some bourbon and water and was careful with the swallowing. “I thought she stayed tame for three or four months, but I didn’t really know. I soon realized that with her you would never really know. I’m not going to name names because that was more than five years ago, and it wouldn’t mean anything about the time you’re interested in. I don’t mean I’m not interested. I am. There was a time when I might have strangled her myself if I—if I had that in me. But that was long ago. You say you want to get the murderer— all right, I want you to. Of course I do. One thing hard for me to believe, that she had a baby. The way you tell it, she must have. She had an abortion while she was married to me. If she had a baby, Dick Valdon must have been the father, I’m sure of that. No other man ever meant to her what Dick did. God knows I didn’t. Are you sure about the baby? That she went to Florida and had a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Then Dick Valdon was the father.”

Wolfe grunted. “I’m obliged to you, sir, on behalf of my client. Naturally the father’s identity is of interest to her. Go on.”

“That’s all.”

“Surely not. When was the divorce?”

“Nineteen-fifty-seven.”

“And since then? Particularly the past sixteen months?”

“I can’t help you on that. In the past two years I haven’t seen Carol more than five or six times, at parties
and so on. I’ve had some correspondence with her. and I’ve spoken with her on the phone fairly often, but only on business—manuscripts I sent her or wanted to send her. Of course I’ve heard talk about her. There are people who will say to a man, ‘I understand your ex-wife is having a time with so-and-so,’ That doesn’t mean anything. Nothing those people say means anything.”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Krug. Every word uttered since man first invented words is a part of the record, though unrecorded. I grant that tattle is often vacuous. A question. If your association with your former wife has been only casual since the divorce, why did you omit her name from the list you gave me, and why did you not identify her picture?”

Krug nodded. “Of course.” Pause. “Frankly, I don’t know.”

“Nonsense.”

“It may be nonsense, but I don’t know. Not putting her name on the list, that’s easy to understand—” He stopped. A long pause. “No, I won’t dodge it. It doesn’t matter how I justified it consciously. We can’t control our subconscious mind, but sometimes we know what it’s up to. Subconsciously I refused to accept the possibility that Carol had sent anonymous letters to Lucy Valdon, so I didn’t put her on the list and I tore the picture up. That’s the best I can do, either for you or for the police.”

“The police should never ask you. They will of course ask you this, so I might as well: did you kill Carol Mardus?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. No.”

“When and how did you learn of her death?”

“I was in the country for the weekend. I have a little place at Pound Ridge. Manny Upton phoned while I
was having a late breakfast; the police had notified him and asked him to identify the body. Carol had no relatives in New York. I drove to town and went to my office, and I had only been there a few minutes when Leo Bingham phoned and asked me to come here.”

“You spent the night in the country?”

“Yes.”

“The police will want particulars, since you are the divorced husband, but I’ll leave that to them. One more question, a hypothetical one. If Carol Mardus had a baby by Richard Valdon, conceived in April of last year and born last January, four months after Valdon’s death; and if X knew about it, helped her dispose of it, and later, moved by pique or jealousy or spite, took it and left it in Mrs. Valdon’s vestibule, who is X? Of the men in Carol Mardus’s orbit, which one fits the specifications? I don’t ask you to accuse, merely to suggest.”

“I can’t,” Krug said. “I told you, I know nothing about her for the past two years.”

Wolfe poured beer, emptying the bottle, waited until the foam was at the right level to bead his lips, drank, removed the beads with his tongue, put the glass down, and swiveled to face the red leather chair. “You heard the hypothetical question, Mr. Bingham. Have you a suggestion?”

“I wasn’t listening,” Bingham said. “I’m thinking about you. I’m getting tight on your brandy. I’m deciding whether to believe you or not, about how you got that picture. You’re a very smooth article.”

“Pfui. Believe me or not as you please. You accepted the proposal. What have you to say about Carol Mardus?”

Bingham hadn’t had time to get tight, but he was working on it. Fritz had left the cognac bottle on the
stand, and Bingham’s second pouring had been a good three ounces. His neon-sign smile hadn’t been turned on once, he hadn’t shaved, and his necktie knot was off center.

“Carol Mardus,” he said. “Carol Mardus was a fascinating aristocratic elegant tramp.” He raised his glass. “To Carol!” He drank.

Wolfe asked, “Did you kill her?”

