A Right To Die

by Rex Stout

  He turned. "It's closer to Milwaukee. Is there an airplane to Milwaukee?"

  "Sure." I stared. "The fare would be around eighty bucks, and then thirty bucks a day. Or more. Whipple might object."

  "He will have no occasion." He returned to his chair and sat. "Veblen called it instinct of workmanship. Mine was committed when I engaged to serve Mr. Whipple. In your conversation with Miss Rowan and Miss Brooke, which you reported Wednesday evening verbatim, did you note nothing suggestive? Surely not."

  "You could call it suggestive. After she said she got good and bored in Racine she said, 'Then something happened, and—' And she cut. Okay, suggestive. Maybe the roof in the big house started to leak."

  "Pfui. What if Miss Brooke's past were a vital element in an investigation of great moment?"

  "I would probably be in Racine now."

  "Then you will go. Tomorrow. Confound it, I'm committed."

  I shook my head. "Objection. Tomorrow's Sunday and I have a personal commitment."

  He settled for Monday, and for Chicago instead of Milwaukee because there were more planes.

  It was three above zero at twenty minutes past five Monday afternoon when I parked the car, which I had rented in Chicago, in a lot a block away from the office of the Racine Globe and two blocks from the hotel where I had a reservation. I have not left the parking to the hotel since the day, a few years back, when I lost an important contact because it took them nearly half an hour to bring the car. I walked the two blocks with my bag, checked in, and went out again.

  I had no appointment at the Globe, but Lon Cohen of the New York Gazette had made a phone call for me Sunday evening, and a man named James E. Leamis, the managing editor, knew I was coming. After two waits, one downstairs and one on the third floor, I was taken to him in a room that had his name on the door. He left his chair to shake hands, took my coat and hat and put them on a couch, and said it was a pleasure to meet a New York newspaperman. We sat and exchanged some remarks, and I explained that I wasn't a newspaperman; I was a private investigator doing a job for the Gazette. I said I supposed that Mr. Cohen had told him that the Gazette was thinking of running a series on the Rights of Citizens Committee, and he said no, he had told him only that I would come to ask for some information.

  "But you know what the Rights of Citizens Committee is."

  "Of course. There are branches in Chicago and Milwaukee, but none in Racine. Why do you come here?"

  "I'm checking on a certain individual. The series will focus on the people at the New York headquarters, and one of the important ones is a young woman named Susan Brooke. I understand she's from Racine. Isn't she?"

  "Yes. My God, the Gazette sent you out here just to check on Susan Brooke? Why?"

  "No special reason. They want to fill in the background, that's all. Do you know her? Or did you?"

  "I can't say I knew her. Say I was acquainted with her. I knew her brother Kenneth fairly well. Of course she's another generation. I'm twice her age."

  He looked it, with his hair losing color and getting thin, and his wrinkles. He was in his shirt sleeves, with a vest, unbuttoned. I asked, "How was she regarded in Racine?"

  "Well … all right. One of my daughters was in her class at high school. Then she went away to college—if I knew which one, I've forgotten—"

  "Radcliffe."

  "Oh. So actually her only background in Racine was her childhood. Her father had a Racine background, and how. He was the smartest real-estate operator in southern Wisconsin. He owned this building. The family still does. I'm afraid I can't help you much, Mr. Goodwin. If what you want is dirt, I know I can't."

  I had intended to ask him if anything newsworthy had happened to Susan Brooke, or about her, in the summer or fall of 1959, but I didn't. She was the Globe's landlady, and they might be behind on the rent. So I told him I wasn't after dirt specifically, just the picture, whatever it was. He started asking questions about the ROCC and what people in New York thought about Rockefeller and Goldwater, and I answered them to be polite.

  It was dark when I emerged to the sidewalk, and the wind would freeze anything that was bare. I went back to the hotel and up to my room, where I was expecting company at six-thirty. In Chicago I had called on a man who had traded professional errands with Wolfe now and then. According to him, there was only one in Racine that was any good, by name Otto Drucker, and he had phoned him and made an appointment for me. In my nice warm room I took off my shoes and stretched out on the bed, but soon got up again. After only two blocks of that zero wind I would have been asleep in three minutes.

