Рекс Стаут - A Right to Die

He kept trying to focus on me without blinking. “I can’t stand it,” he said, “and I don’t intend to. An innocent man convicted of murder because I didn’t have the guts...” He shut his eyes tight and jerked his head from side to side.

“Look,” I said, “let’s get down to cases. What did you lie to the police about?”

“About where I was. That evening. I lied to Wolfe too. I wasn’t at the club all evening. I left right after dinner and was gone for more than two hours.”

My lips parted to say “Where did you go?” but it didn’t get out. I don’t know what stopped it. You never know where a hunch comes from; if you did it wouldn’t be a hunch. I took three seconds to look at it, liked it, and said, “Sure. You went and baby-sat for Dolly Brooke while she went and got her car and went for a ride.”

It stopped the blinks. He stared. “How in the name of...”

I grinned at him. “You have just heard a detective detect. I knew that she had got the car from the garage around a quarter to eight and returned about an hour and a half later. I doubted if she would leave an eight-year-old alone in the apartment. You come and make a big point of not owing them any loyalty and then say you lied about where you were that evening. So I detect.” I turned a palm up. “Simple. Now that the beans are spilled, let’s use the broom. Where did she go in the car?”

He still wasn’t blinking. “So you knew. I didn’t need... I’m a damn fool. How did you find out?”

“Confidential information. We respect confidences, including yours. Where did—”

“Did you know when we were here? Friday?”

“No. We got it last night. Where did she go in the car?”

“I didn’t need to come.” He got to his feet, none too steady. “You already knew.” He turned and was going.

I moved and was between him and the door. “Now you’re a damn fool,” I told him. “The only question is would you rather tell me or the police.”

He was blinking again. “You said you respect confidences.”

“Nuts. You know what I said. We would prefer to tell the police nothing, about you or anyone else, until we can name the murderer, but you’re not leaving until either (a) you answer my questions or (b) I get a cop here and you answer his questions. Take your pick.”

He didn’t size me up. He stood and blinked at me, but not to decide if he could rush me. He was contemplating the situation, not me. I let him take his time. Finally he turned, not too sure of his legs, walked back to the chair, and sat. Back in my chair, I asked him, not demanding, just wanting to know, “Where did she go in the car?”

“If I tell you that,” he said, “I ought to tell you all about it.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

He took a while to decide where to start. “You know I was going to marry Susan.”

“If that’s the way you want to put it, yes.”

“That’s exactly the way I want to put it. We knew about that apartment. We all knew — her mother, Kenneth, Dolly, and I. We knew she was emotionally involved in the civil rights movement. Her mother and Dolly thought she was also emotionally involved with that man, Dunbar Whipple, but I didn’t. I thought I understood Susan, and I still think so. You don’t think so, do you?”

There was no point to rubbing salt in. “I don’t count. I didn’t know her. All I want is to get a murderer.”

“Well, I knew her. I understood her. Her mother and Dolly kept saying I ought to do something, but I thought it was better just to let her work her way through it. They kept harping about that apartment and the disgrace, the scandal, Susan would bring on the family. Then about a month ago Dolly said if I wouldn’t do something she would. She didn’t tell Kenneth because she knew he wouldn’t approve, but she told me. Some evening when Kenneth was staying at the laboratory Mother Brooke would come and stay with the boy, and she would go up there and see what was going on. In one way I didn’t approve either, but in another way I did, because I thought she would find there was nothing wrong. You see the situation?”

I only nodded. What a situation for a grown man with a brain supposedly in working order. I wasn’t thinking of color; that was an unimportant detail.

“All right,” he said, “that’s how it was. That evening, that Monday evening, I got a phone call as I was eating dinner at the club. It was Dolly. Mother Brooke couldn’t come because she was sick, and Dolly wanted me to come and stay with the boy. I suppose I should have refused, but — anyway, I went. I got there a little after eight. She left right away, and—”

“Hold it. Our information is that she got the car from the garage about a quarter to eight.”

“Then your information is wrong. She left the house about ten after, and the garage is four blocks away. My God, do you think I don’t know? When I know what happened? When I’ve been over it and over it a thousand times?”

“Okay, you know.”

“God knows I do. Give her ten minutes to get to the garage and get the car, and ten more to One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Street, and—”

“Maybe not enough. Fifteen.”

“No. Straight up Park Avenue and across, nothing to it at that time in the evening. I drove it and timed it twice yesterday. Nine minutes both times, and I didn’t push. So she got there just after half past eight, out of the car and to the building. She went up the two flights and stood at the door of the apartment a few minutes, listening. She didn’t hear anything, and she knocked on the door and then stood some more, and then knocked again, and nothing happened. I’m telling you what she told me. She went down and stood across the street, and pretty soon Dunbar Whipple came and entered the building. She wanted—”

“Did she know Whipple?”

“She had met him. Susan had taken her to a couple of ROCC meetings. She wanted to go back in and up to the apartment, but she was afraid to. She went back to the car, which she had double-parked around the corner, and drove to the garage and came home. If you allow twenty-five minutes for that, Whipple got to the apartment at five minutes after nine. It was exactly half past when she got home.”

“And told you what had happened.”

“Yes.”

“What was her — uh — attitude?”

“She was excited. She thought she had proved something, but I didn’t. I thought obviously Susan wasn’t there, since Dolly had knocked twice and she hadn’t answered. A girl who works for the ROCC lived in that building, Susan had told me about her, and Whipple could have been going to see her. We got into an argument about it, and I left and went back to the club.”

I regarded him. He was really a pitiful sight. “Tell me something. Just curiosity. Why were you so hot to know why we think Whipple is innocent when you already knew damn well he is?”

“I didn’t know it.”

“Certainly you did. Only two alternatives. Either Susan was already dead when Dolly arrived, since she didn’t answer the door, or she did answer the door and let Dolly in, and Dolly killed her. In either case she wasn’t alive at five minutes past nine. Don’t tell me you hadn’t figured that.”

“Of course I had. But it wasn’t certain. Sometimes people don’t go to the door when there’s a knock.”

“Nuts. No wonder you had conscience trouble. You think Dolly killed her and you baby-sat for her while she did it.”

“I haven’t said so and I’m not going to.” He was blinking again. If his eyelashes had been wings he would have been around the world by now. He asked, “What are you going to do?”

I looked at my watch: 10:43. “Nothing, for seventeen minutes. Mr. Wolfe comes down from the plant rooms at eleven. I would advise— Oh, a question. Did you tell her you were going to spill it?”