The Mother Hunt Read Free Page B

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.

Chapter 2
    A t a quarter to five that afternoon I was in conference, in the kitchen of Lucy Valdon’s house on West Eleventh Street. I was standing, leaning against the refrigerator, with a glass of milk in my hand. Mrs. Vera Dowd, the cook, who evidently ate her full share of what she cooked, judging by her dimensions, was on a chair. She had supplied the milk on request. Miss Marie Foltz, the maid, in uniform, who had undoubtedly been easy to look at ten years ago and was still no eyesore, was standing across from me with her back to the sink.
    “I need some help,” I said and took a sip of milk.
    I’m not skipping my session with the client before lunch in order to hold something back, but there’s no point in reporting everything I put in my notebook. A few samples, taking her word for it:
    No one hated her, or had it in for her, enough to play a dirty trick like saddling her with a loose baby— including her family. Her father and mother were in Hawaii, a stopover on an around-the-world trip; her married brother lived in Boston and her married sister in Washington. Her best friend, Lena Guthrie, one ofthe only three people to whom she had shown the paper that had been pinned to the blanket, the other two being the doctor and the lawyer, thought the baby looked like Dick, but she, Lucy, was reserving her opinion. She wasn’t going to name the baby unless she decided to keep it. She might name it Moses because no one knew for sure who Moses’ father was, but a smile went with that. And so on. Also a couple of dozen names—the names of the five other weekend guests at the Haft place in Westport on May 20, the names of four