  He was punctual, only five minutes late. As I shook hands with him at the door I didn't let my surprise show. I would never have picked him for an operative; he would have looked right at home at the desk of an assistant vice-president of a bank, with his neat well-arranged face and his friendly careful eyes. When I turned from putting his coat and hat on the bed, he asked in a friendly careful voice, "And how is Mr. Nero Wolfe?"

  He was almost certainly a distinguished citizen. It had never occurred to me that a private detective could get away with it. Not Nero Wolfe. He's a citizen, and he's distinguished, but a distinguished citizen, no.

  It was a very pleasant evening. He liked the idea of eating in the room. When I said I would phone room service for a menu, he said it wasn't necessary because the only things they knew how to cook were roast beef, hashed brown potatoes, and apple pie. If I reported the whole evening for you, you wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did, because mostly we talked shop. Take tailing. He knew all the tricks I had ever heard of, and, because he had been working in Racine for twenty years and everybody knew him, he had had to invent some twists that even Saul Panzer would be glad to use.

  But of course the point was Susan Brooke. I didn't mention her until after we had got acquainted and had finished with the meal, which was okay, and the dishes had been taken away. All I told him was that a client was considering taking her as a partner in an important project, that anything he could tell me about her would be strictly confidential, and that he would not be quoted. I would have been disappointed in him if he hadn't asked who the client was. He did. He would have been disappointed in me if I had told him. I didn't.

  He took his pipe from his mouth and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. "Memories," he said. He plumbed his head. "I did some jobs for Susan Brooke's father. Quite a few. I could give you a line on him, but he's dead. She was just one of the kids around town, even if her name was Brooke, and as far as I know she was never in any trouble worth mentioning. I suppose you know she went away to college."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "And then New York. The years she was at college she wasn't here much even in the summers; she and her mother took trips. In the last eight or nine years I don't think Susan Brooke has been in Racine more than four or five months altogether. The past four years she hasn't been here at all."

  "Then I'm wasting the client's money. But I understand she came here, came home, when she finished college. In nineteen fifty-nine. But maybe you wouldn't know; her father was dead then. Not long after that they left for New York. Do you happen to know how long after?"

  He pulled on his pipe, found it was out, and lit it. Through the smoke screen he said, "I don't know why you're trying to sneak up on me like this. If you want to ask me about that man that killed himself, go ahead and ask, but I don't know much."

  I usually manage my face fairly well, but with him there was no reason to be on guard, and it showed. What showed was how that "man that killed himself" hit me. Here, all of a sudden, was dirt. It might even be the blackest dirt, such as that she had killed a man and got it passed off as suicide. The way it hit me, it was obvious that not only had I not expected to find anything much, I hadn't wanted to.

  Drucker asked, "What's the matter? Did you think I wouldn't know I was being played?"

  I produced a grin. "You don't. Even if I wanted to try playing you, for practice, I know damn well I cou
ldn't. I know nothing about the man that killed himself. I was merely checking on Susan Brooke in Racine. Maybe you're playing me?"

  "No. As soon as you mentioned Susan Brooke, naturally I supposed that was the item you were checking on."

  "It wasn't. I knew nothing about it. You said go ahead and ask. Okay, I ask."

  "Well." He pulled at the pipe. "It was that summer when she was back from college. A young man came to town to see her, and he was seeing her, or trying to. At twenty minutes to six in the afternoon of Friday, August fourteenth, nineteen fifty-nine, he came out of the house, the Brooke house, stood on the porch, pulled a gun from his pocket, a Marley thirty-eight, and shot himself in the temple. You say you didn't know about it?"

  "Yes. I did not. Was there any doubt about it?"