“Certainly.” He drained the glass and put it on the stand. “All right, let’s be serious. I met her years ago, and she could have had me by snapping her fingers, but there were two difficulties. I was broke and living on crumbs, and she belonged to my best friend, Dick Valdon. ‘Belonged’ is the wrong word because she never belonged to anybody, but she was Dick’s for that year. Then she was somebody else’s, and so on. Manny Upton, that fish. As you know, she was married for a while to Willis Krug.” He looked at Krug. “You’re no fish. Did you actually think she would go tame?”

No reply.

“You didn’t. You couldn’t.” Bingham returned to Wolfe, “I used another wrong word. Carol wasn’t a tramp. She certainly wasn’t a floozy. Would a floozy leave a good job for six months to have a baby?”

“But you haven’t decided to believe me.”

“Hell, I believe you. I believe you because it fits Carol exactly. King’s right, Dick was the father. And Dick was dead, so she could go ahead and have the baby. See? There wouldn’t be a man it would belong to, it would just be hers. Then after it came she realized she didn’t want it. She wouldn’t be tied to a man, but it would be just as bad to be tied to a baby, only she didn’t realize it until after it came. That’s why I believe you, it fits her to a T. One thing I don’t like, I admit it. You say
someone helped her dispose of it, so she must have asked him to. Why didn’t she ask me? That hurts. I mean that, it hurts.”

He reached for the bottle with one hand and the glass with the other, poured, and took a healthy swallow. He wasn’t appreciating the cognac, he was just drinking it. “Damn it,” he said, “she should have asked me.”

“Possibly she preferred to ask a woman.”

“Not a chance. You can rule that out. Not Carol. Didn’t it have to be kept secret?”

“Yes.”

“She wouldn’t have trusted
any
woman to keep
any
secret. She wouldn’t have trusted any woman, period.”

“You’re hurt that she didn’t ask you, that she didn’t prefer you to the other available alternatives. So you must have some notion of who the other alternatives were. This question is not hypothetical; consider it established that she asked someone to help her dispose of the baby; whom did she ask, if not you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. But whom might she have trusted in so delicate a matter in preference to you?”

“You know, by God, that’s a thought.” Bingham put the glass to his lips and held it there. He took a little sip. “First I would say her ex-husband. Willis Krug.”

“Mr. Krug says his only recent association with her has been on business matters. You challenge that?”

“No. I’m just answering your question. It’s a damn good question. I know how Carol felt about Krug. She liked him. She felt he could be trusted, he could be depended on. But if he says it wasn’t him it probably wasn’t. My second pick would be Julian Haft.”

Wolfe grunted. “You’re merely naming those present. You’re clowning.”

“I am not. Carol thought Haft was the tops. She thought nobody was in his class as a judge of writing, and she let him know it. He was the only man she would have dinner with and then go home and read manuscripts. That’s another reason tramp was the wrong word for her; she liked her work and was good at it. I can clown, but I’m not clowning now. But I shouldn’t have put Krug first. I overlooked Manny Upton. He should be first.”

“Her employer.”

“Well, her boss. That’s why he’s first. He let her go for six months and come back to her job. He must have known what she went for. She told her friends, including me, that she was taking a long vacation, but she must have told Manny the truth. Hell, it’s obvious. If you’re half as good as you’re supposed to be—it stares you in the face.”

“It does indeed. But it was only yesterday afternoon that she was sitting in the chair you occupy. Granting that Mr. Upton is the most likely of the alternatives, are there any others? Besides Mr. Haft and Mr. Krug?”

“No.” Bingham took a sip of brandy. “Not unless there was someone I didn’t know about, and I don’t think there was. Carol liked to tell me things. She liked the way I took things.”

“I believe I asked you if you killed her.”

“And I said certainly. I meant certainly I didn’t. You haven’t asked me where I spent last night and how and when I learned of her death. I spent the night at home in bed, alone, and I was at the studio before nine o’clock, at work. I’m getting up a pilot for a big fall show and I’m a month late. Someone at the studio heard it on the radio and told me. And there had been a picture of her in the batch you sent me Tuesday. I broke away as soon
as I could and came to ask you about the picture. I knew damn well you must know something.”

“So you recognized the picture.”

“Of course I did. The reason I didn’t say so, and I didn’t put her on my list, was the same as King’s, only he says his was subconscious and mine wasn’t. You had told us you were looking for someone who had sent anonymous letters to Lucy Valdon. Carol Mardus couldn’t possibly have sent anonymous letters to anybody. I didn’t need my subconscious to tell me that.”

