The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

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.