  "None at all. Three people saw it happen. Two women on the sidewalk in front of the house and a man across the street. You would like to know about Susan Brooke, where did she fit in, but I can't tell you of my own knowledge. I only know what was printed and what a friend of mine told me who was in a position to know. The man was a college boy, Harvard. He had been pestering her to marry him, and he came to Racine to pester her some more, and she and her mother gave him the boot, so he checked out. As you know, that happens, though personally it is beyond what I can understand. There may be good and sufficient reasons for a man to kill himself, but I will never see that one of them is a woman saying no. Of course it's a form of disease. You're not married."

  "No. Are you?"

  "I was. She left me. It hurt my pride, but I've slept better ever since. Another thing, if a man and wife are together the way they should be, it's natural and healthy for them to talk about his work, and a private detective can't do that. Can he?"

  We started talking shop and kept at it for more than an hour. I didn't try to get him back on Susan Brooke. But when he left, around ten o'clock, I told myself that the Globe was a morning paper, so the staff would be there now, and if her past was a vital element in an investigation of great moment, I would go and take a look. So I used the phone, got Leamis, and received permission to inspect the back file.

  The wind had eased up some, but the cold hadn't, and it pinched my nose. In the Globe building the presses had started; there was vibration on the ground floor, and even more on the second, where I was taken to a dim and dusty room and turned over to an old geezer with no teeth, or anyway not enough. He warned me to do no clipping or tearing and led me to a bank of shelves marked 1959.

  The light was bad, but I have good eyes. I started at August 7, a week before the date Drucker had named, to see if there was any mention of a Harvard man's arrival or presence in town, but there wasn't. On the fifteenth, there it was, front page. His name was Richard Ault and his home town was Evansville, Indiana. It was front page again on Sunday the sixteenth, but on Monday it was inside and on Tuesday there was nothing. I went on and finished the week but drew blanks, then went back to the first three days and read them again.

  There was no hint anywhere of any covering up. The three eyewitnesses had been interviewed, and there were no discrepancies or contradictions. The porch was in plain view from the sidewalk; the two women had seen him with the gun in his hand before he had raised it, and one of them had yelled at him. The man had run across the street and had got to the porch as Mrs. Brooke and Susan emerged from the house. Susan had refused to be interviewed that evening, but had told her story to a reporter Saturday morning and had answered his questions freely.

  Even if I had been hell-bent on getting something on her I would have had to cross that off and look elsewhere. I put the papers back where they belonged, told the guardian I had done no clipping or tearing, returned to the hotel, treated myself to a glass of milk in the coffee shop, and went up to bed.

  I don't know whether I would have looked any further in Racine or not if there had been no interruption. Probably not, since I had learned what was in her mind when she said "then something happened," and that was what had sent me. The interruption woke me up Tuesday morning. I had left a call for eight o'clock, and when the phone rang I didn't believe it and looked at my watch. Ten after seven. I thought, Damn hotels anyway, reached for the phone, and was told I was being called from New York. I said here I am, and was figuring that in New York it was ten after eight, when Wolfe's voice came.

  "Archie?"

  "Right. Good morning."

  "It isn't. Where are you?"

  "In bed."

  "I do not apologize for disturbing you. Get up and come home. Miss Brooke is dead. Her body was found last evening with the skull battered. She was murdered. Come home."

  I swallowed with nothing to swallow. I started, "Where was—" and stopped. I swallowed again. "I'll leave—"

  "When will you get here?"

  "How do I know? Noon, one o'clock."

  "Very well." He hung up.

  I permitted myself to sit on the edge of the bed for ten seconds. Then I got erect, dressed, packed the bag, took the elevator down and checked out, walked to the parking lot and got the car, and headed for Chicago. I would get breakfast at the airport.

  Chapter 4

  IT WASN'T NOON, and it wasn't one o'clock, when I used my key on the door of the old brownstone on West 35th Street. It was five minutes to two. The plane had floated around above a fog bank for half an hour before landing at Idlewild—I mean Kennedy International Airport. I put my bag down and was taking my coat off when Fritz appeared at the end of the hall, from the kitchen, and came.

  "Grâce à Dieu," he said. "He called the airport. You know how he is about machines. I've kept it hot. Shad roe fines herbes, no parsley."

