The Mother Hunt [antikvár]

1 When the doorbell rang a little after eleven that Tuesday morning in early June and I went to the hall and took a look through the one-way glass panel in the front door, I saw what, or whom, I expected to see: a face a little too i narrow, gray eyes a little too big, and a figure a little too thin for the best curves. I knew who it was because she had phoned Monday afternoon for an appointment, and I knew [J what she looked like because I had seen her a few times at t theaters or restaurants. | Also I had known enough about her, part public record I and part hearsay, to brief Nero Wolfe without doing any research. She was the widow of Richard Valdon, the novelist, who had died some nine months ago—drowned in somebody's swimming pool in Westchester—and since four of his books had been best sellers and one of them, Never Dream Again, had topped a million copies at $5.95, she should have no trouble paying a bill from a private detective if and when she got one. After reading Never Dream Again, five or six years ago, Wolfe had chucked it by giving it to a li-brary, but he had thought better of a later one, His Own ; 5 Image, and it had a place on the shelves. Presumably that was why he took the trouble to lift his bulk from the chair when I ushered her to the office, and to stand until she was seated in the red leather chair near the end of his desk. As I went to my desk and sat I was not agog. She had said on the phone that she wanted to consult Wolfe about some- j thing very personal and confidential, but she didn't look as ' if she were being pinched where it hurt. It would probably be something routine like an anonymous letter or a missing 1. relative. Putting her bag on the stand at her elbow, she turned her head for a look around, stopped her big gray eyes at me for . half a second as she turned back, and said to Wolfe, "My j > husband would have liked this room." , "M-m," Wolfe said. "I liked one of his books, with reser- i," vations. How old was he when he died?" I if 1 t T