The Mother Hunt Quotes

“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.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“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.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“The police are not witlings; they will know that each of you may have had a private reason for your reserve not relevant to their investigation; but they will also know that if one of you was involved with Carol Mardus regarding the baby, and if you killed Ellen Tenzer, you would certainly have omitted her name from your list and you would not have identified the picture. So they will be importunate with all of you.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“It is indubitable that Carol Mardus was the mother of the baby left in Mrs. Valdon’s vestibule and that she was gravely disquieted to learn that I knew it and could demonstrate it.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“He growled. “You know quite well that that locution is vile.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“You’re damn right I would.” Cramer took a step toward the door, remembered his hat, reached across the red leather chair to get it, and marched out. I went to the hall to see that he was on the outside when he shut the door. When I stepped back in, Wolfe spoke. “No mention of anonymous letters. A stratagem?”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“You have interrupted me four times, Mr. Cramer. My tolerance is not infinite. You would say, of course, that the message would not be published, and in good faith, but your good faith isn’t enough. No doubt Mrs. Nesbitt was assured that her name wouldn’t become known, but it did. So I reserve the message. I was about to say, it wouldn’t help you to find your murderer. Except for that one immaterial detail, you know all that I know, now that you have reached my client. As for what Mrs. Valdon hired me to do, that’s manifest. I engaged to find the mother of the baby. They have been at that, and that alone, for more than three weeks—Mr. Goodwin, Mr. Panzer, Mr. Durkin, and Mr. Cather. You ask if I’m blocked. I am. I’m at my wit’s end.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Wolfe grunted. “That’s admirably specious, but drop it. I give you my word that I haven’t the faintest notion of who killed Ellen Tenzer.” Cramer eyed him. “Your word?” “Yes, sir.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Wolfe nodded. “The letter-writer’s arrangement is even more adroit. Not only is there no risk of contact, there is no possible line of approach. But she must be found, and I have considered two procedures. One would be extremely expensive and might take many months. The other would require the cooperation of men who were close friends or associates of Mr. Valdon. From Mrs. Valdon’s suggestions four names were selected: yours. On her behalf I ask each of you to make a list of the names of all women with whom, to your knowledge, Richard Valdon was in contact during the months of March, April, and May, nineteen-sixty-one. Last year. All women, however brief the contact and regardless of its nature. May I have it soon? Say by tomorrow evening?”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Wolfe grunted. “Unthinkable, Mr. Haft. Maintaining integrity as a private detective is difficult; to preserve it for the hundred thousand words of a book would be impossible for me, as it has been for so many others. Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overpowering. I wouldn’t presume—” Fritz had entered with a tray. First the beer to Wolfe, then the brandy to Bingham, the water to Upton, and the scotch and water to me. Upton got a pillbox from a pocket, fished one out and popped it into his mouth, and drank water. Bingham took a sip of brandy, looked surprised, took another sip, rolled it around in his mouth, looked astonished, swallowed, said, “May I?” and got up and went to Wolfe’s desk for a look at the label on the bottle. “Never heard of it,” he told Wolfe, “and I thought I knew cognac. Incredible, serving it offhand to a stranger. Where in God’s name did you get it?”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“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.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“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.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“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 knew 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.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. “Twenty grand,” I told him. “The DA wanted fifty, so I’m stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven’t hit on them and now they probably won’t. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they’re welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there’s nothing urgent I’ll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what’s lunch?”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Then she’s the mother!” “No. For various good reasons, no. I won’t—” “But she knows who the mother is!” “Probably she did. At least she knew where she got it and who from. But she won’t tell because she’s dead. She was—” “Dead?” “I’m telling you. After a short talk with her Friday morning I left to get to a phone and send for help, and when I got back to the house her car was gone and so was she. I spent three hours searching the house. I’m reporting only the details that you need to understand the situation. Ellen Tenzer never returned to her house. At six o’clock yesterday morning a cop found a dead woman in a parked car—here in Manhattan, Thirty-eighth Street near Third Avenue. She had been strangled with a piece of cord. It was Ellen Tenzer, and it was her car. You would know about that if you read the papers. So she can’t tell us anything.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“No. The morning will do. You’re impetuous.” He looked at the wall clock. Fritz would come any minute to announce dinner. “Can you get Saul now?”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“It was quite conceivable that Miss Tenzer had aroused in some man, possibly Richard Valdon, the kind of reaction that is an important factor in the propagation of the species; in fact, in more men than one.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“How old are you?” That was for my benefit. He had a triple conviction: that a) his animus toward women made it impossible for him to judge any single specimen; that b) I needed only an hour with any woman alive to tag her; and that c) he could help out by asking some blunt impertinent question, his favorite one being how old are you. It’s hopeless to try to set him right.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“No man with any sense assumes that a woman’s words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Despite some initial reluctance to spend a whole book’s worth of time with a man who flirted with misogyny, I took the plunge. Wolfe, after all, had the good sense to live in Manhattan, and besides, you had to like a man who surrounded himself with exotic tropical plants, consumed epicurean meals, and had the chutzpah to make the universe conform to his rules. And when I met Archie Goodwin, his ebullience and his earthy, rakish charm won me over.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“With money to pay lawyers you can do a lot of dodging. That’s one of the disadvantages of being poor, you don’t dare kill anybody.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“With all the trick gadgets they had hatched, there may be one you could attach to Wolfe and me and find out if he riles me more than I do him or vice versa, but we haven’t got one, so I don’t know.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“He’ll try again. With money to pay lawyers you can do a lot of dodging. That’s one of the disadvantages of being poor, you don’t dare kill anybody.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overpowering. I wouldn’t presume—”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Nothing is nonsense that is concerned with the vagaries of human conduct.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“That’s one of the disadvantages of being poor, you don’t dare kill anybody.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“That’s ill-advised. More, it’s puerile.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Repeat it,” Upton commanded me. I repeated it. “A little malignant spirit,” Wolfe said. “He not only had the pleasure of perturbing Mrs. Valdon; there was the added fillip of telling Miss Mardus what he had done.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“You fat mountebank,” he croaked. He wheeled and started for the door, found me in the way, blocking him, and stopped.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt

“Certainly. You don’t owe him anything. As for me, I’m not that conceited. I’m not actually conceited at all. I merely think it’s common sense to like myself.”
― Rex Stout, The Mother Hunt