  "I can use it. But I—"

  A roar came. "Archie!"

  I went to the open door to the dining room, which is across the hall from the office. At the table, Wolfe was putting cheese on a wafer. "Nice day," I said. "You don't want to smell the herbs again so I'll eat in the kitchen with the Times. The one on the plane was the early edition."

  We get two copies of the Times, one for Wolfe, who has a tray breakfast in his room, and one for me. I proceeded to the kitchen, and there was my Times, propped on the rack, on the little table where I always eat breakfast. Even when I'm away for a week on some errand Fritz probably puts it there every morning. He would. I sat and got it and looked for the headline, but in a moment was interrupted by Fritz with the platter and a hot plate. I helped myself and took a bite of the roe and a piece of crusty roll dabbed in the sauce, which is one of Fritz's best when he leaves the parsley out.

  The details were about as scanty as in the early edition. Susan Brooke's corpse had been found shortly before nine o'clock Monday evening in a room on the third floor of a building on 128th Street, a walk-up of course, by a man named Dunbar Whipple, who was on the staff of the Rights of Citizens Committee. Her skull had been crushed by repeated blows. I already knew that much. Also I already knew what the late city edition added: that Susan Brooke had been a volunteer worker for the ROCC, and she had lived with her widowed mother in a Park Avenue apartment; and that Dunbar Whipple was twenty-three years old and was the son of Paul Whipple, an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University. One thing I had not actually known but could have guessed if I had put my mind on it: the police and the district attorney's office had started an investigation.

  When the roe and sauce and rolls were where they belonged, and some salad, I refilled my coffee cup and took it to the office. Wolfe was at his desk, tapping his nose with a pencil, scowling at a crossword puzzle. I went to my desk, sat, and sipped coffee. After a while he switched the scowl to me, realized I hadn't earned it, and erased it.

  "Confound it," he said, "it's preposterous and insulting that I might lose your services and talents merely through the whim of a mechanism. How high up were you at noon?"

  "Oh, four miles. I know. You regard anything and everything beyond your control as an insult. You—"

  "No. Not in nature. Only in what men contrive."
>
  I nodded. "And what they do. For instance, committing murder. Have you any news besides what's in the Times?"

  "No."

  "Any callers? Whipple?"

  "No."

  "Do you want a report on Racine?"

  "No. To what purpose?"

  "I merely ask. I need a shave. Since there's nothing urgent, apparently, I'll go up and use a mechanism. If I did report I wouldn't have to speak ill of the dead." I left the chair. "At least I won't—"

  The doorbell rang. I went to the hall for a look through the one-way glass, saw two men on the stoop, and stepped back in. "Two Whipples, father and son. I have never seen the son, but of course it is. Have they an appointment?"

  He glared. I stood, but evidently he thought the glare needed no help, so I went down the hall to the front and opened the door. Paul Whipple said, "We have to see Mr. Wolfe. This is my son Dunbar."

  "He's expecting you," I said, which was probably true, and sidestepped to give them room.

  A day or two earlier I would have been glad to meet the Negro specimen that Susan Brooke intended to marry, just to size him up. All right, I was meeting him, and he looked like Sugar Ray Robinson after a hard ten rounds, except that he was a little darker. A day or two earlier he would probably have been handsome and jaunty; now he was a wreck. So was his father. When I started a hand for his hat he let go before I reached it, and it dropped to the floor.

  In the office I nodded the father to the red leather chair and moved up one of the yellow ones for the son. Dunbar sat, but Whipple stood and looked at Wolfe, bleary-eyed. Wolfe spoke. "Sit down, Mr. Whipple. You're crushed. Have you eaten?"

  That wasn't flip. Wolfe is convinced that when real trouble comes the first thing to do is eat.

  Dunbar blurted at Wolfe, "What did you do? What did you do?"

  Whipple shook his head at him. "Take it easy, son." He twisted around to look at the chair, saw it there, and sat. He looked at Wolfe. "You know what happened."