“You were intimate with her, Mr. Bingham?”

“Balls. No, we were never on speaking terms. We used smoke signals.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the studio.”

“We should finish soon.” Wolfe reached for his glass, emptied it, and put it down. “Mr. Haft. You are now conspicuous, on Mr. Bingham’s roster of alternatives. I invite comment.”

Haft was slumped in his chair with his spindly legs stuck out straight. Some men look all right slumping, but he wasn’t built for it. He had finished his scotch and soda and put the glass on Wolfe’s desk.

“I suppose I should feel flattered,” he said. His thin tenor was quite a contrast to Bingham’s full baritone. He turned his head to Bingham. “I appreciate it, Leo, your thought that Carol considered me worthy of her confidence on so delicate a matter. Even though you put me last, with Manny Upton first.” He switched to Wolfe. “Since Bingham has accurately indicated the nature of my relations with Miss Mardus there seems to be nothing for me to say, except to answer for myself regarding the list and the picture. But on that too I have been anticipated. I can only parrot the others. Miss Mardus could not be guilty of sending anonymous
letters. I believe that—No, you asked them about last night. Customarily I spend weekends at my home in Westport, but one of my most important authors, at least important to me, arrives this afternoon from England, and I’m taking him to dinner and the theater this evening. I slept in my suite at Churchill Towers, and I was there when Bingham phoned. I didn’t know about Miss Mardus until he told me.” He pulled his feet back. “Have you any questions?”

Wolfe was frowning at him. “What is the name of the important author?”

“Luke Cheatham.”

“He wrote
No Moon Tonight”

“Yes.”

“You publish him?”

“Yes.”

“Please give him my regards.”

“With pleasure. Certainly.”

Wolfe looked at the clock. Twelve minutes to four. Plenty of time for a little speech. He surveyed them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we may not have mutual trust, but we have a mutual interest. Your professed reason for omitting the name of Carol Mardus from your lists and declining to identify her picture may or may not satisfy me, but it certainly wouldn’t satisfy the police. They would suspect that for one of you it was false, and none of you can prove it genuine. So you don’t want them to know what has been said here, or even that you have been here, and neither do I. That’s our mutual interest. As for the outcome, we’ll see. The man who killed Ellen Tenzer and Carol Mardus will inevitably be brought to account. For the reasons I gave you, I wish to be the instrument of his doom. With luck I will be.”

He rose. “In any case, I am obliged to you on behalf of
my client.” He headed for the hall, five minutes ahead of schedule. Leo Bingham looked at the brandy bottle, then at his watch, sprang to his feet, and went. I followed. In the hall Wolfe was entering the elevator. Bingham beat me to the front door, and I held it open because the other two were coming. They nodded as they passed by, and I stood on the sill and watched them down the stoop before I returned to the office.

There were several things to chew on, but of course the main one was Bingham’s alternatives. If he had known Carol Mardus as well as he said he did there were just four candidates. Even if he had killed her himself, he would name the ones she would have been most likely to pick if she hadn’t picked him, so it was highly probable that it was one of those four. I stood at a window, and sat at my desk, and stood some more, going over them. Which one? That’s the silliest game of solitaire there is, and we all play it, trying to tag a murderer as one of a bunch from what they said and how they looked and acted, unless you can spot something that really opens a crack. I couldn’t.

The trouble was, there was no telling how much time we had—a month or a week or a day. Or an hour. Homicide would check all angles on Carol Mardus, and they would all be seen and questioned, probably Willis Krug first, and one of them might wilt. If he did we were in the soup. There’s a big difference between not giving information you haven’t been asked for, and declining to give it, or faking it, when you
are
asked. All Cramer needed was a hint that there was a connection between Carol Mardus and the baby, or just that she had come to see Wolfe—anything at all that would bring him to the door, to march to the office and ask Wolfe if he had ever heard of Carol Mardus. That would
do it. It was the thinnest ice we had ever been on. I had to go to the kitchen and chin with Fritz to keep from going up to the plant rooms and telling Wolfe that since he hadn’t asked me before spilling it to Krug and Haft and Bingham, I wasn’t going to ask him when and where I could spill it, and he could either fire me or quit fiddling with the damn orchids and do something. I decided to wait till he came down, and if he asked me if I had a suggestion I would throw something at him.