The Mother Hunt (Rex Stout Library)

At 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 of the 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 women, which I had to drag out of her, with whom Dick might possibly have played house in April 1961, and an assortment of names, mostly men, who might know more about Dick's personal diversions than his widow did. Three of those were marked as the most promising: Leo Bingham, television producer; Willis Krug, literary agent; and Julian Haft, publisher, the head of Parthenon Press. That's enough samples.

I was having my conference with Mrs. Dowd and Miss Foltz in the kitchen because talking comes easier to people in a room where they are used to talking. When I told them I needed some help Mrs. Dowd narrowed her eyes at me and Miss Foltz looked skeptical.

It's about the baby, I said and took another sip of milk. Mrs. Valdon took me upstairs for a look at it. To me it looks too fat and kind of greasy, and its nose is just a blob, but of course I'm a man.